THE STARS AND MOON do not seem any closer, but the ground looks much farther away, and the roofs of caravans more precarious than expected. Madeleine teeters above the world like a small, drunken seraph. Everyone but she is sleeping.
From below, she hears a moan, a low and plaintive sound rising up through the rooftop, through the soles of her bare feet. M. Pujol is moaning in his sleep, and when she hears this, the sound of loss, Madeleine thrusts her hands deep into her drawers, which she has dragged, with some difficulty, up to these heights.
A fistful of gravel rains down on the caravan.
The moaning ceases, abruptly.
It is just as she predicted! In the darkness, Madeleine glows. And though to her ears the noise is not of raindrops, but simply of gravel rattling across a tin roof, she knows that from below, from the tousled, sheet-tangled bed, the flatulent man hears the sound of rain, and is quieted.
Go to sleep, M. Pujol! she whispers.
Again she digs into her sack.