I would have returned inside had I not spotted the Farmhand. He was standing in front of his cabin, immobile and eternal, grown from the soil. He is a mystery. He is always there, and yet he is not. You see in him many generations of men with gnarled fists and bony knees. Such men are generally either coming from the forest or going to the forest. Or else they are harrowing a field or sitting on some steps, smoking a pipe without moving their lips. There is no point wondering what the Old Mistress sees in the Farmhand. We all pretend we do not hear the hem of her faded muslin skirt brushing the path across the yard at night.

And then an owl always cries.

The Farmhand was watching me. I could tell because he had turned his head. The hollowed-out footprints from the road to the yard led back to him. In these parts, all prints lead to him. Everything originates from him, more or less, although he does not know it. He is the only one of us who is free from the sin of lying and thus he is innocent.

I finally reached the steps and re-entered the house. And then I just existed. The day had arrived in full, and now I listen to the Old Mistress moving about upstairs, stiff-hipped. I know that the maid has been to her room, that the heavy curtains have been opened and the bed has been made. The room smells of powder, bad temper and the scent Erik says costs too much. On the wall hangs the only painting in the house. It shows a man with bushy eyebrows. He stares at you from underneath his stiff-brimmed hat, which does not fit him at all and appears to have grown directly from his skull, extending out from his forehead and above his ears like two horns fused together. Maybe the Old Mistress pauses to stare back at those eyes, painted near-black. For a moment, she sits down in her chair, upholstered in worn brocade, but soon restlessness forces her back on her feet. Her unease disappears later in the afternoon and mellows into empty-faced lassitude in the course of the evening.