Marc watched Sabine tottering along on the grass, not as fast as him, but walking almost running now and laughing. Mother watched from the bench as he chased his sister laughing. Hot smiling day when he pushed Sabine to make her run faster so he could run faster to catch her. She toppled and fell flat with no hands out. There was no joy, no joy at all, the flat face forever flat and Sabine forever gone. Marc looked at the blonde hair and looked at mother and looked at the blonde hair again. He wanted badly to see her face not flat, to see her laugh and smile again. Never would he push her. Never never never. On his knees turning over the sister Marc saw its face still smiling, look up with its green eyes and muddy nose and the blade of grass on its silent forehead. But he had pushed her. Well boots on Marc.
The ejaculate fell onto the wheat in a single strip and like the severed tongue of a frog it collected grain and tumbled downslope. Sabine withdrew her touch and sat watching Marc in the half-light as he ticked like a clock marking the same second again and again. Many times she had seen larger men wilt, but always this had been accompanied by pain. Caught in the grey light canting from the arrow slits in the wall above, the scabs on Marc’s chest resembled rake marks revealing clay through a smooth layer of white sand. Sabine’s hand traveled over her brother’s body to explore these mysterious gashes, but the boy shuddered beneath her touch and twisted his body away, curling into the fetal position. She heard the zipper of his jumpsuit slowly closing and watched Marc’s back as he trembled there in the wheat. Again she reached her hand towards the boy and touched the cresting fabric on his left side but Marc jolted back his elbow to knock her away. She did not understand. Her eyes narrowed slightly before she flipped onto her back and let herself slide down the grain pile and left her brother there sobbing quietly.
Florian twisted the bronze key and heard a click inside the armoire. The right door shrieked as the boy pulled it open to reveal a metal bar lined with plastic hangers, bare save one, upon which hung a black blazer. Florian pulled the sleeve and the hanger clattered to the bottom of the armoire. He pressed the blazer to his nose. It smelled of trapped air and Florian let it fall to the floor. Through a crack in the median he could see that the rest of the armoire contained objects, some of them shiny and white. The boy pulled at the left door, but it would not give. He leaned back further, biting his lower lip and grunting, pulling with such force that the wood splintered and the latch burst and Florian was flung backwards onto the floor. He scrambled to his feet to observe the door swinging gently on its hinge, now slowly grinding to a standstill. On the shelves sat folded pants in grey and black and navy blue, and shirts, white and cream, socks in black and brown, and several pairs of black briefs. Florian opened the door completely to reveal a black belt coiled in the corner of the armoire, its stainless-steel buckle shining dully back at him. He looked at it for a moment. He had seen it around Christophe’s waist, but also in the old man’s hands when he wanted to cause hurt. Florian shivered. Then he began sniffing the items of clothing one by one and discarding them onto the floor in a heap. All of them smelled imprisoned. He would have to make a choice. Continue naked and unprotected or face the stale smell of his former captivity.
The boy pulled a pair of black pants from the heap and put his right foot into the left leg and his left foot into the right leg. Stepping on the cloth, hopping and almost losing his balance, he slowly managed to pull the pants up to his waist, a fair bit of cloth still concealing his feet. He stared down at his hands with his mouth agape and let go of the belt loops. The pants fell to his ankles. Pulling them back up he hobbled towards the armoire and uncoiled the belt, pushing it carefully through the loops, tongue pressed to his upper lip, chin pulled into his neck. He tied the belt into a knot until he was satisfied the pants would not fall again. Then from the heap he removed a white shirt and did not undo its buttons but instead stood with both arms up like a ghostly worm struggling his way into the torso and eventually the sleeves, until his head popped through the collar and he patted the front of the shirt and looked down at himself, then walked over to the mirror and smiled, a skinny boy in oversized formal attire, pants backwards, zipper open to reveal his buttocks, pushing his fingers into the back pockets and delighting in the warmth. He walked back to the armoire and sat on the floor, rolling back his pant legs and pulling several socks onto each foot until they felt bundled and warm. He pulled the blazer over the shirt and looked at himself again in the mirror. Florian climbed onto the bed and rubbed the semen into the sheets with one foot like a dog mock-burying his shit. Then he pulled the covers over himself and began sinking into an all-enveloping heat, in which he felt comfortable and safe, tumbling deeper into a warm darkness disturbed only by his agitated nerves, the cola stimulating his arms and legs and making his heart pound, until the warmth overwhelmed even this last bit of resistance and Florian fell into the first dream of a deep sleep, thin legs jolting up and down beneath the covers as he ran through forests made of cloth, tree branches swaddled in whites and greys and blacks, ground padded with thick blankets, and piles of suitcases arranged like shrubbery along the landscape. Everything was soft beneath his hands and feet, the smell of fermenting cotton filled his aching lungs, and as Florian’s muscles weakened he began to fall frequently, but without pain, only to rise again and continue his escape. He could not even hear his own breath through the cottony silence.
17.
A period without incident followed. For a week Christophe was calm and lucid, feeding the children at regular intervals and fulfilling his duties in the garden. Several times he spotted Florian roaming the outskirts of the property dressed like some filth-streaked character from a Beckett play. The old man took to leaving food in a basket, which he hung on the branch of an elm tree he had often observed the boy climbing. The aluminum-wrapped meals disappeared and the basket remained hanging, suggesting to Christophe that the boy was receiving this nourishment in the stead of some wild animal.
Marc’s wounds healed and the boy seemed in relatively good spirits save the occasional bout of violence. Sabine remained unreadable, a wide-eyed somnambulist accompanying her brother wherever he went. As for Lea, she often rode her bicycle through the countryside and had recently taken to keeping pets. Christophe would see them hopping and crawling around the house, a few times crushing one accidentally beneath his shoe. Lea marked each death with a solemn and meticulous burial, leaving a rock or stick as a gravestone.
Rodolphe and Gaëlle became de facto leaders for the smaller children who came to favor the safety of the group. Between excursions into the wilderness they remained mostly in the courtyard, mutilating frogs or building miniature villages out of stones and pebbles. Rodolphe entered occasional fits of rage during which he would spend extended time throwing stones against the building’s façade. He rarely turned this anger against the others, and the children looked to Gaëlle for consistency and gentleness, qualities Rodolphe did not possess.
All of this Christophe observed with satisfaction. Each day of service to the children was another day spent in penance.