The Double Mother

THE DOUBLE

MOTHER

To my mother, of course.

I have several mothers.

It’s a bit complicated.

Especially as they don’t like each other.

There’s even one who’s going to die.

Maybe some of it’s my fault?

Maybe everything happened because of me?

Because I can’t remember which one is the real one.

I

MARIANNE

1

Havre-Octeville Airport,

Friday, November 6, 2015, 4:15 P.M.

Malone felt his feet leave the ground, and then he could see the lady behind the window. She was wearing a blue suit, a bit like a police uniform, and she had a round face and funny glasses. In her booth, she reminded him of those ladies who sold tickets for the merry-go-round.

He felt Maman’s hands trembling slightly as she held him up.

The lady looked him straight in the eye, turned to Maman, then looked down at the little brown book that lay open in her hands.

Maman had explained that the lady was checking their photographs. To be sure it was really them. That they really were allowed to catch this plane.

But the lady didn’t know where they were going—that is, where they were really going.

Only he knew that.

They were flying to the forest of ogres.

Malone placed his hands on the ledge so it would be easier for Maman to hold him up. He was looking at the letters on the lady’s jacket. He didn’t know how to read yet, of course, but he could recognize a few letters.

J . . . E . . . A . . . N . . . 

The woman signaled to the child’s mother that she could put him down now. Normally, Jeanne wasn’t quite so scrupulous. Especially here, in Le Havre’s little Octeville airport, which had only three counters, two baggage carousels and one vending machine. But the security staff—from the parking lot attendants to those guarding the runway—had been on high alert since the early afternoon. All of them recruited in a game of hide-and-seek with an invisible fugitive, although it seemed highly improbable that the fugitive would choose to go through this backwater.

Anyway, it didn’t matter. Captain Augresse had been explicit on that point. They had to post photos of the men and the woman on the walls of the lobby and warn every customs official, every member of the security staff.

These people were dangerous.

One of the two men in particular.

An armed robber, to start with. Then a murderer. A repeat offender, according to the police report.

Jeanne leaned forward slightly.

Have you ever been on a plane before, dear? Have you ever travelled this far away?

The child stepped sideways and hid behind his mother. Jeanne didn’t have any children. She had to work ridiculous hours at the airport, and that was enough of an excuse for her two-faced boyfriend to dodge the issue whenever she brought it up. She had a way with little ones, though. More than with men, in fact. That was her gift, knowing how to deal with kids. Kids and cats.

She smiled again.

You’re not afraid, are you? Because you know, where you’re going, there’s . . . 

She deliberately paused until the end of the boy’s nose came out from behind the mother’s legs, squeezed into a pair of skin-tight jeans.

There’s a jungle . . . Isn’t that right?

The child recoiled slightly, as if surprised that the woman had been able to guess his secret. Jeanne examined the passports one last time before vigorously stamping each of them.

But there’s no reason to be scared, sweetie. You’ll be with your mother!

The child hid behind his mother again. Jeanne felt disappointed. If she was losing her knack with kids too . . . But it was an intimidating place, she reassured herself, especially now with all those idiot soldiers walking back and forth with their pistols holstered on their belts and assault rifles hanging from their shoulders, as if Captain Augresse might watch the tapes afterwards and give them bonus points for their zeal.

Jeanne tried again. It was her job, security. And that also meant her customers’ emotional security.

Ask your mom. She’ll tell you all about the jungle.

The mother thanked Jeanne with a smile. She didn’t expect the child to do the same, but he did react—and his reaction was very strange.

For a moment, Jeanne wondered how to interpret that brief movement of the boy’s eyes. It was only a fraction of a second, but when she had said the word ‘mom’, the boy had not looked at his mother. He had turned his head the other way, towards the wall. Towards the poster of the woman she had pinned there a few minutes before. The poster of the woman the entire regional police force was looking for, and that man standing next to her. Alexis Zerda. The killer.

She was probably mistaken.

The child was probably looking at the large bay window just to the left of the wall. Or the planes behind it. Or at the sea in the distance. Or maybe his head was in the clouds already. Maybe he was just miles away.

Jeanne thought about questioning the mother and her son again, she had an inexplicable foreboding, an impression that something about the relationship between this child and his mother seemed a little bit off. Something unusual, something she couldn’t put her finger on.

But all their papers were in order. What excuse did she have to hold them any longer? Two soldiers with shaven heads stomped past in their boots and camouflage fatigues. Providing security by scaring ordinary families half to death.

It was just the pressure, Jeanne reasoned with herself. The unbearable way airports felt like a warzone every time some dangerous madman was on the loose with the police on his heels. She was too emotional, she knew; she had the same problem with men.

Jeanne slid the passports through the opening in the toughened glass window.

Everything seems to be in order, madame. Have a good trip.

Thank you.

This was the first word the woman had said to her.

At the end of the runway, a sky-blue KLM A318 Airbus was taking off.

* * *

Captain Marianne Augresse looked up at the blue Airbus as it crossed the sky. She followed its progress for a moment as it flew out over the oil-black ocean, then continued her own weary climb.

Four hundred and fifty steps.

From fifty steps further up, JB came running down towards her.

I’ve got a witness! the lieutenant shouted. And not just any witness . . . 

Marianne Augresse gripped the guard rail and caught her breath. She felt drops of perspiration trickling down her back. She hated the way the slightest bit of exertion made her break out into a sweat—and it got worse with every gram she put on. She hated being in her forties: lunch on the go, evenings on the sofa, nights spent alone, her morning jog always postponed to another day.

Her lieutenant hurtled down the rest of the stairs, then stood in front of Marianne and handed her some kind of gray and grubby cream rat. Limp. Dead.

Where did you find that?

In the brambles, a few steps higher up. Alexis Zerda must have thrown it there before he disappeared.

The captain did not reply. She just squeezed the cuddly toy between her thumb and index finger, its fur worn, almost white from being constantly hugged and sucked and pressed against the trembling body of a three-year-old. Its two black marble eyes stared at her as if frozen in some final terror.

JB was right: this thing was a witness. A mucky, broken witness, its heart torn out. Silenced forever.

Marianne hugged it, imagining the worst.

The child would never have abandoned his favorite toy.

Distractedly, she ran her fingers through the rat’s fur. There were brownish stains on the acrylic fibers. Blood, no doubt. The same as the blood they’d found in the shelter a few hundred steps below?

The child’s blood?

Amanda Moulin’s blood?

Let’s go, JB! the captain ordered, her tone deliberately harsh. Get a move on!

Lieutenant Jean-Baptiste Lechevalier did not argue. In a flash, he was already five steps ahead of his superior officer. Marianne Augresse forced herself to think as she climbed, partly so that her fatigue wouldn’t slow her down, and partly so that she could begin to string together the theories that were accumulating in her mind.

Although, when it came down to it, there was only one question that needed an urgent response.

Where?

Train, car, tram, bus, plane . . . There were a thousand ways Alexis Zerda could escape, a thousand ways he could disappear, despite the warning that had been sent out two hours previously, despite the posters, despite the dozens of police who were out searching for him.

Where and how?

One step, then another, one thought leading to the next.

Or how and why?

She avoided asking herself the other question. The main one.

Why throw away the toy?

Why tear this beloved creature from the child’s hands? A child who would surely have screamed, refused to climb one more step, who would have preferred to die on the spot rather than be separated from the toy rat that bore his smell, his mother’s smell.

The breeze blowing in from the sea brought with it the unbearable odor of crude oil. Out in Le Havre’s navigation channel, container ships were queuing up like gridlocked cars at a red light.

The veins in the captain’s temples throbbed. The stairs seemed to stretch away towards infinity, as if each time she climbed one step, another magically appeared at the edge of her vision.

The same question ricocheted around the walls of her skull.

Why?

Because Zerda had no intention of being burdened with a child? Because the kid was of no more use to him than the cuddly toy? Because he would also get rid of the child, in a ditch somewhere? Because he was just waiting for a more discreet place to commit the act?

Another Airbus streaked across the sky. The airport was only a couple of kilometers away, as the crow flies. Well, at least Zerda wouldn’t be able to escape through there, Marianne thought to herself, remembering the huge security presence she had installed at the tiny local airport.

Another twenty or thirty steps. Lieutenant Lechevalier had already reached the parking lot. Captain Augresse’s fingers tightened around the ball of gray and cream fur, kneading it, as if checking that its heart and tongue had been torn out, that this cloth rat could never tell anyone its secrets; that it was definitively dead, after all those endless private conversations with Malone, those conversations that they had listened to repeatedly, she and her men.

The captain’s fingers played through the stiffened fur for a second or two, then suddenly stopped. She slid her index finger another couple of millimeters along the fabric, then looked down, not expecting to find anything new. After all, what could this gutted bit of cloth possibly reveal?

Marianne Augresse’s eyes narrowed, focusing on the faded letters. And suddenly, the truth exploded.

In a single moment, all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Even the most unlikely ones.

The rocket, the forest of ogres, the pirates and their wrecked ship, the amnesia of a tropical rodent, the treasure, the four towers of the castle, all those nonsensical phrases that she and her men had fruitlessly mused over for five days.

The tales of a child with an over-active imagination. Or so they had thought . . . 

Yet it was all written there. Malone hadn’t invented a thing.

It was all there in four words, attached to the fur of this mute witness. They’d all held it, this cuddly toy, but none of them had noticed anything. They had been wholly concentrated on what it had to say. It was very talkative they had listened to it, but they hadn’t looked at it. This cloth rat, murdered so that it would never talk again, then abandoned by its murderer on the slope.

The captain closed her eyes for a second. She suddenly thought that, if anyone had been able to read her thoughts, to intercept them the way you sometimes overhear a fragment of conversation, they would think she was crazy. A cuddly toy can’t speak, it can’t cry, it doesn’t die. No one over the age of four believes that stuff six at a push, eight max.

Yes, if someone began the story at this point, they would think she was out of her mind. She certainly would have, when she was rational. Five days earlier.

Marianne continued to clutch the toy to her chest as she peered down the hundreds of steps she had just climbed and felt a sudden rush of vertigo. In the distance, all she could see was an infinite stretch of empty sky, a sky that was almost as dark as the ocean, the gray of the waves mingling with the gray of the clouds.

JB had already started the car; she could hear the engine purring. Summoning all her strength, she accelerated up the final few steps.

There was only one question worth asking, now that the truth had been revealed.

Was there enough time to stop them?

Four days earlier

MONDAY

THE DAY OF THE MOON

2

Little hand on the 8, big hand on the 7

Maman was walking fast. I was holding her hand and it hurt my arm. She was looking for somewhere to hide. She was shouting but I couldn’t hear her, there were too many people."

Too many people? Who else was there?

Just people, doing their shopping.

So there were shops around you?

Yes. Lots. But we didn’t have a trolley, just a bag. My big Jake and the Netherland Pirates bag.

Were you and your mother shopping too?

No. I was supposed to be going on holiday. That was what Maman said. A long holiday. But I didn’t want to go. That was why Maman was looking for somewhere we could hide. So that no one would see me have a tantrum.

A tantrum like the one you had in school? Like the one Clotilde told me about? Crying. Getting angry. Wanting to break everything in the classroom. Is that what you mean, Malone?

Yes.

Why?

Because I didn’t want to go with the other Maman.

That’s all?

 . . . 

OK, let’s talk about that some more later, about your other mother. But first, let’s see if you can remember anything more. Can you tell me what you could see? When you were walking fast with your mother?

There were shops. Lots of shops. There was a McDonalds too, but we didn’t eat there. Maman didn’t want me playing with other children.

Can you remember the street? The names of other shops?

It wasn’t in a street.

What do you mean?

Well, it was a kind of street, but we couldn’t see the sky.

Are you sure about that, Malone? You couldn’t see the sky? Was there a big parking lot outside?

I don’t know. I was asleep in the car and I only remember what came after, in the street without a sky with all the shops, when Maman was pulling my hand.

OK. It doesn’t matter, Malone. In a moment, I’m going to show you some photos. Tell me if you recognize anything.

Malone waited on his bed, motionless.

Gouti didn’t say anything, as if he were dead. Then he started talking again. He often did that. It was normal.

Look, Malone. Look at the pictures on the computer. Do they seem familiar?

Yes.

Were these the shops you saw with your mother?

Yes.

You’re sure?

I think so. There was that red and green bird. And the parrot too, the parrot dressed up as a pirate.

OK. That’s very important, Malone. I’ll show you some other photos in a bit. But now let’s go back to your story. You went and hid somewhere with your mother. Where?

In the toilets. I was sitting on the floor. Maman closed the door, so she could talk to me without anyone else hearing.

What was she saying, your Maman?

She told me that everything in my head was going to go away, like the dreams I have at night. But that I had to force myself to think about her, every night before I go to sleep. That I had to think hard about her, and our house, and the beach. The pirate ship. The castle. That was all she said to me, that the pictures in my head would go away. I didn’t really believe her but she kept saying the same thing, that the pictures in my head would fly away if I didn’t think about them each night in my bed. Like leaves falling off the branches of a tree.

This was before she left you with your other mother . . . is that right?

The other one isn’t my mother!

Yes, yes, Malone, I understand, that’s why I said your other mother. And what else did she tell you? Your first mother, I mean.

To listen to Gouti.

And this is Gouti? Your cuddly toy? So you had to listen to Gouti, is that what your mother told you?

Yes! I must listen to Gouti, but in secret.

He must be very powerful then. How does Gouti help you remember?

He talks to me.

When does he talk to you?

I can’t tell anyone, it’s my secret. Maman made me swear. She told me another secret too, in the toilets. The secret that protects you from ogres when they want to take you into the forest.

OK, it’s your secret. I understand. But she didn’t say anything else, Malone?

Yes! She said that.

What do you mean?

Malone! She told me it was a nice name and that I had to answer when someone called me that.

But you weren’t called Malone before that? Do you still remember your other name?

Malone remained silent. An eternity passed.

Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter. And what happened after that?

She cried.

OK. So what about your house, from before? Not the one you live in now. The other one. Can you remember that?

A little bit. But almost all the pictures have gone away, because Gouti never talks to me about that.

I understand. But can you describe the pictures you have left of the house? You were talking about the sea earlier? About a pirate ship and the towers of a castle?

Yes. There was no garden, just a beach. If you leaned out of my bedroom window, the sea was right there. I could see the pirate ship from my room—it was broken in two. I remember the rocket too. And that I couldn’t go far from the house because of the forest.

The forest of ogres, you mean?

That’s right.

Can you describe the forest for me?

That’s easy. The trees were as high as the sky. And there weren’t just ogres in the jungle, there were big monkeys too, and snakes, and giant spiders . . . I saw them once, the spiders. That was why I had to stay in my room.

Do you remember anything else, Malone?

No.

OK. So tell me, Malone . . . I’m going to call you Malone, if that’s OK, until we remember your name from before. Your cuddly toy. What kind of animal is it?

Well . . . it’s a Gouti.

A Gouti. I see. And you say it really talks to you. Not just in your head? I know it’s a secret, but can you tell me just a little bit about how it talks to you?

Malone suddenly held his breath.

Quiet, Gouti, he whispered.

Malone heard footsteps on the stairs. He always listened very carefully to the noises in the house, especially when he was in his bedroom, under the sheets, listening in secret to Gouti.

Maman-da was coming.

Quick, Gouti, whispered Malone, you have to pretend to be asleep.

His toy stopped talking just in time, before Maman-da came into the room. Malone held his furry rat close. Gouti was very good at pretending to be asleep.

Maman-da’s voice was always a bit slow, especially in the evenings, as if she was so tired she could never finish her sentences.

Everything OK, sweetie?

Yes.

Malone wanted her to leave, but just as she did every evening, Maman-da sat down on the edge of his bed and stroked his hair. Tonight, the stroking went on even longer than usual. She put her arms around his back and pressed her heart against his chest.

Tomorrow, I’m going to see your teacher at the school, remember?

Malone did not reply.

They say you’ve been telling stories. I know you love stories, sweetie, and that’s normal for a little boy. In fact, I’m proud that you can invent things in your head. But sometimes grown-ups take those stories seriously; they think they’re true. That’s why your teacher wants to see us, do you understand?

Malone closed his eyes. It was a long time before Maman-da made a move.

You’re sleepy, my darling. I’ll let you get some rest. Sweet dreams.

She kissed him, turned off the light and finally left the room. Malone waited, cautiously. He glanced at the cosmonaut alarm clock.

Little hand on the 8, big hand on the 9.

Malone knew he shouldn’t wake up his toy until the little hand was on the 9. Maman had taught him that too.

He looked at the calendar of the sky pinned to the wall, just above the alarm clock. The planets shone in the darkness. When the lights were turned off in his room, all you could see were those planets glowing in the night. Today was the day of the moon.

Malone couldn’t wait for Gouti to tell him his story. His own. The story about the treasure on the beach. Lost treasure.

3

Today, Mimizan beach. I took off my bikini top just for Marco, my boyfriend. He likes my breasts. So did the fat pig lying next to us, visibly.

Want to kill

I stabbed his fat gut with the end of the parasol, right through his belly button.

Convicted: 28

Acquitted: 3,289

www.want-to-kill.com

The telephone rang, waking Captain Marianne Augresse with a start. For a brief instant, her eyes remained fixed on her cold, naked skin, then she removed her arm from the bath where she had been dozing for the past hour and picked up the phone. Her forearm knocked the little tray of toys balanced on the laundry basket and plastic boats, wind-up dolphins and small fluorescent fish scattered over the surface of the water.

Shit!

Number unknown.

Shit! the captain repeated.

She had been hoping it was one of her lieutenants: JB, Papy, or one of the other duty cops at Le Havre police station. She had been waiting for a call since the previous day, when Timo Soler was spotted in the Saint-François quarter, near the pharmacy. She had stationed four men between the Bassin du Commerce and the Bassin du Roi. They had been searching for Timo Soler for nearly a year: nine months and twenty-seven days, to be exact. The hunt had begun on Tuesday, January 6, 2015, during the armed robbery in Deauville. The surveillance camera had immortalized the face of Timo Soler just before he vanished on a Münch Mammut 2000, taking with him the 9 mm Luger bullet, lodged, according to the ballistics experts, somewhere between his lung and his shoulder. Marianne had known she wouldn’t get a wink of sleep until the following morning and so had planned only to doze in the bath, then on the sofa, then in bed hoping to jump up in the middle of the night, grabbing her leather jacket and abandoning her crumpled sheets, her Tupperware box of food and her glass of Quézac mineral water in front of the dormant television, pausing only to throw a handful of biscuits to Mogwai, her cat.

Yes?

Her index finger slid across the wet glass. She gently patted the iPhone with a towel that was hanging close by, desperately hoping that this would not end the call.

Captain Augresse? Vasily Dragonman. You don’t know me. I’m a school psychologist. A mutual friend, Angélique Fontaine, gave me your mobile number.

Angie . . . For fuck’s sake, thought Marianne. She was going to tear a strip off that little slut, with her lacy bras and loose tongue.

Is this a professional matter, Mr. Dragonman? I’m expecting an important call on this number at any moment.

Don’t worry, it won’t take long.

He had a soft voice. The voice of a young priest, a hypnotist, or a telepathic magician from the East. A smooth and confident talker, with just a hint of a Slavic accent.

Go on, sighed Marianne.

You’re going to find what I have to say slightly disconcerting. I’m a school psychologist. I cover the whole region north of the Havre estuary. For a few weeks now, I’ve been looking after a strange child.

Strange how?

Marianne’s free hand played with the water between her half-submerged legs. There were worse things than being woken in your bath by a man, even if he wasn’t calling to invite you to dinner.

He claims that his mother isn’t his mother.

The captain’s fingers slid over her damp thigh.

Sorry?

He claims that his mother isn’t his mother, and that his father isn’t his father either.

How old is this kid?

Three and a half.

Marianne bit her lip.

An over-zealous shrink! Angie must have been completely taken in by his smooth psychobabble.

He expresses himself as if he were a year older than that, the psychologist continued. He’s not particularly gifted, but he is precocious. According to the tests that . . . 

"And his parents really are his parents? Marianne cut in. Have you checked with his teachers? He’s not adopted, or in foster care, or anything like that?"

There’s no doubt whatsoever. He really is their child. The parents say the kid has an over-active imagination. The headmistress is meeting them tomorrow.

So, the situation is being dealt with then . . . 

Marianne suddenly felt guilty about the curt way she had replied to the soft-voiced shrink. Just below the surface of the water, the fin of a mechanical dolphin tickled her legs. It had been at least six months since Grégoire, her nephew, had last stayed over; and, given that he would turn eleven next month, it was far from certain that he would ever return to binge on pizza and DVDs at his aunt’s house. She ought to throw these toys away, along with the Pixar films and the Playmobil boxes, throw them all in a garbage bag like so many regrets, instead of allowing them to taunt her.

No, the psychologist insisted. It’s not being dealt with. Because, as odd as this may sound, I have a feeling the child might be telling the truth.

What about the mother? the captain asked.

She’s furious.

You don’t say! Please get to the point, Mr. Dragonman. What do you expect me to do about it?

Marianne used her knee to push away the dolphin. She felt flustered by the voice of this stranger, particularly as he almost certainly had no idea that she was naked as she spoke to him, her thighs in the air and her feet resting on the edge of the bathtub.

The psychologist left a long silence, allowing the captain to sink a little deeper into her hot, damp thoughts. Although realistically, the idea of sharing a bath with a man didn’t get her that excited. She had too many hang-ups, perhaps. And there wouldn’t be enough space to cram her body between the cold wall of the bathtub and the muscles of an ephemeral but well-built lover. Her real dream, though she could never admit it to anyone, was to share her bath with a baby. To spend hours splashing around with a little mite who was as chubby as she was, the water gone cold, surrounded by plastic toys.

What do I expect you to do? I don’t know. Help me?

You want me to open an investigation, is that it?

Not necessarily. But you could at least do some digging. Angie told me that’s what you do. Just check out what the boy is saying. I have hours of recorded interviews, notes, drawings . . . 

The dolphin was back. It was obsessed.

The longer the conversation went on, the more convinced the captain became that the simplest thing to do would be to meet this Vasily Dragonman. Especially as it was Angie who had sent him. Angie knew what she was looking for. Not a man; Marianne couldn’t care less about men. At thirty-nine, she had at least another twenty years in which she could sleep with all the men in the world. No, Marianne had hammered the message home to Angie during their girls’ nights out: in the coming months, the captain would be going in search of a single, mythical creature: a FATHER. So, in sending this guy her way, Angie was perhaps thinking . . . After all, a school psychologist would make the perfect father. A man with a professional understanding of early childhood, quoting Freinet, Piaget, and Montessori while other blokes were content to read magazines such as L’Equipe, Interview, or Detective.

Mr. Dragonman, the usual procedure for a child in danger is to call one of the child protection organizations. But I must admit that this case you have described seems . . . well, unusual. Do you really want to notify the authorities on the basis of the child’s declarations? Does he strike you as mistreated? Do the parents appear dangerous? Is there anything that might give us a reason to separate them?

No. On the face of it, the parents seem completely normal.

OK. So there’s no emergency. We’ll make some enquiries. We wouldn’t want to put the parents in prison just because their son has an over-active imagination . . . 

A shiver ran through the captain’s body. The bathwater was now cold and faintly pink, as if the mixture of lavender, eucalyptus and violet essential oils she had poured in had gone stagnant. Marianne’s breasts emerged from the pale surface, large in comparison to the little yellow plastic boat that floated over her belly. A vision of the end of the world, thought Marianne. Two virgin islands polluted by a liner dumping its toxic waste.

The psychologist’s voice snapped the policewoman out of her reverie.

"I’m sorry, Captain, please don’t take this personally, but you’re wrong. That is why I was so insistent with Angie, and why I felt compelled to call you this evening. This is an emergency. It’s urgent for this child. Absolutely urgent. Irreversible, even."

Marianne’s voice rose. Irreversible? For God’s sake, you told me the kid wasn’t in any danger!

Please understand, Captain. This child isn’t even four years old yet. All those things he remembers today, he could easily forget tomorrow. Or the day after tomorrow. Or in a month or two.

Marianne stood up.

What are you trying to say, exactly?

That this child is clinging to fragments of memory in order to convince me that his mother is not his real mother. He talks about a castle, a pirate ship, a forest of ogres . . . other things. But in a few days, or maybe a few weeks, as surely as this child will get older, he will learn new things—the names of animals and flowers and letters and the rest of this infinite world that surrounds him—and then his older memories will be erased. And that other mother, whom he remembers today, that previous life that he tells me about each time I see him, will simply cease to exist!

4

Little hand on the 9, big hand on the 12

Malone listened to the silence for a long time, making sure that Maman-da was not on her way back up the stairs.

His small fingers reached beneath the sheets until they felt Gouti’s heartbeat. His toy was slightly warm. When he had completely woken up, Malone hid under the sheets and got ready to listen. It was the day of the moon. It was the day of the story about Gouti and the hazelnuts. Malone couldn’t remember how many times he’d heard it.

There had been many days of the moon, so many that he couldn’t count them. But he didn’t remember any days of the moon from the time before.

Malone put his ear against Gouti, as if the toy were a very soft pillow.

* * *

Gouti was just three years old, which was already pretty big in his family, because his mother was only eight and his grandfather, who was very old, was fifteen.

They lived in the biggest tree on the beach, which had roots shaped like an immense spider. Their place was on the third floor, first branch on the left, between a tern that was almost always away on trips and a lame owl who had now retired, but who used to work on the pirate ships.

Maman said that Gouti was very similar to his grandfather a daydreamer, just like he was. It’s true that his grandfather spent a lot of time dreaming, but that’s because he was losing his memory. They would often find him asleep on another branch, his white moustache all disheveled, or burying a gray stone instead of an acorn. Gouti liked to sit in front of the sea and imagine that he was climbing on a boat, hiding in its hold, secretly eating wheat or oats from a bag until they discovered a new island. He imagined himself staying on that new island and making a new family. He often thought about that and forgot the rest.

And yet he did have work to do. His work was always the same, but it was very important: gathering the hazelnuts from the forest and burying them close to the house. Because the reason the whole family was living in this place was the forest. Hazelnuts, walnuts, acorns, pine cones . . . this was the treasure that fell from the sky in the autumn and that had to be carefully hidden before winter so they could eat for