He turned around and looked at Lea. His shoulders slumped and his face softened imperceptibly.
Stay here, he said. All of you stay here.
We are eating, asked Gaëlle.
Yes, we are eating, said Christophe. Stay here.
Gaëlle’s mouth hung open as she considered the situation. They were eating, she thought, but the old man had forbidden her to follow him to the usual place. She didn’t want to bother him again, for fear that he might become angry and deprive her of food. Gaëlle was starving. All she had eaten that day was a slug Sabine had fed her, which she had vomited most of. She hoped the old man had not prepared a meal of mud and moss. Her throat was rancid. She had drunk some water from the pond but it only carried the taste farther down her neck. It was burning the sides of her throat and she couldn’t scratch it away.
Gaëlle’s hair fell dark and stringy over her face and through it her blue eyes shone. Her mouth, wide and protruding, simian almost, seemed to undulate in some unseen current, with her tongue coiling madly beneath it and sliding across her lips. Her cheeks were smeared with gleaming slime trails. The child had thin legs, thin arms, and a thin neck.
Sabine picked up a leaf and began meticulously plucking the flesh from it, keeping the veins intact, staring closely at her work until what remained resembled a skeletal candelabrum. She held the stem and twirled it between her thumb and index finger. The shadow cast by the sapling was making its way across the blue cloth of her jumpsuit, creased and jagged, and when she leaned forward it seemed to leap to her face and straighten. There it remained, drawn diagonally across one of her eyes, until she moved again, deliberately, her face like a pale brown mask beneath which her blue veins mapped another world.
Marc’s nipples were swollen. They were purple and filled with a watery ache. He was careful to keep his jumpsuit zipped and reveal nothing of this to the other children. Not even Sabine knew about this new weakness. Nor did she know about his hanging sack, where previously the pain had come only from violence. Sabine sometimes kicked him down there. Not often, but when she did the pain was worse than anything. Now there was a new pain. It came from nothing at all, just a dull and forceful swelling with no origin except his own body. A new hardness too, with hot flesh to push between his knuckles until it became a kind of pleasure. It scared Marc. He could feel it worming its way into his strength and turning his ideas soft. So when the pleasure came Marc would force his prick between his closed fists until the pain made it small and soft again. At night his bones ached as they grew. He was made of the same wet wood as the cabanne in the forest. Marc stared at the farmhouse and rubbed the small hairs on his upper lip until they burned. Then he closed his fist, walked across the grass, and punched Lea in the small of the back.
She fell onto her hands and knees in silence. The younger children gathered around and touched her back, as if to exorcise the pain they had all known. Unaware of these worshipping pilgrims, Lea did not move, focusing instead on the pain twisting along her spine. Marc returned to his sister and sat by her side. She paid him no attention but instead planted the stem of the third stripped leaf into the soil and began working on a fourth. Sabine stared at her fingers in dull concentration as she worked. Marc looked grimly at her miniature forest. Then he looked at her. No matter how long he pressed his body to hers, how hard he gripped her fingers, how much he looked into the pit of her eyes, how many homes built in the forest, meals served together, nights spent looking at her as she slept, or holding her as she woke in terror from dreams, this sister was no longer human and she never would be again. She was the dark paint strewn across the sky to mask the stars, the blood spilled from a wound. Sabine had died that day in the apartment and Marc could never retrieve her.
The olive oil fell in a golden rivulet through the rising steam. The old man pushed down with the masher, rending the skin and collapsing the soft flesh of the potatoes until they were unrecognizable. The raw garlic was tougher, and he could feel each bulb explode beneath the masher. He should have diced it at the very least. The farmhouse was a collapsing structure barely held together by years of human effort. Christophe had long since abandoned any sealing work. The mud-lime dated back to the early nineteen-hundreds. There was nothing to be done. These would be meager portions. He added more olive oil, salted the mash and stirred it with a silver serving spoon. With the bowls in two stacks on a tray beside nine spoons and a clean folded rag, Christophe walked out into the courtyard.
Lea had ceased crying and she joined the other children as they observed the stone god’s face behind a thin curtain of rising steam, every imperceptible movement an omen of his grace or wrath. A quiet reverence fell over the courtyard. The old man placed a bowl and spoon in front of each child. Therein he portioned an equal amount of mash. When all the children were served, he sat in the grass and spoke.
Eat.
The children looked at each other, suspicious that the old man had not yet prayed or served himself. Then one by one, sensing that their safety might be guaranteed, they lifted the spoons to their mouths. Christophe scraped the bottom of the cast-iron pot and served himself what remained, approximately half of what each child had received. He sat cross-legged and ate on the grass, his limbs relatively loose, looking over his children. Molten bronze beneath the sun, scattered there like so many loose leaves. After a few mouthfuls, the old man let his spoon rest in the bowl. A smile deformed his grey face. It was brimming with grief and joy concurrent, twisting together like two sides of an eddy.
14.
Born of the autumn sludge, between the fallen leaves, a damp stench rose from the forest floor. The mushrooms pushed through this placental layer, and from it small plants drew strength, bowing to the sun’s arc, ever striving with their delicate leaves to find some bit of stray nourishment shining through the brilliant canopy. Every few days, and for varying periods, a consolidating rain would fall. It beat steadily at the treetops, streaming down the branches and trunks to settle the quiet soil. In the rainless periods, when the clouds hung motionless or dissipated altogether, small creatures could be heard scurrying nervously through the dry leaves.
Rodolphe squatted over the edge of the pond with a stick in one hand. Fastened to its extremity was a length of fishing line, and from it dangled a piece of shredded plastic. This unfamiliar insect floated back and forth in front of the frogs, who sat calmly on the muddy shelves above the water, unmoving but for their eyeballs rolling to and fro in their sockets.
This fly made no sound. It had no wings to make a sound.
It was in fact the hand and rifle of a plastic soldier Rodolphe had found half-buried in the ground two weeks prior. There had been several full soldiers too, and in the dark crawlspace above the grain vats Rodolphe had used rat turds and dried wheat to build sandbags and foxholes, pitting the men against each other in a series of grim, lifeless conflicts.
The frogs stared at the plastic rifle as it swung from left to right. Light green and mottled, the leaves of the weeping willow could be seen reflected in the black center of their gold-rimmed eyes. Rodolphe’s shoulders were rigid and hunched, his mouth forming a small O as he concentrated on his prey.
When finally the frog leapt, Rodolphe pulled his stick violently upward and flung it high into the air, its legs and arms outstretched and flailing wildly until it landed with a wet thud among the wheat stalks. Rodolphe screamed and bolted towards the edge of the field where he stood squinting, seeking. And there it was, hopping broken-legged through the stalk shadows. Turning it over, he used the tip of his finger to stroke the frog’s belly in small circles, but it refused to sleep. He could feel its heart beating through the viscous white skin as he walked along the edge of the pond, spine straight, all the way back to the courtyard where he delivered the creature.