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    Against the wall, beneath an awning, was the child.
    He looked at the sea; he didn’t play with the stones he’d gathered on the beach. He held them tightly in his clenched fists. He was wearing something red. Next to him was the young counselor. She looked at him, then at the rain, and then again at him, the child. The boy’s eyes were lighter than usual, larger, more frightening as well, because of the blinding amplitude of what there was to see.
    And once after that day, I remember, the counselor went into a large white tent. She started telling a story about the sea and a child. All the children looked at the sea.

    Once upon a time, said the young counselor, once upon a time there was a little boy named David. He had gone off with his parents to sail around the world on a yacht, the Admiral System .
    And it happened that one day the sea became very bad.
    And the sea was so bad that the Admiral System sank lock, stock, and barrel to the bottom, except for him, that little David kid. And wouldn’t you know that just then a shark was swimming by, who said to him, Come over here and get on my back, little boy. And off the two of them went over the ocean waves.
    Wow! say the children.
    The young counselor pauses, then goes on:
    The shark went very fast along the surface of the waves, the counselor says.
    And then she stops; she falls asleep. The children shout. She begins again.
    The counselor tells the story slowly and very well. She wants the children to stay quiet and the children stay completely quiet.
    Ratakataboom is the shark’s name, she repeats. Don’t forget that word, or else you won’t understand what happens next.
    At the shark’s name, the children laugh out loud. Some of them laugh at the shark, others at the counselor.

    The children repeat whatever comes into their heads. The children repeat in cadence. Boom Boom Telly. Telly Rataky Boom Boom, they say. It doesn’t matter.
    Is the quiet child listening to the story of David as told by the young counselor? No one can know, but he probably is; that child listens to everything. This evening it’s almost like the first time he’s heard a story. He looks at the young counselor, but his gray eyes reveal nothing except that they are looking toward the counselor, the way they’d look toward the seagulls, the sea, beyond the beaches, beyond the sea, beyond the wind and sand and clouds, the screaming gulls and the butchered red worms. David, she narrates, the counselor narrates, and the shark too, with that name of his that he can’t pronounce...
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    The sea is milky blue. There is no wind to carry the story of David as told by the girl. She is stretched out on some tent canvas, staring up at the sky, and she says whatever comes into her head and then she laughs. And the children laugh and listen with all their might.
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    The weather is so calm that bands of swallows come in turn, swirl above the beach, beautiful as gray velvet, as if mad for
children, for the flesh of children. As for the children, well, it makes them laugh ...
    The shark scolds David for crying, the counselor continues. He reminds David that he was the one who gobbled up David’s father and mother, and that it’s not very tactful of David to be crying in front of him.
    The young counselor suddenly seems to drop off to sleep. The children shout.
    You finish that story now, or we’re going to beat you up, shout the children.
    The island comes into sight, the counselor says, laughing.
    She has forgotten; then she remembers. She says:
    But it’s an equatorial island! says David.
    And then she has forgotten the rest, she says.
    I’ve forgotten, she says, I’m sorry.
    Then the children howl:
    Never! Never!
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    So she tells the story all the same. And the children listen as before, but at the end they notice that she’s no longer telling the same story, the one she had begun, and again they shout:
    You finish