Then the moon like a new-lit lamp rose fast over the fields. A half world of lime-lit lakes and rivers formed under it, and the woods were changed into the foam of soundless waterfalls and shadowy cascades.
The moon commanded the hills, the valley and the fields. All things belonged to it. Each leaf was marked by it, it made its own shadows as strong as the shadows of the sun. The tiles of the roof were hardened by the light. One looked at it and lived only in that moment. But though the moon chalked his clothes and his hands and his face, yet Dunkley's body had the living day in it still. Upstairs in their room when he took off his clothes he could feel the warmth of the day in him. The light fell on her, making loops of shadows on her neck and her breasts, and her shoulders were cool but her body was as warm as bread. They lay down mouth to mouth. There was no other sound in the house but their sounds, no other sounds, no other selves (they felt) in all that countryside. 'The year is dying but we are making something beyond the year.'
-- V.S. Pritchett "A New World"
This partly-autobiographical story was found in the New York Public Library's Berg Collection by Jeremy Treglown and published for the first time in Granta #87.
