Page 30 of The Strawberry Thief
‘Of course. My tattoos aren’t camouflage. I see them as fragments of the soul coming to the surface.’
I wasn’t sure what to say to that.Fragments of the soul. I remembered pieces of charred and burning wood on the surface of the Tannes. Remembered the river-folk moving on, sullen and impassive.
I tried for a joke. ‘Be careful. Souls are the Church’s currency.’
‘And the Devil’s,’ said Morgane. ‘Everyone gets what they pay for.’
8
Monday, March 20
Maman says she doesn’t want to see me talking to Morgane any more. I think if you don’t want to see something, then you shouldn’t go looking. Next time, we’ll have to pull down the blinds, or meet somewhere in secret. Because I still want to see Morgane, and look in her book of photographs, and maybe even get a tattoo. There’s something about Morgane that makes me feel I’m not a freak. As if she doesn’t mind those things that make other people stare, or that Joline Drou and Caro Clairmont lower their voices when they talk about me.
Maman thinks I don’t notice those things. She thinks I don’tknowhow different I am. She thinks that if I’m quiet, and good, and never use my shadow-voice, then maybe I’ll be like the others one day, instead of a little girl made of snow. But when I was with Morgane yesterday I didn’t feel different at all. I knew Morgane wouldn’t mind if I spoke to her in my shadow-voice, or if she saw Bam in the mirrors, or even if there was an Accident. She wouldn’t be surprised if she knew why we had come to Lansquenet, and why Maman is sometimes afraid. And I want to know more about her now, and where she comes from, and where she’s been, and what the name of her shop means, and why she hasThe Strawberry Thieftattooed on her collarbones. So I was cross all morning, and wouldn’t drink my chocolate, and Maman looked headachy and sad, and little things kept breaking. There was a wind, too: a sharp little wind that blew in the corners around the square, and made the shop sign dance. It wasn’t exactly abadwind – but it wasn’t a good wind, either.
‘Why don’t you go see your friend Yannick?’ said Maman at last, with a brittle smile. ‘Maybe you could take him some chocolate.’
It was a pretty good idea, but I knew that wasn’t the reason that Maman made the suggestion. She doesn’t want me to visit Morgane, and she’s using Yannick as an excuse. But I could tell she was restless, and I didn’t want to stay in the shop. And so I took the chocolates, which were his favourites (all chocolates are), and picked up my drawing-book, and went over the fields to Yannick’s house. I wanted to know if he’d seen Morgane, and what he thought of the new shop, and then I thought we could play a game, or maybe explore my strawberry wood. But when I got to the farmhouse, Yannick’s mother opened the door, and looked at me in that way she has, and said Yannick was sleeping.
That was a lie. I could tell straightaway. It wasn’t long after lunchtime. Why would Yannick be sleeping? And then I thought he might be ill, that maybe it was my fault, somehow, and I felt suddenly guilty. What if this was an Accident I’d caused by talking to Morgane? What if Maman was right, and I had summoned the wind without knowing it?
Yannick’s mother kept looking at me, and at the little box in my hand. With her long sharp nose and her flat cold eyes, she made me think of a big ugly bird. Maybe a flamingo, I thought: ugly and out-of-proportion.
‘Is that a box ofchocolates?’ she said in a high voice, as if she was talking to someone a long way away.
I didn’t answer. She knew what the box was. Instead I watched Bam pull faces from behind the open door, and listened to the wind through the trees, and wished I hadn’t come at all. But Yannick’s mother rolled her eyes and said: ‘Chocolates!’ again, in that silly high voice, then brought her face up close to mine and said, in a very different tone:
‘Listen to me, Rosette Rocher. My son is a very troubled boy, and the last thing he needs is someone like you, hanging around, making things worse. So you can forget about Yannick, because he doesn’t want you, or your chocolates. Do you understand me?’
I understood. I understood that Madame Montour wanted to keep me from seeing Yannick. And suddenly I didn’t care if there was an Accident. I wished the wind would blow her away, and so I said in my shadow-voice:
‘Liar.’
‘So youcantalk,’ she said.
I made the sly wind tug at her skirt, so that she had to hold it down.
‘Doesn’t surprise me at all,’ she said. ‘My father may have believed in that innocent-little-girl act, but it doesn’t work with me. And if you think I’m going to let you take his land without a fight, you’ve got another think coming.’
‘My land. My wood,’ I said, and the wind blew a little stronger.
Madame Montour didn’t notice. ‘My father was a troubled man,’ she said. ‘What he left in his will confirms it. So don’t start counting your money just yet. It’s not too late for things to change.’
And with that she shut the door, so that Bam was left on the threshold, looking fierce and chattering. The wind blew through the hinges, and rattled the loose tiles on the roof, but Madame Montour didn’t come out. I knew she was behind the door, watching through the keyhole, listening to the sound of the wind and waiting for me to go away.
And so I said: ‘Bitch,’ in my shadow-voice, and tiles began to blow off the roof, one by one, like playing cards.Two, three, fourfivesix, they flew off into the dull grey sky, and smashed into the baked-earth ground in the yard where the henhouses were. Then I ran over the fields to my wood, and sat down by the wishing-well, and ate all of Yannick’s chocolates.
But even then I felt sad somehow, and so I took out my drawing-book, and drew a picture of Madame Montour as a greedy flamingo. It made me laugh, but I still felt sad. It’s not fair that Yannick’s mother gets to decide who his friends should be. And she already has the farm, and the fields. Why does she want my wood as well?
‘I wish the wind would blow her away,’ I whispered into the wishing-well. ‘I wish she would have an Accident, and blow away, and never come back.’
The well whispered back to me –Never come back!– and the wind took the whisper and blew it away.Never come back! Never come back!It sounded to me like the whispering voice that Omi Mahjoubi callswaswas: the nagging, raging voice of the wind, sometimes coaxing, sometimes mad—
I tore the drawing out of my book, and scattered the pieces into the wind. The paper fragments flew like birds over the strawberry clearing. Maybe Narcisse is in the wind, I thought. Maybe he’s watching. Maman says the dead are still here, as long as someone remembers them. Maybe that’s why he left me the wood. As long as the strawberries grow, he’ll be here. As long as I remember.
I walked back along the river. It was raining a little now, and there were feathery little catspaws of wind on the smooth brown surface of the Tannes. Roux was burning rubbish on the bank next to where his boat was moored. The smoke was white, like feathers in a column of rising air.
He saw me and waved. I ran to him and gave him a hug. He smelt the way he sometimes does when he’s slept outside, by the fire. I wish I could sleep outside sometimes. When I’m older maybe I will. I’ll build a firepit in my wood, and live off nothing but strawberries.
