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that story now, or we’re going to beat you up. Then she tells the story:

    But it’s an equatorial island, says David.
    Exactly, says the shark.
    Then she says that she really doesn’t know anymore about anything, and in fact ...
    And she falls asleep.

I T’S THE evening of a hazy, sunless day. On the boardwalk passes the young counselor from the beach. She is with the child. He is taking a little walk by her side. They are moving slowly. She is talking to him. She tells him she loves him. That she loves a child.
    She tells him her age, eighteen years old, and her name. She asks him to repeat it. The child repeats her name, her age. He says, Johanna. And he says, Eighteen years old. Then he repeats the word Johanna again. Then he asks, Johanna what? The girl says, Goldberg. Johanna Goldberg. The child repeats the full name.
    The girl asks what his name is.
    The child says:
    Samuel Steiner.
    He smiles at an image that only he, in all the world, still retains.

    He says:
    And my little sister was Judith Steiner.

T HE CHILD and she, the counselor. They are walking together. They are thin, skinny; they have the same body, the same long, lazy walk. This morning they are walking along the seashore. The same, both of them. Two Negroes, very thin and white. Fallen from the sky.
    Concern about them seems to be spreading among the other counselors and the administrators. Because they never leave each other’s side.
    Beneath the streetlamp she stopped, took the child’s face in her hands, and raised it toward the light to see his eyes: Gray, she said. Then she let go of his face and spoke to him.
    She tells him that all his life he will remember this summer of 1980, the summer when he was six. She tells him to look at everything. Including the stars. And also the long line of oil tankers from Cap d’Antifer. Everything. She tells him to look carefully, this evening. The sea, this city, the cities across the
river, the spinning lighthouses, look carefully, and at every kind of ship on the sea, the black oil tankers, so beautiful. And the large English ferries, the white boats . . . And all the fishing boats – Look over there, at all those lights – and she tells him to listen well to all the night’s sounds. That this is the summer when he is six. That that number will never come back again in his life. And to remember Rue de Londres – which only they know, she and he – which is the Temple of the Sun. She tells him that when he’s sixteen, on the same day as today, he can come here; that she will be here in this same spot on the beach but at a later hour, near midnight. He says that he doesn’t really understand what she’s saying but that he’ll come.
    She says she’ll recognize him, that he is to wait for her opposite Rue de Londres. That he can’t miss it.
    She says, We’ll make love together, you and I.
    He says yes. He says he doesn’t understand.
    She says, The seashore will be deserted. It will already be night and the beaches will be empty, everyone will be with their families.
    They walk together toward the sea until they disappear in the sand, until the people following them with their eyes are horrified.
    Until they return toward the tennis courts.

    She is carrying him on her shoulders. She sings that by the clearwater stream she rested and never never shall she forget him.
    They walk for a long time. It’s already late and the beaches are deserted.
    They leave the boardwalk, disappear into the cliffs.
    After they leave it’s still not entirely dark. He says that he’d like to tell her something.
    Then the young counselor cries again and tells him there’s no need, she knows what he wanted to tell her but there’s no need, she already knows, they told her at the orphanage. And then she hides her face and cries and she tells the rest of the story of David.
    The other children always come back when the counselors tell