Three or four stars peered coldly through racks of tattered clouds. Twinkling. For a moment, Yolek thought of them as no more than pinpricks, little moth holes in a heavy velvet curtain, beyond which shone a vast, terrible illumination, a blinding, molten incandescence. And the stars themselves, it seemed to him, were but the faintest of allusions to the great storm of light raging behind that veil. As though the vats of heaven had sprung a few tiny leaks and several drops of bright liquid clung glistening to their black undersides. Yolek found comfort. He walked slowly, thoughtfully, breathing deeply of the sharp, keen air, taking in all the barnyard smells, charged with the heavy sensuality of a caress. When had he last been caressed like this? Long, long ago, not counting the few politically active widows or divorcées who had dragged him almost forcibly to bed, and that far from recently. Nature alone, so it seemed, cared enough for everyone, even a nasty intellectual, to ensure them all a few years of mother love. The whole thing is very strange and rather pathetic, thought Yolek, recalling that his own mother was the last person really to fondle him. Starlight on a winter night was no doubt to be taken auspiciously, but life was basically a rum business.

Thick, sour fumes steaming out of the chicken run. Sheep giving off a warmish odor of manure. A stream of liquid compost flowing out of and back into the darkness from the sopping hay. The breathing of the cows. The calm, drowsy, winter-night thereness of the farm animals.