MY CAR PIROUETTES into the ditch in the driving snow on the high plateau. Small hands are already knocking on the windows, men in wolfskins and Puma tracksuits, they escort me to a farmstead not far from the road, a shack, a modest campfire. They boil water for tea, feed me Mars bars, and the tea smells of sheep. We are the shepherds, they say, that's us.

The shepherds’ eyes: wide. They don't want to listen to anything I have to say.

They don't want to listen, the shepherds, they want to talk: about a building that cleared its throat years in days of yore and then hesitated.

The factory, the shepherds say, behind the fir trees, over there. The shepherds point at the window, the window is all steamed up; the smallest shepherd stands on tiptoe to wipe the glass with his sleeve and the snowstorm obliterates the view.

What does that mean, I ask, it hesitated, and how can buildings clear their throat, is that some kind of joke?

We heard it, say the shepherds, we were there. We were playing cards, sheltering from the wind behind the factory walls. And they eagerly demonstrate what the throat clearing sounded like, gruff and steely, they say, gruff and steely, they rasp through cupped hands, and you can't imagine it.

The shepherds’ lifelines: made of earth.

Since then the factory has been hesitating, say the shepherds. Since then the plateau has been waiting, the wind and the fog have been waiting, the shepherds wait and so does their snow, waiting for something to come next.

They say: let's pay a visit.

To whom? I ask.

The factory. The shepherds dunk their Mars bars in their tea.

I’d rather not, I say.

The shepherds confer behind their hands. The smallest shepherd sits down on my lap. He sings quietly, playing with my collar. It's a children's song, one of the old, brutal ones, with guilt and punishment, and when I join in the chorus he breaks off and bares his eye teeth.