TE23 Double Feature

The Forests

Sandrine Collette

He closed his eyes.

he had seen on his way, she looked like a dromedary’s hump, or a huge bump, or an animal swallowed by a boa constrictor, or a bed with sheets rumpled in a violent haste.

He spent his time curled up by the wood stove, listening out for a sound, a voice. At night, in the attic, with his ear close to the chimney shaft, he waited for a sign that didn’t come. They had their assigned roles, of necessity. Corentin helped, prepared, tidied, brought in wood. Mathilde stayed curled up under the blanket, begged them to darken the room for her. Then stopped begging. Who knows what was still there under the comforter—a ghost, denial, hurt. Corentin couldn’t help but stare, whenever he went by, at the shapeless mound under the sheets.

She looked like a woman who had no child anymore, at all.

Silence filled the house.

* * *

One morning, it was the fourth day, Mathilde got up. She came upon Corentin in the kitchen. The violet shadows beneath her eyes seemed to devour her face; her eyes were red with sorrow. There were lines along her cheeks and down the sides of her face, and Corentin hoped they were marks left by the pillow, but they weren’t, they really were lines of fatigue and suffering. She looked away.

How could she breathe under there.

He went by and he looked at Mathilde, buried, and it made him think of the white cow corpses 94

Don’t say anything.

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