TE23 Double Feature

Tomas Espedal

The Year

gentle heat another day of sun I have breakfast and go to bed. On Tuesday I pack my sack fill my bottles with water leave the hotel and walk through the town out of the town. Buy a map at a filling station walk along the road towards L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue the island in the river am told that it’s dangerous to walk on the side of the road the cars go fast here like deathtraps for tramps and animals: Dead hares and foxes by the roadside squashed frogs flattened birds injured hedgehogs on the hard highway slaughtered strays shredded cats killed by workaday murderers behind steering wheels and lorries they don’t give a centimetre of ground here

walk on the grass between the carriageway and the cornfields those spring-green fields with sunflowers and poppies in a dense thicket of flowers wild flowers by the edge of the road small flowers yellow orange red flowers to the left black silver-grey shiny automobiles to the right a thin line between life and death between asphalt and the hedges trees streams and the clear river that passes beneath the road bridge there is a big difference between someone in a car and someone in a house. I pass the houses they stand there so quietly these sand-coloured houses that resemble the landscape they come from. The houses the gardens the fields where vegetables fruit and berries are grown you see North Africans working animals and Africans in the fields. The men greet me as I walk past it’s an old greeting alien as when you greet a friend or an apparition from a familiar land 137

on this narrow road I

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