As a grade 18 official, I had a very low rank even in that office, and received________ hardly any compensation. But my assignment, collecting and preparing specimens, was one I was born to, and I spent each day very happily. At that particular time, the race track in Morio was being planted as a botanical garden, so our office had charge of a broad and lovely looking area planted in acacia, with its attached ticket office and signal building. I was therefore able to live in the watchman's cottage, alone with a small phonograph and twelve records purchased from the amount I received each month as a quarters allowance. I was raising a goat in the horse stalls, with a small yard I built of boards. Each morning I milked her and had a breakfast of cold bread dipped in the milk. Then I would put a few documents and magazines in a black leather briefcase, shine my shoes, then stride through the shadows of rows of poplars to the city offices.
I had the cold wind that blew through Iyhatovo, the blue sky with its edge of coldness even in summer, the city of Morio decorated with forests, and the brightly sparkling grasses at the edge of town.
Now when I think of all the people I knew there, Fazelo and Rozalo, the goatherd
Milo, the red-faced children, the landlord Temo, Doctor Wildcat or
Borgant Destupago,
and the huge, dark stone buildings, they seem like the phosphorescence of a old,
familiar breeze. I will now quietly set forth, using a number of subheadings, the events
of May through October of that year in Iyhatovo.
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