26
ROBERT MUSIL
stone, the next best piece of stick in her hand, to be aimed at the
Grey One as soon as she was within throwing distance. Since, however,
the cow Grigia had a distinct taste for straying valley-wards, the whole
of this operation would be repeated with the regularity of pendulum–
clockwork that is constantly dropping lower and constantly being
wound higher again. Because this was so paradisically senseless, he
teased her by calling her Grigia herself. He could not conceal from
himself that his heart beat faster when from a distance he caught
sight of her sitting there; that is the way the heart beats when one
suddenly walks into the smell of pine needles or into the spicy air
rising from the floor of woods where a great many mushrooms grow.
In this feeling there was always a residual dread of Nature. And one
must not believe that Nature is anything but highly unnatural: she
is earthy, edgy, poisonous and inhuman at all points where man does
not impose his will upon her. Probably it was just this that fascinated
him in this peasant woman, and the other half of it was inexhaustible
amazement that she did so much resemble a woman. One would, after
all, be equally amazed, going through the woods, to encounter a lady
balancing a teacup.
"Do you come in," she too had said, the first time he had
knocked at her door. She was standing by the hearth, with a pot
on the fire, and since she could not leave it, she made a courteous
gesture towards the bench. Mter a while she wiped her hand on her
apron, smiling, and held it out to her visitors: it was a well-formed
hand, as velvety-rough as the finest sandpaper or as garden soil
trickling between the fingers. And the face that went with the hand
was a faintly mocking face, with delicate, graceful bones that one saw
best in profile, and a mouth that he noticed very particularly. This
mouth was curved like a Cupid's bow, yet it was also compressed
as happens when one gulps, and this gave it, with its subtlety, a
determined roughness, and to this roughness again a little trace of
merriment, which was perfectly in keeping with the wooden shoes
that the slight figure grew up out of as out of wild roots. . .. They
had come to arrange some matter or other, and when they left, the
smile was there again, and the hand rested in his perhaps a moment
longer than when they had come. These impressions, which would
have been so insignificant in town, out there in this solitude amounted
to a shock, as though a tree had moved its branches in a way not to be
explained by any stirring of the wind or a bird's taking flight.
