I watched the progress of one house with particular horror and misgiving, because it was within a few minutes’ walk of my own. The deliberate speed with which it went up shook me and seemed a mockery of my own situation. It was an ugly house, with pink walls and cheap iron grillwork over the windows. Once it was finished, and the last young tree planted in the dust beside it, the owners drove up from the city and spent All Saints’ Day there, sitting on the terrace and looking out over the valley as though they had box seats at the opera. After that, as long as the weather held, they drove up to the house every weekend, filling the countryside with the noise of their radio. I watched them gloomily from my window.
The worst of it was that my friend immediately stopped visiting me on the weekends. I knew he had been drawn away from me by my neighbors. From a distance I saw him standing quietly among them in their yard. I felt utterly miserable. At last I had to admit how bleak my position was. It occurred to me then to sell my land and begin all over again somewhere else.
I thought I might get a good price for the land from other city people. But when I went to see the real estate agent, he told me flatly that because there was a sewage yard in the next field and because my house was uninhabitable, my property would be almost impossible to sell. He went on to say that the only people who might be interested in buying it were my neighbors, who had in fact resented my presence all this time and would give a very low sum for the land just to be rid of me. They had told the agent in confidence that my house was an eyesore in their front yard and an embarrassment when friends came to spend the day. I was shocked. My strongest feeling, of course, was that I would never sell to my neighbors. I would never give them that triumph. I turned my back on the agent and left without saying a word. As I stood deliberating on the doorstep, I heard him go into another room, say something to his wife, and laugh loudly. This was a very low point in my life.
When, after several weeks, my friend stopped coming altogether, without a word to explain his absence, my bitterness was complete. I sank into a deep depression and decided that I would give up the idea of building a house and return to my job in the city. The directors of my company had not been able to find anyone else willing to put up with the long hours and devote himself to such interminable complications. They had several times written asking me to return and offering me more money. I could easily slip back into my old way of life, I thought; this stay in the country would then have been a protracted holiday. I even managed to convice myself, for a moment, that I missed city life and my few acquaintances in the office, who used to buy me drinks after particularly tedious days. I told the agent to make an offer to my neighbors, and tried to think that I was doing the right thing. But my heart was not in the move, and I felt like a changed man as I packed up my belongings and took a last walk around my narrow boundaries.
The suitcases were out in the early sunlight before the door of the house, the taxi I had hired was bumping over the dirt road toward me, and I was really on the point of leaving, when I thought I might have been too hasty. It would be wrong to go without saying anything to the young man who had been my friend, whose name I did not even know. I paid off the taxi driver and told him to come at the same hour the following day. He gave me a doubtful look and drove back down the road. The dust swirled up behind him and settled. I carried my suitcases inside and sat down. After I had spent some time wondering how to find my friend, I realized that of course I had been foolish, that I had pointlessly committed myself to one more day in these hostile surroundings, that I would not be able to find him. The directors would be annoyed when I did not arrive at the office, they would worry about me and make an attempt to reach me, and would be completely at a loss when they did not succeed. As the morning advanced I became more and more restless and angry with myself, and felt that I had made a terrible mistake. It was small comfort to know that on the following day everything would go forward as planned, and that in the end it would seem as though this day had never passed at all.
During the long, hot afternoon, small birds fluttered in the thorny brush and a sweet smell rose from the earth. The sky was without clouds and the sun cast black shadows over the ground. I sat in my business suit by the wall of the house and was not touched by the beauty of the land. My thoughts were in the city, and my imprisonment in the country chafed me. At supper time there was nothing to eat, but I was not willing to walk to the village. I lay awake cold and hungry for hours before falling asleep.
I awoke before sunrise. I was so hungry that I felt I had stones in my stomach and I looked forward to eating some breakfast at the train station. Everything outside my window was black. Gusts of wind began moving the leaves as the sky became white behind the black bushes. Color slowly came into the leaves. In the forest and closer to the house bird songs rose and fell on all sides. I listened very intently to them. When the rays of sunlight reached the bushes I went outside and sat by the house. When at last the taxi came, I felt so peaceful that I could not bring myself to leave. After some angry words, the driver went away.
Throughout the morning and into the afternoon, I sat in my business suit beside the house, as I had sat the day before, but I was no longer impatient or eager to be elsewhere. I was absorbed in watching what passed before me — birds disappearing into the bushes, bugs crawling around stones — as though I were invisible, as though I were watching it all in my own absence. Or, being where I should not be, where no one expected me to be, I was a mere shadow of myself, lagging behind for an instant, caught in the light; soon the strap would tighten and I would be gone, flying in pursuit of myself: for the moment, I was at liberty.
When evening came I did not know I was hungry. Lightheaded with contentment, I continued to sit still, waiting. Driven inside by the cold and the darkness, I lay down and had savage dreams.
The next morning, I saw a figure at the far edge of the nearest field, walking very slowly across. My eyes felt as if a long emptiness had been filled. Without knowing it, I had been waiting for my friend. But as I watched him, his hesitation began to seem unnatural and then it frightened me: he weaved back and forth over the furrows, put his nose up as though sniffing the air like a spaniel, and did not seem to know where he was going. I started to meet him and as I drew closer I saw that his forehead was wrapped in bandages and that the skin of his face was an awful color of gray. When I came up to him he was bewildered and stared at me as though I were a stranger. I took him by the arm and helped him over the ground. When we reached the house he pushed me aside and lay down on my bed. He was trembling with exhaustion. He had lost so much flesh that his cheeks were like pits and his hands were claws. He had such fever in his eyes that I thought wildly of going to the village for a doctor. But after his breath had returned to him he began speaking quite tranquilly. He explained something at great length while I sat uncomprehending by the bed and listened. He made several motions with his arms and finally I realized he had been in a hunting accident. During all the weeks that I had been reproaching him so bitterly, he had been lying in a hospital somewhere.