TE23 Double Feature

Sandrine Collette

The Forests

He took her hand.

tired quickly. Mathilde, white as a ghost: she made Augustine sit in the armchair several times a day.

She yanked it away.

And so they acted as if everything was normal.

Augustine had taken a walk around the garden. She came back shrugging her shoulders.

* * *

There’s nothing left, Corentin whispered, with the ridiculous hope that she might contradict him.

For a long time, Alice had kept a donkey, and now at her place Corentin found a cart. So one morning he left for the Little Town to help himself to all the supplies he could find. Mathilde’s scream had been like the lash of a whip. He couldn’t give up. He couldn’t go on saying he was unhappier than anyone, or that he had no more strength. So what else could he do now, other than join in the insane circle dance of ephemeral survival. Augustine was extremely thin. Was it since, or had she always—he couldn’t remember. She organized. She planned. She took care of. She 96

Well now, she said.

And that was all.

Well now, Corentin would echo defiantly, looking outside, harnessing the cart, stopping mid climb to catch his breath. He’d stuffed the little cart with everything he found, lashed it all together with ropes so it wouldn’t spill out. He would go back to the Little Town many times: twenty-three, 97