Five Women Read Online Free PDF

spring, as if a strong wind had swept over them after rain. The fly made a few efforts, each weaker than the last, to turn over, and from time to time a second fly that was feeding on the oilcloth ran to see how it was getting on. Homo also kept a careful watch—the flies were a great nuisance here. But when death came, the dying fly folded its six little legs together, to a point, and kept them straight up like that, and then it died in its pale spot of light on the oilcloth as in a graveyard of stillness that could not be measured in inches or decibels, and which was nevertheless there. Someone was just saying: "They say someone's worked out that all the Rothschilds put together haven't enough money to pay for a third-class ticket to the moon."
    Homo murmured to himself: "... Kill, and yet feel the presence of God? ... Feel the presence of God and yet kill?" And with a flick of his forefinger he sent the fly right into the face of the major sitting opposite, which caused another incident and thus kept them occupied until the next evening.
    By then he had already known Grigia for some time, and perhaps the major knew her too. Her name was Lene Maria Lenzi. That sounded like Selvot and Gronleit or Malga Mendana, had a ring as of amethyst crystals and of flowers, but he preferred to call her Grigia, pronounced Greej a, after the cow she had, which she called Grigia, Grey One. At such times she would be sitting at the edge of her meadow, in her mauve-brown skirt and dotted kerchief, the toes of her wooden clogs sticking up into the air, her hands clasped over her bright apron, and she would look as naturally lovely as a slender little poisonous mushroom, while now and then she called out to the cow grazing lower down the hillside. There were actually only two things she called: "Come a-here!" and: "Come a-up!" when the cow strayed too far. But if her cries were unavailing, there would follow an indignant: "Hey, you devil, come a-here!", and in the last resort she herself would go hurtling down the hillside like a flung 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 tea-cup.
    "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. After 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,