An Offering for the Dead Read Online Free PDF

for mine ...Well, you can see them for yourself On her left hand, she wore an old silver ring with an opal. I wasted a great deal of effort trying to find out whether the ring was a present from me. When could I have given it to her anyway?
    I thought of a wooden arbor standing in the garden of a tenant farm. The arbor contained a real room, which, incidentally, I never entered. In front of it there was a small open terrace with a table and benches surrounded by grape leaves. Antlers and a few painted targets hung on the solid wall of the terrace. One of the targets showed a mountain cock courting precariously on a pine tree. The other picture showed a stag with a tremendous vapor issuing from its mouth. The most exciting picture showed a struggle between a forester and a poacher high in the mountains. The poacher was kneeling behind a boulder; naturally, he had a black beard while the forester was respectably clean-shaven. The poacher was also wearing an open, tattered shirt and buckskin trousers. Next to him lay a chamois kid; yes, a kid. The fiend had shot it in the chest region; to make this quite clear, the artist had not spared the red paint. However, it was not yet decided who would win this hunting-rifle duel.
    The arbor stood virtually concealed in the blaze of noon. The low main house was visible through the grape vines. Wherever the wall was not camouflaged by espalier fruit, its harsh yellow-white hurt the eyes. The twigs of the currant bushes, full of red clusters, hung over the fence of the nearby vegetable garden. At first, the clattering of plates and dishes could be heard from the kitchen. But by now, everyone must have been asleep, like the yellow hound in the open front door. Or else, the farm hands, male and female, were out in the fields. The hush was occasionally broken only by the drowsy crooning and clucking of a hen. It was the hour of day that so closely resembles midnight; although one can see everything, it all blurs insensibly into light and heat, just as, in the darkness of night, things lose their familiar stance.
    The cloth covering the table on the arbor terrace had an old-fashioned blue cross-stitch pattern. A vase containing bell flowers stood on it. And two young people, almost children, were sitting there. The boy was reading poetry aloud, and the girl had folded her hands in the lap of her white dress and was listening attentively. You must not laugh. When I see that picture, sentimental words come to my lips, such as: Happiness! And youth! And fullness! And yet it is nonsense! Where would I have taken the money back then to give the girl such a valuable ring, which a priest must have worn in ancient times.
    Turning away, I walk across the crowded square of a metropolis. I do not consider it impossible that this is the same city to which I then returned later on. It is a filthy winter morning, but I do not notice it, for it fits me so nicely. Very many cars drive past, preventing me from crossing the street. So for a while, together with other people, I have to wait by a monument in the middle of the square. A green man sits there on a ruddy marble pedestal. He clutches a scroll. His hand is half covered with a lace cuff that falls out of his sleeve. He has a braid. But his forehead and his shoulders are soiled with white stripes by the sparrows. At last, I can hurry across the roadway and I charge straight towards a mailbox. Then, something occurs to me, and I reach into my left coat pocket.
    You see, early in the morning, I took a girl to an ocean liner. So the story I am narrating must have happened in a port. Perhaps she was no longer a girl, I do not know. I accompanied her to customs, they had checked her papers and opened the valise that I was carrying for her. The burgundy taffeta silk dress that she had worn on the previous evening lay on top. We had been with the people she was living with. I believe we also danced. After we were done with customs, we stood on the swaying