A Treatise on Shelling Beans Read Free Page B

in Mr. Robert’s cabin? I don’t think you arrived in the night, I would have heard you. I didn’t sleep at all in the night, I’d have heard. In the night the faintest sound carries across the lake. I only got to sleep in the morning. The dawn was already starting to break, I looked out the window, but you weren’t there then. After that I dropped off, I don’t even know when. The fog held you up on the way? We didn’t have any fog here. True, in the fall you get fog that’s so dense you can barely drive through it. You’re driving along and all of a sudden there’s this white wall.
    When I was still living abroad, one time in the fall, round about this timeof year, I decided to come for a visit. In fall, when no one would be here. And I stayed in Mr. Robert’s cabin, like you. Mr. Robert had told me where to find the key. Under the deck, hanging on a nail in the beam. That’s where you found it too? There you go. Before that I’d only ever been here once, one Sunday during the season. Mr. Robert and I arrived together then. This time Mr. Robert couldn’t make it. Of course I could have the use of his cabin, he said when I phoned him, but unfortunately he wouldn’t be able to join me. He told me where things would be, and where I’d find the key.
    The sun had already set by the time I crossed the border. I figured I’d arrive in the night and maybe even get a decent night’s sleep. As long as I was on the highway everything went OK, it was a starry night, the moon was out, I could see clearly. But I turned off onto a side road, then onto another, and the fog started. To begin with it was sparse, and it only appeared here and there, I’d just drive through strips of mist lying in places across the road. My fog lamps worked just fine. I was even driving pretty fast for the time of day. But with every mile the strips of mist grew thicker. After a bit, it seemed like barriers of fog were starting to rise up in the road. You could only see anything in the towns, where there were lights. But as I’d leave each town I’d find myself in even thicker fog. It got denser and denser. The fog was in front of me, on top of me, to the sides, behind. It was like the world had gone away and there was only fog. I tried turning on all the lights I had, but nothing did any good. I was well aware that full beams are the worst in a situation like that. You turn them on and immediately you have a white screen in front of you. You can only use your sidelights and fog lamps. Best of all is if someone’s with you in the car, they can crack the door open and watch the road surface, tell the guy at the wheel which way to go. But I was on my own. On top of that, there were no other cars either in front of me or behind. Because you can agree with another driver to take turns at leading, him for a bit, then you for a bit. In fog, the best way to know where to go is to follow someone else’s red tail lights. At moments I almost lost confidence in whether I was even on the road, I was scared I’d drive into the ditch or hit a road sign ora tree. Honestly, I’d never driven in fog that bad before. Every now and then I’d stop and get out to take a breather. I’d stretch a bit, climb back in and drive on.
    All of a sudden I see these strange faint little lights along the sides of the road. What could it be? To start off they were only here and there. But you could see they were in people’s windows, even though the windows themselves were barely visible, let alone the houses, which were no more than faint outlines in the fog. I guessed I must be driving through some town, especially since there were more and more of the lights, they came closer together, and soon they formed a shining chain on either side of the road so it was like driving down a kind of avenue. Well, I wasn’t exactly driving, more like inching along. The fog in front of me was still as dense as before.
    Then, out of the blue two figures emerged from the fog right