survive.
1996
Comet Hyakutake
FRANÇOIS’S MAMA IS FUSSING.
He takes the blackcurrant jam from the cupboard – they made it together at the weekend, fruit and sugar simmering in a pan for hours as they prepared the dough for the bread. He scoops out a teaspoonful, puts it upside down in his mouth as he watches her check there’s milk in the fridge for chocolat chaud, the book for his bedtime story, a list of emergency numbers pinned to the wall by the phone.
It’s OK, the sitter says. His mama told him she’s a student from the university. We’re going to have fun, she says to François, patting his blond hair as he pulls away and then, using a different voice to Severine: you too, enjoy your date.
His mama glances in the hallway mirror before she leaves. Her hair is loose, not tied up like it is when she’s working, and her dress is red and gold, her arms decorated with bangles.
Be good, she says to François.
You know, I don’t need a babysitter, he says, you could just trust me . . .
You’re only ten years old. We’ll talk about it later.
He scoops up another spoonful of jam and lets the rich flavours sink onto his tongue, waves goodbye.
In the restaurant, Severine starts telling lies and finds she cannot stop; the last ten years of her life have become a fiction for anyone who cares to listen. I spent a year in Vietnam, she says; the heat, the moisture, it fills your lungs, and the traffic – twelve lanes moving each way, criss-crossed, no separation between them, bikes, cars, buses, motorbikes, taxis, tuk-tuks, a mess of vehicles and if you want to cross the road, you just step out into it. It’s a leap of faith.
And where will you travel to next? he asks.
The opposite, maybe Greenland. It’s so empty, so big, you know? When you look on the globe it’s a mass of frozen land. What would that be like?
He’s leaning forward over the table, almost seems to be reaching for her hand.
I’d like to go to the desert, he says, to see sand dunes and hazy gold sky in every direction. I’d like to see a mirage.
Severine smiles.
A mirage of what?
Anything; an oasis, an iceberg, a civilisation.
I think I’d see the past.
But he shakes his head, not interested in that route; the past is done with, he says, I want the future. I’m only interested in what comes next.
François tells the babysitter he would like to read to himself in bed, and he selects the world atlas from the tall bookshelvesin the study, climbing up on his child’s plastic stepladder to reach it.
The sitter doesn’t seem to know what to do, watches on to check that he’s safe while he ignores her and carries his atlas down to the table, carries the stepladder back to the kitchen; politely wishes her a good night from the top of the stairs.
Goodnight, François, she says, turning back to the sitting room and marvelling at how a ten-year-old can make her feel too young to be a babysitter.
In bed, François opens up his atlas to the page he was up to: Indonesia, it says, and he traces his finger over the tiny dots of land that decorate a blue-and-white sea. Sangkapura, he says, rolling the consonants on his tongue, Belitung, Masalembo. The land here is drawn green and yellow and orange and he thinks that means there are mountains, rising up from the sea. Thirteen thousand, six hundred islands, it says, under Geography. He tries to think of something else with a number that big, but he can’t.
Severine and her date go for drinks after dinner, rich red wine in a dark candlelit bar where they flirt over what the future will bring. Slim buildings of glass that stretch to the clouds, a colony on Mars where people will live in the orangey glow of starting over, cities built on the crisp water of melted ice caps. His hand on her knee. A glass nearly spilled, then saved. But this is not real life, and underneath the flirting Severine knows it.
On the walk home, it happens: a shiver of warmth, a rush of relief and Severine is not
1996
Comet Hyakutake
FRANÇOIS’S MAMA IS FUSSING.
He takes the blackcurrant jam from the cupboard – they made it together at the weekend, fruit and sugar simmering in a pan for hours as they prepared the dough for the bread. He scoops out a teaspoonful, puts it upside down in his mouth as he watches her check there’s milk in the fridge for chocolat chaud, the book for his bedtime story, a list of emergency numbers pinned to the wall by the phone.
It’s OK, the sitter says. His mama told him she’s a student from the university. We’re going to have fun, she says to François, patting his blond hair as he pulls away and then, using a different voice to Severine: you too, enjoy your date.
His mama glances in the hallway mirror before she leaves. Her hair is loose, not tied up like it is when she’s working, and her dress is red and gold, her arms decorated with bangles.
Be good, she says to François.
You know, I don’t need a babysitter, he says, you could just trust me . . .
You’re only ten years old. We’ll talk about it later.
He scoops up another spoonful of jam and lets the rich flavours sink onto his tongue, waves goodbye.
In the restaurant, Severine starts telling lies and finds she cannot stop; the last ten years of her life have become a fiction for anyone who cares to listen. I spent a year in Vietnam, she says; the heat, the moisture, it fills your lungs, and the traffic – twelve lanes moving each way, criss-crossed, no separation between them, bikes, cars, buses, motorbikes, taxis, tuk-tuks, a mess of vehicles and if you want to cross the road, you just step out into it. It’s a leap of faith.
And where will you travel to next? he asks.
The opposite, maybe Greenland. It’s so empty, so big, you know? When you look on the globe it’s a mass of frozen land. What would that be like?
He’s leaning forward over the table, almost seems to be reaching for her hand.
I’d like to go to the desert, he says, to see sand dunes and hazy gold sky in every direction. I’d like to see a mirage.
Severine smiles.
A mirage of what?
Anything; an oasis, an iceberg, a civilisation.
I think I’d see the past.
But he shakes his head, not interested in that route; the past is done with, he says, I want the future. I’m only interested in what comes next.
François tells the babysitter he would like to read to himself in bed, and he selects the world atlas from the tall bookshelvesin the study, climbing up on his child’s plastic stepladder to reach it.
The sitter doesn’t seem to know what to do, watches on to check that he’s safe while he ignores her and carries his atlas down to the table, carries the stepladder back to the kitchen; politely wishes her a good night from the top of the stairs.
Goodnight, François, she says, turning back to the sitting room and marvelling at how a ten-year-old can make her feel too young to be a babysitter.
In bed, François opens up his atlas to the page he was up to: Indonesia, it says, and he traces his finger over the tiny dots of land that decorate a blue-and-white sea. Sangkapura, he says, rolling the consonants on his tongue, Belitung, Masalembo. The land here is drawn green and yellow and orange and he thinks that means there are mountains, rising up from the sea. Thirteen thousand, six hundred islands, it says, under Geography. He tries to think of something else with a number that big, but he can’t.
Severine and her date go for drinks after dinner, rich red wine in a dark candlelit bar where they flirt over what the future will bring. Slim buildings of glass that stretch to the clouds, a colony on Mars where people will live in the orangey glow of starting over, cities built on the crisp water of melted ice caps. His hand on her knee. A glass nearly spilled, then saved. But this is not real life, and underneath the flirting Severine knows it.
On the walk home, it happens: a shiver of warmth, a rush of relief and Severine is not
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