Making their list, on the other hand, immersed them in frenetic excitement: they would fight over the round-ended scissors to cut out pictures from the toy catalogs so there’d be no mistakes, adding arrows and descriptive notes, using colored felt-tips and little hearts to show how those were the presents they absolutely had to have. Afterwards, they had to choose. Two presents each, said Madie, because they were far too numerous to ask Santa Claus for more, he only had two arms, after all (and a sack, ventured Louie). So they would frown at one another, they wished they were fewer in number, even though it wasn’t something you could change. At first, Liam and Matteo resorted to the argument about the sheep and the crèche, because that was the rule: every evening during Advent Madie and Pata asked them if they’d been good, or kind, or generous. They’d been allotted one sheep each, and depending on how they’d behaved that day, they had the right to move one length closer to the little terra-cotta structure where Joseph and Mary were hovering, for the moment, over nothing at all, since Jesus wasn’t born yet. But if they’d been naughty, their sheep would just stay where it was, or even move back. This was what the older boys were trying to point out: that the first sheep to reach the crèche would be entitled to an extra present. As a result, squabbles broke out, provocations, fights, cheating, too, because Madie discovered that her little ones would sneak in, when she was busy elsewhere, and move their sheep forward a few inches. In the evening, cries came thick and fast:
“But I was ahead of Louie, there, I wasn’t there!”
“My sheep has gone backwards!”
“Get out of the way, I’ll put it back.”
“You weren’t there!”
“Yes I was!”
“Cheater!”
Madie eventually raised her voice one day, and ferociously. She picked up all the sheep, despite the wailing, and put them away in a box at the very top of the cupboard.
“There,” she said. “And anyway, with all those sheep, it was looking like a racetrack, not a crèche.”
Ever since, the lists for Santa Claus were all pretty much the same, and anyway, Liam and Matteo, and then Louie, and then Perrine stopped making them. Noah stoutly maintained that he still believed, and that it was his right; everyone knew he was lying, but Madie let it go, and he would sit next to Emily and Sidonie to pick out toys from the magazines.
“Madie doesn’t want you to have an ATV,” says Louie. “It’s too dangerous.”
Noah shrugs.
“I’ll get it all the same.”
“Oh, yeah? And why’s that?”
“Because… they’re gonna give it to me because… they left us here, that’s why.”
Louie turns to Perrine.
“And you, do you think you’ll get your kitten?”
“Oh, yes.”
He scratches his cheek; his trip to the racetrack doesn’t seem like much in comparison to what the others are asking for, so he tries to come up with a better idea. A new bike? A dog? A game console. Or nothing at all, if they are stuck on this island the way Perrine said, until they’re old.
“We’ll have beards,” he murmured to Noah.
“And we’ll walk with a cane.”
They giggle and look at each other out of the corner of their eye. In the end they know perfectly well that it isn’t funny.
Boredom. Never before have they sat for so long doing nothing. No inspiration, no desire: when one of them suggests something, the other two sigh and shake their heads. It’s driving Noah crazy. He jumps to his feet.
“Okay, what do we do now?”
“Stop saying that all the time!”
“Yes but we’re not doing anything. I’m bored.”
“There’s nothing to do,” says Louie, spreading his arms to encompass the house and the island. “Where do you want to go?”
“I’m sick of being here.”
The little boy goes out to walk along the shore; initially Louie and Perrine can see him, then he vanishes from their field of vision. They go back to gazing at the sea, hoping to see Pata arrive.
“How many days has it been?” asks Louie.
Perrine, who crossed off a Thursday on the sheet, replies without hesitating.
“Seven.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Louie raises his eyebrows and suddenly stifles a laugh.
“What is it?” says Perrine.
“So that means we haven’t had a wash in seven days.”
The little girl smiles in turn: It’s not as if we were really clean, after the storm.
“It stinks,” adds Louie, sniffing his T-shirt, which he hasn’t changed, either.
And then:
“Shall we go for a swim?”
“In the sea?”
“Well sure, it’s nice weather, there’s no waves.”
“Somewhere where we can touch bottom?”
“All right.”
They call Noah and he comes running. In the beginning they probe cautiously for the bottom. And yet they know this spot at the end of the garden, not even a week ago it was still grass, and they can feel it tickling their ankles; a gentle slope, and they move fifteen yards or so before they’re able to let themselves go into the water and swim and splash. Before long they’re shouting and splashing one another, they forget that initially they swore to keep an eye on the horizon, on the sky and the sea. They stay there for maybe two hours, not a cloud, no fear, no twinge in their bellies. Sometimes they spot an object the sea has brought to the shore and they pull it up, shouting. They have found a ball, and pieces of wood, and a plastic chair. When they’re not interested they toss the item back into the sea.
“And what’s that!” screams Noah, pointing.
A thick tarp floating a few yards away. Louie dives in to retrieve it.
“There’s something inside it!”
“Treasure!”
“It’s heavy. Come and help me.”
The three of them tow the tarp until it beaches on the shore. Impossible to pull it any further.
“Shall we look?” says Louie.
Noah is jumping up and down: Go on, go on! Wading by the water’s edge, they struggle over the rolled tarp, in vain, it’s stuck. Perrine runs to fetch a pair of scissors and hands them to Louie.
“I’m sure it’s a safe!” says Noah, fidgeting as he tears off the bits of plastic his older brother has cut away.
Then all of a sudden they recoil.
The smell.
“Yuck,” says Perrine. “What is it?”
“Dunno.”
Louie cautiously removes the tarp, keeping an arm’s length.
“Well?” asks Noah.
“I can’t tell but I don’t want to go on.”
He wrinkles his nose. Noah tries: One last time. Leaning forward, he yanks at the plastic.
“Oh!”
All three of them leap away.
“What is it, what is it?” cries Perrine, who knows but—
“Oh, shit!” exclaims Louie.
“It’s a dead body!” screams Noah.
-
At first they thought of pushing it back into the sea. But without touching it, now that they knew. Louie sent Noah to get a long stick so they could shove it in. Impossible. Too heavy, high and dry. They are shivering all over, as if the corpse might infect them, or the island, along with the air and the sea around them.
“We have to make it go away!” cries Noah, stamping his feet.