GRIGIA
31
stockings be-it won't be long till nightfall." That was near Grigia's
cottage. When he told Grigia, she made a scornful face and said:
"People will talk, and brooks will run," but she swallowed hard, and
her thoughts were elsewhere. Then he suddenly remembered a woman
he had seen up here, whose bony face was like an Aztec's and who
spent all her time sitting at her door, her black hair loose, hanging
down below her shoulders, and with three healthy, round-cheeked
children around her. Grigia and he unthinkingly passed by her every
day, yet this was the only one of the local women whom he did not
know, and oddly enough he had never asked about her either, although
he was struck by her appearance: it was almost as though the healthi–
ness of her children and the illness manifest in her face were impres–
sions that always cancelled each other out. In his present mood he
suddenly felt quite sure it was from here that the disturbing element
must have come. He asked who she was, but Grigia crossly shrugged
her shoulders and merely exclaimed: "She doesn't know what she says!
With her it's a word here and a word over the mountains!" And she
made a swift, energetic gesture, tapping her brow, as though she must
instantly devalue anything that woman might have said.
Since Grigia could not be persuaded to come again into any of
the hay barns around the village, Homo proposed going higher up
the mountain with her. She was reluctant, and when at last she
yielded, she said, in a tone that afterwards struck Homo as equivocal:
"Well, then, if go we must."
It was a beautiful morning that once again embraced the whole
world; far beyond, there lay the sea of clouds and of mankind. Grigia
was anxious to avoid passing any dwelling, and even when they were
well away from the village she, who had always been delightfully
reckless in all arrangements to do with their love-making, showed
concern lest they should
be
seen by watchful eyes. Then he grew
impatient and it occurred to him that they had just passed an old
mine shaft that his own people had soon given up trying to put back
into use. There he drove Grigia in.
As
he turned to look back for the last time, there was snow on
a mountain peak and below it, golden in the sun, a little field of corn–
stalks, with the white and blue sky over it all.
Grigia made another remark that seemed strangely pointed.
Noticing
his
backward glance, she said tenderly, "Better leave the blue
