I could not see or realise my own
body, and I seemed to exist merely in my perception of the waves and
of the crying birds, and of the smell of seaweed.
When I tried to come home I lost myself among the sandhills, and the
night seemed to grow unutterably cold and dejected, as I groped
among slimy masses of seaweed and wet crumbling walls.
After a while I heard a movement in the sand, and two grey shadows
appeared beside me. They were two men who were going home from
fishing. I spoke to them and knew their voices, and we went home
together.
In the autumn season the threshing of the rye is one of the many
tasks that fall to the men and boys. The sheaves are collected on a
bare rock, and then each is beaten separately on a couple of stones
placed on end one against the other. The land is so poor that a
field hardly produces more grain than is needed for seed the
following year, so the rye-growing is carried on merely for the
straw, which is used for thatching.
The stooks are carried to and from the threshing fields, piled on
donkeys that one meets everywhere at this season, with their black,
unbridled heads just visible beneath a pinnacle of golden straw.
