I’m still here, lying at the entrance to the threshing floor, looking up at the sky with closed eyes, my arms spread open and a leg stretched out, sprawled over the damp grass.

Nothing hurts. Nothing at all. True, the pain had its moment, but now all I feel is nothing.

The plank gate remains open, swinging gently against its stone frame. Moino is making circles around me. Sniffing me.

It’s been an hour and no one’s come by. Above the house the smoke from the chimney has faded somewhat and the wind makes a soft, continuous hum among the branches of the eucalyptus trees.

The clouds rest in an invisible sky. Gray, dark, cloaking clouds. Motionless clouds, heavy and low, lying in malevolent wait for events on the earth below, as if settling like dew upon the early morning. As if onto a cold, silent bed.

I can’t see him, and I can’t see her either. Those two! I don’t know what his face was like when… when did it all start? When the baby arrived, maybe? Or before that? What I did see was the rest, full on. But that doesn’t matter.

Dinner was still in the pot. The plates were on the table, the knives and forks beside them, and the uncut country loaf in its cloth bag.

It’s like wine, like wine. Wine splashing into china drinking bowls, painting them.

Moino is snuffling at my boots and rubbing his muzzle into their mud-covered soles, nipping at my corduroy trouser legs, at the ragged cuffs of my woolen sweater. He lifts his enormous head and a gust of air arcs his whiskers. Whining, the dog eyes the unpaved path, the horizon, the tiny villages scattered along the valley, where people are coming home to their dinners.