Julian Feeld: Fire Hides Everywhere

There are many people to whom I owe much. I’d like to thank Remi Slade-Caffarel, Genevieve Gagne-Hawes, Mathilde Huron, Kathleen Craig, Louisa Pillot, and Alicia Heimersson for reading, being read to, editing, and generally providing help along the way. I’d also like to thank my family for their love and support: Audrey, Gerard, Christian, Claire… that’s you. In this third and perfectly acceptable sentence I think I will direct the stream of my gratitude towards Alfie Bown for his generous disposition and help in getting Fire Hides Everywhere into the hands of the Zero Books team, whom I’d also like to thank for their support and expertise, particularly Emma Jacobs for the copy-edit. Finally, a little word for you, dear reader: thank you. For picking this novel up. For reading literary fiction in general. And for accepting to come on this journey with me.

The twins had blonde hair and dull green eyes and tanned skin. Sabine, whose hair was longer than Marc’s, wore a thick scar near her pubis where Christophe had removed her appendix. The old man had forced the child supine atop the dinner table and bound her there with old rags. He had unseamed her bloated flesh with a match-singed razor blade and removed the mucilaginous growth with his bare hands as the other children watched from outside the farmhouse. Their eyeballs were locked, faces warped in a spill, down into the whitewashed wood of the window frame, where the glass pooled thick and hazy. There a horsefly beat continually against the thin upper-pane, falling to the sill below, wings an opalescent blue.

Sabine screamed like a stuck pig until Christophe soaked a rag in chloroform and pressed her to sleep. He worked slowly and precisely, gaze rising to meet Marc’s periodically, baring his teeth to discourage the boy from shattering the window with a rock.

Afterwards Christophe sewed the gash with copper wire to prevent Sabine from tearing the stitches apart. He filed her nails until they were dull and useless, but in the weeks to come Sabine worked at the wound with small twigs and rocks until it turned a reddish purple and filled with pus. Finally he rode his bicycle along the main road, set upon by ruined colza and wheat fields, scattered farmhouses, most destroyed, expanses of oak, hornbeam, and into Vailly, where he waded through crushed pillboxes in the backroom of a flooded pharmacy to find something that might save the child. Sabine did survive, but the scar remained, tumescent and pink, a crudely etched cave painting upon her flesh.

Florian’s hair was long and black and dry as burned straw, broken teeth protruding from lips dewy and larviform, above which a thin black moss gathered around a single beauty mark. The child was of bone and lopsided sinew, moving mostly on hands and feet, but standing now in the reeds at the edge of the pond where he sounded the surface for the secret shapes of fish beneath, skitting water spiders, undule of vertebrae in the muddy waters. He heard the old man’s voice from the farmhouse.

We eat.

And licked his lips, smiled crooked, scratching the tip of his prick to feel the shivers. Abandoning the water he drew his feet through the grass until the mud fell away from them, and having passed the peach tree he raised his eyes to reorient himself, white ears atwitch. In the building across the courtyard, behind one of the grain silos, he crouched in the penumbra to clothe himself, the jumpsuit stiff and alien to his skin. Rats often whispered here in the half-dark behind the silos, but the old man’s food was warm in his belly, and it was worth the discomfort.

Christophe was tall and thin with a narrow face and small hard eyes, grey and lifeless. His skin was hard too, muscles flat grey rocks shifting about his thin frame as he placed bowls and spoons on the table. Beneath his bare feet, varicose, the terracotta shone a faded orange in the waning sunlight, steam rising to form droplets on the dark wood of the beams above. Christophe removed the soup from the fire and stirred it with a ladle. The smell of coriander.

Little ones sat huddled in a row at the end of the bench and looked slantwise at Lea. Her plump features, ruddy and curious, eyes golden brown. She worked her fingers into the crevices of the kitchen table where the grime had clotted and blackened. Little wormlets of crud curled away beneath her nails and they tasted sour and putrid. She let her tongue hang from her mouth and shook her head until they flung loose. Muffled laughter from the little ones. Lea looked at them and smiled, poking the one beside her in the ribs.

Marc and Sabine arrived together and sat on the bench opposite the others. She seemed lost with her drooping eyes, sunken, and Marc wore a fierce expression, sitting upright with his hand on her knee. Soon Florian entered the farmhouse and took a seat next to Sabine where he hunched over his bowl and watched his faint reflection in the porcelain as if it were something else altogether, something alive in its own right. Christophe ladled soup into each of their bowls and none of the children touched their spoons. Even Florian and the little ones knew to wait until Christophe had said the words.

The poor will eat. They will be satiated. Those who seek him will praise the lord. Let us pray to the lord who gives us this bread

Christophe paused for a very long time. He remained with his long dry hands pressed together and his eyes closed. The children looked at each other and at Christophe, except Florian who looked at his soup. Lea’s eyes were wet and full of worry.

Each day. Our father

Again there was a long pause and Lea’s bottom lip began to tremble. A slow vinegar was spreading in the bottom of her stomach.

Our father

Christophe’s eyelids were purple and thin. Lea thought she could see his eyeballs through the skin, waiting to see if she would pick up the spoon. Finally Christophe finished the prayer.

Our father protect us, lord god, and provide our weakness what it needs to survive. In the name of jesus christ our lord. Amen.

Christophe separated his hands and set his wrists against the table’s edge. He opened his eyes and his mouth widened and his lips thinned and curved at the edges. Christophe’s eyes remained inscrutable and he didn’t blink. The children made noises as they ate their soup and Christophe watched them.

The vinegar had dissipated but Lea could feel it forming a sour headache. The soup took its warm course down her chest and into her belly. She felt like a river split in two. As she sipped from her spoon she noticed Marc’s fingers. They were growing longer and thicker by the day, and beneath his nails what looked like dried blood. She turned to watch Christophe. He was staring at the wall, lip lopsided, the left side of his face unrecognizable to Lea.

Christophe knew the children were little fucking liars, each and every one of them. He knew to keep that in mind. To stay organized and make sure everything…

But during the prayer something had happened and he understood that too. There was no confusion in Christophe’s mind. He needed to stay focused on what was important. No matter what, these children needed some form of structure, some form of instruction despite the steel-bound fact that he couldn’t move his left wrist for several minutes. Then he could feel the sweat around his hand but not the flesh within. Then and little by little he regained feeling in his entire left side until he felt confident enough to attempt movement. Everything was the same as it always had been. Florian’s bowl was shifted slightly forward because of the way he tended to lean into it. Otherwise all the bowls were equidistant and set correctly on the table. Even the soup tasted good. But Christophe wasn’t an idiot. He knew exactly what had happened and also that it wouldn’t get better over time.