Country Girl: a Memoir
“We, the boarders, were little recruits for Heaven, where we would learn to be immune to passions, to mortify ourselves in every way, and to put up with our chilblains.
The prevailing smells were of wax floor polish and cabbage, but in the chapel it was the smell of burning incense, so exotic, and afterward that smell lingered on in the wreaths of smoke that clouded the air.
Not long after I had arrived there, crossing the courtyard, I was halted in my tracks by the sound of whistling, and it se...emed to me the sweetest and most melodious sound imaginable. I felt that it was a young boy on his way home from work, and I had the deepest longing not to be in that courtyard but to be out there, walking, walking under the stars. Although we were on the edge of the town, we might as well have been in Timbuktu. Our dormitories were on two floors, one for the junior girls and one for the seniors. Seniors had a private cubicle with a curtain at the end, but for us it was a question of washing by a basin at the side of the bed, girls splashing themselves from ewers of freezing water and trying not to let their dressing gowns slip off.MoreLess
The prevailing smells were of wax floor polish and cabbage, but in the chapel it was the smell of burning incense, so exotic, and afterward that smell lingered on in the wreaths of smoke that clouded the air.
Not long after I had arrived there, crossing the courtyard, I was halted in my tracks by the sound of whistling, and it se...emed to me the sweetest and most melodious sound imaginable. I felt that it was a young boy on his way home from work, and I had the deepest longing not to be in that courtyard but to be out there, walking, walking under the stars. Although we were on the edge of the town, we might as well have been in Timbuktu. Our dormitories were on two floors, one for the junior girls and one for the seniors. Seniors had a private cubicle with a curtain at the end, but for us it was a question of washing by a basin at the side of the bed, girls splashing themselves from ewers of freezing water and trying not to let their dressing gowns slip off.MoreLess
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