Just After the Wave

by Sandrine Collette

  “And we want to eat the hens, but Louie won’t let us. And we don’t know how to fix them.”

  “I’ll fix them for you, your hens. I haven’t had any decent meat in weeks, so if that’s all it takes to make you happy . . . ”

  “Yay!”

  Afterwards, Ades cannot recall that he’s ever had a meal with three kids sitting around him, not eating, not speaking, just looking at him. In the beginning it bothers him a little; but then deep down he doesn’t give a damn about these weird kids with no parents, and he wonders if he should believe their story; yet he sniffed around, kept his ears open, didn’t see or hear anything, they really are alone, just the three of them.

  The four of them, now.

  He feels as if he’s some sort of god there among them, as they go on gazing at him. Or maybe he’s an ogre, the way he’s gobbling down his eggs and pancakes, washing it all down with some bad wine he found in the barn and uncorked with delight: no more having to drink that damned water. But it annoys him to have to eat in front of these brats, are they going to watch him sleeping, too, and he slams his fist on the table:

  “That’s enough!”

  The kids hardly move. They’re not afraid.

  It hasn’t happened often, Ades barging in somewhere so abruptly and inconsiderately, to find opposite him people who aren’t trembling.

  On the contrary: at times he catches the gazes they exchange among themselves, little stolen sidelong glances at each other with a faint smile, as if they were pleased—yet if they only knew the true nature of his company, for sure their faces would fall, then.

  “Where is the bedroom?”

  He has asked Noah. He has realized the little one is the least fierce, even if he seems on the slow side now and again—that’s still better than the older silent one or the girl who always seems to think before she speaks.

  “What bedroom?”

  “My bedroom. I have to sleep. I’ve been on the sea for a week.”

  “Well . . . ”

  Noah tries to answer, turning to Louie and Perrine, hesitant.

  “There’s our parents’ room, but—”

  “That’ll do.”

  Ades stands up, grabs him by the collar.

  “Move it, show me.”

  He follows him down the corridor, opens the door cautiously, by instinct, what if there is someone behind it—after all this time?

  No one.

  Ades puts his bags on the floor and sits on the bed. Perfect. He motions to Noah.

  “It’ll do. Scram.”

  Once the little boy has left, he gets up to turn the key in the lock, then hesitates. Should he lock the kids up? But where would they go, and who could they warn; he gives a shrug and lies down.

  As always, he starts counting to fall asleep. Usually by the time he reaches five, sometimes six, he’s out. Eight if something is really bothering him.

  Three, four. That will do for today.

  * * *

  But when he wakes up, Ades isn’t pleased, not one bit. For a start, those damn kids made noise this morning, playing, or shouting, or something, while he was still contentedly sleeping between two dreams, until a plate smashed and he sat up with a start. And then nothing was ready. With his hair disheveled, looking like a bad-tempered giant, he walked over to the stove and looked at the little girl.

  “Where’s the coffee?”

  She pointed to a box.

  “No,” he growled, shaking his head, “hot coffee, shit. Make me a mug.”

  And he took advantage of the silence caused by his sudden appearance to say, very loudly:

  “In fact, next person wakes me up in the morning will get a hiding they’ll remember until the day they die. And if that’s a problem, death can come real soon. Is that clear?”

  No answer. Three pairs of eyes staring at him like frightened mice. Yes, kids, Ades is here now, make it snappy and I won’t ask twice. I want my coffee in my cup soon as I get up, and same thing for meals, the minute I snap my fingers.

  And I want a map so I can find my way.

  Until Noah says in a tiny little voice:

  “There’s no more map. Pata took them all for their trip.”

  Crap.

  “Are you going to leave?”

  Ades isn’t listening.

  “Will you take us with you?”

  This time he looks at the boy, and he hadn’t planned it, but it just takes hold of him, he bursts out laughing, a huge, monstrous laugh, he tries to repress it but can’t, he was right to think the little brother was a dimwit—as if he would take them. And what else? They can just stay on their island.

  “We’ll die if we stay here. This morning the water is up to step number ten.”

  Ades doesn’t know what he means and doesn’t care. Kids die every day of the week. The only thing on his mind is which way to go and how many days it will take to reach land.

  “I need supplies.”

  “We don’t have much.”

  I’ll take it all. But he doesn’t say it. He opens the cupboards to make his own inventory. Goddammit, they’re right. A dozen eggs, a few pancakes. He looks at Perrine.

  “You know how to make pancakes?”

  She nods.

  “Then get going, use all the flour that’s left.”

  “But . . . then there’ll be nothing left for us?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “And the chickens, we’ll kill those chickens and cook them.”

  Louie looks up all of a sudden.

  “I know where there are loads of potatoes. But you need a boat to get there.”

  Ades stands still.

  “Potatoes?”

  “A whole field of ’em. Since we don’t have a boat anymore, we couldn’t go get any. There’s enough there to eat for weeks.”

  Ades thinks. He figures he should leave the island two days from now. That way he should avoid running into the father—and by then the water will cover the land all the way to the second floor of the house, leaving only a few feet of land at the top of the hill. Two days should be more than enough to dig up some spuds and get the little girl to cook them all. If he leaves with forty pounds of cooked potatoes, he’ll make it. So he looks at Louie, who is waiting.

  “All right. You show me and we’ll see when we get there. If they’re good, we’ll start digging them up.”

  Perrine and Noah move closer, worried.

  “What about us?”

  “You stay here.”

  On his way out Ades adds with an icy guffaw:

  “You have to keep watch on the island. You never know, there might be burglars!”

  He doesn’t see their terrified expressions, and even if he did, he wouldn’t give a damn.

  But he doesn’t see the little black and yellow clouds forming on the horizon, either, or notice that the wind has gotten up, and is bringing those clouds toward them, inexorably.

  As he steps foot on the potato island for the first time in days Louie feels a sort of exaltation. And yet the land here, too, has shrunk, eaten away by the water lapping all around the island, but at the moment it doesn’t matter, all Louie can think of is showing Ades the patch of potato plants, with a scarcely concealed pride, as if this were his domain, as he comments—They’re not quite ripe but they’re fine for sweet little new potatoes, they’re really good, and you can eat the skin—and he fingers the leaves that are beginning to go yellow, and takes the spade from the shed to dig up a plant—you see, I told you so. They’re good potatoes all the same. Ades is trying to work it out. But he’s never had a potato patch.

  “How many pounds are there?”

  “Where?”

  “All together.”

  “If we harvest them all?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well . . . I don�
��t really know, it depends on whether all the plants are good or not. Four hundred pounds, maybe?” He chooses the figure quite at random, because Ades seems to be hoping for a considerable amount, and four hundred pounds is huge; he’s rather pleased with himself, four hundred pounds is pretty good.

  Ades snorts with laughter. No way.

  “Sure there are.”

  “Then these two rows here will be enough. Go on, start digging.”

  “Me?”

  Louie is about to say that it will go faster if Ades does it himself, with his strength and endurance, then he sees the way the man is looking at him, the gleam concealed in his vague smile, narrow, chilling, and he swallows his words. Ever since Ades got there, he has sensed something strange—a diffuse, disquieting feeling, not unlike the way the hens react when Ades walks by them, something instinctive: he knows the man is no good.

  And he knows that the man has a boat. Even if there’s no more fuel, the boat has oars, the means to go forward. He thought about it all night long, was tempted to wake Perrine and Noah before dawn to escape in the little craft, just like his parents did ten days ago, and this time it would be Ades who got left behind, it would be their turn to sail away as fast as they could, to get back to high ground. But he didn’t do it. He remembered all of a sudden what Pata had said: the journey would take nearly two weeks.

  Two weeks of supplies on the boat. That’s what Ades is planning now—for himself alone. The children can’t leave without taking something. And they can’t start stockpiling food without Ades noticing.

  Ades who won’t take them with him, ever. He has no intention of doing so, doesn’t even think about it. It’s not even on purpose: he just doesn’t care, that’s all. Louie is sure of this, Ades will let them drown, let them die, beyond a shadow of a doubt. He, Louie, doesn’t have much time, very little time, to come up with a plan. The potatoes were one way of gaining a day. But he has been pressing on the spade, bringing up earth and potatoes for nearly an hour, and he can’t think of anything.

  He stands up straight, carefully, his back aching, and wipes his forehead. An instinctive glance, because the sky has imperceptibly changed color. Yes, that is the only thing he can think of: a storm, or at least a good squall. So Louie drops everything, the spade and the potatoes scattered around, and he runs to stand in front of Ades who is smoking a cigarette of dark tobacco, We gotta go.

  “But you haven’t finished.”

  “There’s a storm coming.”

  Ades shrugs. So what?

  “If we wait, we won’t make it back. I already capsized once. You can’t steer the boat through the currents.”

  Now Ades looks at the sky. I wouldn’t know.

  “We have to go back,” insists Louie, and he points to the potatoes scattered in a jumble by the plants he has unearthed: “We’ll come and get them later. There’s no time now.”

  The wind is already blowing his hair into his eyes, and there are small waves on the sea; in the distance there are rollers. He shivers, his entire body feels the swell coming.

  “You’re afraid,” says Ades.

  “Last time I nearly drowned. And I lost the raft.”

  “Okay.”

  He stands up. Do we have time to get back?

  “Yes.”

  “Take a few spuds. We can have them tonight.”

  Louie quickly stuffs his pockets, then runs down to the shore. Come on! Ades follows him, taking a last draw on his cigarette. It’s as if he’s never seen a storm, thinks Louie, or else he suspects me of making it up to stop harvesting the potatoes.

  The boat is already dancing on the water.

  “Goddamn,” says Ades when he sees how it is rocking, and he goes pale.

  Ah, so you do see.

  “Are you sure it will be alright?”

  “There are currents here because it’s where the sea divides above the two valleys. We have to get out of here quick.”

  Idiot, he adds, to himself. If only you’d hurried a little.

  Ades grabs the oars.

  “How long will it take to get back?”

  Without even waiting for a reply, Ades pulls hard on the oars, creating so much momentum that Louie stumbles and catches himself on the edge just in time, then bursts out laughing.

  “I don’t know, maybe ten minutes if we go this fast all the way, or fifteen. That is, if everything goes well.”

  “It had better go well, because—” But Ades breaks off, and doesn’t say why it had better go well, and without knowing why, Louie is still laughing. It helps him to master his fear, because only a few hundred yards from there the sea looks just as he remembers it from the storms he’s been through, the last one above all, when they went fishing, with the crests forming and breaking until they’re big enough to swallow the surface of the earth.

  Louie has stopped laughing. He looks at the clouds and extends his arm.

  “That way.”

  To circumvent the strongest currents.

  “Hurry.”

  Ades grumbles, I’m doing the best I can.

  Louie knows that if they go to the east of the hill, they will lose six or seven minutes, but they will have the storm at their back for longer. The wind is propelling them, and Ades’s straining muscles are like steel chains; Louie looks at him despite himself, fascinated, he has never seen such strength in a man. He’d like to be like that, later—but he will probably look like Pata, who is soft and pudgy, and maybe it’s better that way, even if he’ll never have the kind of strength that emanates from Ades, magical, almost superhuman, the boat continues to plow straight through the water until they meet the crosscurrents and the waves make the boat pitch and rock, and Ades cries out with rage, Row, bastard! and Louie looks at him—it has to be said—with wonder in his gaze, until finally the island appears and they realize Ades has rowed faster than the wind, faster than the storm and the tall waves, the time it takes them to secure the boat, to pick up the potatoes that have fallen from Louie’s pockets, and they’re on land, and Perrine and Noah are greeting them with rain jackets to protect them. So Louie bursts out laughing again and only stops once he’s sitting in the house, his hands trembling, and his voice murmuring, Incredible, incredible.

  * * *

  The next day is like all those strange mornings after a storm, clear and calm, a calm no one can believe in at first, and then it becomes obvious, the wind has gone on its way and the waves have given up, no matter how hard you stare at the horizon there is nothing moving. But it’s hard to trust the sky, when you know how quickly it can cloud over, and Ades has been watching for an hour, muttering into the coffee Perrine gave him, his second cup. Fucking country. Fucking water. And fucking children, always in the way when he would like to be alone, running around outside just when he wants to bring them to heel. So he motions with his chin to Perrine:

  “Call your brother. The big one.”

  She runs off. Ades can’t make up his mind whether to go back to the potato island. He can still feel the tension from the day before in his aching arms, and he’s looking for signs of bad weather. He plunges his hand into the platter of French toast and gobbles down the full day’s portion. The kids can just make something else for themselves. Earlier that morning the girl watched him eating all the pancakes, with tears in her eyes, and he almost told her that it was better to eat now before they all ended up drowned, for all the difference it made. But he just barked, Eat some then, instead of sniveling. She shook her head. He doesn’t like that pale, sad little girl. To be honest, he hates brats of any kind. He really must need Louie, to speak to him in an almost kindly fashion when the boy comes over, breathless.

  “Can we go,” says Ades.

  He doesn’t make his words sound like a question. It’s a sort of hesitant remark waiting for the decision to come from the boy, a way of reminding him, if things go wrong, that it was
n’t his idea, or not completely, anyway. He looks at Louie who is studying the sky now, too, pressing his lips together, and Ades grasps the sheer incongruity of the situation, leaving the matter up to a ten-year-old kid.

  “It’s okay,” says the boy.

  “You sure?”

  “Sure. There’s nothing.”

  Ades clicks his tongue, puzzled.

  “So let’s go get the spuds. Get some sacks ready.”

  And this time, he doesn’t take his eyes off the sky, neither all the way there nor on the other island. He doesn’t pick up a single tuber, so preoccupied is he by puffs of air and absent clouds, so intent on focusing on the horizon, as if he could repulse any storms by the simple force of his gaze and his will, as if he could drive the winds, astonished and raging, back to where they came from, so that the sea would stay flat, smooth, and motionless.

  “There’s no danger,” says Louie again, leaning over the pile of potatoes he is slowly harvesting, panicked at the thought that Ades will be ready to get away already the very next day, or worse, by the end of today.

  A bit later on, the man takes him by the collar and shakes him, Hey you, you think I don’t see you slacking off, you’re getting nowhere, get to work, you hear me? Louie, his eyes welling with tears, thinks of Madie and Pata, his mother because he misses her gentleness, and his father who will be too late to save them, this morning the water had risen even further and the hens sought refuge all the way at the top of the embankment; the hazel bush he clung to with Noah a few days ago is half submerged.

  “You can’t leave us.”

  Ades raises his eyebrow. He doesn’t turn his head or look at him.

  “I can,” he says.

  Your father is coming. You have to be here.

  “What if he doesn’t get here in time.”

  “Anyway there’s not enough room on the boat, you can see that, it’s a little boat.”

  “It’s little but there’s enough room.”

  Ades shrugs and doesn’t answer, takes his eyes from the sky at last to reach for the canvas sacks, and he loads them quickly onto the boat. Three sacks: two for him, one for the kids: he owes them that much. Louie’s words went in one ear and out the other, they don’t register, he doesn’t care. Not the faintest twinge in his throat or his guts anywhere, no hands trembling, not a shiver. In his animal instinct there is no room for love or pity.