“I can’t tell but I don’t want to go on.”
He wrinkles his nose. Noah tries: One last time. Leaning forward, he yanks at the plastic.
“Oh!”
All three of them leap away.
“What is it, what is it?” cries Perrine, who knows but—
“Oh, shit!” exclaims Louie.
“It’s a dead body!” screams Noah.
At first they thought of pushing it back into the sea. But without touching it, now that they knew. Louie sent Noah to get a long stick so they could shove it in. Impossible. Too heavy, high and dry. They are shivering all over, as if the corpse might infect them, or the island, along with the air and the sea around them.
“We have to make it go away!” cries Noah, stamping his feet.
“I’m going to be sick,” gasps Louie, turning away and vomiting the entire contents of his stomach.
Afterwards they give up. They managed to roll the body over once or twice, and the ocean has half covered it.
“The sea will take it away,” murmurs Louie, wiping his mouth. “With the tide it will go away again. Let’s just not stay here.”
Because they feel even dirtier now than when they first went into the water, when they go back up the house they rinse off with a bottle of fresh water; they have a big enough supply, and tonight they’ll drink orange juice.
“Yuck, yuck,” says Perrine, over and over.
“It was disgusting,” whispers Louie, remembering the swollen skin he saw briefly under the tarp.
They haven’t stopped shaking, although they are standing by the walls of the house, away from the sea—but still too near, and they’d rather be where it’s safe, as if the corpse might suddenly pop up next to them otherwise.
“Who was it?” asks Noah. “Was it Liam?”
“Of course not, don’t say such a thing.”
The little boy shrugs.
“Well, it could have been.”
“Stop talking nonsense.”
“It wasn’t someone we know, then?”
“Of course not.”
“So they’re not dead.”
“I don’t think so, no.”
* * *
Louie was right: by morning, the body has disappeared. They walk around the island to make sure the tarp didn’t get caught on a root or in an eddy, and they sigh with relief when they come back. They feel as if the smell is still there with them, in their noses, as if it is firmly planted inside them. They rub their noses, blow them. Even while they’re drinking their cold chocolate at breakfast and eating their melba toast, the memory of the smell is disturbing.
The weather has turned drizzly, and they look out the windows at the sullen sky, and the sea they cannot imagine swimming in and that is beginning to turn rough. In addition, the hens they let out early that morning have come back, a sure sign the day is turning stormy. At the end of the corridor they’re squawking, each one louder than the other. In the room where Louie locks his birds the children find eggs laid in odd little places, as if the hens were trying to hide them, thinks Noah; for the children every day is like a treasure hunt. It reminds them how at Easter Madie and Pata hid eggs in the garden, in the grass, under rocks, behind trees, for whoever could find the most—but those eggs were hard-boiled, painted all sorts of colors, decorated with drawings and stickers, not the white or brown eggs that break if you squeeze them too tight when you pick them up and which leave big gooey driblets all down your fingers.
Perrine makes a new pancake batter. Their eyes no longer glow with delight: eggs, pancakes, noodles, they’ve had their fill already for eight days. Even this is boring. They dream of grilled meat, the smell of rosemary and thyme, red peppers roasted on the barbecue. Noah nibbles on a potato left over from Louie’s escapade and grumbles, “I like sautéed potatoes better.”
“There aren’t any left,” says Louie.
“There isn’t anything left, here. It’s stupid.”
Again they let their gazes drift to the horizon—or to where they suppose it must be, they can’t see very far for the curtains of fine rain, that faint drizzle you don’t think will get you very wet which gradually soaks you to the bone, freezing your skin and your clothes. Wind, clouds, rain. Noah shouts, clenching his fists as he leans toward the window.
“Wind, clouds, rain! I’m sick of it!”
And that shape all the way at the end of what is visible out there on the ocean, a black mass half hidden by sudden cascading downpours, Noah frowns, stiffens. Takes a step back and looks anxiously at the others.
“I think there’s another dead body.”
“A what?” asks Perrine.
“A dead body like yesterday. Only it’s far away.”
Louie shoves the little boy aside and takes his place at the window.
“How can you see that from here?”
And then:
“Oh!”
“What?” says Perrine.
“Is that what it is?” says Noah.
Louie turns to them, frenetic.
“No! It’s a boat!”
All three of them cluster suddenly at the window, squint, shout.
“Yes, it’s a boat!” exclaims Noah.
“We have to call them!” says Perrine, fidgeting with impatience.
They run out of the house, mindless of the rain, scramble down to the shore and wave their arms.
“Hey!” they cry, sweeping their arms over their heads and jumping up and down.
“Over here!”
“Here, here!”
Perrine sobs:
“They can’t see us.”
Now and again it looks as if the vessel has disappeared behind the clouds and is going away, and then it reappears for a few seconds, at the mercy of the waves and the spray; they wait for the square shape to turn and head toward them, to come closer, but it doesn’t.
“A fire!” cries Louie. “We have to build a fire!”
“But it’s raining,” says Perrine.
“We have to try! Noah, you and Perrine go and get some kindling in the barn.”
“And you?”
“I’m going to take a burning log from the stove. That way it will work.”
He rushes to the house, lifts some brands with the tongs and drops them into a metal bucket, slips a box of matches in his pocket. When he comes back, Perrine and Noah are there with wood and pieces of cardboard; Noah gushes, Cardboard will burn really well!
Louie tips the bucket out on the ground. The embers hiss in the rain, it makes a funny sound, some are going out already.
“Give me the cardboard!” shouts Louie, tearing it up to get the fire started again. “Stand around it to shelter it from the wind!”
They kneel on the ground, still watching the shadow in the far corner of the sea as it sails in a disorderly dance, they go on screaming, one after the other, so that the boat will hear them, until Louie gives up: No point shouting, we have to make the fire, just the fire. A few flames rise, licking the cardboard. Noah yells.
“It’s started, it’s started!”
Louie adds some wood, a little bit, not too much, leans closer to listen to the tiny fire, wishes it would crackle; for the time being only the cardboard is burning.
“Come on,” he says, urging it on.
“There’s smoke!” says Noah, clapping his hands.
“But this is nothing, they won’t see it, it’s not big enough. If we don’t have big flames it won’t work.”
Perrine leans down, blows on the embers to kindle them. The boys do likewise, hair sticking to their brow. Louie has tears in his eyes, he remembers how he helped Pata burn branches over the years; Pata would grumble, Fire never starts the way you want it to. Either it’s hot, and it burns too quickly, or it’s cloudy and you can’t get it going.
Smoke rises from the embers as they die one by one. Louie hears the hissing sound, carefully watches the pieces of cardboard that are still burning. He cups his hands around the twigs that don’t want to catch, the rain snuffing the sparks the moment they appear. Noah has already given up, he stands up straight and turns to the sea. He goes on shouting, his little voice covered by gusts of wind and the roaring of the sea, there’s nothing else to do, so he tries. Louie cannot even feel the warmth of the flames on his hands anymore, cupped over the brands. He won’t give up. He shouts again.
“Come on!”
Suddenly an idea flashes through him: the lawnmower fuel, in the jerry can. Pata used to take a little to get a fire started, when he’d been struggling for half an hour with his leaves and his green branches and nothing happened. Louie leaps to his feet, runs to the barn, returns quickly, the jerrycan banging against his legs. He remembers it’s dangerous. He steps back, removes the cap to pour out a little fuel, holding the can at arm’s length.
Nothing.
So he takes two matches from the box in his pocket.
Scratch.
He tosses them onto the fire. The whoosh surprises both him and Perrine, who has already stepped back: they give a start.
“It’s beautiful!” says Noah, his arms lowered, as he watches.
A flame three feet high.
Then a foot and a half.
Then, after only five or six seconds, less than a foot, six inches.
And it goes out.
“Put some more,” shouts Noah.
Louie tries again. And again the scary sound of the puff of fuel catching fire, the flames eager for sustenance. Louie steps back, stumbles. From a distance he watches the flame rise, orange against the gray sky, then immediately subside. The embers remain red for a few seconds, he hopes the wood will catch.
Nothing.
Soon there is a fine column of smoke, like when you blow out a candle.
“Again!” shouts Noah.
Louie shakes his head. Looks out to sea.
No more boat.
“It’s gone,” murmurs Noah.
The rain hammers down on their shoulders, icy. Let’s go in, says Perrine. Louie doesn’t answer. Facing the ocean, he waits for the boat to come back.
It doesn’t come back.
After a few minutes, Perrine takes him by the hand. Come, she says quietly. She squeezes his fingers. Not saying a word, head down, he lets her lead him away.
By the next day the rain has stopped. In the house, the children’s clothes are spread over the backs of chairs, still wet from the day before. The two younger children sleep late, exhausted by their dashed hopes, by their determination to keep watch on the sea through the window, what if the boat came back. They ate pancakes by candlelight, and went to bed with their eyes sticky from tears.
Fatigue keeps them sprawled in their beds, arms outspread, crucified. Only their open eyes are proof they are still alive, and their hoarse voices, which gradually regain their usual timbre, once the words are ready to be spoken.
“Maybe it wasn’t a boat,” whispers Noah.
Perrine shrugs.
“What was it, then?”
“A whale?”
“There aren’t any whales, here,” says Louie.
After a halfhearted breakfast, they open the front door with the strange impression of another world, when what is left of the garden lies between lingering dew and the first warm rays of the sun. They can tell it is going to be a fine, hot day. Perrine tilts her head to one side, thoughtful. Yesterday’s bad weather, the almost surreal vision of the boat on the horizon, the crushing return to the house after they gave up on the fire: it all seems too distant, too unreal.
Maybe they dreamt it?
The little pile of dead embers, somewhere on the shore, slowly restores things to her mind. Louie squats down and scratches at the ashes with his fingertips.
“Is it cold?” asks Noah.
“Of course.”
The little boy touches the ashes.
A bit further along, the sea has scattered pieces of wood; they nudge against the shore.
“Look,” says Perrine.
Boards. They go closer and Noah leans down to pick one up.
“Is it the boat?”
Without a word, they study the broken plank, and reach for a few other laths and lengths of wood.
“It looks like it,” nods Louie.
“We were lucky, then,” murmurs Perrine.
They don’t add anything: they prefer to believe it. That the boat was shipwrecked: it’s a consolation. They feel almost happy, suddenly. And so, silently to themselves, they decide that yes, the boat capsized the day before, once it had sailed past their island. They even hope that everyone on board died: it is Noah who says this. Louie puts his hands on his hips, watching the sea.
“For sure they’re dead. They all drowned.”
He doesn’t add, Serves them right. But the faint smile in their eyes indicates there’s no need to say it.
They don’t think about the fact that this is cruel. When your parents abandon you, you have every right. And it really does cheer them up, they run to the house, laughing, because they’re hungry again—not the kind of hunger that wracks your belly because there’s so much you’ve been missing, but a proper hunger, voracious and joyful, which makes them grab one pancake after another from the plate, smearing them with honey and jam, swallowing the whole lot with that sensation of power; they are alive, the three of them, the only ones who are alive, without a doubt, and they are celebrating. In the end they open a bottle of soda and the bubbles sting their noses.
* * *
The heat catches them unawares: by ten o’clock, they’re sweating, the excitement has passed, boredom is already catching up with them. When Noah opens his mouth, Louie raises a finger in warning.
“If you say, ‘What are we going to do,’ I’ll wallop you.”
Noah stands there, mouth agape. Then he closes it.
“Yes, but—”
“Did you hear me?”
So the little boy keeps silent. He wanders off in the house, from room to room, opening doors and closing them again noisily, to the last one.
“Can I open this one?”
“Why shouldn’t you?” says Louie, exasperated.
“It’s the one to the stairs.”
“So?”
“Well, there’s the sea down there, isn’t there?”
“Not all the way up.”
“Are you sure?”
“Just have a look.”
Noah decides to laugh it off: I’m scared. Louie glances at Perrine, mocking. Walks over.
“Okay, let’s check it out.”
He puts his hand on the door handle. Noah is standing a few yards behind him, leaning forward to see. They haven’t opened it for days, this door leading to the basement, doomed by the rising sea. Last time, they were in water up to their ankles, it felt strange to be walking on flooded tiles.
“Are you coming?”
Noah hesitates. Wipes his hand cautiously over the walls.
“There’s no light.”
“There’s been no electricity since the storm,” Louie reminds him.
They go slowly down the steps. Very quickly their feet are in water.
“It’s risen,” says Louie, stopping when he’s in up to his knees.
“Have we reached the bottom of the stairs?”
“Not yet.”
“Look, over there, the fishing rods. They’re not far.”
Louie reaches for them, hands them to his little brother behind him.
“Here, we can go fishing.”
“Are we going to keep going down?”
“I don’t think so. We’ll be in up to our waists, and besides there’s noth
ing left down here.”
The bottom of the house is dark and wet, it smells of things rotting—old furniture, cloth, carpets. Louie can make out objects floating, caught prisoner in the room; a dull fear overcomes him, that the sea might rise all of a sudden, and they’ll be trapped inside. So he stays on the stairs, clinging to the banister. Noah wrinkles his nose.
“It’s kinda gross.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think the sea will go all the way upstairs?”
“I don’t know.”
“What will we do if it does?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will we drown?”
“Why don’t we go fishing?” says Louie, to shut Noah up, so that the fear around his throat will finally loosen its grip.
And so, heedless of the sun and the heat, the three of them go down to the shore. They have dug for worms in the earth and put them in a bucket which they keep in the shade of a tall hazel bush. Motionless and silent—Louie has forbidden them from speaking, so as not to scare the fish away, and, in the beginning, they manage not to—they wait, casting their lines again when they think they can detect the movement of a fish here or there. The first hour they don’t catch anything, and nearly give up—it’s the fault of the heat, which rouses those damn flies and puts the fish to sleep. Exasperated, Noah changes his worms every ten minutes: They don’t like those ones. The fish start biting at around noon, at the same time as the wind rises. Perrine pulls in a bass, or at least that’s what they suppose it is, because it could be some other species the sea has brought up from the depths. Louie removes the hook and pounds the creature’s head on a stone to kill it. Perrine proudly holds her fish at arm’s length before putting it in the basket. It’s a nice one, isn’t it?
They catch a second, then a third, then they have four.
“We’ll eat them tonight!” exclaims Noah.
Perrine scratches her ear, puzzled: she doesn’t know how to cook them. The scales vaguely remind her of the hen they tried to pluck—pray the scales will come off easily, or that they can leave them on. She doesn’t want to have to cut the fish up.
Or maybe they should skewer them, on the barbecue?
The waves lap at the shore, the sky has turned gray again. They observe the clouds. Initially they pay no attention, just enjoying the refreshing cooler air; then the wind begins to swirl around them.
Just After the Wave Page 7