Noé gathers up every bundle the tide brings back in. She spreads the bulrushes out on the ground, anchors them with rocks so they don’t scatter to the wind, and then, once the rushes are dry, rolls them together and piles them behind the cabin.
After the folly of his act, Osip no longer knows what to do with himself and so he stays in his tower and watches. Noé spends three days salvaging the remains of her boat. On the fourth day, she disappears before dawn and returns after noon, her skin covered in scratches, brushwood under her arm. She sits on the porch steps and sorts through the branches, peels them, then cuts them into sections as long as an adult hand. Later, she digs a hole in the sand beyond the tide’s reach. She carries the branches in the folds of her skirt. Its fabric stretches but doesn’t tear. She lets the sticks fall into the hole and form a small pyramid that she pats down, sliding her fingers along the wood. She carries stones polished by the sea in the same manner — Osip is surprised at how resistant women’s clothing is, delicate but unyielding under wood or stone — and covers the pit with the rocks and then, on top, she piles mud, seaweed and, finally, the dried bulrushes. There in the yellow straw of the boat, the burning begins. Noé makes another dozen trips from the cabin to the fire, feeding the flames with frames and chairs, books, dresses, paddles, canes: her possessions and the Boryas’ all in a jumble. Flames leap as high as a lighthouse storey, and the acrid stench of burning wafts far enough into the forest for Sevastian-Benedikt to catch its scent. Inside the cabin, she rips away what’s left of the wallpaper, and its glue blackens the smoke as it burns. Finally, she retreats to her quarters and sits on the floor, stares at the empty half of the room, its large wall bare. She breathes.
Osip keeps watch over the fire all night long. He’s afraid the flames will spread to the cabin. They don’t. Once everything combustible has burned, the flames die; the wind scatters the embers across the beach, leaving the stone mound covered in nothing but cinder and ash.
Osip takes the stairs down from the lantern, trying not to wake Mie and the Old Woman, asleep in each other’s arms. Outside the lighthouse, he hesitates. A shallow expanse of water still covers the path linking the tower to the shore. If he waits for low tide and daylight, he won’t dare do anything. Only the prospect of a sleeping Noé gives him the audacity to act. He crosses the dunes and imagines her asleep, collapsed from fatigue, half-naked, her dress falling off her shoulder.
He shakes his boots over the first porch step, and sand falls in a cone on the tread.
He pushes on the door into the cabin.
Noé is seated on the floor, she hasn’t budged. She’s contemplating the wall; at the creak of the door’s hinges, she starts, then blinks, as if waking from a dull dream, neither alarming nor pleasurable. For a second, the surprise makes her close in on herself — her chest collapses, her clavicle drops toward her belly, but when she sees Osip, her body grows rigid, her trunk forms a rod, her chin lifts. She stares at him long and hard. Her face betrays nothing, neither anger nor curiosity nor pleasure. She eyes him, and he has no idea that she will never look on him again. Still in the doorway, he bows his head, and when he lifts it, she has already ceased to see him. She concentrates on her wall. The white half of the room seems to devour the whole space. Osip wishes he could fill the silence of the cabin; the void here has pulled Noé to a side of the world where he cannot follow.
Nothing happens for the longest time. He stands on the threshold, Noé focuses on the wall. Occasionally, she squints and tilts her head, as though seeing something she can’t quite grasp; she draws curved lines in the dust, then sits up straight and observes in silence once more.
A crow’s cawing wakes Osip from his torpor. He steps through the doorway, makes his way to the bed, feet as heavy as lead, and begins to speak. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth and he utters whatever comes to mind. “I’ll make the bed see I’ll just straighten the blankets that’s better your pillows don’t have enough stuffing I’ll talk to Sevastian he can pluck a turtledove you need a comfortable bed I want you to feel at home are you sure you don’t want to live in the lighthouse the bedroom is bigger and the mattress soft I could sleep next to you on cold nights the wind won’t touch you anymore I want to shelter you here I’ll make a fire would you like some tea I always have a few tea leaves with me I’ll make you happy let me show you you’ll be fine staying here how is it that you have no kindling to start the fire I can use the seat of this chair the leg is broken anyhow.”
When Sevastian-Benedikt emerges from his forest, the last embers have died out on the beach. He looks at the lighthouse, which has not burned, and at the cabin gradually buckling within its prison of birch. The fire alerted him, and he’s back three days earlier than planned. He pushes open the door. Osip, bare-chested, has pulled Noé’s sleeve down, he’s leaning over her, studying the burn of an ember that has swollen her shoulder. Sevastian steps into the cabin as if entering his own home, unfazed by the new decor or the presence of his younger brother; though Noé’s does surprise him somewhat. He rummages through the objects that have escaped the purge, pulls out a trap with grayed teeth, looks at Osip, “Signs of a bear in the clearing. Tell mother to be careful.” Before leaving, he turns one last time and, smiling, looks his brother up and down, “When did you start growing hair there?” he asks. And disappears.
Osip dresses quickly. He does the buttons up on his shirt as best he can, steps out of the cabin, looks for his brother. Three times he circles the house, and then surveys the various trails plunging into the forest, he doesn’t even know which leads to the clearing but ventures down one anyway, walking on and on before the thought of the bear slows him down, before the noises begin to worry him, he reasons with himself for half a league then retraces his steps. He’d have nothing to say to his brother in any case.
Noé is on the beach, kneeling before the pyre. She brushes away the cinders that float up and adhere to her face, her arms. Sevastian-Benedikt emerges from the lighthouse — he must have stopped by to greet his mother, his daughter — follows the trail, then lays his trap on the ground; Osip sees him from a distance, would like to join him, but shame holds him back.
Sevastian speaks to his woman, short sentences that his brother can’t hear. Osip can’t tell if his brother is angry or not. He stays out of sight, half crouching behind the wood piled on the porch. Noé gets to her feet. From his hiding place, Osip wonders if she’s looking at his brother or staring right through him at the trees. She lets her dress drop from her shoulders. The top falls to her waist, stops at her hips. Noé pulls the neckline down over her buttocks, in one motion the fabric glides to the sand. Sevastian-Benedikt approaches, grabs her wrist, turns her. With one hand he holds her by the waist, and with the other he forces her to bend. Noé is doubled over his arm. She speaks, the wind carrying her voice to Osip. “Do it,” she says. Her legs are two lines perpendicular to the beach, her dress wrapped around her ankles and feet.
For a long while, she stays on the ground as the eldest finishes putting his clothes back on, hikes the trap hanging from its chain over his shoulder, and trudges toward the forest. Osip wishes he could melt into the trees. What could he possibly say? What did Noé give away? He’s afraid of his brother’s anger, or his mockery, and looks for excuses — she’s the one who pulled the sheet away, I was near the cabin, she gave herself to me — but when Sevastian passes next to him, he doesn’t even look over; he swerves around his brother and proceeds to the edge of the forest, the trap hanging down his back like the gaping maw of some enormous fish.
He stops only when Osip finds the courage to speak his name.
He’s already halfway into the trees by then, the leaves of the trees draw living shadows on his face.
He says, “You can, after me,” then turns his back and plunges into the undergrowth; the forest swallows him whole.