strangely there
was at the same time a presentiment that I might be struck by
lightning. But all Nature was madly excited with me and also shared my
presentiment of destruction. We lived together like the victim and the
accomplices in a Dionysian sacrifice and orgy.
And the clouds kept on gaining! Far away I heard the storm wind and
the clamour of the sea. The thunder moaned and sobbed. I hurried along
the deserted road and asked my heart for a village, a house, a church,
a cave, anything to shield from the oncoming drench.
Spying a light far away on a hill, I left the road and plunged towards
it. I went over many maize-fields, by narrow paths through the
tall waving grain, the lightning playing like firelight among the
sheath-like leaves. I crossed a wide tobacco plantation and approached
the light on the hill, by a long, heavily-rutted cart-track. This led
right up to the doors of a farmhouse. Big surly dogs came rushing out
at me, but I clumped them off with my stick, and having much doubt in
my mind as to the sort of reception I should get, I knocked at the
windows and doors. I expected to be met by a man with a gun, for the
dogs had made such a rumpus that any one might have been alarmed.
The door was opened by a tall Russian peasant.
"May I spend the night here?" I asked.
The man smiled and put out his arms as if to embrace me.
"Yes, of course. Why ask? Come inside," he replied.
"I thought of sleeping in the open air," I added, "but the storm
coming up I saw I should be drenched."
"Why sleep outside when man is ready to receive you?" said the
peasant. "It is unkind to pass our houses by. Why do you deny your
brothers so? You said you slept in the fields, eh? That is bad. You
shouldn't. The earth here is full of evil, and the malaria comes up
with the dampness. Your bones grow brittle and break, or they go all
soft, you shrivel up and become white, or swellings come out on you
and you get bigger and bigger until you die. No, no! God be thanked
you came to me."
He asked me would I sleep in the house or on the maize straw. His sons
slept on the maize; it was covered, and so, sheltered from the rain.
I could sleep in the house if I liked, but it was more comfortable on
the straw. His three sons slept there, but as it was a festival they
had not come home yet.
I agreed to the straw. My host led me to a sort of large open barn, a
barn without walls, a seven-feet depth of hay and straw surmounted by
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