AS I WAS returning home that night on the narrow path that runs along the side of the Junker’s property, I saw a crowd of young peasant girls, eleven- and twelve-year-olds or so. Maybe one or two younger. The girls were carrying bricks to that kiln run by Lorenz Neher. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but, for some reason, this day I saw that I was walking to the end of my life, and they were walking into their bloom. They were walking toward the center of their lives, and I was walking toward my own perimeter. I’m not usually detained by fanciful nonsense like that. It was a curious
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