Read "The Fish can Sing" by Halldór Laxness online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
In Löngustétt, where the girls promenade, a girl came towards me. By habit when I met girls I took care to look the other way; I did not feel quite safe with these creatures, and could not exactly think of them as people at all, any more than I could "the authorities". She was tall and shapely, and I felt her looking at me. When she saw that I was going to sidle past her, she put her hand on my arm. She looked at me with that strange smile that seemed to live in the air itself but manifested itself in her face as a flash from some unknown light: the air clad in a soul, or the soul clad in air, and light – Bler. Her voice was slightly breathless as she bade me good day. I stiffened up completely, just as I had done before, and could see nothing; the world melted away in a white fog. This was the moment that I had dreaded in my innermost being ever since I had fled from her, the moment when I would meet her again.
"What beautiful shoes you are wearing," said the girl, and gazed at me from out of the air.