bushes to the window, and with some trouble pushed the window inward, slung the traveling bag inside, and then stepped inside behind it. I closed the window, pulled off my shoes and went through the workshop up to the room under the eaves. It was still a little warm. I turned the heater on again and hung the heavy baize curtain in front of the window. Then I screwed in the light bulb in the wall lamp and turned on the light. Although I had slept until noon, I felt tired and worn out.
A puddle had formed under the wet traveling bag, but the bread was on top and had only gotten a little damp. I pulled off my jeans, which were stiff with the wet and sprinkled with sand up to the knees. I dried my hair with a hand towel, pulled on a turtleneck sweater, and put on a second pair of wool socks. Then I took the small packet of tea and went downstairs to the kitchen.
The stairs were slippery. I tried to imagine what would happen if I fell and was injured, but as I thought of it I was already in the kitchen.
The venetian blinds on the window stuck as always. I pulled them down and tied the string around the nail in the window sill. I laid the flashlight on the kitchen table. Its beam made a semi-circular spot on the opposite wall. In the narrow cupboard next to the door I found the tall aluminum pot with the immersion heater and next to it the large yellow cup with a teaspoon in it.
Everything in the cupboard was clean and tidy, only the cup was a little dusty. I held the pot under the water pipe and turned on the faucet, which had dried tightly shut. The pipe knocked noisily and for a while nothing happened. Then rusty water sprayed out of the faucet in small spurts. I put the pot to one side. Gradually the noise in the pipe died down; the water flowed smoothly, even if only in a thin stream, and slowly cleared. I rinsed the pot out, then the cup, and filled the pot half-full. Then I took the brown teapot out of the cupboard.
The sugar in the paper bag had formed a lump as hard as stone. I put it back and plugged in the immersion heater. When the water began to simmer, I rinsed the teapot out with hot water and then waited until the water boiled.
Then I measured out the tea, two tea spoons from the green package. I placed the pot with the immersion heater in the empty sink to let it cool. The potato basket under the kitchen table was empty. I put the full teapot and the cup in it, took a cutting board from the kitchen table and put it in the basket as well, and then took the flashlight and went back up the stairs to the room under the eaves.
While the tea steeped in the pot, I unfolded the bed and pushed it into the niche under the wall lamp. Then I got the blankets and placed them on the narrow bed. With my pocketknife I poked two holes in the top of the can of milk, and put it, the teapot, and the cup on top of the stool. I poured the reddish, amber-colored tea into the cup and then poured the condensed milk in over the teaspoon, which I held above the cup. It ran out of the can in a thin thread which gradually filled the spoon. Then I stirred it in and the color of the tea blended into the milky cloud. I held the cup in both hands while sitting on the bed. The tea was hot and sweet, but it had almost lost its tea taste.
My watch showed seven. I had an entire night and day before me. But the workshop and the terrace room had no curtains – if I wanted to search for something there I had to wait for daylight. So, for this evening, there was only the room under the eaves left. I sipped the tea and looked around the room.
It covered almost the entire floorplan of the house. The longer walls sloped, interrupted on one side by the curve of the dormer with its small window. Shelves had been built in on both sides with sand-colored curtains drawn in front of them. The wall at my back separated the stair to the workshop from the room.
The gable end window under the overhang gave sufficient light to the staircase landing all day long , and from there a trap door led to the attic under the roof peak.
The other gabel-end which faced the southeast had been double glazed over its entire surface and was now completely covered by a thick baize curtain. The glass door behind the curtain led to an open terrace on the roof of the small workshop. The workshop and a porch were later additions which extended the width of the house by about three meters. The large drafting table, which had a white drawing board laid out on it, stood on two supports next to this glassed-over gabelend.
An open shelf between the curtain and the drafting table held a large cylindrical pot with brushes, two trays with pencils, bottles of India ink, and a glass with drafting pens and quill pens. Two different white plastic palettes hung to one side on a nail, and a small draftsman’s portfolio leaned against one of the supports for the drafting table.
I went over to the drafting table. There was a single sheet of paper on the white surface, a brush sketch done with a hard, flat brush and unthinned, black, India ink as if it were a doodle.
A rider on a horse, riding at a walk, on a line which looked like a wave. The sketch had the terseness and power of expression of a pictograph. It seemed to remind me of something, but I found no connection between the sketch and anything at all that I could remember. Perhaps I was expecting secrets everywhere and so had lost the ability to make simple, logical connections. I put the sheet of paper back on the drafting table.
The tea in the pot was still hot. I poured out the rest, which had now gotten very black, drank it down, and lay down on the narrow bed. I tried to remember.
The next day after that June night four years ago, I had gone back to the house on the hill, but there had been no one there. The house was shut up and a plastic sheet tied to the posts hung over the colored target. An old man in the neighborhood gave me the man’s name and told me that he generally shot at the target in the early morning before the tourists started using the path over the hill to get to the beach.
So the next morning I went back up the hill at about seven o’clock, and as I passed the last house in the village, I could already hear the dull thump of an arrow’s impact from the direction of the target. I went up the path to the level of the house and found a flat stone which lay near the fence in the sun with the night’s dew already gone from its surface.
I sat down so that I could keep an eye on the man. Although he had seen me, he took no notice of my presence. He shot six arrows at a time at the target, then laid his bow down and went down the slope to the target to get his arrows. Apparently he had gone that way a lot. Now, in the sunlight, I noticed a narrow, trodden path in the short grass.
In the daylight, the bow seemed less clumsy than I remembered. I could hardly make out the arrows in the target, but the morning sun threw their shadows on the colorful target and those black streaks pointed to the places where the arrows had hit.
Soon, however, all my attention was on the man. His movements were of a relaxed uniformity and were repeated at such regular intervals that they gave me the impression of a special kind of precision.
The sequence of movement which so impressed me then was always the same. The man picked up his bow, and then stood with his legs slightly spread so that his left shoulder was directed toward the target. He nocked the arrow while he kept the bow set on his left foot, let his right hand drop, and then, motionless, stared for a moment at the grass in front of his feet. Then he looked up and raised the bow toward the target with his left hand while the arrow remained on the string. Then the bow came to a stop. He grasped the string with his right hand, drew, and, almost at the same moment that the arrow reached his chin, let the arrow fly. For a moment he held the bow still in his hand, then he set it back on his foot. He repeated that entire series of movements until there were six arrows in the target.
The sun had risen higher and was hot on my shoulders. It must have been a half hour before he carefully unstrung his bow. To do this, he placed one end of the bow behind his left foot and
