Through the small hedge that surrounded the grey schoolhouse atop the cliff, a child’s arm held out a bundle tied off with a pink ribbon.
“Take that first,” said a little girl’s voice. “Be careful, though: it could break. You’ll help me later.”
A light rain drizzled uniformly over the boulders’ cracks and the deep cove, and misted over the swirls of the waves at the foot of the cliff. The cabin boy, keeping watch from the fence, came forward and said quietly:
“Come on, hurry up.”
The little girl cried, “No, no, no! I can’t. I have to cover up my paper; I want to bring all my things. Selfish! Selfish! Go away! Can’t you see you’re getting me wet!”
The cabin boy screwed up his mouth and grabbed the little bundle. The soaked paper tore open, and yellow and violet silk triangles stamped with flowers, strips of velvet, a small pair of cambric doll’s pants, an empty golden heart locket, and a fresh spool of red thread all fell into the mud. The little girl climbed over the hedge; her hands were pricked by the stiff twigs, and her lips trembled.
“Look what you’ve done,” she said. “You had to go and be stubborn, and now all my things are ruined.”
Her nose scrunched up, her eyelids furrowed, her mouth slackened, and she began to cry:
“Leave me alone, leave me alone. I’ve had enough of you. Get out of here. You’re making me cry. I’m going back to Teacher.”
Then, sadly, she picked up her fabrics.
“My pretty spool is gone,” she said. “And to think I was going to embroider Lili’s dress!”
Sticking out of her short skirt’s pocket was a little porcelain head with regular features and an extraordinary mop of blonde hair.
“Come on,” the cabin boy whispered. “I’m sure that your teacher is already looking for you.”
She let herself be taken along, drying her eyes with the back of her tiny, ink-stained hand.
“So now, what was it this morning?” asked the cabin boy. “Yesterday you didn’t want to anymore.”
“She beat me with her broomstick,” said the little girl, biting her lip. “Beat me and locked me up in the coal cabinet with the spiders and bugs. When I come back, I’m going to put her broom in her bed, burn her house down with the coal, and kill her with her own scissors. That’s right. (She pursed her lips.) Oh! Take me far away, so I never have to see her again. I’m afraid of her crinkled nose and her glasses. I got her good, though, before I left. Just think, she had this picture of her mom and dad all dressed up in velvet up on the mantel. Old people; not like my mom. You wouldn’t believe it. I smeared them in sorrel salt. They’re going to look hideous. I did a good job. Well, you could say something, at least.”
The cabin boy was gazing at the sea. It was solemn and misty. A curtain of rain veiled the entire bay. The reefs and the beacons could no longer be seen. Now and then, the moist, woven shroud of raindrops formed holes over bunches of black algae.
“We won’t be able to walk tonight,” said the cabin boy. “We’ll have to go into the old customs shack where there’s some hay.”
“I don’t want to, it’s dirty!” cried the little girl.
“Too bad,” said the cabin boy. “Do you want to see your teacher again?”
“You’re selfish!” said the little girl, bursting into tears. “I didn’t know you were like this. If I’d known, my god! And to think I didn’t even know you!”
“All you had to do was stay. Who was it who called me over on the road the other morning when I was walking by?”
“Me? Oh, what a liar! I wouldn’t have left if you hadn’t told me to. I was afraid of you. I want to get out of here. I don’t want to sleep on hay. I want my bed.”
“Nobody’s stopping you,” said the cabin boy.
She continued walking, shrugging her shoulders. After a few moments:
“Besides, if I do want to go with you, it’s only because I’m all wet.”
The shack was sprawled out by the edge of the sea, and rainwater ran silently down the mud thatching of its roof. They pushed open the plank over the entryway. At the back was a sort of alcove made of crate lids and filled with hay.
The little girl sat down. The cabin boy covered her feet and legs with dry grass.
“That prickles,” she said.
“That warms you up,” said the cabin boy.
He sat down by the door and kept an eye on the weather. The wet air made him shiver.
“I hope you’re not cold, at least!” said the little girl. “Otherwise you’ll get sick, and then what will I do?”
The cabin boy shook his head. They remained silent. Despite the blanketed sky, one still sensed the sun setting.
“I’m hungry,” said the little girl. “Tonight they’re having roast goose with chestnuts at Teacher’s. Oh! You weren’t thinking at all, were you? I brought along some crusts; they’re all soggy now. Here.”
She held out her hand. Her fingers were covered with a cold bread paste.
“I’m going to go look for some crabs,” said the cabin boy. “There are some up by the Pierres-Noires. I’ll take the customs officer’s rowboat down there.”
“I’ll be afraid, all alone.”
“You don’t want to eat?”
She said nothing.
The cabin boy shook the straw off his uniform jacket and slipped outside. The grey rain engulfed him. She heard his footsteps sucking away in the mud.
Then there were gusts of wind and the great, rhythmic silence of the downpour. Darkness set in, stronger and sadder. Dinnertime at Teacher’s had passed. Bedtime had passed. Out there, under their hanging oil lamps, everyone was sleeping in their lined beds. The cries of a few seagulls proclaimed the coming of a storm. The wind whirled and the waves cannoned in the great recesses of the cliff. Waiting for her dinner, the young girl fell asleep, then awoke. The cabin boy must have been playing with the crabs. How selfish of him! She knew very well that boats always stay afloat in water. It is when there is no boat that people drown.
“The joke will be on him when he sees that I’m sleeping,” she said to herself. “I won’t say a word; I’ll pretend. I’ll do a good job.”
Toward the middle of the night, she found herself in the light of a lantern’s flame. A man in a tapered peacoat had just found her, curled up like a mouse. His face glistened with water and light …
“Where’s the boat?” he said.
And she cried out, vexed:
“Oh, I knew it! He didn’t find me any crabs, and now he’s lost the boat!”