The going is easy—it is as though you walk on air. Pleasant thoughts, motley reminiscences, are circling gently. These thoughts in the mind are like white-caps on the sea. They are on the surface, while down in the depths it is quiet: there the bright, pliant hopes of youth are swimming gently, like silver fish in the deep.

The road is drawn toward the sea; coiling, it creeps closer to the strip of sand that the waves invade. The bushes, too, wish to peer into the face of the waves; they bend over the ribbon of road as though greeting the far-flung, watery waste.

The wind begins to blow from the mountains—it wil rain.

…A low moan in the bushes—a sound of human distress, which always shakes the soul with sympathy.

Making my way through the bushes, I came upon the peasant woman with the yellow kerchief. She was sitting with her back against the trunk of a nut tree. Her head was resting on her shoulder, her mouth was gaping in an ugly way, her eyes were starting out of her head, and there was a crazy look in them. She was clutching her enormous abdomen with her hands and breathing so unnaturally that it moved up and down convulsively, and she was making a muffled, cow-like sound, baring yellow, wolf-like teeth.

“Someone gave you a beating?” I asked her, bending over her. Her bare legs, covered with ashen dust, were jerking like a fly’s, and shaking her heavy head, she managed:

“Go away…you shameless fellow…go…”

I understood what it all meant, I had seen it happen before. Of course, I was frightened, jumped away, and the woman let out a long-drawn-out wail. From her eyes, which looked ready to burst, came troubled tears that ran down her purple, strained face.

This brought me back to her. I threw my bundle on the ground, together with the tea-pot and kettle, put her on her back, and tried to bend her knees. She pushed me away, hitting me on the face and chest, turned around, and roaring like a bear and cursing, crawled on all fours further into the bushes:

“You bandit…devil…” she brought out.

Her arms giving way under her, she fell, her face striking the earth, and again she howled convulsively, stretching out her legs.

In a fever of excitement, and quickly recalling everything I knew about this business, I turned her around and laid her on her back and bent her legs.

“Lie quiet,” I said to her, “you will be delivered in no time.…”

I ran down to the sea, tucked up my sleeves, washed my hands, returned, and became an accoucheur.

The woman was writhing like birch-bark in the fire, she thrashed about with her hands, and, plucking the faded grass, tried to push it into her mouth. She strewed earth over her terrible, inhuman face with its wild, bloodshot eyes. Already the child’s head was showing. I had to keep her legs from writhing, help the child, and see that she did not put grass into her wry, bellowing mouth.

We swore at each other a little, she through her teeth, I too under my breath, she from pain and, perhaps, also from shame, I because I was ill at ease and tormented by pity for her.

“L-lord!” she repeated, bringing out the word with a rattling sound. Her blue lips bitten and frothy, and from her eyes, which looked as though they had suddenly been faded by the sun, tears kept pouring, the abundant tears of a mother’s unbearable suffering, and her body was writhing, breaking, dividing in two. “G-go away, you devil…” she kept saying.