Franck couldn’t sleep. At two in the morning he got out of bed and went to stand by the window, oppressed by the darkness outside and the complete absence of any points of reference. As his eyes adjusted, he noticed the outline of the hills in the distance, a faint distinction between sky and land. Apart from that, he could see nothing and no one; there was no light, whichever way he looked. He went out of the house in just his shorts and walked a little. Everything was quiet. And yet he was not calm, for there was a constant hum: a crunch in the distance that he took to be the sound of footsteps, or maybe the rustle of leaves; strange hooting; the brush of wings; it never ended. Every time he turned on his headlamp to point it at the area in question, a swarm of insects flew into his face; tiny moths darted at him from below. He even swallowed one or two of them. But when he turned the light off, he felt anxious again. In the darkness he could sense the presence of thousands of beings around him; he felt he was at the centre of a troubling world, populated only by insects, animals and creatures lurking in the shadows. When night fell, this planet belonged to them, a planet of millions of invisible beings where humans had no place. He had a strong sense that he was not accepted by the wildlife that surrounded him.

At three in the morning he went back to the room. He wanted to turn on the bedside lamp that Lise had dimmed with a scarf and turned off when she went to bed, but didn’t dare, for fear of waking her. The room was plunged in darkness, just like the house, like the nearest trees, immersed in shadow like the whole universe. A little earlier, at around midnight, the sliver of moon had still cast some of its light on the landscape so you could see the trees, the hills, the car and the little shed that must once have stored tools. But the moon had since disappeared to the west, and thousands of stars were twinkling in the sky without casting any light below. He remembered that while researching the holiday online, he had come across an expression that he immediately disliked: ‘the Black Triangle of Quercy’, an area of total darkness with no light pollution at all. He was right in the middle of it.