11:43 A.M.
Papa?”
It’s not a cry, just a whisper in the white night.
Martial’s pulse speeds up. Sopha is there, a couple of meters away from him.
“Sopha?”
Their hands find each other instinctively. They do not pronounce another word. Martial pulls his daughter along with him, his stride now confident. The ground descends as they walk. Then it begins to slope more steeply, and the fog thickens.
In the muted atmosphere, everything grows increasingly faint—the policemen’s voices, orders bellowed through the megaphone, shouting, random footsteps. The police are now just invisible ghosts scattered by the wind.
Martial and Sopha continue to move further away. Martial knows this place like the back of his hand. He has memorized each square centimeter of the map, he has a good sense of direction, and—if necessary—a compass in his pocket. First they must go along the Savane Cimetière ravine. The terrain, if you cut across to the east of the gully, isn’t too dangerous. In general, he keeps to a marshy bit of land that has enough trees to make them invisible from above, even if the fog disperses. The ravine then joins the Rivière de l’Est. After that, they must turn fully towards the east, crossing through Les Hauts de Sainte-Rose and the Bois Blanc forest. A forest of tamarinds, palms and other species, interspersed by lava flows that turned hard and cold decades ago, but also covered in hiking trails that they must avoid. Next, they will approach, under cover until they are as close as possible, Anse des Cascades. Les Hauts de Sainte-Rose is an area planted with sugar cane, ten foot tall, that extends almost as far as the ocean.
According to his calculations, they are about fifteen kilometers from the coast, and it is downhill all the way, a descent of around one thousand seven hundred meters. Sopha will walk for as long as she can. They’ll take breaks. He’ll carry her.
They are so close to their goal now.
They’ll get there.
Just to set his mind at ease, Martial takes the compass from his pocket, then heads north-east, towards a tiny crater whose shape can just be made out through the mist.
“Don’t let go of my hand, Sopha. We’ll be walking downhill like this for hours yet.”
“And Maman will be waiting for us at the bottom?”
“I hope so, sweetheart. Don’t talk too much. We should save our strength.”
Martial knows that, in about an hour, they will be underneath the layer of cloud again. Then they must be even more vigilant.
12:48 P.M.
Papa looked at his watch and told me we were a bit ahead of time because I’d walked so fast, and not complained. He also told me that all we had to do now was go down into the big field with plants four times taller than me and, afterwards, we’d be there.
“At the meeting?” I asked Papa. “Will we be on time?”
“Yes, sweetheart, if you keep walking like this.”
I didn’t reply. I still have the message I saw on the car window inside my head.
Anse dé Cascade
Tomoro
4 P.M.
Be ther
Bring the gurl
It’s going to be hard.
I haven’t said much to Papa, but my feet are hurting, and so are my legs. Everywhere hurts. Maybe Papa guessed that already, because he said we could take a break by the river.
Papa says it’s a gully, not a river. A river without water, or hardly any, just a few drops running along the bottom. There’s fruit here too. Papa told me we could eat some. All we had to do was pick it from the branches of the trees. There were a few different kinds—grapefruit, clementines. He taught me some other names too—Kaffir limes and guavas.
At the beginning, on the way down, Papa talked to me a lot about all the trees and flowers and fruit. But ever since we stopped for a break, Papa’s been far away. Not far away from me, that’s not what I mean. He’s sitting right next to me, on a rock. It’s just that he’s not thinking about me any more. That happens a lot. I think he’s with my big brother. Alex. The one who’s dead. The corners of Papa’s eyes look wet.
That’s how I guessed he must be talking in his head to Alex, and maybe also some other ghosts from before I was born.
1:03 P.M.
Martial has got up to pick some guavas from the branches that are poking through the mist here and there. He makes a pile at his feet. He’ll let Sopha taste them later. He watches his daughter playing. She is trying to build a miniature dam across the gully.
He is amazed by his little girl.
She has already understood when she should transform herself from a charming little chatterbox into someone quiet and discreet, taking refuge in her imagination so that he can be alone in his.
Martial exhales. He pats his pocket with his fingertips and suppresses the desire to roll a joint. Not here. Not now. Not in front of Sopha.
He looks up at a timid patch of blue sky that appears like a small tear in the mist. The patch is in the shape of a heart, with a single white stripe across it.
Just the vapour trail of an aeroplane. His imagination does the rest.
Without knowing why, he starts thinking about Aloé.
Why now?
Why here?
Because of that white arrow? That pierced heart?
The question has tortured him for years. Yet another question without any hint of an answer.
Would Alex still be alive if he hadn’t let Aloé take the plane?