6

The first time, the expedition from the Seiche shack to the lighthouse takes six days because all the furniture, fishing gear, clothing, and smaller possessions dear to the brothers and their mother must be ferried through the forest’s dense trees and vegetation. Their father doesn’t yet know which paths link the village to the open sea — he gets lost two or three times, often wandering blindly, his boys shouldering the entire contents of their household first this way, then that. The trees are massive and tall, even the eldest can’t climb their trunks, and their dense foliage hides the stars. All they can do is advance, hoping to find the lighthouse by following the sketchy map they’d been provided with in Seiche. Their mother complains and their father has barricaded himself behind an intimidating silence; he has no idea how he’ll lead his brood to safety. Sevastian-Benedikt comes and goes at will, bringing back pheasants and hares that he cooks over fires he builds from twigs and leaves.

Pride drives their father for four days. After that, he pulls the eldest aside and asks him to find the lighthouse, then sits on the upside-down dresser and watches his son sectione in among the tree trunks and tall ferns. Osip has never seen his father like this, slumped over, his chin dropped to his chest. Even their mother doesn’t approach him; she sheds tears at the thought that Leander might come upon their empty home should he return from the Cité, and spends the rest of the time with her youngest sons. They fashion spears without the slightest idea how to use them. Osip wishes he could feed his family but can’t. When he imagines hunting he’s reminded of the pigeons, and whenever he roams through the woods in search of berries, he never recognizes the edible ones and is afraid he’ll poison everyone. So he waits. The eldest reappears the next afternoon. He’s carrying a lantern and the spyglass from the lighthouse. Fifteen hours later, Osip drops a steamer trunk and a chair on the shore; he walks toward the sea, wades in, lets himself sink into the waves. Thighs, back, head: foam washes over his limbs. Not long after, he sits up and looks at this new territory — vast, deserted, and to be shared with his brothers.

The lighthouse sits on a rock surrounded by reefs. Its imposing structure is connected to the beach by a stone path. The surf has studded it with coral, shells, and mossy seaweed that are revealed at low tide. As the water rises, it swallows up the foreshore and the tower’s foundation, breakers crashing and hammering against the stone. Round in design, the bottom third of the lighthouse is built of porous chiselled rubble encircled by a wall that protects the columns, portico, and railing from the violence of heavy seas. Above, the white paint on the watchtower has deteriorated over the years, the matte yellow of brick shows under the flaking coat of paint: a weathered observatory, its windows opening onto the waves, the shore, the forest. Then, higher up, invisible in the sun: the watch gallery, the wire-meshed red lantern, and the verdigris dome mark the horizon. Along the wall and invisible from shore is the huge foghorn that flares out to the open sea and its ships.

Osip has never seen anything this big.

Sitjaq’s beach is chalky and speckled in parts with black sand whose patterns shift in the wind. The dunes go on forever, wild around the edges; in the distance, toward Seiche, cliffs pierced with caves hem in the rest. At the edge of the strand, trees sprout suddenly, packed stiff and tight behind a small cabin of wooden planks.

Weary and wet, Osip gets to his feet. He wants to be the first to choose a bed, he checks on his brothers lolling in the surf and drags himself over to their quarters.

The furniture that used to belong to the previous owner is draped in white sheets. Every drawer and closet had been meticulously emptied before their father, Lousbec Borya, was given access. Osip likes the small cabin immediately; its scent of oiled wood, its dust and drapings remind him of the villas in Seiche. He doesn’t notice the fungus along the walls or the cracks in the ceiling. He trembles as he removes linen from the bookcases. He’d like to be the only one to pull on the corner of each sheet and reveal a couch, a dresser, a table, but his younger brothers have followed him inside and start throwing the covers off everywhere. Within a minute of their arrival all the furniture is bared, and before Osip is able to commandeer the bunk by the window, they’ve already staked a claim to it with their bags and returned outside to explore the caves and lagoons.