ABSTRACT
Pierre’s foot slipped on a rocky slope and he instinctively reached for the boulder next to him to steady his step. Gaining his grip, he watched as a rockslide developed and washed down over the cliffs below. It was getting dark, but not too dark to see. He dusted off his hands and remembered his father’s ability to talk to animals—he hoped he would not find himself in a situation that required such powers. He thought of his brother, Raymond, with whom he used to collect strawberries and eat them all, igniting his brother’s rage. He worried about his brother serving under the French flag in Africa, and for his parents, whom he instructed to inform the authorities that he had died in the bombings. It was not clear where this path would lead him, but surely, not to war. He remembered cycling to Czechoslovakia when he was 15 years old and wished, only for a moment, for a flat gravel road and a bicycle. He made a fire in a cove of boulders and in a shiver, decided to wait out the long, cold night. The terrain was too difficult to navigate in the darkness. He would begin again toward Switzerland in the morning.
