A Treatise on Shelling Beans Read Online Free PDF Page B

taken aback – all he’d been intending to do was drown a dog, and here he was talking about his soul. All the more because if you ask me, these days the soul is a commodity like anything else. You can buy it and sell it, and the prices aren’t high. Maybe it was always that way. I read in some book that centuries ago someone said the human soul is a piece of bread. Do you think bread could have been so very expensive back then? If so, it’s hardly surprising things are the way they are. Sorry for asking, but I imagine you must know what a human soul might cost these days, even just thinking about my dogs here. Or the graves in the woods.
    You didn’t know there were graves in the woods? I was convinced you’d gone into the woods to look for them. I even wondered how you knew about them. Could Mr. Robert have told you? He let you stay in his cabin, said where to find the key, so maybe he told you about the graves as well. That was why I didn’t want to bother you. It’s always awkward to go ask someone who they are, why they’re here, how long for. Some folks I have to ask to show ID, because not everyone can be taken at their word. Or I even ask to see written permission that they can stay in someone’s cabin, especially if I’ve never seen them here before. But since it’s Mr. Robert …
    Tell me at least how his health is. You don’t know Mr. Robert? Really? I bet you just don’t want to let on. Mr. Robert must have told you to say that. I was even thinking he must have sent you to let me know what’s going on with him. I thought maybe he’s ill and he couldn’t make it himself. So I waited till you’d had a good night’s sleep and came to see me. But you went off into the woods. To begin with I thought you’d gone for a walk, to relax a bit after the drive, get some fresh forest air, but that you’d be back soon. I kept looking out the window,I even went outside a couple of times and stood there, but there was no sign of you. Everything started to get dark, the lake, the cabins, the woods. Soon it’d be night, then how would you find your way back? I was worried. It’s your first time here, you don’t know the woods, you could get lost. I’d have to take the dogs out and go looking for you. I turned a light on just in case, thinking that the light might lead you back. You saw it? There you are. It’s not hard to get lost out there, especially this time of year, in the fall. Right now nothing is what it is.
    I almost got lost there myself. Yeah, that time the fog held me up on the way. It was all quiet and deserted, and just like you I went into the woods to find where the graves are. That was basically why I’d come in the first place. I didn’t know exactly where they were, only that they were in the woods. When Mr. Robert told me about them, he just waved toward the woods in general, as if to say, over that way. But the woods go on and on, where are you supposed to start? And if they were at least together, but no, they’re all over the place. I walked about the whole day, I don’t even remember how many of them I found that day. I didn’t notice it had started to get dark. Especially because the darkness doesn’t come all at once, as you know. For a long time you think you can see fine. And since you can see … I knew the woods, so I somehow managed to find my way back in the dark. But imagine this, it was only when I came out by the lake that I no longer knew where I was. On this shore or the other one. I remembered which direction the Rutka flowed, but now it seemed to me it was the opposite. The cabins could just about be made out in the darkness, but which one was Mr. Robert’s, I couldn’t have said. So I just stood there, I was completely unable to get my bearings. I even started to doubt whether it was me standing where I was standing.
    All of a sudden, I saw a tiny light in the distance. At first it was ever so faint. I thought someone must be walking, lighting their way