he had managed to wake up and was standing in front of the door in front of the woman his big bulging eyes looking at me with an offended expression, I screamed We’ve got to get out of here We’ve got to get our clothes back on He wanted to have me shot one of those boys took a shot at me

but he didn’t move went on looking at me with that same expression of outrage reproving sullen then he raised his arm towards the café behind him, saying He said he’d cook us a duck tonight

and I A duck?

and he He’s going to give us something to eat He said that

then I stopped listening, I headed overland climbing back up the hill the sun had that insistent obsessive presence of long afternoons in spring when it remains endlessly lingering still high in the sky days that never end as if it were immobilized on the verge of setting but not able to move held motionless by some Joshua there must have been at least two or three days that it had forgotten to set since it had risen reddening at first softly tinting the sky purple the rosy-fingered dawn but I hadn’t seen the moment when it had appeared only my shadow elongated and diaphanous, a quadruped’s shadow on the road where there was nothing but those motionless heaps like rags and the idiot face of Wack lying back staring at me I had it right in my eyes now motionless in the white sky

turning round I saw he was following me; so he had finally made up his mind, he was still at the foot of the hill had just passed the last houses walking up the meadow staggering a little once he stumbled fell but got up again then I stopped and waited for him when he caught up with me he stumbled again and fell on all fours for a moment vomiting then he stood up again wiping his mouth on his sleeves and started walking.