At the door of the farm, men were waiting, dressed in their Sunday best. The May sun was shining brightly on the apple trees in blossom. Round and fragrant like enormous pink and white bouquets, they formed a roof of flowers over the entire yard. A constant snowstorm of fine petals swirled and eddied as they fell into the tall grass now flecked with blood-red poppies and blazing yellow dandelions. Near the dungheap a sow dozed, her vast belly and full teats surrounded by a litter of piglets with tightly curled tails.

Suddenly from far beyond the farmland trees, the church bell pealed. In the distance, the sound of its iron tongue rang faintly in the clear air. Swallows darted like arrows across the blue space enclosed by huge, motionless beeches. Stable smells wafted, mingling with the sweet, soft breath of the blossom.

One of the men standing round the door turned towards the house and yelled: ‘Come on, Mélina! Can’t you hear the bell?’

He was about thirty, a tall farmer of upright bearing, unbent as yet by long years of toil in the fields. His bandy-legged father, with hands and arms as gnarled as an old oak, declared: ‘That’s women for you. Never ready.’

The old man’s other two sons began to laugh and one, turning to his elder brother, the man who had shouted, said: ‘Go on in and get them moving, Poly. Else we’ll be here till noon.’

The young man went into his house.

A gaggle of geese, pausing near the farmers, hissed and flapped their wings before proceeding with slow, measured gait towards the pond.

Just then, at the newly opened door, a buxom woman appeared carrying a baby of some two months. The snowy strings of her tall bonnet dangled on her shoulders about which she wore a flame-red shawl. The baby, swaddled and swathed in white, lay comfortably across the nurse’s ample belly.

Then on her husband’s arm out came the mother, a tall strong-looking girl of barely eighteen, fresh-faced and smiling. The two grandmothers, wizened like old apples, followed, their backs bent and twisted by patient, daily labour. One, a widow, took the arm of the other grandfather, who had stayed outside the door. These two, heading the rest of the procession, followed the baby and the midwife. The others followed behind, the youngest carrying paper bags full of sugared almonds.1