THE GIRLS OF THE VILLAGE have all disappeared. Who will bring in the goats? Who will set the table? Mothers stand in doorways, looking provoked. Their daughters are nowhere to be found, although the twilight is filled with names: Marianne! Sophie! Emma! Beatrice!
Those girls. Wedded to mischief. What will we do with them?
A cry rises up from the far field: Aha!
Papa has discovered them.
And he will bellow; he will make them hurry home. The tall grasses parting, their caps gone askew, they'll come spilling out, red-faced, mock-penitent, grinning with secrets.
But all is quiet. Papa has not made a sound.
He is too surprised to speak. Aha! he had shouted, and at once the girls stiffened—hands outstretched, knees deep in the grass. Now Beatrice sits upright, blinking wildly, petals shedding from her face, her breasts, the dark fall of her hair. She has been laid out on the grass; she has been strewn with flowers. The girls have been tending to her: they touched her skin, and spread her hair; they held a mirror beneath her nose.
Before Papa has even the breath to ask, the girls answer his question:
Nothing, they murmur. It's nothing