CHAPTER V
It seemed to him that he was walking about in an enormous kitchen garden. All around was nothing but cabbage heads, not simply heads, but heads which grinned and were slimy from the creatures which had crawled over them; gibbering heads, blear-eyed, monstrous, watery, pimpled and swollen. They were growing on cabbage stumps, and creeping over them were repulsive green caterpillars. And now across the garden there ran towards him the girl with the veil over her face. She raised her skirts a little and jumped over the heads. But under each of them there suddenly sprouted bare, horribly thin and hairy hands, which clutched at her feet and her skirts. The girl screamed in fear, and raised her skirts still higher, above her strong knees, showing her white legs, and tried to spring out of the way of these grasping tentacles. Prokop closed his eyes; he could not bear the sight of her white strong legs and was nearly mad with dread lest those green heads should defile her. He cast himself on the ground and chopped off the first head with his clasp-knife. It squeaked like an animal and snapped at his hand with its rotten teeth. Now the second and the third head. Christ! would he be able to mow the enormous field before the girl reached the other end? Springing madly about, he trampled them
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