When the man is finished he lays himself down and rolls into the hole he has dug. His eyes opened up to the sky, he begins scooping dirt from the pile across his own body, covering his legs, and then his boots. Hacquelebacq winces at this and appears from behind the tree.

‘Good man,’ he calls, ‘can you tell me which way is Nobber?’

The old man rises up, dirt pouring off his legs; when he stands in the hole he looks very short.

‘I mean no harm,’ Hacquelebacq says, ‘but may I ask what you are doing?’

The man’s breathing is frantic. There is dirt in his beard, and whenever he exhales small pieces of it fall off him.

‘I am digging my grave,’ he says.

Hacquelebacq clicks his tongue, as though this were the response he expected.

‘I know it is silly,’ Hacquelebacq says, ‘but I saw a thing of crows and it set my mind askew. I became lost, though these woods are very small. Before you lay you down, could you direct me out of here?’

The old man turns round in his grave, earth shifting beneath him making a soft sound, and then looks back to Hacquelebacq.

‘I wish I could help you, but I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I came here at night, by accident. I wanted to bury myself by the lake; it was my daughter’s favourite place, but I cannot find it any more. I am so lost.’

The old man’s shoulders hunch up, and he begins sobbing.

‘What ails you?’ Hacquelebacq says.

‘I gave her the sickness, you see,’ he explains. ‘I had it first; she was minding me; keeping me cool with wet cloth, dripping water into my mouth. I told her to stay away, but she said it was her duty, and then she spread it to her husband, and then her daughter, too.’

He moans, bashes his head with his fists, loosing more dirt from his beard. The birdsong above their heads grows louder; the little fox looks up at the trees.

‘My arms were swollen, my crotch too, and I couldn’t breathe,’ the man continues. ‘We were all there in the room, all of us sick, lying across from each other, all of us holding hands, praying together; and I closed my eyes, thinking that at least we were together, but I awoke and they were all dead. I could breathe and the swelling had gone down, and I wasn’t sick any more. Then Colca came and he took them from me. He dragged them out by the heels, and locked me in my own house. He would not let me go with them.’

He raises his face to the sky.

‘I killed my family.’