Sitjaq empties the day Matvey, Goldby, and their father perish at sea.
One afternoon, their mother complains of hunger — the eldest is taking too long to bring meat and berries. From his lookout, Osip watches his father and brothers: they carry the patched-up boat overhead along the dunes. In their hands are fishing rods, nets, and colourful fish hooks. Osip imagines them whistling the tune of a ribald song as they recede from view and into the woods and reappear farther down. For a while they row erratically, then turn in circles until they find their rhythm and head for the coast beyond the cliffs, out of sight.
They do not return.
For several days, the waves bring in nothing, and then they spit out the youngest brother. Later: blue and yellow planks, a buoy, half a grey oar. Mother Borya buries the relics next to her son; she stares at the lighthouse, the deserted dunes. There’s nothing for her in Seiche. Here, there’s nothing for anyone. Sevastian-Benedikt has disappeared into the jungle and has not been back for ten days. Osip holes up in the lighthouse-keeper’s office to read whatever he comes across there, especially logs from ships wrecked on the shoals. His mother sits on the porch, her chin resting on her hand, and doesn’t move. For a day, a night, another day, another night, until diluvian rains pour down on her, leaking through the roof’s blackened thatch and dislodging her.
Four years later, the eldest brother’s woman scores the beach with her footprints just as his brothers did before her. The cabin has been deserted for a long time — the Old Woman and her two remaining sons live in the lighthouse now — so the new arrival appropriates it for herself, makes it a part of her territory, which soon extends to the dunes, the forest’s edge, the cliffs, the caves.
She has only to shed her dress to disrobe. She has no undergarments to unlace or throw off. She grabs the fabric at her waist and crosses her arms, then in one fluid gesture, hikes the dress over her shoulders, her head, her hair. Stripped of the taffeta, her skin resembles a leopard’s — a profusion of round pink and white scars. They’re concentrated in the middle of her back, between her shoulder blades, then spaced farther apart; on her ribs and the small of her back they’ve taken on a rusty brownish hue, as though freckles had sprung up after she was wounded. Other marks streak her buttocks, thighs, and upper arms; on her right calf, faded over time, a thin line stretches from knee to heel and sectionides her leg into perfect halves.
From the lantern, Osip studies the geography of this stranger. He arms himself with the spyglass and follows the walks she takes along the large lagoons bordering the tower. The woman baffles him. Her wandering makes no sense, she bares her flesh without shame, tumbles in the ocean, sectiones headfirst, and resurfaces far from shore. She’s always on the move, knows how to butcher and hunt, fishes with branches she has sharpened herself, grills her catch over pine-cone fires. She lives on her own in the musty, leaky hut, refuses to use the lighthouse bedroom, remains in the hovel, errant, mute.
Her name is Noé. She is not here to stay. Not that she says as much to Sevastian-Benedikt — he knows.
At the end of September, she expels Mie. The little one glides from between her legs, emits one big cry, then falls silent. The first sound she makes is not even a true wail, more like a breath, a greeting to the world. Mie’s face is all eyes, open wide to gorge on the beach and the creatures inhabiting it. All winter, Noé carries Mie on her side like so much baggage. She doesn’t speak to her, doesn’t fuss over her, but takes her wherever she goes to do whatever she does, beneath her sweaters and dresses, belly to belly, tiny feet striking her hips night and day. Mie learns to suckle on her own, twists to reach her mother’s breasts and grips first one, then the other. When she isn’t nursing, she sleeps, she chirps; she gazes at the animals and the people, the swirl of the big sea, the stretch of sand along its edge.