"My Prison-Cure in America", Chapter 14
Adapted from Annemarie Schwarzenbach, by Cleo Varra
You know, I wasn't at all safe in that moonlit field. As I've said, they could easily have found me, with their searchlights and their guards.
But I wasn't afraid.
I was almost happy.
I can't describe it to you, —but I was so happy, even death didn’t frighten me anymore, although it was all around me.
***
Their feet ran hard past me.
Sometimes I thought I could feel their breath, sometimes I clenched my teeth and thought there was no way they wouldn't find me.
At the same time a gentle breeze hit me, fanning the grasses and continuing quietly: fanning into distances that I could only imagine.
***
After a while I raised my head a little, just enough to see, through the grasses, the sky in the distance: full of white clouds, lowering towards the edge of a forest.
I thought to myself, I could easily reach that forest.
I got up and walked,— not even quickly; but it was as if the swelling grass were carrying me under my feet.
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