Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Mercredi — December 22, 1915

Mercredi
December 22, 1915

I wish you could see the winds playing on the dark blue sea to-day, and two big sailing vessels have come in and are rocking like our white boat rocked when you were here. The sea is what I call very high this morning and the clouds are like swans. It is a lovely morning; the air tastes like fruit!

Yesterday I went for a long scrambling walk in the woods, on the other side of the railway. There are no roads there—just little tracks and old mule paths. Parts are quite wild and overgrown, then in all sorts of unexpected faery places you find a little clearing—the ground cultivated in tiny red terraces and sheltered by olive trees (full of tiny black fruit). There grow the jonquils, daffodils, new green peas and big abundant rose bushes. A tiny (this word is yours really: it's haunting me to-day; villa is close by with a painted front and a well or a petite source at the bottom of the garden. They are dream places. Every now and then I would hear a rustle in the bushes and an old, old woman, her head tied up in a black kerchief would come creeping through the thick tangle with a bunch of that pink heath across her shoulders. “B'jour ma petite dame” she would munch and nod—and with a skinny finger point me my way. Once I found myself right at the very top of a hill and below there lay an immense valley—surrounded by mountains—very high page 52 ones and it was so clear you could see every pointed pine, every little zig-zag track. The black stems of the olives showing sooty and soft among the silvery green. One could see for miles and miles. There was, far in the distance a tiny town planted on a little knoll, just like a far away city in a Dürer etching, and now and again you would see two cypresses and then if you looked carefully you found a little house, for two cypresses planted side by side portent bonheur. On the other side of me there was the sea and Bandol and the next bay, Sanary. Why weren't you with me? Why didn't you lean over the fence and ask the old, old man what that plant was and hear him say it was the immortelle, and it flowers for eight years and then dies and its yellow flowers come out in June?

The sun went down as I found the Saint-Cyr road back to Bandol. The people were coming home, and the children were running from school. As I came into Bandol I heard a loud chanting and down the Avenue des Palmiers there came four little boys in white, carrying a cross and incense braziers—an old priest with white hair, chanting—four men following each carrying a corner of a black and silver cloth—then a coffin carried on a table by six men and the whole village following—the last man of all being an old chap with a wooden leg. It was extremely fantastic and beautiful in the bright strange light.