AS CLAUDE STUMBLES through the orchard, his expectations take on form, enormous size. They will have soft fingers. And gleaming hair. Their nipples will be tiny and wild as strawberries. In an interesting coincidence, Claude found a patch of berries last summer behind this same barn. He kept them to himself. He made visits when no one was looking. And remembering how shyly the berries appeared when he lifted up the canopy of their leaves, Claude pictures the girls' sleepy faces, their looks of surprise. How delighted they will be to see him.
The barn is bathed in moonlight. Claude presses his face to a crack in the door. He wants simply a glance, an unhurried glance, before he comes in and startles them. Maybe he will catch them as they are brushing each other's hair, or softly embracing, or kissing good night. Countless entrancing scenes could await him, but when he presses his face to the crack in the door, the sight he finds disturbs him.
There is only one girl, not three. She is lying on the floor of the barn. She is small, and wearing a filthy party dress, and appears to have been dropped down from another world. But not in the pleasant way he was expecting. Her body lies rigid except for her hand, which is tucked between her legs and moving desperately. Though her face is turned away from him, Claude believes that its expression must be of suffering. Look at the violence she does to herself! She is in thrall to that furious hand. He forgets the nipples, the shining hair: his thought is to save her, to knock down the rotting door and make it stop. But there is something in the way she stiffens that tells him such a rescue would be unwelcome. That annihilation is in fact her purpose. That she wants nothing more than this hand, this moon, this forgotten barn, conspiring to release her, to rub her out.
Claude knows where he's not wanted. He has several sisters, an older brother; he is familiar with the feeling. His hopes and gifts hang heavily on him. As he backs away from the awful barn, he empties his swollen pockets of their sausages.