The word, bucolic

Silence makes a profound sound in the village. When someone opens a door the open door means something; and when the door closes it means something else. What the sounds mean is up to you in the midst of France.

The goats at the bottom of the hill wear bells. Sometimes late at night they stir together like a little breeze and walk uphill toward the house where you are sleeping; but since you're sleeping they turn away.

When people live in stone houses it's easy to imagine something terrible going on inside, some unspeakable cruelty or injustice that no one talks about except behind the closed door. It's tempting to believe the people who live inside are honoring the idea of privacy, until you've been around here long enough to know that the things they didn't want others to know them about are things others already knew.

By morning the village drunk will have fallen out of the third story window, his neck and back broken. A little girl finds him, crumpled in some weeds. Everyone talks about the tragedy for weeks, but quietly, in private, so only they can hear.