Zbornik Mednarodnega literarnega srečanja Vilenica 2004 - Ljudmila

Katarina Marinčič
The smooth trunks were the nymphs swaying like in a dance. Vel, with
a strange hollowness in his heart, sometimes brought the whistle to his
lips and played for the staggering dancers, to the beeches wrapped in silk
and the olive trees dressed in linen.
He was longing for something, but didn’t know for what.
X.
For his wife to be they chose Setra from the Cantanei family. Ever since he
first saw her in the greyness of the twilight he started sensing strange
things evoking anxiety.
She had very high breasts and a gap slightly too small between the waist
and the neck. She walked as if intoxicated. A long ponytail dangled from
the back of her head. She hardly moved her neck at all. Her hair was so
closely tied that the skin on her cheeks was stretched tight.
But, when they first met she looked at him with eyes wide open. She
would have held her glance longer had he not turned away.
XI.
The next time he met her by the lake.
That day he had shot a pretty duck. The young dog, not yet trained for
hunting, bit the bird’s head off. Vel beat the animal with a belt and then
sat down by the water. He was sad rather than angry.
The water was heavy and smooth as oil, full of fat fish. The bottom was
covered in black sand and the silt at the edges thick as honey. The massacred
duck lay in the mud. The dog whined.
Suddenly Vel felt that Setra was looking at him. She was standing a
stone’s throw away with the Cantanei women.
Vel looked down and saw that his calves were sprinkled with blood.
For a while we was rubbing off the duck’s blood with a sweaty hand.
When he looked up again, the girl still stared at him, and looked hungry
rather than awed; her look was fixed on the duck, not on Vel’s calves.
Fierce anger rose in his chest. He muttered a curse of some kind, picked
up the bow and threw it towards the dog. The supple wood hit against
the firm ground and jumped off, the cord vibrated. Then Vel rapidly stood
up, stepped behind a bush, took off his clothes and waded into the blackish
water, not caring about the reeds that were scratching his angles or
the slimy life that gathered around his legs like a threat, and then dispersed
with ominous haste before his step. He waded in deep, forgetting
that the lake had a bottom, dived in, relaxed and calmly watched the golden
spray twinkling above the gently undulating surface. He was swimming
with regular strokes, plunging far ahead with every move as if he were a
ship driven by strong, well-coordinated oarsmen. When he was lying on
his back and levitated in golden light, the mountains around the lake
seemed particularly dark. The murky heaps were building a soft dam
around his neck, he felt safe and was happy.
He came out of the water when his skin turned hard with cold. For a
while he stood on the bank and kneaded the warm mud with his soles.
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