After each explosion, fragments of rock shot up above the mountaintop then hurtled down the slope, now sticking fast in the tangles of the underbrush, now parting the smooth surface of the stream. Some of the slabs came to a halt just yards short of the fence that screened the house. Each time they caught sight of a fresh stone missile, the man and woman would leap up, holding out their arms instinctively, as if they could block the bounding fall that snapped tree trunks and tore up broad swathes of the forest floor.

When the explosions fell silent they exchanged looks and had time to say to themselves that their presence had not been discovered, so the place was really safe, or perhaps (they dared not believe this) their clandestine, criminal way of life was finally going to be accepted. The last salvo was unlike the others: it sounded to them like a stray echo that had been delayed. The slab of rock that detached itself from the mountaintop was different too-flat, rounded, and, in a manner of speaking, silent. Its fall was almost soundless. It struck a tree, stood on edge, and revealed its true nature. It was a granite disk, sliced off by the whim of the explosion, rolling faster and faster. The man and woman made no move, mesmerized both by the speed of its rotation and the improbable slowness with which the action was unfolding in front of their eyes. A tree trunk barring the path of this stone wheel was not smashed but sliced, like an arm by a saber. The thickets that might have stopped it seemed to part to let it through. It avoided another tree with the sly agility of a big cat. The dusk veiled some of the stages in its descent-they heard, before seeing it, the dry shattering of the fence.

The disk did not destroy their house. It embedded itself in it, as if in clay, plunging into the heart of it, tearing up the floor and coming to a halt, still bolt upright.