Limbani.

There is one sentence Limbani has been repeating the same way for years. Somebody points out the stake he drove in up at the top of the bank to mark himself the edge, and tells him the edge is no longer where it was. He answers: "I put that stake in. I'll move it." He says it without looking up from the basket and without breaking step down the path. He has spent three floods answering the same thing, in the same words. Anyone who has heard it twice doesn't raise the subject again.

The second sentence comes out when somebody mentions that on the far bank he comes through as clearly as he does from ten paces away. He answers that it's the bend, that it sends it back, and changes the subject with his chin. He says it the way you would explain why it rains in January: without giving it any importance and without having checked anything. He has never crossed the river to hear himself from the other side, and it has never occurred to him that there was anything to check. And there it stays.