"I'll fix you something to eat. Manuel must get you out of those wet trousers." "Lucienne ... you must send word to Petaca." "Should Manuel go?" "I think that's best." "Try to rest.... I'll see about it," she said. Pain kept Raul awake most of the night. All her doctoring helped very little; again and again he saw Lucienne by the lamplight of the adjoining bedroom; she would come and bend over him and whisper something. "Try to sleep.... "Are you thirsty?" In the dim light, his face had about it the tragic quality that had haunted her at the burial. Death was such a wearisome thing. Dear Raul, sleep, sleep. This is really your home. We've always been kind to one another ... we can go on being kind. We have that assurance. Only a little while ago you and I were children, playing together.... I can see you in the dining-room doorway, tears streaming down your face, Mama and Papa lying dead on the floor, just as they were when they took them from the sea. Oh, love, I want to share your pain. "Let me get a hammock for you," she said, "to let the air come all around you. Maybe that will help you rest." She slung a long white hammock for him and he found it more restful lying crosswise, swaying a little.... Mona wandered in and licked his fingers, when his hand hung over the side of the hammock. She lay underneath, on the cool tiles. Strange, lying here in her bedroom, strange to be alive, strange that Caterina is dead ... stranger still is Angelina's coldness, her sorrow, her introversion ... what is it we say to one another, or don't say? What is it that heals us? Something for one, something else for another. She wouldn't like to care for me but she would like to look after a child. Strange sound the sea makes, strange what life is. In a few days I'll be back at Petaca. I'll see her and she'll ask about my shoulder and I'll ask about the earthquake. There must be a way to change ourselves. Lucienne says there is no God. How does she know? Has she searched? She spends her time with her plants and her friends. Gabriel has said "God is." For him it's as simple as that. And I must talk to him, to change myself. Caterina didn't live for nothing. Her faith was real to her.... Lying alone in Lucienne's tiny servant's room (a room that had no furniture), Manuel saw his soul sitting in front of him, about three feet high, made of clay. He had often seen it. It had a bulging forehead, close cropped hair and scraggly beard. It spoke in an African tongue, faintly. He listened and tried to understand. Wasn't it repeating the same things? The voice rose. The soul seemed to grapple with something; it snuffed the air ... Manuel, breathing hard, turned restlessly on a dusty straw mat, woke and gazed about at the tiny room. Up long before dawn, he washed in the sea, ate, talked with Lucienne about Raul's condition and then saddled his horse for Petaca.