10:17 A.M.
A bouquet of flowers in every color, said Papa. The biggest we can make! For the old, blue-haired lady who died. Like in a cemetery. Dead people like flowers.
Papa told me to stay under the trees while I pick them, and not to go too far away, but not to come too close to the hole either. It’s actually more than just a hole, it’s a sort of huge well that seems to go down into the center of the earth. It’s VERY dangerous! The wooden barrier in front of it is damaged, and there is orange plastic tape around it and big yellow triangles.
I turn around so I don’t get lost in the bushes. Papa is standing near the yellow car, about thirty meters away.
I get it.
Papa came off the road as soon as he saw the helicopter. He turned off straight away, but he continued along a dirt track, being very careful to stay under the trees. The helicopter couldn’t follow us—it would have had to land—but we were already a long way away. Afterwards, Papa parked next to the hole. Just in front of the sign attached to the barrier. I read the words: Commerson Crater.
We got out of the car. Well, Papa and I did, not the old lady, obviously. I wanted to go up to the edge, but Papa wouldn’t let me.
“It’s almost a thousand feet deep,” he explained. “You could put the Eiffel Tower down there and only the very top would poke out.”
I found this hard to believe, but without leaning over it, all I could see was the edge of the well and black rocks full of holes like dried-up sponges.
Then Papa sent me to pick some of these flowers.
I’ve got enough now—I can only just manage to hold all the stems in both hands—so I head back to the yellow car, still being careful to stay under the trees. Papa has taken off his shirt. It’s true that, even up here in the mountains, it’s really hot, even hotter than it is by the lagoon, because there’s no wind. Papa has taken everything out of the car. The bag, the water, the map.
It’s strange.
It looks as if the car has moved.
I walk towards him, holding the flowers.
“Don’t come any closer, Sopha!”
“What are you doing, Papa?”
He’s all sweaty and his hands are on the car.
“What are you doing, Papa?”
He crouches down so his face is level with mine. I like it when he does that.
“You’ve seen graves in cemeteries, right, Sopha? People dig holes so that dead people can sleep without being bothered by all the noise, the rain, the sunlight . . . So they can sleep forever, you understand?”
I nod. I understand. But being dead is not sleeping. Being dead is never waking up.
“On this island, there’s no need to dig holes in the earth, because there are already lots of really big ones, craters made by the volcano. Five-star graves. Like five-star hotels, you see?”
I nod again.
“Stand back, Sopha.”
Papa moves the yellow triangles out of the way, then starts pushing the car. He doesn’t push it towards the wooden barrier, but a bit lower down, through some bushes and straight towards the hole. He pushes it as hard as he can. The car rolls along slowly.
The old lady is inside. I can see her blue hair sticking out.
With one hand, Papa tears off a strip of orange plastic tape. One last push. The car tilts over.
It’s funny. At first there’s no noise, as if the hole really has no end, like when Alice fell down the rabbit hole.
But then suddenly, there’s a loud bang. As loud as thunder when it’s very close, just a little while after the lightning. So loud I almost imagine the rocks are shaking around the edge, and that they are going to come loose and fall into the hole, blocking it up forever.
I take two steps back. I’m not as brave as Alice.
10:22 A.M.
Martial pushes Sopha further back into the cover of the avoune40 and looks up at the sky. He can see three helicopters now, all quite far away; two are flying over the Piton de la Fournaise, while the other is headed towards the Piton des Neiges. He imagines policemen leaning out over the void, binoculars clamped to their eyes, searching for any clue that might help them spot their prey, among the avoune or in the Forêt des Tamarins. One car, two fugitives, hiding somewhere between the edge of the volcano and the Rivière des Remparts: the search perimeter has narrowed considerably.
And that was his plan.
Attract the helicopters by driving the Nissan, very conspicuously, along the Route du Volcan. Wave a red flag to get them excited. Then, as in Saint-Gilles, suddenly make the car vanish, covering their tracks and continuing on foot. Swinging over to the other side of the volcano, towards Piton Sainte-Rose, the ocean, and Anse des Cascades.
Martial smiles at Sopha, then crams the rest of their things into the bag, while trying to memorise every detail of the OS map, the differences in height, the wooded areas, the gullies, forcing himself to create a 3D image in his mind.
As soon as they have left the scrubland around the Commerson Crater, they will be confronted by two major problems.
Firstly, they must cross the Plaine des Sables, over a mile of black ash, under the full sun with no shade at all—it has a record low albedo, as it absorbs almost all the solar radiation without reflecting any of it. A barbecue the size of five hundred football pitches, large enough to grill sausages for the entire island’s inhabitants for a century. They must cross the Plaine des Sables completely exposed, as easy to spot as ants on a white tablecloth.
And if, by some miracle, they get past this, they must descend the slopes of the volcano towards the ocean.
Nearly ten miles. A five and a half thousand feet descent.
Sopha will never be able to follow him . . .
10:25 A.M.
“Come here now, sweetheart. That is a beautiful bouquet.”
I hesitate. I press the bunch of flowers against my heart. I feel like the hole is still trembling.
“Come on, sweetheart. You don’t feel dizzy, do you?”
“No.”
“Give me your hand. You’re going to throw the flowers into the crater so that the old, blue-haired lady will have them in heaven.”
I want to tell Papa that if he hadn’t killed the grandma we wouldn’t have to bother with all this nonsense—heaven, flowers, pushing the car into a hole—but I don’t want him to get angry again.
So I walk towards him. My feet are very close to the edge.
Papa’s hand is damp.
The hole looks like a huge mouth. A hungry mouth that doesn’t just want to swallow my flowers but me too, like the big teeth of a horse when you offer it some grass through a fence.
It wants the fingers too. The hand. The arm.
I stand on the rocks, right on the edge. I want my flowers to fall all the way to the bottom.
“Hold me tight, Papa!”
Maman would never have let me do this.
I lean over. I’m almost leaning over the hole now. Papa holds my left hand while my right hand whirls around, then suddenly I let go of the bouquet.
The flowers rain down.
They fall in silence. I look down. I want to watch them fall as far as possible, until they reach the center of the earth.
All I can hear is the wind blowing through the leaves, and insects buzzing high in the sky. Or maybe that’s the helicopters?
“You won’t let go of me, will you, Papa?”
40 A sort of local heather consisting of low bushes.