13.
Other children slapped their palms together in a pattern. These children are playing games, fed with this food to play more games, and anyways they have no future, thought the old man. But who are these children. I don’t recognize them. Of course you do. Look at them closely. There is the skin that blisters, the angry one, there is the one who led you to Florian, snot hanging from bedraggled hair, there is the one whose eyes are too close together, and there is the one who smashed the teapot like a careless twit. You know each of these children. You are the one who feeds them as you starve. God will provide our weakness what it needs to survive. These aren’t just words. He is calling us to his breast. This may even be his plan for us. To play games in the grass. To be obliterated or fed. He speaks to us in this life. We are fed and so we do not starve. Starving children do not listen to their father. They listen only to their bellies. Once they have heard the words of their father, you may bury these children. Then you will be fed.
The children will not be fed because Lucien and Joseph are hoarding the eggs. For a long time they were good neighbors. They lived alone with their chickens and single rooster, a rachitic animal. They lived in the home that their father built, the two old men who were also brothers. I would bring vegetables from the garden and they would give me fresh eggs from their hens. They even had wine in the cellar, the entrance to which was concealed beneath a moldy persian carpet, ancient hunting scene. They liked to tell the story of how their father’s father had hidden jews down there.
Bloated old crabs really, and gutless. Eating eggs together in that musty little home, growing old and limp. Lucien and Joseph raped and killed my wife. They took her eggs and we had no children. They kept her eggs warm in their home. The two old men sat on her eggs to keep them warm. They squatted over the eggs and kept them pressed to their warm assholes once the last hen died. They poked a hole in the egg and sucked the yolk right through. The children were born inside their bellies to walk the earth after the old men finally passed away. Lucien and Joseph are alive. Your wife was infertile. Your wife was like an egg with naught but white. When they poked her open, Lucien and Joseph sucked the empty fluid right out.
This time the old man was on his knees, holding a pillow to his chest, and once again he did not know how he had arrived there. The window was dangerous, a place of chaos. Carefully he stood. The room had not changed. He found the watch on the kitchen counter near the window. Lunchtime. No wonder the children were gathered on the grass at the center of the courtyard. The old man walked through the dining room and opened the front door. Lea was sitting quietly off to the side, watching the other children play. She saw the old man appear, stand for a moment, look down, and close the door. She had never seen his grey chest before: a dull coat of armor across which vaporous scores of white hair rose like scars from a curved blade. She pushed her own hair to her nose and inhaled deeply, sucking her thumb through the messy strands. Lea tried with her actions to restore order, but the children were too noisy. She bunched her hair into her eyes until everything went black, but still Lea could hear the other children and see Christophe standing in the doorway in his underwear and socks, a look of great confusion disfiguring the old man before he disappeared again.
Christophe found his clothes folded in a neat pile beside the sofa. He put on his pants and tightened his belt. He had lost a notch in the last six months. The old man walked into the kitchen and opened the doors to the pantry. There he found a plastic bucket full of dirt-caked potatoes. Grunting and bending his knees, the old man lifted the bucket, set it on the counter, and tilted it into the sink. The potatoes rolled out in a great fracas, their thuds hollow against the thin metal. The old man was drawing short breaths. The pipes creaked as he opened the tap and then hissed as the water ran. His bare hands twisted around the potato as he scrubbed. The dirt ran off his fingers and into the sink, where it shored up against the other potatoes or was dragged along the metal and into the drain. A wasteful process. Usually he would have filled the bottom of the bucket with some water and scrubbed the potatoes there. But Christophe needed the white noise. He did not trust his own mind.
Stuck to the side of the third potato was a layer of mud and sediment that refused to soften in the stream. The old man chipped at it with his fingernails. Soon the potato’s skin was flapping loosely beneath the running water. The yellow flesh was uncovered and Christophe knew the wound was porous. The potato soaked up the water until it became fat and spongy. Christophe stared at it for a moment before he turned off the tap. He looked at the remaining potatoes, muddy and glistening in the sink. Two clean potatoes on the counter. He tried to squeeze the waterlogged tuber but it felt as hard as a rock. He had seen it grow in volume. The water had penetrated. The potato had swollen. He placed it next to the other clean potatoes on the counter. He did not look at it. Instead he opened the tap again and resumed scrubbing. The other potatoes did not show any such signs.
When he was finished Christophe wiped his hands on a rag and retrieved the cast-iron pot from its hanging place on the wooden beam. He filled it with water and turned on the gas. Christophe covered the pot. He did not look out the window. He did not look at the clean potatoes. He stood over the pot and listened to the rising sound of the water until he felt confident that it was boiling. Then he removed the pot top and dropped the potatoes in one by one, focusing his attention on the blistering water as it built to froth. Soon he would feed the children. They had been waiting long enough.
Lea had been watching the doorway. When finally the old man reappeared, she uncovered her face to better observe him. He walked out into the courtyard, wearing familiar clothes. Two of the small ones had been tumbling around on the grass and they froze in strange positions to observe the old man. He was approaching slowly, with an unsteady lilt. All of the children had stopped now, watching Christophe. After a few steps on the grass the old man slowly bent his knees and lowered himself to the ground. There he sat among the leaves and the children, hands locked together and hunched forward.
After a long period of quiet scored only by the distant cry of a bird, Lea was the first to move. She walked uncertainly over to the old man, whose head had dipped until his face was obscured. She stood behind his back and wrapped her arms partway around his torso. Like this Lea held Christophe. The old man was crying and she felt his silent convulsions in her own body. The other children watched the old man and the girl. Their limbs relaxed but they did not move. Then Sabine’s fingers began searching through the grass for some insect or worm. Some of the children’s eyes darted back and forth from Sabine to Lea. Nobody had ever touched the old man like this. Their faces were flush with embarrassment and several of them squirmed and pulled nervously at the crotch of their jumpsuits. Marc’s upper lip receded. His teeth were visible and he sat transfixed by the scene. Even the sound of his sister’s fingers did not distract him. Marc’s stomach was filled with something hard and cold.
Christophe shifted his torso until Lea’s fingers loosened and her arms loosened and she stepped back. He lifted his head and looked around at the other children. Then he rose to his feet with a grunt and stood there half-composed. Still the girl stood a few paces behind him, with her little fingers wriggling and her arms in the shape of a crescent, as if she were waiting for the old man to return to his previous position. Marc wanted to smash a piece of wood across her arms and pull out her eyeballs. Sabine was chewing on something slowly, her eyes lost in the middle distance. The other children watched the old man. His shoulders were stiff and his face was severe and grey.