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"I want to bring my brother back." "Back from where?" "From wherever he is... travelling. You have never met Olivier, have you?" "No." The Curé shook his head. He looked at Jacques's imploring face. "People say terrible things about him. They call him a lunatic. But I know him. I remember him from when he was young. I remember our talks together. He used to laugh. He used to be reasonable. He did well in his lessons at school and he worked at the hotel de ville. He was my friend. And he remembers." "What does he remember?" "He remembers.. Things from the time before I was born. "Abbe Henri saw Jacques look down to the table where he was rubbing his hands together coarsely, as though to scour them. "Things I would g-give my life to find again." "These illnesses are desperate things," said the Curé. "I know. I have visited the asylums. Perhaps your Olivier is better off at home." "That's what we thought. He was in the asylum for a time, but we brought him home. A man from the Department comes to see him every few months." "Perhaps he is better like that." "With the horse? He lives with the horse! My father won't let him in the house so he lies down in his own excrement while the chickens shit on him from the rafters. Forgive me, Father." Abbe Henri raised his hand. "If you had seen what I have seen in the asylums you might not think it so bad." He shook his head. "These are places where you feel the absence of God." "We must not despair, Father." The Curé smiled at the way the boy had assumed the priestly role. "I do not despair, Jacques. But the only way I can keep from that sin is by never visiting one of those places again." "Surely there are doctors," said Jacques. "There are doctors, alienists, in charge of the attendants, but they are powerless. And do you know what the strangest thing is?" "What?" "You would think these places could only exist after death in hell, or in another world. Yet when you leave them, you rejoin the ordinary life of the town with its streets. It doesn't seem right that you walk from one to the other. It doesn't feel like a short journey you make with your feet. It feels as though you've passed into a different existence." The next morning, Jacques woke early in his silent house. He retrieved his shirt and trousers from the floor, where he had left them the night before when he hurriedly blew out the candle on hearing his father's footsteps on the stairs. His boots were harder to find among the debris. On the bed that used to be Olivier's were two boards on which he had pinned a collection of moths and butterflies; along the windowsill were some glass jars in which he had pickled the viscera of animals he had trapped: a rabbit's heart, the lungs of a hare. The table was covered with pieces of copper wire, screws, clamps, two rusty saw blades and pieces of paper on which he had done anatomical drawings of mice and frogs in his careful hand (neat enough, but lacking, in his eyes, the flair of Olivier's lovely astral diagrams). Jacques found his missing boot behind some books the Curé had lent him and which, for want of a shelf, he had piled on the floor. He took a leather waistcoat from a peg and tied a scarf round his neck, then pushed open the shutters on to the grey morning. His window looked over the orchard at the back of the house, beyond which he could see the soft rise of the field that led to his father's wood. There was fencing to be done today, a task he would have enjoyed more had he been allowed a companion to hold the post as he hammered it into the ground. There was a light rain over the dense, distant trees, and a glance at the sky told him it was unlikely either to remit or grow worse. He went downstairs softly, carrying the boots, but in the parlour he found Tante Mathilde already at the table with a bowl of tea and some bread. He took two slices and put them in the pocket of a woollen jacket; from an outside store he took an apple and as many walnuts as he could find room for.