Just that it is coming.
For the first time, Madie is alone to confront it. A confrontation so unequal that she laughs—a single, dry little laugh, scornful, masking her terror, she looks like a madwoman with her sweat-soaked hair sticking to her forehead, her big eyes open wide and rolling in their sockets.
But an hour later she isn’t laughing, Madie, and she knows that in her entire life she has only ever seen this in books: a magnetic storm. She has watched it coming from far off. The sky torn by bolts of lightning, lines of molten fire plummeting into the waves, accompanied by deafening crackling sounds, it is as if the ocean itself were parting, swaths of phosphorescent green spreading across the surface and illuminating the lower depths, fathom upon fathom. Madie, leaning over the side, in silent stupor, cannot help but observe the drowned world below her when the lightning flashes, the dead outlines of the buildings and trees that were caught in the tidal wave, hulks of cars that haven’t had time to rust, illegible signs, turned and twisted. Asphalt streets blistered and split by the violence of the cataclysm; a church steeple. The storm makes them appear intermittently beneath the boat in a bleary yellow and green light, as if they were being photographed in negative, as if the harsh light of a projector was blinding them for a few fractions of a second, and after that, everything returns to obscurity, the mother leans a little further, terrified and tense with waiting, she wants to see more, to rediscover, to revel in this dead world caught in the currents, where everything floats and everything is trapped on the bottom, imprisoned by its own weight.
When a lightning bolt strikes thirty feet from the boat, Madie lies flat on the floorboards. She glances up at the clouds: now the storm is upon her, she can feel her small craft panicking, spinning on itself, the streaks from the sky circling it ever closer. At that moment exactly the mother thinks it is all over, yes, in that fraction of a second when the lightning strikes to her left, then again to her right, and the impact, the vibrations cause the waves to roar, aftershocks coming to ram the boat, and the green light with its charge of electricity stops a few inches from her, a cry, No! as she waits for the next flash to hit her, the water is riddled with lightning, a blinding glare, the end of the world.
On the boat Madie sobs among the lightning flashes, her hands over her ears, not to hear anymore; and then she puts them back on the side of the boat to hold on, instinctively, she cannot bring herself to surrender to the storm, to whirl her way down to those drowned lightning-lit landscapes.
She wanted to close her eyes, she couldn’t, it was as if they were being forced open to make her see, terror keeping them wide open, incredulous, awestruck, lashed by the spray that is making her weep, but there it is, it’s impossible to close her terrified, fascinated eyes, scorched by the lightning which continues to strike with a consuming rage, the bow of the boat is taking on water, Madie holds on, her mouth open in an endless scream.
And then a drop of rain.
She doesn’t even feel it.
Another one.
The storm hesitates, but she’s not looking.
Not screaming, nothing.
But not dead. Like those soldiers petrified by war who have forgotten how to move.
Her eyes riveted to the floor of the boat.
The storm abandons her just as dawn sketches a gray horizon. Then with no sense of relief, no prayer, Madie bails the water from the bottom of the boat and lies down again, her body drenched, her lips purple with cold and fright. She finds the same position, goes twelve hours back in time, an animal curled in a ball watching the night, then daybreak, out of the corner of its eye, the arrival of the sun, the heat causing steam to rise from her clothes and from the sea. The rowboat glides smoothly, lulled by peaceable currents.
The difference is hunger, thirst, and fear.
And death approaching, holding regrets by the arm.
ON THE ISLAND
August 28
On the ninth day after their parents left, Louie, Perrine, and Noah watched as the sea rose all day. Every hour, they went to inspect the water until it reached the stone Louie had put on the ground, covered it, and moved beyond it. Louie put a new stone a bit higher up, but Noah stopped him with his hand.
“I get it.”
The little boy added, as if to reassure himself—as if there was anything left to reassure him about—his eyes moist and his heart beating too fast:
“We have six days left, that’s it.”
Louie shrugged his shoulders, looking at the top of the hill.
More or less.
Perrine gazed at the ocean, her hand shielding her eyes. Pata has to get here.
And yet there is this strange lack of awareness that makes them chatter as they stride across the island, arguing this way and that, they will die, or they won’t, six days or five or seven, where will it flood last, where should they build a hut or put up a tent to keep going until the last moment. It feels unreal, as if death had no consistency—and yet again, their knowledge of that thing was too fleeting for them to be truly afraid of it, they cannot imagine what it means to drown. Right away the idea of a hut distracts them, amuses them; not one of the three tells the others to be quiet because there is danger, because there is urgency. They think. Where can they find wooden poles for the structure of a tent or a roof, what can they use for tarps, which sheets if they have to, how big. What will resist the sun and wind, how much food and water should they take; and the hens, and a mattress for the three of them.
So of course while they are dawdling from place to place on the tiny island, of course when the boat appears on the horizon, a little dark spot melting into the sunlight, they don’t even notice it.
Yet it is there, that boat, for the time being it is in the distance, uncertain, but there can be no doubt that it has set its course for their hill—the only land within sight when you are coming the way it is from the northwest, the other islands are on the other side, invisible. On the boat a figure is moving about. It’s because of a brusqueness in its movements, an impatience, that an hour later, when Louie springs up all of a sudden with a shout, they will all swear it is Pata on his way back.
The fact that it is far too soon: they don’t think of that.
That the high ground is to the east and not the northwest, they’ve forgotten that.
* * *
Damn water, everywhere, he hasn’t seen a patch of land anywhere for days. And for days he’s been looking at the sky, after he weathered the storm, well, it passed him by, some ways away, but those huge waves nearly capsized the tub and left it half full of water, damn rotten boat, no wonder he was able to steal it, nobody wanted it anymore. So here he is now, on the sea, he hates the sea—he doesn’t even know how to swim—rowing this way and that without a map or a compass, he didn’t have time, he knows he’s doomed. But as long as there’s life, and a rage—so he clenches his fists as he scoops into the water with his oars, he ought to know, it does no good to moan, there’s no one there to hear him, no one to help him, Row, asshole, that’s how he speaks to himself.
He used up his meager supplies two days ago. Just some lukewarm water left at the bottom of a bottle rolling on the floorboards. He left in a hurry maybe a week ago—they were bound to figure out he was the one who’d tortured the old man to make him say where he’d hidden his money; he should’ve killed that old man, anyway, rather than leave him half dead on the floor of his shack, and now the old man has Ades’s face printed on his retina, all he has to do is give his name to the people who came to rescue him and the hunt will be on.
So he left just before.
Didn’t think it through.
Where?
Fucking shit. What the fuck does he know, from where he’s headed.
It’s just that Ades doesn’t want to get caught. These days, people make their own justice, and that’s bad for him, with all those honest folk who’ve decided t
hat the earth is too small now to put up with scum like him. They will throw him in the water, not a moment’s hesitation, with two fine stones on his feet to make sure he goes down good; he’d been there when Jean and Atta, his old partners in crime, got themselves lynched, and he knows that he isn’t any better than them. Only a matter of time: his turn will come.
But he got the hell out of there too fast, that was for sure, and he didn’t prepare anything. When he heard the door open downstairs, in the house where a dozen of them were squatting without permission, he got up with a start, grabbed his bag and his jacket, jumped out the window and started running: he knew the way by heart. Escape is burned inside him, viscerally, a spark that can galvanize his entire body in a few fractions of a second, an animal instinct, ageless.
And that was it.
After that, came the old boat—out of gas two days ago, heavy as a tank—and the infinite sea, and the near-certainty that it will all end here.
Unless.
He actually begins to dance, Ades, when he sees the smudge on the horizon. He even barks an oath, narrowing his eyes to be sure he’s not dreaming, and hell’s bells, no, he’s not dreaming, it doesn’t move, it doesn’t disappear. An hour later he knows it’s an island and that he’ll reach it before the afternoon is out. He has to get a lot closer before he can make out the outline of the house and nod his head, until it becomes obvious: the island is inhabited. In a way, that reassures him. He’ll find something to eat and drink, a roof for his head. But it’s bad news, too, because he doesn’t know what he’ll find on that land, peaceful families or nervous little warriors, and as he runs his tongue over his teeth the way he always does when he’s annoyed, he wonders what to expect, and how to present himself. The long knife in his pocket is a comfort. If he looks despondent, he can pass himself off as a man who lost his family in the storm and is trying to find his way back to high ground. They’ll put him up for a night or two; then he’ll see. It depends on so many things. How many of them there are. What they’re like. What they have, and what they tell him. His fierceness is written on his low brow, in the gleam of his yellowish eyes. Some families, when they saw him coming, would offer him what they had in exchange for the promise that he’d be on his way. He loves that mute power, the dull fear his presence inspires. But he hasn’t forgotten that people would rather see him dead, that all it takes is one man a smidgen meaner than he is and he’ll end up on the ground, felled by the bullet of a rifle or his throat slit by a knife.
But not everyone knows him, of course.
So now he’s getting closer to the island, and he’s thought through all the possibilities, and decided to show up nice and smiley, and then he’ll see. First he’ll eat, and sleep. With one eye open, as always. Find out which way to go, hope they have a map. Keep his voice down—unless someone comes looking to start a fight, because he’s hot-blooded, is Ades, it doesn’t take much to get him worked up. Damnation, he thinks, there was me thinking I’d die on this boat.
He laughs. He can see the island is small, that he shouldn’t expect much.
He doesn’t care, he’s not expecting anything, just some food and a bed. For the rest, he has faith. He is capable of taking everything, stealing everything, killing everything, silently and without remorse. That’s his strength, this absence of scruples. His conscience died years ago, in the fire that killed his parents and his sister, an accident the police called it back then, an accident that had tied his father and mother to a chair while someone held burning brands to the curtains. The baby girl was in her cradle next to the fireplace.
No, he didn’t do it, it wasn’t Ades who set the fire. In those days he was a normal kid. But the father did a fair amount of trafficking; there were threats, his old man was sick of it all, had never believed those threats: proof he should have. He was sure he was untouchable. What Ades learned in that moment was that you were the strongest and the craziest until the day you met someone stronger and crazier than you were—and there was always someone. He owed the fact that he’d lived nearly to the age of forty now to his unrelenting vigilance; mistrust was his bible, and besides, may as well say it, he didn’t know what it meant to hesitate, to pity, or to feel.
In a life like his, you’re bound to run into strange characters and complicated situations. He’s seen it all. Made it through it all. Not that he’s come out on top, but then he didn’t expect to. All he knows is fighting and thieving—he’s good at that, damn sure. And if there’s one thing he’s learned, it’s that with those two gifts you can solve any problem. ’Course he won’t tell anyone any of that when he gets to the island. He’ll put on his good-boy mask, his stupid smile; sometimes it makes him look even scarier, so he checks his reflection in the water to make sure his jaws aren’t clenched and that his features are softer.
Not bad.
Has to remember not to laugh: he looks demented.
Sometimes he thinks he must be crossed with an animal. Bastard, he murmurs to himself.
On the shore there are figures moving restlessly. So he’s been spotted. His throat tightens: the excitement of something new, maybe dangerous, maybe not, a confrontation with other people, and his life is such a solitary one, this’ll be a break, a challenge. In a hushed voice he says, I’m coming.
He’s ready. Lie low, cross swords, jump out of the boat, run away if anything seems dicey; beg, weep, keep quiet, tell them some story he’s made up from beginning to end, once again.
So he is prepared for anything.
Except for the three pairs of wide eyes staring at him when he finally steps on land, disgusted by all that ocean, and ties the boat to a tree next to the drowned jetty.
What the hell is this, thinks Ades, looking at them, what sort of welcome, this circus, one kid with a twisted leg, another one knee-high to a grasshopper, and a little girl with a blank eye; he has to refrain from bursting out laughing, this is a freak show, where are the others hiding? There’s something disturbing in the eyes of the kids standing there, a special light, like a huge expectation tinged with bitterness, as if they’d been hoping for him with all their might—yes, this is the impression he’s getting—and that when he finally stood there before them, everything collapsed. So that’s the effect he has on these three brats, a disappointment scarcely concealed by their stunned expressions, their downturned mouths. Ades suddenly gets it: they were expecting someone else.
He hasn’t said a word yet.
Nor have they.
He finishes mooring the boat, takes his bag, walking heavily, a few steps. He stands up straight, slowly, feels his back straining after all these days on the water where every movement was made hunched over. The kids watch him. He walks toward them, no hurry. There’s no rush—he surveys his surroundings, tries to see whether there could be anyone hiding, he listens carefully. And he doesn’t want to frighten them, doesn’t want them to go shouting and raising the alarm. He pretends to be walking along an invisible path; when he draws level with them he turns his head toward them. All he says:
“Hey.”
The smallest one smiles: Hey. The two older ones don’t say a thing.
“I’m looking for your parents.”
This time, too, only the little boy opens his mouth. They’re not here.
Ades raises his eyebrow. It’s strange how incongruous his answer seems in a place like this, where there’s nowhere to go, and the kid saying it as naturally as if he were saying, They went shopping. Yes, but where? So Ades lowers his eyebrow in a frown and asks:
“Where are they?”
“They left.”
“When are they coming back?”
“In . . . six days.” Noah counted on his fingers and glanced questioningly at Louie and Perrine.
Goddamn, thinks Ades, either this kid is a half-wit, or he’s making fun of me. But the two next to him don’t seem to think it’s funny. He decides to be patient.
&
nbsp; “Oh,” he says. “So who is here on the island?”
“We are.”
“And who else?”
“Nobody.”
“Are you telling me you live here all alone, the three of you?”
The little boy nods.
“Our parents left with the others, ’cause of the rising water. There wasn’t enough room on the boat, so they left us. But Pata is going to come back and get us.”
“In six days.”
“Yes. But Louie says that in six days there won’t be any more island and we’ll all be drowned.”
Ades surveys the land besieged by the sea. In his opinion the kid’s not wrong, and he turns to him.
“You’re Louie?”
The bigger boy nods.
“Is there anything to eat here?”
The little girl breaks in:
“There’s some but not a lot, otherwise we won’t have enough until Pata gets here.”
“Let’s go check it out. I’m starving.”
The little boy follows close on his heels, skipping.
“Do you like eggs? We have eggs.”
“That’ll do me. I’ll have six.”
“Six?”
There is surprise on the kid’s face but not only. A sort of amazement. In spite of himself, Ades smiles, mechanically counting his steps from the shore to the house, an old habit he hardly notices.
“Who does the cooking?”
“Perrine does. Sometimes Louie helps her, and me too.”
“Okay. Perrine, make me six eggs.”
The little girl does not abandon her look of surprise, but takes a big frying pan out of a cupboard. Noah adds:
Just After the Wave Page 17
