The Long Summer of Monsieur Loiseau

January.

The sea fog came out frequently, like an avalanche, smashing in large groups on the shore, rolling, engulfing the frosty gray-brown fields.Looking out of the window, it seemed that nothing existed except the mansion, and even the chirping of birds could not be heard.The sunroom was too cold to stay long; the kitchen became the perfect sanctuary, warm and dark with food close at hand.After Alex ignored him, Harry resumed his initial dissociation, wandering from room to room, killing time by his book by the fireplace by himself.Miss Carlston from the post office now only comes once every two weeks. Most of the time, there are no letters or telegrams, just to chat.From her, Harry heard that more than half of the children who had taken refuge in London had been picked up by their parents around Christmas.The news filled him with anticipation, and he even secretly asked Miss Carlston if she could send a telegram to London. The latter looked embarrassed, hesitated for a while, and agreed.Harry kept his ear to the doorbell every day, hoping that his mother would show up at once to take him home; but as the weeks passed, the balloon of hope dwindled until it wilted entirely.

The boys still had lessons together in the study, and Harry left various little notes on Alex's desk, trying to apologize, asking his opinion on trivial matters, drawing a little doodle, asking about the correctness of a certain French word. Context, repeated apologies, even outright asking Alex what he would have to do to talk to him, never got a response.Alex's demeanor gradually changed from indifference to cold politeness.Harry was initially relieved, but soon found that it was worse than turning a blind eye, and Alex limited himself to "good morning" and "pass me the pencil please", as if Harry was someone who had to keep strangers at a distance.This frustrates Harry, which then turns into annoyance.The boys kicked off a new contest to see who could be more nonchalant and sarcastic, two bravado puppies flashing their tiny fangs at each other.The baron didn't seem to notice the problems between the children, and even if he did, he didn't mean to intervene.

"What's the matter with you two?"

It was Martha who asked this question, on a morning with sleet and sleet.She was wearing glasses, knitting a doomed and ownerless sweater; Harry was hiding in his book, as usual, next to the big kitchen fireplace.He pretended not to hear Martha's words, but Martha didn't intend to let the matter go easily, put down the sweater needles, gently took the book from the boy's hand, and repeated the question.

"What?" Harry asked back, buying himself a little more time to think.He reached out to get the book back, but Martha pushed it further away.

"You know what I'm talking about, honey."

"We have nothing."

"The two of you were unwilling to separate for a second before, but now you are like deadly enemies."

Harry wanted to tell her about the notebook, the Mayweeds, the invisible monster, the vanished firstborn; warn her that the monster was still alive in Alex's mind, hissing like a rattlesnake in the shadows.But prying into someone else's secret is bad enough, sharing it is even worse betrayal.

"Nothing." Harry repeated the words, walked around the table, picked up the book, and left the kitchen.

After that day, he didn't stay in the kitchen for a long time, but like a little crow, he flew by quickly, stole the food and fled back to the bedroom.It was during this period that he resumed drawing, using pencil and paper, not only because crayons were too childish, but also because paper, like everything else, was in short supply and had to be cherished, erased and drawn again and again.Harry drew the train running along the coast, the little Christmas tree like a broom, the switchman's rocking chair and the puppy.Then, almost inevitably, he began to paint the monsters of the Meved family.Harry spent a lot of time on this, imagining several versions, one of which was a winged shadow that took up most of the page, another that looked like a boa constrictor with claws, and another that was a A mouth full of fangs set into a twisted, shapeless body.In his painting, Harry lifted the roof of the Mewade family, the sun and rain fell on the vague monster, it screamed and fled, and a plume of black smoke made of graphite fled to the edge of the drawing .

He tried to show the pictures to Alex, but the latter had a cold and didn't come into the study, and Martha wouldn't let Harry go to Alex's bedroom ("He has a fever, and you'd better Don't get contagious, I don't have the energy to take care of two sick little troublemakers.").Harry walked up and down the corridor several times, making up his mind, resolving, convincing himself again, and stuffed the crumpled painting under the door.A sudden panic and embarrassment overwhelmed him, and Harry quickly fled back to his room and closed the door, as if afraid that the monster drawn on paper would come to life.

-

Prudence groped in the small iron box for a while, removed a stack of old letters, found three or four sheets of paper folded into squares from the bottom, unfolded them, and smoothed them out.The paper is creased and the edges are yellowed and cracked, but the clumsy pencil lines are still clearly visible, from the hands of a nine-year-old child.The house was askew, the roof lifted like a pot lid, and black lines like hurricanes escaped from it in the swollen sun.

"Alex told me he still had a lot of these little useless things that I never saw - from laziness, not because he hid them on purpose. I lived with him later on Juniper Street The apartment, about the size of a matchbox, my suitcase and portable typewriter took up the most space and couldn't be stowed away, you know, I'm on the news at any time, usually early in the morning. Alex likes to work until Early in the morning, so he tends to be just asleep when the phone rings, and he hates my editor, and you can guess why. He always says 'bye, sailor' when we kiss goodbye. It's his favorite joke, 'Goodbye, Sailor', because."

Prudence suddenly stopped talking, stood up, walked to the window, watched the rain outside, and wiped his eyes with his knuckles.The reporter looked away, pretending not to notice.He picked up the cup, tentatively took a sip of the half-warm tea, frowned, and poured a spoonful of sugar into it.

"The rain doesn't seem to be as heavy," Prudence said, sounding normal, just a little weaker.

"I think so, Mr. Prudence."

"Ever been to Brittany before, Mr. Rivers?"

“Only been to Saint-Brieuc, on vacation, five days of rain, whiskey, TV, and poker. One day we ventured to the beach, blew two umbrellas, got wet Drenched. It was July, by the way."

Prudence smiled at the glass and pushed open the window.The damp cold wind crashed in like a runaway train, the rain dripped on the carpet, and the fire in the fireplace quivered.The reporter shuddered, holding down the rattling notebook with one hand, and grabbed the drawing paper on the coffee table that was about to be blown away with the other.

"I slipped the drawing under the bedroom door, as before, not expecting anything from Alex. But Martha handed me a piece of paper the next morning, folded in half with ragged edges, and it was Torn from a notebook. Inside is Alex's monster, his own version, like a ferocious turkey, in my opinion. It's the second piece of paper you have, Mr. Rivers, you can have a look."

"After driving away the monster with claws there was another problem: How to get the eldest son of the Mayweed family back? We exchanged more doodles, sometimes in words, to discuss a rescue plan. Martha is our honor A messenger, passing a small piece of paper between the two hunters. I don’t know if she has read the content of the note, probably not, and she is not interested in the letter delivery game between children.”

"Alex's idea is that the monster has a lair, far away. He didn't actually determine where the lair is. Sometimes it says it's on the mountain, sometimes it says it's on the other side of the strait. In any case, the Meweed family's It is there that the eldest son was taken. It must be noted that there may be more than one monster, who stored their victims in the cave like jerky. When his cold was cured, we put all the maps in the study The books were turned out, looking for possible hiding places for monsters. But we did not complete this plan in the end."

"why?"

"Distracted and then forgotten. While the threat of air raids has diminished in early '41, Miss Carlston has brought new rumors. The Germans are said to have sent spies to our dear island in U-boats, and also There were paratroopers, who dropped in quietly in the wee hours of the morning. People said that German spies might be hiding in abandoned monasteries and mills, preparing to attack the docks and airports. The gardener swore he had seen suspicious parachutes fall from the sky one night and disappeared near the beach. Meat The shop owner couple also said they 'as if' they had witnessed strangers moving in the wilderness, carrying shovels. The children were carefully locked up at home, and the fat police organized a big search, taking the surrounding churches, barns and shepherds The huts were inspected and nothing was found except owl nests and some rabbit holes. Even so, everyone felt that no one should take it lightly, and the volunteer fire department had a new mission: to watch the beach in case someone sneaked ashore."

"Alex didn't rewrite the story of the Medved family, and many of the small pieces of paper with the rescue plan were erased and redrawn on other things, and others were lost and never found. .for a while we turned our attention to the fighter jets, climbed onto the roof and waited for the Spitfire and the Hurricane to pass overhead.You could say the first crisis between us was resolved peacefully,safety , I waited almost a week before asking if I could read any other stories he had written, if he was still writing. Alex said yes and included me as his first reader. Feeling cold, River Mister S?"

"Very."

Prudence closed the windows to lock out the sound of wind, rain and waves.

tbc.