Status Updates From Joutsen

When they reached the estuary a number of swans were taking off and sang that disconcertingly beautiful song that swans sing when autumn is approaching and they fly off into the shadowy night. The girl stopped her horse to watch them leave, the way they seemed to take to the air with great effort, then glide unearthly and rejoicing out into the green brightness until they vanished and could be heard no longer.

People turned gloomier, their optimism and the effect of the alcohol wore off and they felt the vast hopelessness that was the main thing this little nation had cultivated in its little land, and in fact the only thing it had to offer on any great scale.

They were also well past the age when they has seriously stopped approaching women with insistent potency, but did so rather with their impotency and in trite submission.

There was a smell of dogs in the house, a strong animal scent everywhere, from the farmer’s wife and the farmer too. The girl remembered her mother saying, “In the countryside, everything smells of dogs’ arses.”