Just After the Wave

by Sandrine Collette

  The boat is so heavy that the water is level with the gunwale when there’s a swell. Madie wishes they could go faster, the ocean oppresses her, getting her hands wet, she places them in her lap. Her legs hurt, she turns from left to right to shift her weight. The little girls stand next to her and fidget, feeling numb.

  “Careful,” says Madie.

  “When will we get there?” chimes Lotte.

  “I need to have a wee-wee,” moans Sidonie.

  So the mother takes the little girl and holds her up over the side of the boat, terrified that some clumsiness might make her let go. But the little girl laughs out loud, bare-bottomed, wriggling, chirping and gurgling when a little wave splashes her. Stop it, says Madie, panicking, do you think it’s easy to keep hold of you, the boat leans to one side. And then the others grow impatient.

  “Me too, me too!”

  And one by one the mother removes their undies, faint with fear, while they giggle and wiggle, Again! shouts Sidonie when they’ve all had a turn, but this time Madie looks at her sternly.

  “No, you don’t need to go anymore.”

  They sit back down, time passes slowly when there’s nothing to do. Madie brought a deck of Happy Families and for a while they play, sometimes distracted by the movement of the water, or a sound they think they hear. Because Madie is stunned by the silence around them, only the breath of the wind fills the air, and the oars dipping in and out of the water at regular intervals, and the boys’ labored breathing—over there beyond their belongings and their supplies, Madie knows from those sounds that they are still pulling hard. From time to time they let the boat drift to rest their arms for a few minutes, and the seepage of the wind wraps itself around them like a frightening mist, a sort of faraway chant, and the mother listens as closely as she can, she’s already white, oh she doesn’t like this dull whistling, it’s not honest, it’s not clear.

  When Sidonie lets out a cry, she gives a start.

  “Look at the fish!”

  Madie turns her head, dubious. The long undulating back circling around the boat makes her raise her eyebrows, a huge creature, four or six feet from head to tail, she can feel a shiver run through her arms. They’ve all seen it, the boys stood up on the other side of their pile of belongings when they heard Sidonie, and the boat rocks, and Pata ordering them to sit back down doesn’t help matters, because he too has stood up to have a look, and his eyes meet Madie’s, and she whispers, “What is it, what is that thing?”

  He shrugs, but goes on rowing. Only the mother notices the slight loss of rhythm to his gestures, a kind of hesitation or precaution, yes, that’s it, the father is being careful, eventually he keeps one oar in the air and orders Liam to do likewise. The boat glides soundlessly, slow and solid. Beneath the water, the beast follows, flashing black in their wake. It is following them, that much is sure.

  “But what does it want?” cries the mother, trembling, suddenly alarmed.

  The father raises his hand imperiously: Sshh. Motions to Liam. They give a stroke of the oars, just once. The boat moves forward. The excited children ask questions all at the same time, looking to one side and then the other, searching the surface of the water with their shining eyes, and the mother would like to scold them, to scream but don’t you know it’s dangerous? Yes, to argue with them, very loudly, it would do her good, it would chase away her fear for a few moments.

  “Enough!” orders Pata, exasperated.

  They sit down, confused. The mother’s throat feels as tight as if someone were trying to strangle her. She senses the imperceptible wave of the beast swimming beneath the boat, brushing it with the top of its back and making an infinitesimal twisting motion, it can be nothing else, the sea around them is smooth, not a ripple, just this tiny, terrifying displacement of the water which goes with them and will not leave them; the father does not dare paddle. Gradually the boat slows and stops. What shall we do, murmurs the mother. Silence, all of them. Liam, Matteo and the father stare out at the water.

  “There it is!” exclaims Matteo.

  “It?”

  “The monster!”

  Madie shudders. To her it seems that the boat is rocking harder and harder. And the father is doing nothing! What is the point of standing there motionless if it’s just to be food for the fish, you might as well row for all you’re worth, maybe the beast will get fed up, maybe it will go back to its lair without disturbing them—but for that to happen, Pata has to regain his wits, instead of this panicky, immobile stare, so Madie suddenly cries out:

  “Get a move on, what are you waiting for!”

  They all give a start, it is as if she has roused them from a wicked spell, she spreads her arms wide in urgency.

  “Row! Row!”

  Liam plunges his oar into the water at the same time as his father, twisting his torso in an effort that elicits a grunt. They encourage him, loudly, Go on, go on. The inertia of the heavily laden craft is enough to drive the mother crazy, she leans forward as if that could help them pick up speed, her jaws clenched fit to break her teeth, if she had a whip, god knows she would use it right then, and she pulls Lotte and Marion closer, her babies, her treasures. The beast cannot be seen for the strokes of the oars and the waves they make, the spray everywhere, the creature is invisible or has slipped away, the mother begins laughing, it’s her nerves, she’s laughing with tears in her eyes, and she stammers, “It’s gone now, isn’t it?”

  And then she sees it gliding behind them. Its dark spine is catching up with them, keeping pace by the port side of the boat. The father stops rowing, undecided. At that moment the mother sees in his gaze that he is tempted to strike the animal, to make it flee or to hurt it, she can sense it even in the oar as it trembles for a fraction of a second in the father’s hand, at the same time that she realizes how big the animal is and how great the risk; should it get angry, it could surely capsize them with a single lunge—and half rising from her seat, with a shrill cry the mother warns them:

  “No!”

  In that same instant, Liam and the father thrust their oars into the sea, propelling the boat ever further, ever harder. Madie loses her balance and almost falls in the water, catching herself on the ropes strung around the gunwale, with Marion in her arms. No one noticed, except Emily and Sidonie, who don’t have the reflex to cry out; they are alone in the stern, the mother and her daughters. They are cut off by the pile of supplies and blankets from the rest of the family, from Liam and the father at the oars, and Matteo keeping watch at the bow. If something should happen to them, no one would realize. She’s not even sure the sound of them falling overboard would drown out the splashing of the oars. The time to cry out and the beast would be upon them. A few seconds of struggle, red water all around them, and the father would hear too late. The mother sits back down, tries to erase the vision. Swears that if they find an island she will make them all get out so they can move the supplies to the stern of the boat. Never mind, this business of ballast. She feels so far away that her voice would not carry beyond the supplies.

  “I think we’re all right now,” says the father.

  The mother stares into the opaque black water, sees no trace of the beast, neither shadow nor movement.

  “We’re all right,” says the father again.

  Yes, maybe it went deeper. To follow them without their knowing. To wait for a moment when they’re not as vigilant, when they’re tired, or night has fallen, there are a thousand ways to outsmart them. The mother thinks again of its strange shape, an animal she has never seen, a stranger to this sea where they have fished all kinds of sea creatures over the years. A beast that the drowned land sent packing, scudded through the water from who knows where, obliged to adapt to an unfamiliar place. Or a little fish, grown gigantic with the miraculous abundance of food and habitat? Matteo is right: a monster. And once again, the mother hopes the father, too, is right, when he says it has g
one away.

  During the night, they dropped anchor so they would not drift. It is so easy to get lost when you have no landmarks either ahead of you or behind you, or anywhere. And the oarsmen need to rest, even though Matteo made it possible for the father and Liam to rest for a few hours during the day. He’s dead tired, the younger brother, with his eyes as big as the sea, and shadows beneath them seeping into his cheeks. So the mother did not protest when they moored in the middle of nowhere, for Matteo and Liam’s sake, because otherwise they won’t make it. She examines her boys and they dodge her gaze, they don’t want her to see how exhausted the exertion has made them, they’re not even hungry, she forces them. She reaches in the first bag for pancakes and hard-boiled eggs; she cooked their entire stock when she knew they were leaving, a whole night spent boiling eggs, fortunately at the time the hens were still laying constantly, she knows the number by heart, there are ninety-two eggs in the bag. She left thirty behind for the little ones abandoned on the hill, the hens will go on laying there, and the children know how to make omelets. She feels a lump in her throat at the sudden thought of Louie, Perrine, and Noah; she reaches abruptly for the knife, cuts up the pancakes, unequal portions as always, she doesn’t want the vision of the three children on the island to come to her. How did they react this morning when they awoke and found the house empty? In their panic, did they see the letter? Do they understand that their father will be coming back for them? And what if they did panic? What if they jumped in the water to go after them? Cut your slices, Madie, shut off your brain, there’s nothing good in there. God, please make sure Perrine manages to cook something. Make it so that Louie will agree to kill his hens one by one, if they get hungry. Maybe they are still at the water’s edge, crying, incapable of moving, they’ll have lost all will, all three of them—why them? Yes, why them? The mother feels the wrenching in her flesh, she knows there were no solutions, it was those three or the others, either way they had to leave someone behind, they are already crammed on this boat worse than sacks of grain, the eight of them. In the falling night, she prays the water level will not rise all of a sudden. That the father will have time to go back. Stop that, stop right now, otherwise you’ll start crying. Her heart upended with sorrow and rage she peels her eggs, three for the father, two for Liam and Matteo. Just one for everyone else. Don’t eat too fast. That much she said out loud.

  A strange picnic on a boat in the middle of the black waves. They have lit two candles. The little girls want to stretch their legs, to run, to squabble. The mother points to the water: Where? They look out at it in silence. Liam and Matteo are already asleep, rolled up in blankets. Emily grumbles.

  “There are mosquitoes.”

  “We’ll climb under the sheet,” whispers Madie.

  “It’s too hot . . . ”

  “During the night it will get cool. You’ll see. We’ll be glad to have a blanket.”

  “Where are we going to sleep?”

  “Lie down right there. I put a little blanket so it won’t be so hard.”

  “Are we going to put on our jammies?”

  “No.”

  “Are we going to brush our teeth?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Are you going to sleep there too?”

  “Of course I am, where else am I supposed to go?”

  The mother glances at the water around them, and touches the ropes on the sides of the boat. Will she manage to sleep? She bets she won’t. She’s too afraid one of her children will fall overboard. She wishes she could have lashed them all together; but the older ones would have given her an exasperated look, and the little ones would have whined that it bothered them. The father would have said she was crazy.

  The father has left a candle burning on the other side of the supplies.

  “What are you doing?” murmurs the mother; she cannot see him.

  “I’m studying the map.”

  “Are we lost?”

  “No, I have a compass. I’m just looking, for tomorrow.”

  “Are we headed east?”

  “Yes. Always.”

  “How many miles did we do today?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But roughly?”

  “The only thing I know is that that’s all we could do.”

  “We made good progress,” says the mother, with conviction.

  “It would be better with some wind.”

  “God forbid.”

  That is Madie’s greatest fear, a storm. Ever since the climate went to the dogs and they’ve been battered by bad weather, she has been afraid of gusts, of sudden squalls that ambush them with a downpour in a matter of seconds, and more than anything of the wind, the wind that brought the sea to their doorstep, obliging them to flee, the wind that would have them lie flat on the ground if they don’t want to be blown away, the wind which on the day of the great tidal wave took the hens from the island. Never before had Madie imagined she would ever see those hens flying away, caught in a wind that whirled them every which way, like wisps of straw that she and Pata never saw again. They would have laughed about it if it hadn’t been so tragic, because at the same time the hens were being scooped up from the ground, a section of the barn roof collapsed, crushing everything underneath it. The father wanted to save what he could—tarpaulins, spare bottles of water, and the wood, because it would eventually dry—so he rushed out. He made it ten yards, no further, before he turned around, nearly swept off his feet himself by the gusting wind, left deep down with an indefinable feeling of weakness. Shrubs he knew did not grow on their hill rolled by like tumbleweeds; one of them scratched his leg and he stumbled. He came back in on all fours, his expression wild, his hair clinging to his brow. It was impossible to close the shutter behind him, he was fighting over it with the wind, which kept slamming it against the wall. He gave up. He would never forget the force of the heavens.

  Madie does not know that he is praying at least as hard as she is, praying to be spared any storms during their voyage. But the water was still rising when they left their island, and that was a bad sign. The elements continue to brim over; nothing can stop them, nothing can calm them. Hundreds of miles of water with neither rocks nor trees to oppose them. A clear field, open to every gust, every whirlwind. Yes, Pata too knows it’s an illusion to believe they can complete the journey without a storm. He just hopes it will come as late as possible, once the former prairies are behind them. He hopes the buttes will still be there, and that they might find refuge for a few hours. At dawn, when he raises the anchor, he looks warily at the sky. There is no hint of anything, just a light, gentle mist, which he doesn’t like much either. And with a sinking heart the father senses they won’t have to wait for long.

  * * *

  One day and one entire night. Hours to be afraid and feel the air pressure building. They saw it coming from a long way off, the storm. The clouds gathered on the horizon like a pack of dogs about to spring, growling for hours while they rowed until they were breathless, as if they could outrow the storm, praying that they would find land, while their panicked gazes swept over the sea and found nothing but water and the first waves. Madie can feel the power beneath them, something vast and contained, she knows the storm is strengthening. No matter which way she turns her head, the sky everywhere is yellow and black, and thunder surrounds them. The boat is solitary, tiny and laughable on the angry ocean. The mother looks at Pata with all her might. He is observing the world, he knows, too. He’s gauging their chances. They have stowed the oars on the side of the craft, they are useless now. A huge black wall is following them, a mixture of rain and wind, of turbulent waves; when they are inside it—when this gigantic gaping mouth catches up with them and engulfs them—there will be nothing they can do. Lowering his eyes from the heavens, the father’s gaze meets the mother’s. His lips murmur in silence. I’m sorry. And just then, the first waves rock the boat.
>
  What they endure at the eye of the storm will mark them forever. Whenever they think back on it, they will pause mid-gesture, once again; their cries will catch in their throats. The memory, too, of those who—and their hands will squeeze, groping for ropes to catch on to, because that was all the father had time to say, Hold onto the ropes.

  The waves rock the little craft, playing with it, tilting it up then pitching it down onto the bow, relentlessly. Screams: when it crashes down, it is as if it is headed straight into the bowels of the sea. Leaning into the oars, Pata tries to steer into the currents; in that moment he does believe they will make it. Wants to believe. He has to. If Liam helps him on the other side—and he opens his mouth to scream above the enraged waves, breathes deep, his eyes stinging with gusts of rain, but nothing comes out, nothing at all, because just as he is about to shout, a huge roller of spray catches him broadside, an ox, a vise, there’s nothing he can do, there is only the wave striking him, the water taking him. In a fraction of a second he flips overboard.

  At the other end of the boat Madie is on her feet, screaming his name into the wind, his name and then the pain, No, no, no! She orders the girls to huddle at the bottom of the boat, to cling to the hooks, which give them some purchase. Tucking Marion tight beneath her coat, she steps over the supplies, caution to the winds, without a thought to the swell which threatens to capsize them, and she falls to her knees at the spot where the father disappeared. There, there! roars Liam, pointing his finger. So the mother plunges her arm in, thinking of nothing, neither the storm which is fighting with her for her husband nor the boat which is heeling to one side with her weight, nor even the beast which, beneath them, is just biding its time; it takes all her energy not to yank her hand back when something grips it under the water, ferociously, something holding her arm or tearing it, she’s not sure which, she resists whatever it is that is pulling her, gradually; Liam has hold of her on the other side to keep her from slipping, she hears his cries, Mommy, Mommy!