Thus it was that this man suddenly caught my eye. It looked as if he had been thrown out of the little annex. The door, blocked by the snow, had resisted him, and to escape he must have flung himself against it with all his might. Several times, perhaps. Eventually the door had given way, and he had toppled out into the night, into the storm, his face buffeted by snow flurries, his eyes dazzled by the white flakes, losing all sense of direction. Disconcerted, he took a moment to close the door again as it dragged against a thick layer of snow. During these few seconds, while he was pushing at the door, I saw the inside of the little place. A kind of hallway flooded with bright light, lemon colored from the bare bulb, and beyond it a room. And, framed by this inner doorway, I saw a flash of ponderous nakedness, the massive whiteness of a belly, and most notably, the rough gesture of a hand that grasped first one breast, then another, vast breasts, worn out by brutal caresses, and thrust them into a brassiere… But almost at once, with a screech of panic, a woman had appeared on the threshold, muffled up in a padded jacket (the keeper of the storeroom, who rents it out as a trackside love nest, I said to myself), and the door had closed with an angry slam.

The human mass sleeps on. The only new sound is of munching in the darkness: the old man, stretched out on his newspaper, has propped himself up on one elbow, has opened a can of food, and is lapping it up, as people do who have very few teeth left. The metallic clatter of the lid being closed makes me wince at its grating ugliness. The man lies back down, seeks a comfortable position, with much rustling of sheets of newspaper, and soon begins to snore.

The judgment I have been trying to keep at bay floods in on me, a combination of sympathy and rage. I contemplate this human matter, breathing like a single organism, its resignation, its innate disregard of comfort, its endurance in the face of the absurd.