...of contrition

By this time Martin had fallen on his face in the sand. And he was digging. Slowly at first, his hands paddling feebly in the liquid, dusty matter. Then faster, scuffling with his arms, sending up spadefuls of smelly dust into his face. And in the end, frantically, his whole body transformed into a digging-machine, into an insect struggling and twisting in the middle of the sand-pit, making holes in all directions, with his arms, his legs, his shoulders, his hips, even his head. He buried his chin in the sand, he was suffocating, grovelling, drowning! Delirium had taken entire possession of him, and it was like a bottomless abyss, a well that grew deeper and deeper as he fell. He was part of the falling movement, he was in the centre-line of the abyss itself, he was his own cavern, more and more a cavern, and nothing could stop him. Time had gone by, he had served as the frenzied victim of this metamorphosis, and nothing could turn him back.
But his strength was ebbing. He lay stretched out in the centre of the lists, flat on his face in the sand, his limbs hardly moving now. Only a slight tremor in his arms showed that he was still alive. The sun poured down on his motionless body and mingled with the sand that covered his skin and clothes. Martin was grey all over, now, as grey as a lizard’s cast off skin, a dull, dirty grey that seemed to cut him off from the world of the living.
Almost instinctively the children fell silent. They stood still, round the sand-pit, staring at Martin’s corpse-like form. Then Pierre put the toe of his shoe into the sand-pit and jerked his ankle to send a spray of sand on to Martin. The sand fell on the inert body, scattering over the tangled hair, the back of the neck, the shoulders, the ears. When he saw that Martin didn’t move, Pierre pulled his specatcles out of his pocket and threw them down on the sand beside the sprawling body; then he stepped down among the other children. He had no need to say a word: the others understood at once; they took to their heels and ran out of the courtyard.

[Martin, from Fever, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]