ABSTRACT
The german lady, watercolouring it, agreed. The german lady’s husband stood behind her at the parapet and looked. Sabinetta had floss-soft pale-gold hair. She had a luminous skin, which stretched over her fine cheekbones the distinction of an adult. The Signora Lisi, like all the villagers, loved Sabinetta. The Signora Lisi’s husband had been killed by Germans in his appennine village. The Signora Lisi had been a sweet tough peasant girl. She had learnt to grow rough and coarse and cunning. Rising out of the ilex trees, small green lamps that flashed and grew bigger as they arrived, like messages; signalling surely and evenly, leaping and swimming where they wished, pulses of a single bloodstream, green, hidden in black.
