She tells me something about being “careful”, while I reopened the door to get again in that wrathful weather. With nauseous-ness, protecting the lamp’s flame, I try to swim in the heavy rain storm, to the place where the car will take us and drive us to the mine. The wind calmed down a little and it seemed that less water was falling. I got in front of the solitary poplars. Through the catchy weather’s, pluralism of noises, you could discern other more … different. My heart endeavored to take the size of a flea. Sometimes, in this place I saw how a horse flesh threw its master in the yawn together with the cart. I don’t doubt the stories that were flowing as folklore of that unfriendly place. The strange noise, the noise that had distortioned in the storm, was starting to become clearer, stronger. I compared it with the noise of a man that would climb down from a tree in the way he would step on a foot board of which was hitting strongly his feet. God forbid us, who would be at four o’clock in the morning in a poplar on a stormy weather?! My mind went at … Satan, crippling all my senses. The noise that was growing high was obvious it won’t stop going on clearly above my head. I could not see a thing as I lent my body over the lamp’s flame so that the rain and the wind won’t fade it. I was exactly under the poplar and the close descent of the Evil one accelerated and it was closer and closer. The storm, darkness and lack of any other person around, the fact that not even the dogs barked, generated a fear that brought me to the verge of insanity. All the stories with the Evil one, vampires, genii, grumps, ghosts and all that man cannot clarify in a life, went through my mind like a flash and in stead of running from that place, in a fatality, I go under the poplar. I was so cold and I realized that if I did not know what it was, what “that” was, I could never ever go back to that place. “Its” descent was loud, with branch ruptures and also fed with other types of noises that made you believe someone was specially making all this, ahead framed, to get you out of your mind. In that moment I was hit in the head, right on my back, then I could hear a plump. Yes, my lamp faded. The water was leaking on my hands. Restlessness I drop match after match. Finally, I managed to light one. It might have been from pity. I light the lamp with the agony of a man that has to do something that he never wished to, I turned to see the Evil one. My loping glance was looking for something at the eyes level. Nothing! God, I hope you haven’t taken my mind away! For ten minutes, although I wasn’t waiting for him, I am determined to encounter my self with Satan. I have heard him and I won’t be able to see him? Behind, there wasn’t anybody.

Was I dead? I haven’t felt anything of a kind. I blink and I rub my eyes, it is impossible! At least a shadow or something, a steam, a whiff, a little something, that could justify my experience. Nothing! Totally bewildered, with my hands and feet “cold as ice”, absolutely disappointed and played-out, with an immense hole inside me, I get away, but my foot “clamps” into something. I wasn’t far from having a heart attack. I set the lamp towards the ground. On the ground there was a wet owl that climbed down as I told, getting me to paroxysm. On an instant, the animal instinct inside me hurled towards the owl to rip it away, that’s how angry I was, especially after her “landing”, but seeing her so small and helpless I took her carefully and put her in a hollow from the tree. I was hardly recovering from my human state. Although, my lamp faded again, I kept going ahead in the dark, getting my thoughts away from the momentary reality that suggested, that in case it would rain with the same force, downhill, at “Iobanel” and “Saveta’s” bridge, I would have some work with the bourns. I passed “Iobanel” but at “Saveta’s” bridge because of the dirty catch the alluviums obstructed, and the water that was coming from “Poderei” was divided in two. So, I won’t get my feet too wet, I thought which way to go, and heard under the obstructed bridge some gasping. Oh, my God, are you testing me again? It wasn’t just a simple estimation; the noises were coming right from under the bridge. How can this be, if the bridge if full of water, till above?!! Do I without any fail have to go insane in this morning?!! Please, God, don’t leave me! The moan and gasping didn’t continue. I “requested” again the carbide lamp light. As the sounds didn’t end I felt that my senses were leaving me. Not even a distance of a hundred meters was from those two places of challenging my mental health. As the noises from under the bridge amplified I had to get closer … With the strength I had left I put my hat on the lamp so that the wind won’t blow it. With a hard to hide sickening I lay on my knees in the clay soil from the lip of the bridge. I push the lamp forward, under the obstructed bridge and try to pull my self through the mud under the bridge. A little earlier seeing the owl I calmed down. Now, when I saw that scarecrow full of mud, a roar broke out from my being has covered all the storm’s noises on an area of two kilometers. Don’t believe I exaggerate but until that morning I haven’t seen people “dressed up” in mud in the light of a carbide lamp. I shouted out at “him” so that I would cover my fear:
– Who on earth are you?

– Oh my God, you don’t recognize me?
– Mister Josef, is that you?
– Yes it’s me, God forbid me!
– Well, what on earth are you doing full of mud under the bridge?
– What should I do? I had something to drink and I lost my hat, I was looking for it … I bent giving him my hand and drew him outside, obviously without hat. We greeted and went each on his way.
Wasting so much time, the water grew in huge quantities, becoming true torrents. To get at the embarkation place I had to climb up to “Poderei”. The lamp faded again. I was looking for other lights, of my workmates, that were heading to the same place. I was passing near Alexander, Lipan and Sovre’s houses, which were built on a hammock lip, which made the road lower than the houses. They were in the same shift as me. Alexander’s house was all lighted. I was heading with my eyes at the ground looking to avoid as much as I could, water. Reaching, in the end, the car, it seemed that people were grouped and were whispering among themselves. All this grouping and crew discussions had a lugubrious atmosphere. I said hello and asked: “What are they whispering about?” They stared at me, after that one of them asks me:
– Through were did you come at the car?
– Over “Poderei”, at Alexander, “Sovre” and others, places.
– Was there any light at Alexander?
– There was. And what if?
– But, didn’t you ask yourself why was there light at Alexander, if he’s the driver for a week? Did you take a look at their nut tree?
– Who cares to look at a nut tree when one’s heading for the shift?
– There was where Alexander hung himself …
Then I realized that if I had drawn myself up, I would have stared up, I could see him hanged. With no other words with the feeling of a huge despair, of losing a man, a very good mate and mine digger, but whom did not bear the “discharging” shock. It seemed that also the car was sick, it was hardly getting up to the mine. In the car I was snooze following the road with its curves, in my own imagination, to the mine. The engine was turned up to maximum; there were the last hundred meters before stopping.