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didn’t answer. The furrows of damp earth required concentration: a hunter could break an ankle if he wasn’t careful where he stepped.
    “It’s true it’d be better,” said Michelle. “It’s true we’re hurting each other. But I’d like to know what you think. I don’t know what you’re thinking. I’d like to hear what you have to say.”
    Fortunately, we arrived at the woods at that moment, so I held a finger to my mouth to hush Michelle. I leaned close to her face, so close that her red hair tickled my lips, and spoke very softly. From here on in, total silence. Don’t speak, step carefully, breathe in whispers. A boar can hear us from many meters away. If there are deer, the snap of a twig can scare them off.
    The tracks of an abandoned railway line were covered in moss that sparkled with frost and raindrops from a recent shower. A false floor of fallen leaves covered the grass, and the leaves were wet and soft and opaque and golden, and Michelle liked stepping on them. I held her hand and we began to walk between the rails. The oaks and beech trees filtered out the wind. The air was dense and humid, the light filtered through the bare branches. There in the woods there was no noise. The world was green and gray and brown, there were no shadows, and nothing was moving. I think Michelle was happy.
    I pointed to the spot where we’d wait, the place where the hill started down toward an open field. From there, kneeling on the damp earth and feeling its coolness, we overlooked the place the prey would run across, frightened by Pierre from the other side of the woods. I loaded my rifle. It was something Michelle had never seen me do. I tugged a piece of bark off an oak tree and gave it to her to sniff. Michelle inhaled deeply and a bit of dirt stuck to her cheek. She didn’t feel it, because the cold air had numbed her skin, and I wiped it off with one finger in a movement that was very similar to a caress. I motioned to her to kneel down in front of me, so she could get a better view down the slope of the hill and the fallen tree trunks that had been caught up in the undergrowth. She liked the idea and crawled on her hands and knees without worrying about getting dirty. This, I didn’t know why, made me feel sad. Seeing her like that, moved by the shapes and colors that moved me, her eyes open wide like a little girl, made me regret what hadn’t yet happened. When had we failed at this? What words would which of us use to close off the possibilities? I thought back to the time when I’d fallen in love with Michelle. When I met her, she was a distracted and slightly brusque woman who was taking English courses at the University of Liège, but her only interest was in drawing letters to adorn the openings of books like
Le Morte d’Arthur
and
Lancelot du Lac
. This contradiction was emblematic of her way of going through life. On her T-shirts there was often a caricature whose outline, when it was cold, stood out from the pressure of her nipples. She used to ask me to pose for her, and she’d draw deformed figures in which my cheeks were like red peppers and my black hair, as in the Mandrake comic strips, appeared tinted with streaks of navy blue. At that time I loved her and everything was simple, clear, as evident as this uneasy reality, which would conclude with solitude, a necessary solitude but one requiring a sacrifice, a ghost sleeping between us like a small child. Realizing then that everything declines, that nothing lasts, made me think that living on my own would be less difficult. That’s how I was feeling, midway between sad and resigned, when we heard three shouts from Pierre. I looked at my watch. We’d been kneeling on the ground and the moss for half an hour.
    Michelle turned and looked at me with her big eyes, asking me wordlessly what that meant.
    “That he’s reached the end of the run,” I said out loud.
    “The run?”
    “He’s run out of woods, Michelle. And not a single animal