Lea woke to the old woman’s snoring. She pulled the blanket to her chin and sat for a moment listening to the sounds filling the darkness, guttural and wet, until she noticed light filtering through the skylight. She crawled beneath it and lay on her back, wrapped in the blanket, staring up at the wet moons trapped in the layered glass, stars glowing like marbles at the bottom of a puddle. The rain had ceased. The light had always been there, and Lea had always been there, and all of this would continue. Her heart lay comfortably in her chest, where it gurgled and rushed. The light would come again to fill the world, and when it did Lea would return to Christophe and Florian, and even the small children, who were no different than the specks caught in the glass, and had done nothing wrong. She fell asleep between the cool concrete and the wool blanket, humming, and listening to the old woman’s throat scrape moons together and apart.
Christophe walked alongside the farmhouse slowly, turning his head from left to right, eyes narrowing, sometimes hunching his shoulders, hands fathoming unseen shapes, creeping lightly, stopping in his tracks, immobile and cocking his head to listen. Marc stood just west of the grass, among the desiccated remains of yesterday’s frogs, now bloated with rainwater and half-buried in the wet mud. He watched the old man crane his neck to peek around an unseen object, turn at a right angle, walk in a straight line near the edge of the field, then stop and stare across the courtyard, eyes unfocused, ignoring the siblings altogether. Sabine squatted beside her brother in the wet dirt, holding between two fingers some unrecognizable amphibian organ, hands stained dark with blood and mire.
For Marc the world was quickly becoming a gelatinous landscape composed of non-meted punishment. An empty gale blew through the space Christophe had once occupied. It made the boy nauseous and disoriented. He gnawed his knuckles and watched the old man turn again, drawing a rectangle around the courtyard, lost in his fearful pantomime. Ram a fist through his chest. Crack his face with a log. Crush his arms and legs with a boot. Smear him across a wall. Marc kneaded his swollen nipple and watched the weak creature.
It was after breakfast when Christophe first noticed his wife’s absence. She was not in the double bed, which had been carefully made. Not in the shower either, nor using the bathroom, nor reading a book in the living room, nor standing in the kitchen. He called her name, hoping she might emerge from some overlooked room, frowning and telling him to lower his voice, but Christophe knew he had searched the apartment thoroughly. She had not travelled to the store, which had been looted weeks ago.
So Christophe wandered their block, along graffiti-covered walls, staring desperately through smashed-glass storefronts, smelling the long-rotten stench of fruit thrown during the protests. There, the abandoned laundromat where they had washed their clothes, sometimes together, sometimes apart. It was empty and dark. On one of the machines lay an open pizza box, empty as well. He kept searching.
In the penumbra of some ground-floor apartments, a faint sense of human presence. He stared, but was unable discern anything save the occasional rat scratching its way through the detritus, some stray glimmers of glass. Careful to avoid making noise, Christophe leaned around each building to make sure streets were empty before turning the corner. He did not dare wander too far, for fear that if Isabela returned she might find herself locked out. Better to return to the apartment, wait for her there.
Sabine attempted to draw Marc’s attention to the grotesque statuette she had been crafting, but her brother was too busy thinking about the old man. Christophe had entered the farmhouse again. Marc left Sabine standing in the courtyard and he walked towards the window. He placed his fingers on the ledge and pulled himself up to peer through it. Inside he could see Christophe sitting in his rocking chair. The old man was reading a book.
A strange restlessness was preventing Christophe from concentrating. He kept looking around the apartment at the furniture, the unchanging furniture, and thinking of Isabela, how her lifeless body would drape over the curb, limbs angled unnaturally, bleeding or already dead, and he cursed himself for agreeing to a temporary exile. Capitulating to her terms, sleeping on that stupid cot in the office. Weakness to give her freedom when she needed protection. Failing to notice her departure in the night. Now the sound of gunshots, explosions in the distance. Paris was no longer safe and perhaps it never would be again. And somehow this fucking idiot wife of his… placing no value on her own life, leaving him to loneliness and sorrow, to death. And perhaps this was her plan all along: edified, a martyr. How small he would seem in comparison.
He put the book down and got on his knees, praying for her health, please lord protect my wife, do not let her die, do not let them find her, protect her today and allow her safe return. Now he prostrated himself, face pressed to the hardwood, and continued his prayer. Save my wife from herself. What have you allowed them to do, and to how many people, how many dead and how many maimed and how many raped, and what kind of god. I am sorry. I am full of fear and I do not know what to do. Please keep her safe, and show me some path forward through my stubborn nature, and deliver me from the bondage of self. I thank you for my beautiful wife and for the fire that inhabits her, and for the decisions she has made, even if I do not understand them. To leave me here alone in this apartment as she wanders this godforsaken city, without a second thought, and tell me god, has she lost her mind. Has she lost her fucking mind.
The mouse groveled on the floor of the farmhouse, skin loose and sagging forward, the fragile notches of its arched spine, the thinning hair, fingers splayed out and trembling on the tile, and the rocking chair immobile behind it. A book lay beside the old man, carelessly cast there when the prayer had pulled him to his knees. Marc hung from the windowsill until his fingers ached and then lowered himself to the ground. There was pain in his wrists and fingers. When it subsided the boy pulled himself up again. Christophe remained prostrate, toes bent back, heels caked in dead skin, brittle and flaking.
Sabine had not moved. She stared at Marc, face absolutely placid, eyes hard and cold. Her brother struggled to keep his face at window level. Sabine walked up behind him quietly and when Marc lowered himself to the ground she kicked him between his spread legs, where she knew the pain would be excruciating.
Lea slept until late morning, and the old woman did not disturb her. Instead she remained in the lawn chair drinking. A deafening quiet filled the room, interrupted only by the sporadic gurgle of flowing drink. The child lay on her back in the center of the room, round white face delineated by soft shadows. She reminded the old woman of a painting she had seen long ago: some nameless cherub compromised by darkness. Of course the child would lose everything, as the old woman had. The grooves in her face and body would deepen until her bones jutted forward in desperation, and then flesh itself would melt away to reveal the underlying structure, hard and white and dead. Even the girl’s cunt was a deepening hole where the emptiness had already taken root. The old woman chased these bad thoughts away with the wine. She brought the bottle to her lips until her mind buzzed blankly and her body felt young and light again. When the bottle was finally empty, she reached beneath her chair and produced another.