The Passing
At home there is a path along the shore below the terraces, a little above where the fog stands, and it goes the whole way round the water. Nobody keeps it and nobody is asked to. It is there in the morning the way the fog is.
Once a year they come along it.
You hear about it before you see it. Word comes from further along the shore that the work has stopped there, and then a day or two later it stops where you are. Nobody is told to stop. The baskets are left on the terraces where they were set down and everyone goes up to the houses and sits in the windows.
They come in a line, five of them, and they do not hurry and they do not stop. Each one goes on one foot, the whole underside of it, and the ground is wet behind them. The front of each one is lifted a little and there are two stalks there that turn, one and then the other, and never together. Some of them carry a shell. There is a sound the whole time, long and low, like a cloth being drawn across stone and never reaching the end of it.
They do not look up. There is nothing above them they want.
Behind them the five lines cross and come apart and cross again, and they are bright. The near end is brightest. The far end goes dull first, and by looking at how far back the dullness has come you can tell how long it has been since they were there. I knew that before I knew anything else about them. I think everybody does.
The passing is over when the last line has gone dull the whole way along. Then the baskets are taken up. Nobody says how long that was, because it was a passing.
Nobody at home says the paths are theirs. It is not that nobody knows. You would not say whose a path was, any more than you would ask somebody what they came back with.
Here there is a line worn across the grass in the park on the way to the station, where people go the short way, and a small sign in the middle of it asking them not to. I stood and looked at the sign for some time. At home the line would have been entered and left.
I am a long way from anyone it would be rude in front of, so I will put it down once. The paths are theirs. I have watched them make them. I was small and I sat in the window the whole of a passing and did not look away, and the line below the house was bright the entire time, and it was still bright when I was put to bed.