GRIGIA
29
Sometimes he talked to Grigia about this. She had a way of her
own of asking about it: as respectful as
if
it were something entrusted
to her, and quite without self-seeking. She seemed to regard it as quite
in order that beyond the mountains there were people he loved more
than her, whom he loved with his whole soul. And he did not feel this
love growing less; it was growing stronger, being ever renewed. It did
not grow dim, but the more deeply colored it became, the more it
lost any power to decide anything for him in reality or to prevent his
doing anything. It was weightless and free of all earthly attachment
in that strange and wonderful way known only to one who has had
to reckon up with his life and who henceforth may wait only for death.
However healthy he had been before, at this time something within
him rose up and was straight, like a lame man who suddenly throws
away his crutches and walks on his own.
This became strongest of all when it came to hay-making time.
The hay was already mown and dried and only had to
be
bound
and fetched in, up from the mountain meadows. Homo watched it
from the nearest height, which was like being high in a swing, flying
free above it all. The girl-quite alone in the meadow, a polka-dotted
doll under the enormous glass bell of the sky-was doing all sorts of
things in her efforts to make a huge bundle. She knelt down in
it,
pulling the hay towards her with both arms. Very sensually she lay
on her belly across the bale and reached underneath it. She turned
over on her side and stretched out one arm as far as she could. She
'Climbed up it on one knee, then on both. There was something of the
dar-beetle about her, Homo thought-the scarab, of course. At last
she thrust her whole body under the bale, now bound with a rope, and
slowly raised it on high. The bundle was much bigger than the bright,
slender little human animal that was carrying it--or was that not
Grigia?
When, in search of her, Homo walked along the long row of
hay-stacks that the peasant women had set upon the level part of the
hillside, they were resting. He could scarcely believe his eyes, for they
were lying on their hillocks of hay like Michelangelo's statues in the
Medici chapel in Florence, one arm raised to support the head, and
the body reposing as in flowing water. And when they spoke with
him
and had to spit, they did so with much art: with three fingers
they would stop it up again. One might be tempted to laugh; only
if
