Emma was laughing, but we could not guess what she was laughing about. Her mouth was forming words, but the sounds were inaudible, absorbed into the mass, the luscious mass of her well-fed face, like the satisfied mask of a Gille de Binche. I suppose she kept on uttering sentences as she always did. It made her laugh. She laughed at herself, despite her black eye. From month to month Emma's face always had a new black eye, a new bruise, somewhere in her mouth, around her eyes, or on the wings of her nose. It didn't stop her from smiling, or even laughing out loud. Maybe in a way it even helped. In any case, we never thought about it. We had got used to that too.