Human Traces
A Novel
IAn evening mist, salted by the western sea, was gathering on the low hills — reed-spattered rises running up from the rocks then back into the gorse- and bracken-covered country — and on to the roads that joined the villages, where lamps and candles flickered behind the shutters of the grey stone houses. It was poor country — so poor, remarked the Curé, who had recently arrived from Angers, that the stones of the shore called out for God's mercy. With the mist came sputtering rain, made invisible by the extinguished light, as it exploded like flung gravel at the windows, while stronger gusts made the shivering pine trees shed their needles on the dark, sanded earth.
Jacques Rebière listened to the sounds from outside as he looked through the window of his bedroom; for a moment, a dim moon allowed him to see clouds foaming in the darkness. The weather reminded him, often, that it was not just he, at sixteen years old, who was young, but all mankind: a species that took infant steps on the drifts and faults of the earth.
Between the ends of his dirtied fingers, Jacques held a ...
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