“There’s going to be a storm,” murmurs Louie.
The others nod, to them this is obvious: in the three weeks since the tidal wave engulfed the earth, there has been one storm after another. And it’s not that Louie has noticed anything in particular about the vibrations in the air or the way the wind is turning: he has said this instinctively, because the sea is getting choppy and the blazing sun has misted over, he says it and maybe there won’t be any storm at all, he simply says it because there could be. But Perrine looks at him as if it were certain.
“A real storm?”
So he nods his head to seem important, his expression solemn.
“I think so.”
She is worried.
“Should we stop?”
But Noah wants to go on, the wind in their sweat-sticky hair calms them. Louie studies the horizon. Five more minutes. Then we go back. He is giving them a wide margin: Noah is always clumsy at putting away his fishing rod, the line gets tangled, he jabs himself with the hook. A few months ago he got it lodged in his cheek. He has had a clear little mark under his eye since that day, a scar that won’t go away, where the skin grew back thinner—the little boy was damned lucky, half an inch higher and he would have lost his eye.
And they’ll have to carry the basket with their heavy catch, Louie doesn’t want to run, to be heading back through gusts of wind and rain that wrench the door from their hands. He says it again, sniffing the air. Five minutes. Noah lets out a cry: the line has gone taut. The last one! cries Louie, hurrying over. He brings the fishing net closer while Noah gives some slack, tightens, lets go. Perrine exclaims, watches the sky, then the fish, the sky again, she moves further back on the shore while the horizon fills with black clouds, she blinks suddenly, a raindrop.
“It’s raining!”
Noah pulls on his rod—I’m almost there! says Louie, kneeling by the water’s edge, his net outstretched, and behind them the sea has suddenly risen, like a dragon curling under the waves to toss them skyward, along with the wind, slapping and blowing; Perrine is afraid. The time it takes for her to look again and the heavens are upon them, a cloudbank so low that she thinks it will swallow them up, black monsters with gaping mouths, half concealing the breakers the sea is bowling impatiently toward the shore.
“Let’s go, let’s go!”
But the boys don’t hear her, all attention focused on the fish, which is struggling as they drag it slowly toward them, and that is why she is the only one who sees it, little Perrine, the wave forming out there on the ocean, a wall of water, distant at first, then too near, a thundering sound, Perrine screams in vain, runs back—while Louie senses his sister’s movement on one side, hurrying away, and he stands straight, heart pounding, to see what it is she is fleeing from, then a rush all through his body, danger, danger.
“Noah!”
He grabs his brother, tearing away the fishing rod. He leaps away with a roar.
“Perrine, go to the house! The house!”
At the same moment he stumbles, and Noah falls between his legs, The fish! The line, the rod: everything has been sucked into the sea. But that isn’t what Louie is looking at, his eyes open wide.
It’s the wave.
The same one.
No, not the same one.
Not as high, not as strong.
But the fear is the same. The same as on the evening of the great tidal wave. Again Louie sees the water rising dozens of feet above him—how he ran to reach the house, to slam the door behind him. Again he sees Madie’s astonished gaze as he clung to her, he sees his own hands, trembling as he tried to explain, and couldn’t find the words.
All of that in a few fractions of a second.
And in that moment he knows that he and Noah won’t have time, the sea will be upon them before they can get away. He flings himself to the ground behind the hazel bush, dragging Noah down with him. He puts his arms around each side of the bush, grabs his brother’s arms. His voice, hoarse and trembling: We don’t let go of each other. Even if you die, you hold onto me. You hear me?
* * *
The wave crushes them. Louie counted as he watched it coming—four, five seconds later. He would have liked to be sure Perrine reached the house, to hear the door slamming behind her, hear her steps vanishing into the shelter of the thick walls. But he couldn’t. First of all, because he didn’t have time; and then because he was incapable of turning away from that wall of gray water bearing down on them, hypnotized by the way it was moving, spouting and swelling, a living thing, of that he is certain, howling, creating the deep trough to take them out into the core of its power; Louie has rolled Noah’s sleeves in his hands to grip them tighter.
When the wave flattens them, the impact is so powerful that Louie cannot be sure he has not opened his hands. For several seconds he stops breathing, his belly crushed by the blow. Immediately afterwards, he can feel the water receding, tugging at his body, his torso, his legs, clashing with the hazel bush over them, pulling them out of joint in a rage, maybe he and Noah have already been separated, he doesn’t know, he can’t see, there is only this terrible painful shaking in his shoulders and arms that makes him hope they are still clinging on and that the bush will withstand the surge. He doesn’t feel the blood on his face, doesn’t hear Noah calling him, he is blinded, one by one his fingers are pulled back by the prodigious force of the sea, the little boy cries his name, Louie, Louie! as the waves turn him on his side like a wisp of straw, twisting his arms, smashing his back against the hazel bush, no, Louie hears none of that, his eyes are closed, his voice is reciting his fierce determination to survive and his refusal to be carried away, this voice that no one can hear, saying, No, no, no.
The wave recedes, a few seconds have gone by, ten, fifteen at most—an eternity. It will come back. The wind announces it and precedes it, this wave or the next one, already rumbling in the distance, forming and dissolving, building up anger to return to the shore, to grab hold of anything running, living, and to drag it down to the bottom of the sea, Louie knows he must be quick. Coughing and gasping, he tries to catch his breath, to turn his head toward the sea, which has taken possession of the land, a liquid force incorporating everything, pulling him back again, toward the ocean, toward the vastness and the void, he throws up, he is filled with water, too light, too weak, around him there is nothing left but the roaring of the waves, the whistling of the wind, and the shouts inside his head.
The land is covered with sand and silt, rivulets of water returning to the sea in tiny shining trenches which Louie observes, lying on the ground, his cheek pressed into the abandoned puddles his fingers are still clutching, instinctively, and which he cannot stop. His shoulders and belly are still trembling, his breathing comes fitfully from his throat with a metallic rattle.
Think about nothing.
Fear has taken everything.
Don’t look.
So as not to see the catastrophe all around.
Finally, listen: light footsteps on the sodden ground, going splatch splatch as they come nearer, little steps first walking, now running, the sound of water being squelched underfoot, that’s all, no words, no cries.
Louie tells himself he should turn his head and have a look.
Doesn’t move.
Sudden terror: what if he is paralyzed. He moves an arm, rolls to one side. It’s okay. He lets out a long sigh. Slowly, the thought that there is nothing left at his fingertips, nothing holding him or clinging to him, works its way into his brain: but for the time being, it doesn’t affect him. Emotions have not yet returned, nor has consciousness. Just breathe. Listen.
Louie?
His name.
Louie?
Yes, that’s me.
Are you all right, Louie?
He doesn’t know. Can’t speak. He sticks out his tongue, loosens his frozen jaw, sure that the hoarse, croaki
ng sound that has just come from his throat was a word.
Louie?
I’m here.
Louie . . .
This voice, insisting, a little girl’s voice. Perrine?
Louie, are you dead?
A little boy this time.
Then a shiver of immense, wordless joy turns him over onto his back, still with his eyes to the sky, but he sees them, the two figures kneeling next to him, that is what gives him this huge smile, this swallowed sob, he murmurs, Holy cow. Perrine leaps up and claps her hands, joyfully.
“You’re not dead.”
He sits up, cautiously, his body aching. Guess not. He gently taps Noah’s palm as he holds it out to him.
“So there you are. I thought the sea had carried you off.”
The little boy laughs.
“Were you afraid?”
“ . . . But you’re here.”
“I hung on the way you told me.”
“When the wave went back out I wasn’t holding you anymore.”
“I was just next to you, behind the hazel bush. You didn’t see me. It’s true, I let go of you. But the water went back down just then, good thing, too, otherwise I would’ve been done for.”
Louie nods. The three of them look at the sky, the movement of air, the storm interrupted. It won’t be back, he says. Not right away, anyway.
They head back, taking streaming little steps, shivering despite the soft air. Perrine thinks about the hot chocolate they will heat up on the old stove, exactly the same chocolate that Madie makes when they come home from school or from helping Pata out in the rain in the garden, at the end of the road or of their chores, drenched to the bone, hair clinging in wet strands to their foreheads. When she sees them coming Madie lets out a cry and a laugh, Oh, just look at those mops, go quick and get changed and then come back! They run to remove their wet clothes, they toss them in a ball into the laundry basket; they clatter down the stairs and back to the kitchen where Madie has put the milk on to boil and she stirs in the squares of chocolate to make them melt, none of that tasteless readymade chocolate but a sort of magical brew that stays in their mouths and throats with a sweet thickness, and its aroma fills their noses; clicking their tongues they try to keep it at the back of their palates as long as possible. Even on days when something has made them very unhappy it brings consolation. Yes, says Perrine, that’s what I’ll do.
Next to her the boys walk like old men, broken and silent. They are thinking of their basket swallowed by the storm, with four, almost five, fish. And it was pointless for the sea to reclaim them, because they’d already killed them, their father had taught them never to let animals suffer, suffocating in the air, and they had done everything as they should—and look what happened. No more basket, no more fish. No more fishing poles, they too went out with the wave, they were surely snapped in two by the wind and the water; and it’s not with a branch of hazel bush and a length of yarn, the way their father used to keep Noah happy, that they’ll be able to catch anything.
“We could try anyway,” whispers Noah.
It annoys Louie when Noah spouts nonsense, he knows very well they don’t even have any more hooks. What, they’ll just ask the fish to bite the yarn as a gesture of goodwill? Noah hangs his head. It might work.
“Yeah, sure,” says Louie.
They change into dry clothes, they’re still shivering. Perrine has taken the eggs, broken three of them and beaten them with sugar to add to the pan with a pancake. In another saucepan she is heating the milk and a few squares of chocolate, and she orders Noah to stir it slowly. The time it takes to put on a sweater and it already smells of pancakes browning. Their mouths are watering, eyes shining. Eating reconciles them with each other, relaxes them: they talk about the storm, exaggerating slightly, laughing at their bruises and their luck. Not once do they wonder if the sea is about to rise again soon. They look outside, the waves are still rough, the wind is hurling rain through the windows, it makes them jump every time, their hands held up against the gusts of air. Divided between a cozy sentiment of sheltered safety and the fear that a gust will blow the entire house away, they chatter, interrupt each other, go on chattering. The storm worries them, even though its strength is waning; they clench their teeth in silence, listening out for the sound of water and wind and hoping it will all go away. An hour later the sea is almost calm, still they watch, the sea and the detritus it has washed up from the dark depths, bits of wood afloat for months or years and which the underwater eddies have restored to the surface, scattered flotsam drifting on the surface, like dead fish.
The sea is calm and there they are, the three of them, with a strange pain in their chests, on the upper left-hand side. They rub it in vain with the palms of their hands to make it go away, a pain as if they’d been jabbed with a needle and something was pressing it, a sting, an itching, discomfort. Then they know that something else has happened that they don’t understand, elsewhere, differently, but which their skin and their guts can sense through this unpleasant tingling, and this something is bound to be bad, they can tell from the impression of emptiness and want and fear that passes over them, they don’t speak of it, they gobble down the sweet pancake and lick their chocolate mustaches; it’ll go away eventually.
* * *
Eight. That is the number Louie sees on the step, the water licking regularly at the base of the chalk mark, as if it were scoffing at the closed doors, which are powerless to stop anything.
There is no trace of step number seven. Louie sits at the level of number nine, his gaze weary, his chin on his crossed arms. They must have lost eight inches since yesterday. He can’t remember his father ever telling them the water had risen that much. Outside, the hazel bush he and Noah had clung to during the storm now has its roots in the water; taking long strides, he measures. Two yards, maybe even three. If the sea keeps encroaching at this rate, in six or seven days even the roof of the house will be underwater.
So he decides: they have to get ready to leave. His feet wet when he comes in from the garden, he tells his siblings.
Leave? murmurs Perrine.
To go where? asks Noah.
To look for higher ground. The only real puzzle is, how?
How? echoes Perrine.
Yes, how? agrees Noah.
“We’ll build a boat.”
Noah laughs, all excited. Louie frowns because he has already thought of a way, and he really can tell Noah that there’s nothing funny about it at all, it’s no laughing matter, because there is nothing there to build a boat with.
What if they remove the shutters and doors? The wall of the woodshed?
Louie doesn’t know how a boat floats. And anyway none of them would know how to fashion the curves or put a vessel together: he’s thinking of a simple raft.
And if there’s a storm?
Shush. Shush. Don’t even mention it. There won’t be.
But if ever . . .
There won’t.
He erases the thoughts from his mind.
“So, we’re going to build a raft.”
Ah, say the younger ones.
“But if there’s a storm, will a raft sink?” asks Perrine.
Shush, shush. Don’t even mention it. There won’t be.
Louie looks elsewhere.
“We’ll try, okay?”
No questions.
“Okay,” says Noah, conciliatory. “What do we need to build it?”
And Louie doesn’t answer right away because he’s looking for the words, and they’re not at all satisfactory, words that won’t frighten them, that won’t show how little he knows about what they have to accomplish, how to reply truthfully, not only what first springs to mind and which he tries to translate into something reassuring, but also something besides the obvious fact that spins round and round in his head and keeps him from thinking: W
e need something that floats.
What do you mean, float?
Things that float, I said.
Louie looks at Noah, who looks at him. He articulates, to convince himself.
“We’ll find something.”
But who would have thought it could be this complicated, this impossible, on an island without electricity, without supplies, without adults to help or show them how? Louie has his face in his hands.
“Can’t you do it?” Noah just asked.
And he was tempted, he had to confess, even if his mother would have scolded because it’s not nice—but Madie isn’t there to give her opinion or give orders or decide what’s right or wrong—yes, Louie was tempted to slap his little brother, hard, and scream a terrible insult at him, something which would have brought him some relief, would helped him ease his nerves, allowed him to forget that he doesn’t know how to build a raft, and that, indeed, he can’t do it.
The simplest thing would be to take the door they’d used to build the watchtower. The door would be the raft. Besides, there was nothing else, no boards they could have put together, other than a few pieces of shipwrecked boat, nothing at all, and yet they did look, because that damned door weighed at least eighty pounds and they would need plenty of imagination to keep not only the door afloat, but also themselves as passengers; it would take a miracle.
So there it was, they had a door, but no floats.
What floats?
Madie always kept her empty plastic bottles. She said you could use them for all sorts of things—watering plants, making iced tea, or dye, you could turn one into a funnel if you cut it, pots for the children to fill with paint, five or six of them, with screams of joy. Empty plastic bottles: there used to be dozens, on shelves and in the barn.
A carpet of bottles strung together under the raft.
Just After the Wave Page 8