ADRIEN TAKES THIS OPPORTUNITY to heave himself onto the roof. From the damp ground below, Madeleine scowls at him, thinks up curses. May your every picture be pornographic! May your glass plates shatter! May you ruin every single thing you touch.
Her curses are bitter, not only because he is up on the caravan, and she down on the grass, but also because what was once faint and without name—no more than a shudder, a flush, a short spell of light-headedness, an intestinal fluttering—feels now like a wound.
Without knowing it, he has told Madeleine her own secret.
That she loves the flatulent man; that she aches for him.