Just After the Wave

by Sandrine Collette

  They show him on a map. A map from a time still so recent, when there were roads and real villages, not three half-drowned houses where chickens peck looking for insects and parasites, and a despondent boy, his hands ravaged from days of rowing, is talking to two old ladies, next to a blind little girl and a tiny shrimp of a boy. And no matter how Louie peers and points to the roads the old ladies show him, the calculation always comes out the same, between Levet and Tenet there are just over ten miles, and that is how far they’ve gone in eight days, two of them with the motor, hardly more than a mile a day, Oh no, thinks Louie, we went for miles, dozens and dozens of miles, how could.

  They did get lost, indeed.

  They went round in circles.

  A fine arc of a circle; they headed east the way they should, and then because of the sun, and daylight, or the lack of it, and the wind, and fate, and storms, and misfortune, and their parents who had abandoned them, and rain, and hens, and fear—they drifted south, and then random chance brought them back up, in a perfect and terrifying loop, and that’s it, from Levet to Tanat, they rowed fifty or sixty miles to end up with ten, and there they are, in a house that is taking on water, with two woebegone old ladies who are trying to console them.

  “The main thing,” says Adele, “is that you’re all alive.”

  But Louie shakes his head:

  “All of that for nothing . . . ”

  “It’s never for nothing.”

  And yet. Days of fear and suffering, watching the sea, trembling at the thought of storms, hands bleeding from the oars he had to hold from morning to night, the traps that might come their way, right down to men who hide underwater or the claws of terrified chickens. Days of sleeping badly and getting no rest, wondering if the weight of the anchor won’t pull them down with it when they lower or raise it. Days of waiting for the morning light, of rowing despite the fatigue that was like a dagger in his gut and his back. Days of doubting, silently weeping, not to frighten the others. Days that lasted for centuries: this morning, Louie is one hundred years old.

  Do they know, Adele and Lucette, how they have stifled their terror and despair, do they realize, too, that the children no longer have enough food to leave again, or enough hope to believe that this time they will find their way, without a map or a compass? Louie hid his face in his hands so no one would see his distress. In his inner eye, as if indelibly, the map shows him again how they went astray, and his thoughts come tumbling, throbbing: what are they going to do now?

  He wants to live, he doesn’t want to let himself die on an island, or in a house once the waters have risen, he doesn’t want to become resigned, even if everything seems to be conspiring against him, even if there are not enough supplies or water, even if they have to choose between having the eggs and eating the hens, even if it takes ten more days to reach the high ground. And that is exactly what comes out of him when he pounds his fist on the terrace, his eyes welling with tears:

  “I want to live!”

  Just tell him what to do, and he’ll do it.

  It might be superhuman. It might be impossible.

  He’s game.

  But give him a second chance.

  Perrine gropes with her hand, closes her fingers around his. Noah comes, too. They sit there in silence. They don’t know what else to do, other than to cling to each other, to show their love.

  The old ladies have slipped away, soundlessly. They closed the door to the house behind them.

  * * *

  For a few days they fashion a strange existence together, the children and the grandmothers, made of bandages and care, waiting, impatience. Perrine’s eye is gradually getting better, Adele gives her half an aspirin when it hurts too much; after three days, Perrine removes her bandage. The sun still dazzles her, never mind, she can see. Sitting at the edge of the terrace, her feet in the water when the heat is stifling, she chirps the songs that Lucette hums when she’s not’s in too much pain—in those moments of pain, the old lady withdraws, they don’t know where, somewhere in the house where no one can see her or hear her, and then she reappears a few hours later, her features still drawn, but wearing that smile that makes their hearts leap, they run up to her but don’t hug her, not to knock her over, they take her hand and sit down next to her. Afterward, Noah looks out to sea.

  “When are we leaving?”

  Louie feels a lump in his throat every time he hears the question. Leave, yes, but he doesn’t know where. The old ladies have promised to point him in the right direction. Even to give him their compass; they’ll never need it again. But in spite of this he’s afraid. He’s lost his faith. And he already went astray once, so . . .

  “I dunno,” he says.

  “Here too, the water is rising. The terrace will be flooded soon.”

  “Of course if the water is rising here, it’s rising everywhere.”

  “Do you think our house still exists?”

  “I don’t think so, no. It was flooded a long time ago.”

  “But when are we leaving?” insists Noah.

  “When Perrine is all better.”

  “I’m better,” says Perrine.

  “Not quite.”

  A day or two more of respite—a sad respite, to be honest, because Louie feels a dull dread gnawing away at his guts, and every sunny morning is spoiled by the fear of the voyage they must undertake, the impossibility of finding landmarks once they’re alone again in the middle of the ocean; at the thought of the boundless blue-gray expanse Louie loses his appetite, cannot drink, a sort of bile simmers inside him, burning his flesh, Lucette ruffles his hair the way Madie used to and he turns his head the way a kitten does to heighten a caress, he’s upset, and lost, they have to help him, he doesn’t want to be the one who has to answer for everything, he doesn’t want to be the big brother.

  Louie takes his fishing pole over to Noah and kneels once again at the edge of the terrace. They’ve been there for nearly three hours. Just behind them he can see shadows fluttering over the old ladies’ faces from the uneven torchlight. It reassures him to know that Adele and Lucette are sitting behind them; the night doesn’t seem as dark.

  And yet: when he looks up, there is no moon. An ink-black night.

  Perfect, said Adele happily a while ago.

  Because they need fish, lots of fish.

  “We tried,” said Noah when they started. “They don’t bite anymore. There aren’t any more fish.”

  “But were you trying to fish in the daylight?” asked Lucette.

  “In daylight?”

  “Aha. So you do have a few things to learn.”

  Yes, loads of fish, because they need to feed all five of them, Adele, Lucette, Noah, Perrine, and Louie, on the boat for days—they don’t know exactly how many. And since there aren’t enough hens anymore, and they have to be fed too, there won’t be enough eggs.

  Thousands of fish, agreed Noah with a laugh, when they cast their lines.

  Because they are going to leave together.

  No, it wasn’t what they planned.

  Yes, now, it’s decided.

  They will go all five of them to the higher ground, that’s what the old ladies promised when they came out of the house this morning. You could see that the decision pained Adele; Louie looked at her on the sly and he could tell she was in a bad mood, he could tell that Lucette must have cornered her between the four walls of that room where they had heard their voices raised shortly before dawn, and she wouldn’t let her leave the room until she got her way. Louie knows this because Lucette whispered the secret to him, yesterday.

  She didn’t picture it like this, the end of her life. She thought she would be on her own, a peaceful decline, until one day she would fall asleep and simply not wake up. And besides, she was sure it would go quickly. But instead, she is in pain, Lucette, her entire body radiates with a word that L
ouie can’t remember and that makes her cringe over her joints, she says, it feels as if everything inside her is shrinking and gradually drawing her in, and if this goes on, she won’t be able to bend her arms or her legs, you just can’t imagine how painful it is, this feeling of being sucked inward, it takes her breath away.

  Louie didn’t say anything. He frowned; he understood that something was wrong but that Lucette was right when she said he could have no idea what she was going through, and he refrained from turning his head to ask where the others were, whether they had started the meal, whether the hens were all there. Then she murmured something about a sort of impossible battle, convincing Adele to leave, all together on the little boat, and at last Louie looked her right in the eyes:

  “Really?”

  Oh, such immense hope in those eyes, Lucette found it hard to look away. In a low voice she said, Yes.

  But it won’t be easy.

  This she did not say, not to dim the glow in the wild gaze there before her. Convincing Adele to go with the three children who arrived on the wave. And go back to die among her family, on solid ground, not the one gradually shrinking away beneath her own feet. Lucette also has another idea behind all that: to put an end to her suffering. There are times when the simple vibration of Noah’s steps running toward her on the terrace is enough to make her wince with pain. And it’s not the few remaining aspirins that reassure her, when she shakes the tube, not to see how many days are left; then what, the absence of relief, Adele’s poultices: on her, they don’t work.

  Lucette’s day, yesterday, went by in a sort of indecision, between the pain in her body and the excitement of her promise. A thousand times she opened her mouth to speak to Adele; a thousand times her courage failed her. Last chance, she thought, at midnight, when they said good night after a cup of lime-blossom tea—and she let the last chance slip. It gave her an odd palpitation in her heart, made her breathless for no reason. Adele finally noticed and asked her if she was all right.

  “Yes,” replied Lucette in a meek voice, inwardly cursing herself.

  They went to bed, each in her own room, soundlessly, by candlelight, and Lucette still hadn’t said anything. Perhaps she didn’t sleep all night long, or maybe it was just an impression, but at six thirty she heard Adele moving around on the other side of the wall and this time, she went to knock at the door, even if it would mean her heart stopping for good.

  So of course it’s because of her if Adele is in a bad mood today. But she doesn’t care.

  She got her way.

  She said as much to Louie, exactly like this: I got my way.

  And the little boy began laughing and crying at the same time.

  Today, Lucette feels almost no pain. She rubbed the tube of aspirin and thought of how now there’d be enough for an extra day, that with a bit of luck she’d make it to high ground, she wouldn’t disappear before then, dragged down by her shrinking body; and it is her wildest desire, to see for herself that somewhere there is land as far as the eye can see, to forget this maddening ocean that blinds her in the sun and worries her when the wind gets up.

  What she had to do in order to get Adele to comply, she’ll forget about that, too. How she moaned and wept and went down on one knee despite the terrible pain. She’d have thrown herself in the ocean if she’d had to.

  All that just to go and die somewhere else, she thinks, taking a fish from Noah’s line.

  For a moment she stands still: maybe she won’t die yet, if they can treat her, there?

  As for Louie, he stopped counting when they pulled the fiftieth fish from the sea. He doesn’t know what part of the night it is, the beginning, the middle, he just knows that Noah can’t keep his eyes open, now, and he has to keep nudging him in the ribs to keep him awake. Perrine can’t help them, but she has removed her bandage to watch. Every time Louie or Noah catches a fish she takes it to the old ladies for them to kill. The buckets are nearly full.

  Right at the edge of the terrace are two torches, burning with a raw, yellow light, and they attract the creatures, fish and insects, like tiny lighthouses, everyone bustling around them, mosquitos and flies, kids, old ladies holding out empty fishhooks to be cast back in the water, buckets filling with dead fish. Sometimes tiny moths fly too near the torches and their wings make the sound of rustling paper; a little flame in the air, sometimes a mere puff of smoke, the rest plummets. Louie goes on pulling out fish, Noah has stopped shouting whenever one bites. They spent the afternoon preparing their bait with corn and pieces of potato—Double or nothing, murmured Adele gravely.

  It’s a winner.

  Like Lucette.

  Tomorrow they will smoke the fish, so they’ll keep for the length of the journey, and they’ll filter the water to fill the empty bottles. They’ll inventory the last potatoes, and the last cans in the larder, they’ll check for hiding places where the hens might have laid eggs. They’ll picture how to arrange the boat to hold the five of them, with cushions for the grannies’ old bones—this was their request. But for now they still need a few more fish, until Adele finally gets up and stops Noah and Louie as they’re about to cast their lines for the hundredth time. Very precisely, she puts her hands on their shoulders and says:

  “I think we have enough, now. Time to get some sleep, to build up your strength.”

  And everything stops.

  Time doesn’t go by; that’s what they are thinking the next day, as they make endless preparations for the voyage. The water, more than anything, is slowing them down, taking so long to filter, but Adele won’t have it any other way, she wants to fill their thirty-four bottles and not a single one less. Under the baking sun Lucette explains to Louie and Noah how to rig poles in the boat on which to stretch a canvas. They are afraid it will blow away with the first gust of wind, like their tarp during the storm: never mind, says the old lady, it will last as long as it lasts. And besides, in September the spring tides are over, the storms less frequent. Even if the seasons have gone haywire.

  The two boys exchange glances. Their memory is of storms coming one on top of the other.

  Maybe they were the last of the season.

  But maybe not.

  Lucette hums a tune they don’t know, a song her grandmother used to sing, she explains, a long time ago. She and Adele have been up since dawn, cutting the fish and preparing the fillets: by the time the children woke, they had lit the fire and already extinguished it again so that only smoke remained. No flames or embers; and yet you had to keep it going underneath, otherwise it would all go out, and the fish would never get smoked. They showed Louie how to keep an eye on the hearth. The first fillets had been carefully arranged on a grill.

  “It stinks,” said Noah, “it makes me feel sick.”

  So he went to get the boat ready.

  Perrine stayed with the old ladies.

  Hours of waiting, clenching their fists to urge the fish to cure and the water to flow more quickly, and accept the fact that it wouldn’t help at all to blow on the fish or to stir the water to filter it—an entire day, a wasted day, according to the children; they chafe at the bit, they wish they were already on their way, to have it behind them, because in reality one day more or less makes no difference, but, when the children see how Adele and Lucette gaze at the houses—what’s left of them—and sigh, and lower their heads as they come back inside, walking slowly, they’re afraid one of them might get cold feet.

  And they are right to be afraid.

  Oh, until the end of the afternoon, nothing alarming.

  And then.

  When they’d finished filling the water bottles and placing the fish filets in plastic containers, separated by sheets of paper, when everything had been readied in the house for the next day, except for the hens, which they’ll have to catch at the last minute, belongings on one side, food on the other, and they were sitting on the sofa staring at the bla
ck television screen, counting the hours until departure, at seven in the morning, since before then it’s still dark out: that’s when the argument started.

  Initially they didn’t hear it, or paid no attention, Adele and Lucette were in the bedroom, talking, on the other side of the thick walls.

  But their voices were raised: that’s why the children started listening.

  “Do you understand?” murmured Louie faintly to the other two.

  Perrine and Noah shook their heads.

  “What can they be saying?” said Noah, worried.

  No time to share their questions any further: a door slams, Adele comes into the room, three pairs of eyes instantly riveted on her, Lucette follows right behind, waving her arms with such intensity that if her rheumatism weren’t restraining her those arms would enfold the entire living room.

  “No, you won’t stay!”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “I won’t leave you here.”

  “Of course not. Go ahead and try.”

  “We won’t leave without you!”

  “What?” exclaims Louie.

  The old ladies freeze. As if seeing the children for the first time, as if they are about to frown and wonder who they are, that’s how far away they seem, but then something lights up in their gaze, they acknowledge them, and fall silent, embarrassed. So Lucette turns to the children:

  “Adele doesn’t want to leave anymore.”

  “Huh?” says Noah.

  “Who?” says Perrine.

  Adele purses her lips:

  “I helped get everything ready for the trip, I’ve done my bit. But I’m staying here.”

  “But why?” asks Louie, stunned. “The sea is rising, and you’ll die.”

  “Never mind. I no longer have the strength.”

  “We’re the ones who’ll be rowing!”

  “ . . . to live somewhere new. I’m afraid of leaving. I’m afraid of being all alone in a foreign place.”

  “I’m here,” protests Lucette.