* * *
Hearing shouts, I leaned out the window, and in the middle of the street I saw a circle of children pressed close together, bending down, gathered around something or someone. I tried to make out what it might be, but in vain. I looked again, alarmed, and thought I saw two of my own children among them. What were they doing there, absorbed and thoughtful, sometimes letting out little cries and warnings? What were they doing there, hiding their faces and blocking the street?
Between their legs I saw a dark form, moving and anxious.
I bolt out of the room, race down the big staircase. My bare feet slap loudly against the wood. I say to myself, and say again, frantic: I’ll never make it in time. And then again: Please God, let me make it in time. The steps seem to be multiplying diabolically, I feel like I’ll never get to the bottom. Down and down I run, never reaching the landing, while, from the street, I hear the children’s voices, ever more excited, unbridled.
I lay my hands on my children’s shoulders, as gently as possible.
“What’s going on here? Time to come in now,” I say.
“It ran away!”
“It was all black! It ran off, it’s quick!”
The children ask if I saw it, if I can tell them the name of what I saw. They turn their bewitched little faces toward mine. Some of them seem sated, exhausted, like lion cubs after a feast.
“Time to come in now,” I say, shivering. “No, I don’t know what that’s called,” I tell them. “I don’t think it has a name in our language.”
Since they say nothing, I add:
“To tell you the truth, I didn’t see anything. Nothing at all. What was it?”
Then the children eye each other gravely. Their lips are very red. Then they look away, and fall silent.
* * *
December 2003 — The water’s stopped rising. But in La Réole the riverside streets are submerged, and the ground floors of the modest houses are flooded. Above them, on the bridge, the passersby stand motionless, looking at the water, waiting for nothing more, only the simple spectacle of water where it’s not supposed to be.
And then. . driving slowly across the flooded plain, on the one passable road. . I wonder. . the water muddy and calm on either side of the roadway. . is the Garonne. . is the Garonne a woman in green?