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cry. He saw the mute faces that people have when they are a people in flight. And he saw a tree, on the side of the road. And suspended from a branch the boy who had brought him there, hanged.
    Hervé Joncour approached and stood staring for a moment, as if hypnotised. Then he untied the rope that was attached to the tree, picked up the boy’s body, laid it on the ground, and knelt beside it. He couldn’t take his eyes from that face. So he didn’t see the village starting off, but only heard, as if from a distance, the noise of the procession as it brushed past him, along the road. He didn’t look up even when he heard the voice of Hara Kei, a step away, saying
    ‘Japan is an ancient country, do you understand? Its law is ancient: there are twelve crimes for which a man can be condemned to death. And one is to carry a message of love from one’s mistress.’
    Hervé Joncour didn’t take his eyes off that murdered boy.
    ‘He had no message of love with him.’
    ‘He was a message of love.’
    Hervé Joncour felt something pressing on his head, forcing it towards the ground.
    ‘It’s a gun, Frenchman. Don’t look up, I beg you.’
    Hervé Joncour didn’t understand immediately. Then, amid the rustling sounds of that caravan in flight, he heard the gilded tinkle of a thousand tiny bells approaching, gradually, ascending the road towards him, step by step, and although in his eyes there was only that dark earth, he could imagine the litter, swaying like a pendulum, and almost see it, ascending, foot after foot, approaching, slow but implacable, borne by that sound which grew louder and louder, intolerably loud, closer and closer, so close that it touched him, a gilded din, right in front of him now, precisely in front of him – at that moment – that woman – in front of him.
    Hervé Joncour raised his head.
    Marvellous fabrics, silk, draping the litter, a thousand colours, orange, white, ochre, silver, not a peephole in that marvellous nest, only the rustling of the colours rippling in the air, impenetrable, lighter than nothing.
    Hervé Joncour didn’t hear an explosion shatter its life. He heard the sound growing distant, the barrel of the rifle lifted up and the voice of Hara Kei saying softly
    ‘Go away, Frenchman. And don’t ever come back.’

50.
    I T took Hervé Joncour eleven days to reach Yokohama. He bribed a Japanese official and procured sixteen cartons of silkworm eggs that came from the south of the island. He wrapped them in silk cloths and sealed them in four round wooden boxes. He found a ship for the continent and in early March reached the Russian coast. He chose the northernmost route, looking for cold to arrest the life of the eggs and prolong the time before they hatched. By forced marches he covered the four thousand kilometres of Siberia, crossed the Urals, and reached St Petersburg. He bought, at an exorbitant cost, hundredweights of ice and loaded them, with the eggs, into the hold of a merchant ship bound for Hamburg. It took six days to get there. He unloaded the four round wooden boxes, and got a train heading south. After eleven hours of travel, just outside a city that was called Eberfeld, the train stopped to take on water. Hervé Joncour looked around. A summer sun was beating on the fields of grain, and on all the world. Sitting opposite him was a Russian merchant: he had taken off his shoes and was fanning the air with the last page of a newspaper written in German. Hervé Joncour stared at him. He saw the stains of sweat on his shirt and the drops that pearled his forehead and neck. The Russian said something, laughing. Hervé Joncour smiled at him, rose, took his bags, and got off the train. He walked beside it to the last car, a freight car that carried fish and meat, preserved in ice. It was dripping water like a bowl punctured by a thousand projectiles. He opened the door, climbed into the car, and, one after another, picked up his round wooden boxes, carried them