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for him, across from his house. He had with him fifteen sheets of mulberry bark, completely covered with eggs: tiny, ivory-coloured. Hervé Joncour examined each sheet, carefully, then negotiated the price and paid in gold scales. Before the man left he made him understand that he wished to see Hara Kei. The man shook his head. Hervé Joncour understood, from his gestures, that Hara Kei had left that morning, early, with his entourage, and no one knew when he would return.
    Hervé Joncour went through the village quickly, to the dwelling of Hara Kei. He found only some servants, who responded to every question by shaking their heads. The house seemed deserted. And although he looked carefully all around, even at the most insignificant things, he saw nothing resembling a message for him. He left the house and, returning to the village, passed the immense aviary. The doors were closed again. Inside, hundreds of birds were flying, sheltered from the sky.

37.
    H ERVÉ Joncour waited two more days for some sign. Then he left.
    It happened that, no more than half an hour from the village, he passed a wood from which came a singular, silvery din. Hidden among the leaves he could make out the thousand dark patches of a flock of birds that were still and at rest. With no explanation to the two men who accompanied him, Hervé Joncour stopped his horse, took the revolver from his belt, and fired six shots into the air. The birds, terrorised, rose into the sky, like a cloud of smoke released by a fire. It was so big that you could have seen it days’ and days’ walk from there. Dark in the sky, with no other purpose than its own bewilderment.

38.
    S IX days later Hervé Joncour embarked, at Takaoka, on a Dutch smugglers’ ship, which took him to Sabirk. From there he went back along the Chinese border to Lake Baikal, journeyed over four thousand kilometres of Siberian territory, crossed the Urals, reached Kiev, and by train traversed all Europe, from east to west, until, after three months of travel, he arrived in France. The first Sunday in April – in time for High Mass – he reached the gates of Lavilledieu. He halted the carriage, and for some minutes sat without moving behind the drawn curtains. Then he got out, and continued on foot, step after step, with infinite weariness.
    Baldabiou asked him if he had seen the war.
    ‘Not the one I expected,’ he answered.
    At night he went to Hélène’s bed and loved her so impatiently that she was frightened and couldn’t hold back her tears. When he noticed, she forced herself to smile at him.
    ‘It’s just that I’m so happy,’ she said softly.

39.
    H ERVÉ Joncour delivered the eggs to the silkworm breeders of Lavilledieu. Then, for days, he did not appear again in the town, neglecting even his usual daily outing to Verdun’s. In early May, to general amazement, he bought the house abandoned by Jean Berbeck, the man who had stopped speaking one day and had not said another word for the rest of his life. Everyone thought that he intended to make it his new workshop. He didn’t even start to clear it out. He would go there, from time to time, and remain in those rooms alone, doing what, no one knew. One day he took Baldabiou there.
    ‘Do you know why Jean Berbeck stopped speaking?’ Baldabiou asked.
    ‘It’s one of the many things he never said.’
    Years had passed, but there were still paintings hanging on the walls and dishes in the drain, beside the sink. It wasn’t a happy sight, and Baldabiou, on his own, would willingly have left. But Hervé Joncour continued to look with fascination at those dead, mouldy walls. It was obvious: he was looking for something in there.
    ‘Maybe it’s that life, at times, gets to you in a way that there’s really nothing more to say.’
    He said.
    ‘Nothing more, forever.’
    Baldabiou wasn’t much cut out for serious conver- sations. He was staring at Jean Berbeck’s bed.
    ‘Maybe anyone would become mute in such a hideous