When they ride out of Pettau, they take the stone Roman bridge straddling the wide course of the Drau. On the other side, a carter meets them. They will need his services to carry the barrels of wine owed to them, plus interest. It’s an irksome trek to the vineyards. The path passes through two villages, across a span of fields towards the hills which form an amphitheater around the plain, an audience for the castle.
To pass the time, Siegfried sings, his voice a breezy tenor:
I knew myself a little cat
her coat was rife with fleas
And when she laid with me in bed
she shared her fleas with me!
The two men find this bawdy song hysterical, and they join in for the next round. But soon Siegfried finds their rejoinder annoying and when he stops singing, his chorus hasn’t the confidence to sustain itself. Then the only rhythm left is the thudding of hooves against well-trodden earth. In unison, they part the landscape. The fields around them are dark and empty; a few sprigs of wheat are still strewn among the rows, snapped at the middle, twitching in the breeze.
The houses in these parts slouch towards the earth like the shoulders of the people in them.
