Yann Andrea Steiner Read Online Free Page B

barren sky there is a kite like they make in China, I’m not really sure, but I seem to recognize Chinese lacquer red, a color from North China.
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    The child stands there. He too looks at the kite, the red design in the sky. He is a bit apart from the others, but probably not on purpose; he must be that way all the time. Like a slight delay behind the other children, without meaning to.
    When the kite fell down dead the child watched it. Then he sat down on the sand to watch it some more, a kite that was dead.

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    The seagulls are there too, turned toward the distance, feathers smoothed down by the wind. They remain that way, posed on the sand, watching for the disorientation of the rain. And suddenly they let out a deafening cry; they are frightening. Then for no reason they fly into the distance, only to return just as suddenly. Those seagulls are crazy, say the children.

T HE CHILDREN have climbed back up the hill to go to the dining hall. The beach emptied, slowly, as every summer day at that hour, lunchtime for the “camp kids.” The counselors called them in. The child got up, waited for his Jeanne. He put his hand in hers and followed.
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    One day summer will be over. The memory of it sometimes comes to you in the bright light of the beach, through the transparency of the rolling waves. When summer stretches as far as the eye can see, so strong, so hurtful or dark, or sometimes illuminating; when you’re not there, for instance, and I am all alone in the world.
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    I will never know if the child realized one day that on this beach, there was often someone watching him. Several times he turned toward me but it was to stare at nothing, just a whole
troupe of kites. Or the wind. Or the seagulls. It’s the young counselor he’s looking at, whom he knows was assigned to him by the administrators of the holiday camp.
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    It’s the first time I see the body of the child so close to me. He’s a skinny child, tall, maybe too tall for his age. Six years old, he said.
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    A second kite took off like a crazy person toward the sea and then it was snatched up by the wind. The child ran as if to catch it but the kite fell down dead. The child stopped, looked at the dead kite. And he passed it by.
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    Then the aria from Norma floated out again from the residential hotel. Far in the distance, Callas again cried with the child over the dead kite.
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    In the midst of the bad weather there was an hour of sunshine, and warmth suddenly enveloped the beach. The wind fell and they told the children they could go out and swim, that the ocean was warm after the rain.

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    The counselor didn’t follow him, wasn’t watching him anymore. She saw him without looking. The child removed his wool vest, as if he were all alone in the world; he went to drop it near her and then headed off toward the sea with the other children. He didn’t mention the death of the new kite.
    And very soon he came back up the beach, toward the young counselor.
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    The child is in a white bathing suit. Thin. You can see his body clearly. He is too tall, as if made of glass, a windowpane. You can already tell what he’s going to become.
    The perfect proportions, his joints, the length of his muscles – you can see them. The miraculous frailty of his relays, his bones, the folds of his neck, his legs, his hands. You can see.
    And his head, carried like a mathematical emergence, a lighthouse, the tip of a flower.

A ND IT came. Suddenly the nights were hot. And then the days.
    And then the small children from the camps took naps under blue and white tents.
    And the child who remained silent lay there with eyes closed, and nothing set him apart from the other children.
    And the young counselor came up near him. And he opened his eyes. Were you sleeping? He doesn’t answer, just gives that same apologetic smile. Don’t you know when you’re sleeping? He smiles again, says he