Just After the Wave

by Sandrine Collette

  The father snivels soundlessly. The baby’s silence is wrenching.

  But then comes Liam’s weary voice.

  “There’s an island over there.”

  He sits up straight. For now it’s just a dot on the horizon, a dot on their route. Less than an hour off course, at a guess. So the father says, Let’s go.

  “You think there’ll be food?”

  “I hope so.”

  “It looks big.”

  “Yes, fairly big. We’re bound to find something.”

  Madie looks, too. At first she doesn’t want to be glad, not to be disappointed. She curbs the unbearable little voice inside her that is already squeaking with joy, she can’t believe it, she’s sure the island will disappear, a mirage in their tired eyes, in their silent prayers. But the further they go, the bigger the mound becomes. After half an hour they can make out green shapes, bushes or little trees, expanses of grass, woods. And it’s true that all of a sudden the island looks like paradise. Madie exclaims, Oh my lord! Matteo, Emily, and Sidonie are clutching the gunwale, their eyes feasting on the approaching land. At the same time they keep an eye on the sky, where all the perils have come from, they don’t trust it, something worries them.

  They’re wrong. It’s in the sea that the threat is looming, but none of them realizes it just then, absorbed as they are by the clouds, the absence of wind, the outline of the island. Matteo slaps his thighs, I knew it! Pata lets out a cry, turns to them, his smile radiant.

  “We’re saved.”

  Even the baby, awoken by their exclamations, waves her arms and chirps. Yes, says Madie, we’ll go there, we’ll find food. Her hands, white-knuckled, veins bulging, grab the rope around the boat as if to make it go faster, she wants to see, to feel, to be sure of the food they will find there, she’s already planning a meal in her mind, picturing them all in a circle around a fire, mouths watering from the aroma of something roasting—what can they roast, for goodness’ sake, tubers, forgotten vegetables, a careless bird, some fish at last?

  Sidonie stretches her arms out to the island: Come! They laugh.

  The island is only a few hundred yards away. From the bow Pata thinks he can make out spots of color on the bushes, maybe berries, or fruit, he prays in silence. Feverish agitation overcomes him, he misses the feel of earth beneath his feet, its motionless strength, its warmth. He smiles.

  Then his smile fades.

  The boat judders to a halt. It has hit something.

  He looks at Liam, rowing on the other side, who frowns when he sees the father has stopped. What is it? Pata slowly immerses the oar in the water: there’s no silt, no resistance, he didn’t think there would be, to be honest, no reeds, no rushes to break through the surface here, it’s still too deep, it’s not land they’ve scraped against, no. All of a sudden, his terror poorly concealed, the blood drains from his face. Shivers along his skin, like the sudden onset of a raging fever: he knows what they have struck. Turns to Liam.

  “Turn around.”

  Act as if. Pretend. The boat moves a few feet.

  “Something stuck on my side,” exclaims Liam.

  “Try again.”

  “I can’t, it’s stuck!”

  “It’s not stuck. Row.”

  “I tell you it is!”

  Matteo is by his brother and now he leans over and dips his hand into the water to search around the edge of the hull. Pata screams: No! And then silence. He looks at Matteo, he looks at all six of them frozen by his cry, sitting straight and motionless, six pairs of eyes glued on him. He shakes his head, looks at Liam.

  “Row backwards. We’ll move off to the right.”

  The oars dip into the water, struggling to maneuver the little craft. Slowly, the boat heads again toward the island. Quick, breathes Pata. Eighty, a hundred yards. They pick up speed, breathless, look all around not knowing why, only the father, with his eyes scanning the space, his mouth suddenly open—when the wave forms.

  “There. There!”

  “What do we do?” cries Liam.

  They watch the ripple in the water, fascinated by the roller that comes toward them and pushes them away from the shore. Initially they are not afraid, because the wave is round and gentle; until they realize. Everywhere else the sea is flat and smooth. Not a breath of air. No lapping of water. Madie’s worried expression: What is it? Pata doesn’t reply. To say what? To hear his voice trembling when he says, It’s the creature—no, he goes on rowing, in vain, because the huge invisible body blocks their way, under the water, never mind, he tries again, Liam follows suit. For a few moments they make headway again. Matteo encourages them.

  “We’re nearly there!”

  Yes, but.

  Silently the wave forms again. Pushes them back more abruptly, as if annoyed; this time the boat rocks, the mother reaches for her little ones to make them sit on the floor. It’s the creature, isn’t it!

  “What is it?” shouts Matteo.

  Liam gives a start, holds out his arm.

  “It’s the monster! It’s back!”

  It never left, ruminates Pata, biting his lip, feeling the knots in his stomach as he stares at the ripples on the water; the creature is circling around them, shoving them.

  “Why is it doing this?” cries Matteo.

  To keep us from landing—but the father doesn’t say it out loud, too terrified to utter the words, it’s just that he’s sure, the beast has decided to attack before the water is too shallow for it to follow, before they hurry away, before the father stops being afraid. In a surge of desperation he strikes the water with the edge of his oar, immediately thinks that was a stupid thing to do, but too late, when you picture the size of the thing swimming beneath them, a blow for nothing, for an explosion of anger, a fraction of a second later the waters whirl apart to reveal a gigantic animal. Everyone on the boat screams, mother, father, children, instinctively recoiling, hands raised before them in a useless gesture. Do they see what Pata sees at that moment, the shining gray-black body emerging from the depths, its huge mouth open on razor-sharp teeth, and even more terrifying, its roar—do they hear its hoarse, mournful cry causing the surface of the water to tremble, creasing the air beneath its resonance, petrifying them all in the middle of the boat, tiny and panicked, the little girls crying, hiding their eyes. Liam and his father seize the oars, struggle against the current left by the beast. The shore is a few yards away, Pata could weep for it, he can almost reach out and touch it, jump out, ten breaststrokes beneath the water—and the monster’s jaw closing over him, he knows he wouldn’t have the time, or the speed.

  “It won’t let us!” screams Madie.

  The boat lurches from left to right, buffeted by waves and troughs. They are lying on the floor, rolling and crashing into the side of the boat as it rises and falls with a sinister cracking sound, they are drenched by the slapping of the water. Liam and Matteo cry out at the same time, there’s a leak, the father envisages all the impossible solutions, final seconds, their little boat damaged, the wood giving way, he squeezes the edge with all his strength as if that could hold the boat together, Don’t kill my children, his head shaking as he roars, No, no, and meets Madie’s horror-stricken gaze.

  “It’s going to eat us!” screams Liam.

  “No!” But Pata is losing faith and his voice cracks.

  He starts to get up, nearly stumbles into the water, bangs into Matteo next to him. He squeezes his shoulder, and sways when he sees the knife in the boy’s hand. Matteo?

  The crazed look on his boy’s face.

  “If I go for him, you’ll have time to land.”

  “What?”

  He reaches out his hand to grab him. The boy leaps away. Jumps overboard, and the father had no time to do a thing. Matteo was there next to him—and a second later, an absence, not even a second went by, nor does he hear the sound of his body hit
ting the water.

  Then Pata’s roar, and Madie’s, and Liam’s. All three of them saw.

  The waters swirling, and the foam, suddenly moving away, leaving the half-drowned boat, to plunge a few yards further away. The sun glinting off the flash of the knife blade, and the cries, of the beast, of the boy, the water red around them, all is vain, the father doesn’t listen, doesn’t look, won’t, he has picked up the oars and is rowing like a condemned man toward land.

  Only Liam and the father had the strength to drag the beast’s body onto the shore, a creature over six feet long, it was stupid but Pata couldn’t help figuring its length, that of a bed, roughly, that was it, six feet of power and rage. The mother and the girls are weeping helplessly as they watch them tugging the gray mass, scored with knife wounds, blood still flowing. They don’t want to go closer. The father sobs as he slices open the animal’s belly and empties it, throwing the guts into the sea. He cuts its head off cautiously, as if its sharp teeth could still tear off his arm. Fucking monster . . . Liam is kneeling next to him, his big eyes full of silent tears. His hands curved over the gleaming skin—if he could tear it off, shred upon shred, if the beast were still alive, if it could feel pain the way he does, piercing his heart, a knife wound, a strangling. Pata next to him carves and cuts, slices, skins, a bit more than he needs to, for sure, anger, despair. Liam agrees:

  “We’ll eat the whole goddamn thing.”

  He hides his disgust, the nauseating smell, the viscous flesh he is reluctant to touch. The father gestures toward the fire and he skewers hunks of flesh onto wooden stakes and puts them on to roast. Not hungry. And yet. Despite the sorrow, despite the shock which has silenced them all, when the air fills with the smell of fish they go closer, for three days they’ve been eating the last crumbs of pancakes and potatoes, a few blackberries, and air, they hate themselves, the way their gazes are riveted on the fire, their weak, famished bellies, the saliva at the corners of their lips. Pata goes on slicing, they’ll cook the surplus during the night and take it with them the next day, so that it will have served some purpose—to allow them to land, to eat, it had saved them, at last. His hands tremble on the knife blade.

  They have not found Matteo’s body. Perhaps drifting, perhaps twenty feet under. The father doesn’t know. He took the others to shelter on the island, surrounding the keening mother, to keep her from diving in, he murmured in her ear to convince her, and so that the girls would not hear, He’s dead, Madie, he’s dead, you have to look after the girls now, you hear me? Jumping in the water won’t bring him back. And she wails with despondency, her suffering greater than the open sky when it rains, her arms straight in front of her. He had to calm her like a little child. Wept with her when she said:

  “Another one. Another one.”

  Pata keeps busy, so as not to think. The fire, the boat turned on its side on the shore to provide shelter for the night, the image of the beast floating on the surface of the water, then carving it up. He goes from one child to the next with a tender word, a smile, a caress.

  “I’m hungry,” says Sidonie.

  “It’s almost ready.”

  When he comes to the mother he hesitates. If she looked up she would see his unsure, questioning, imploring step; but Madie doesn’t look up. She has withdrawn into herself, curled around her despair, her eyes hidden behind her palms, and suddenly the father is fascinated by her hands, those of an old woman of forty, with blue, protruding veins, spots on her skin that shine yellow, hands that have been clinging too hard to the boat these last days and which look as if they will never open again, curled like claws. And so he moves on, without making a sound or a gesture, he leans over the baby in Emily’s arms, next to the mother, strokes the girl’s cheek, let’s hope the fish will be good. Liam has begun to pass it around, filling their metal bowls. They eat in silence.

  Afterwards the little girls get up. Emily puts the baby in Madie’s arms and runs with Sidonie, her legs stiff after so many days, the stop yesterday did not completely revive them. Before long the father hears them laughing. He hurries over—and stops. To say what? What, at the age of five or six, do they understand of death and sorrow? Of course they saw dead animals back on their island, drowned rats, hens the mother was preparing for dinner. But that wasn’t death. They only know absence.

  Tomorrow they will ask where Matteo is, the way they did with Lotte, and he’ll have to keep from shouting at them, how stupid they are, they saw it for themselves, and they were told that Lotte was dead, and now Matteo, too, is dead, dead, DEAD. But they are stubborn. Sidonie insists Lotte is in the sea with the fish. I’d like to go there too, she proclaims in her clear, chiming voice. The mother turns pale.

  “Be quiet!”

  Sidonie looks down, gazes silently at the surface of the water, looking for a familiar shadow, does not know it cannot be, splashes with her hand as if to attract something—what, thinks Pata, corpses, fantasies—miracles. Her innocence appalls and enchants him at the same time: if only they, too, the father and mother, could be content with absence. Take note. Lotte is no longer here, nor is Matteo. Something new is beginning.

  But the night lays bare the falsehood, and Pata cannot sleep for grief, with Madie stifling her sobs on the other side of the fire, both of them incapable of speaking or helping each other, a wall between them, for everything they don’t want to say to each other in front of the children. Liam has burrowed beneath a blanket so that no one can see him. Ten times the father gets up to go and look at the little girls and find courage there; they have drifted off to sleep, smiling, and their peaceful faces console him for a brief moment, what can be consoled, a balm on a patch of his heart, a soothing breath on a burn. Maybe they are not even unhappy. They cried, earlier, because they were afraid; but sorrow? How will they miss Matteo? Sidonie, as she lies down, says to Emily:

  “I like it when Matteo isn’t here because that way he can’t pester me and yank on my pajamas.”

  Above all, don’t scold them. There is nothing more alive than his little girls, and what could be more right than they are, rooted in the moment, oblivious of the past, unconscious of the future when it goes beyond the next hour or the next meal. He envies their animal spontaneity, the mindless momentum that propels them toward the future come what may, selfish and proud, virgin souls who know nothing of good and evil; his marmots, his little girls. He dozes for an hour or two, his gaze filled with love. If they were not here, he’d be dead already.

  At dawn, wandering by the water’s edge, he finds Matteo’s body.

  * * *

  Of course, it’s only a body. But still.

  Pata stepped back once he’d pulled it up on the shore and turned it over to gaze at it. Vomited some bile just there, couldn’t help it, it happened too quickly, seeing the boy’s face half torn off, his arm missing below the elbow—the right arm, the one that had been holding the knife. Matteo’s flesh exhibits the violence of the final moments. The father looks behind him; the others are still sleeping. In a burst of panic he takes his son in his arms and runs to the farthest point on the island to bury him. Madie mustn’t see him, not Madie or Liam or the girls, no one, he wants to conceal everything that has damaged Matteo, he wants to keep pure the image of the little boy they had brought up to be a fine lad. But the island is nothing but hard ground and scrabble, and Pata breaks his nails trying to dig a grave, terrified at the thought that Madie might wake, he tries three or four different spots, and fails every time. So he runs to the boat and takes a rope. Picks up the biggest stones and winds the rope first around the stones, then around Matteo, all bound tightly together. When he’s sure the rocks will be heavier than his boy he shoves the strange coffin to the edge of the water, but gently, as if it might still have an effect, this infinite care taken by something deep inside him that is not quite dead, murmuring words of comfort, a final caress on the cheek that is intact—he won’t look at the other one. One more ge
sture and Matteo’s body slips soundlessly into the sea. For a moment it seems to want to float on the surface, and the father fears it might never sink. Then the water fills the spaces, takes hold, sucks it down, and the boy’s ravaged body vanishes beneath the tranquil ripples, no more than a shadow. And then nothing. Pata kneels on the shore, his face in his hands. He stays there for a long time, his mind completely empty, his fingers gripping the fierce pounding in his skull, he huddles over his heaving heart, his insane thoughts. What if he loses them one after the other? Is this his punishment for abandoning Louie, Perrine, and Noah on the island, will three of his children on the boat die now to make him regret his decision, to tell him he shouldn’t have chosen those children, but how could he know, how can he be forgiven—nothing is possible anymore, he can only go back to sea and pray he won’t finally get there with three empty places, pray that land will appear soon on the horizon, mountains rising up before him, tomorrow, today, in an hour, it is time, they can’t take any more of this. Already it is time to get up. In his body Pata feels like an old man.

  When Madie wakes, he tells her in a whisper about Matteo. Gives no details, just that he’d been injured, that she wouldn’t have wanted to see him. What he did with the stones. Her eyes lowered, the mother nods, says nothing. On her drawn features there is a sort of wretched relief. The father almost adds, I’m sorry, but then recalls he has said this already, too often. Silence absorbs them as they ready the boat to leave, Liam at the oars, holding the boat steady against the shore for the girls to climb in. For a moment Pata feels a dull fear in his gut, wondering what the sea has in store for them on this new day, and he looks out, lost, at the vast surface of the water. Then, so what. Does he have any choice, now? He grabs the oar Liam holds out to him. Are we off? The boat seems to weigh so heavily in his arms. He forces it away from the stagnant water.