She knows she is too heavy for him, but the father, the father!
Mustn’t crush Marion at her belly.
She squeezes her fingers in the water, clinging to the rope on the boat, battered by the waves as they tumble, terrifying. It is nighttime in broad daylight. Curtains of rain blind her. Too much pain, as well: she pulls back her hand, with all her strength. The surface of the water is shattered with spray. There is something at the end of her arm—her arm like a gigantic fishhook, with a shape clinging to it, keeping her leaning dangerously toward the sea, and it won’t let go, she opens her eyes wide, suddenly panicking, trying with all her might to sit up straight, her knees propped against the hull of the boat, which is pitching ever more roughly; she is shaken by the waves and this thing that is trying to suck her down. She shouts, refuses, struggles. Like an animal being dragged toward an abyss she snorts, drawing on all her remaining strength to save herself, to pull away from this grasp, she’ll sacrifice her hand if she has to, Dear God, and the children, if I’m not here anymore?
And then she sees him.
Pata, clinging to her, emerges from the waves as she pulls back with a roar, his face white as death, a ghost, and if he hadn’t opened his mouth to breathe as he screamed, the mother would have thought he was dead, there at the end of her arm. A savage joy grips her. Pata! She slaps her other hand onto his.
“Get in!”
But he has no more strength, he has come back from deeper water, where he thought it was all over. On his face the mother reads the traces of the tomb, the horror she wants to pull him from and which has not quite left him, yet, the exhaustion spewed into the water—Get in, get in! He shakes his head, depleted. Every time the boat yaws, buffeted by the furious waves, he nearly lets go of the rope he is hanging onto. The boat rears up like an angry horse, hovers for a second, then plunges with a crash, a noise to make you think it will spill all its guts into the sea, and the mother sees the father’s fingers slip a little more each time the boat rises, and sees her hope fading. So she leans out again, and grabs his hands. She ties them clumsily, a rope fastened around the one that circles the boat, the same way she would tie a roast, she loops it around three times, a quick knot. The storm can always try and tear her man away, it will have to pull him apart—it doesn’t occur to her that if they sink, the father will be pulled under with no way to get free, there is too much wind, too much swell for her to even think about it, just the urgency of keeping him near her; only then does she glance behind her.
And behind her, Lotte is on her feet, crying, arms outstretched. Madie stands up like a madwoman. No!
The boat pivots to the left, into foaming white water.
All at the same time Lotte falls into the water and the mother throws herself in with her.
She bursts out of the water, her hands cling to the side of the boat. She puts an arm through the rope on the gunwale to support herself, coughing and spitting, a sharp wheezing in her lungs, until the air reaches her, she vomits bile. She calls to Liam. Begs him.
Liam.
Her voice so weak it could be a child’s.
Liam, I can’t hold on.
Her arm through the rope, the mother is tossed by the storm. She clenches her jaw, squeezes her fists. On one side she is holding Marion inside her coat. On the other, she is clutching Lotte by the hood of her jacket. That was all she could grab when the waves took them both, her hood, impossible to strengthen her hold, she prays the little garment will not tear, she holds her arm up high to keep Lotte’s face out of the water. The rope is rubbing the inside of her elbow, never mind, she needs both hands to save her daughters, the one pressing against her, who could slip down, and the one being tossed here and there by the waves. On her own, she cannot get them back onto the boat.
“Liam, please, please . . . ”
Her vision of Pata is tormenting her, the pair of them clinging to opposite sides of the boat, surely the two older boys are with him, or with Sidonie and Emily who must be trembling with fear, she is convinced that at some point they will realize their mother is no longer there—when they lean over the supplies to tell her something and see the empty space. Then they will cry out and rush to the side of the boat; they will find her, they will haul up Lotte and the baby, and then her, but they’ll have to be quick, she can feel her strength ebbing. She won’t be able to keep up for long with the boat’s maddened cavorting, with each onslaught her fingers edge away from their hold on Lotte’s hood, she tugs on Marion who keeps swallowing water and coughing, she can’t hear the others, can’t see them, perhaps she has already drowned with her two daughters and she can’t even tell. The storm, the wind, shouts, the children crying. It has all gone silent in her head. The black clouds above her, the blasts of rain, the boat bouncing on the ruthless water, her eyes widened with horror. Only the buzzing in her ears will not stop, cutting her off from the world, a rumbling roar like an airplane too near, but there is no plane, just something hurting her brow, too great an effort, the pain of it, more than once she has banged her head against the side of the boat, blood mingling with water and she hasn’t noticed.
Her arm is going to slip from the rope, she knows it is. She can’t take it, tries with her legs to bring Lotte closer, in vain. Paralyzed by the waves and exhaustion, she sees Marion’s face held close against her, the face of a baby who has stopped crying, her eyes red, wide open on the storm, Marion spitting out the water that gets into her mouth, saying nothing, her good little baby, her last little soul. The mother huddles on herself with helplessness. Swings her head back, the wind whipping her, her arm slipping, she surrenders, sobbing, oh pray the father makes it, he’ll have to look after the other little ones, all on his own, yes, she didn’t manage to stay with them.
Liam.
“Mommy!”
The mother screams, eyes wild. Liam, at last. Take Marion!
The eldest, and Matteo. From the boat they reach down, grab the baby and pull her from her mother’s coat, it feels as if she is being skinned, so tightly have they been bound together, a great chill enters her, suddenly she is shivering, she bites the inside of her cheeks, a few seconds, hang on a few more seconds, if they don’t have time to save her, she doesn’t care, but Lotte—there! Marion tips into the boat.
“Lotte now, Lotte!” cries the mother, tugging as hard as she can on her arm.
She straightens to bring the little girl closer, she’s having visions with the exhaustion, she’s so light, Lotte, in her waterlogged jacket, she smiles, Liam and Matteo have paused. The mother hesitates, implores.
“Liam?”
Not a vision.
The mother doesn’t look. She doesn’t need to. From the boys’ eyes she can see what has happened. And she stares at them as she murmurs, No, no, no.
And screams: No!
She holds out her arm. Take her.
“Mom,” says Liam gently—and for a moment the storm has fallen silent because she hears him, even though he is speaking so quietly, she wishes he would not speak in that tone, with that distress, that sorrow, no.
“Take her!”
So Liam bends over, and from his mother’s hands he gently lifts up the empty little jacket.
* * *
The boat moves slowly over the smooth sea. The wind has subsided, the rain has stopped. Of the hours of nightmare, there is nothing left, just a grayness in the sky and the water. Even the soft warm air has returned. A damp air. They are crushed with fatigue.
On the horizon there is an island. That is where Pata is headed.
In the stern, Madie is curled up in a ball. She has left the baby with Emily. She doesn’t want to speak, doesn’t want to move. To see anybody. She doesn’t answer when Matteo calls to her quietly. The mother is a teardrop.
She is holding Lotte’s soaked jacket tight to her chest.
Closes her fingers around the sleeves, as if to make sure.
But Lotte isn’t there. Lotte slipped out. She sank. She drowned.
Doesn’t even know where.
Somewhere in the ocean, at some point during the storm. Madie was holding onto a piece of clothing that no longer protected a little girl. Madie did not feel how there was no one left inside.
She let go of Lotte.
She had already fallen in, murmured the father. In any case. Madie, head lowered, sobbing.
“It’s my fault.”
The father put his arm around her shoulders, shook her chin. No one could have.
“Shut up, go away.”
If a mother can no longer protect her little ones. All those times she railed at Pata for being careless, his stupid hopes, his improbable expectations; and she was the one who lost Lotte. It is her mistake. Her tragedy. Why her? Like the little ones left behind on the hill: there is no reason. It’s just chance that. Oh, the sadness.
She tries to recover Lotte’s smell on the jacket, that sweet little child’s perfume, laundered by the storm; finds only a smell of silt and damp which makes her cry in silence. Lotte is gone. She doesn’t even have a picture of her.
She doesn’t have mementos of any of them, that all stayed behind in the house, frames abandoned on shelves, albums stored in cupboards. There was no room on the boat, not for anything; Madie took her children, flesh and blood.
And lost them. One gone.
The first, thinks Madie, shivering. In her head it is as if she has been gripped by a strange frenzy, she is reconstituting Lotte’s face, the sound of her voice, her crystal-clear laughter. She wants to make her fast deep inside—she knows so well how it fades. When she lost her parents, she thought their ageing forms were branded forever in her memory. Over the years she has realized she was mistaken. And now this terrifies her: she will forget Lotte. Not her life, not the suffering of her death—but her face and her hazel eyes, her laugh, her little chatter when she was telling stories. All of it will blur, features, sounds. Maybe a day or even two will go by when she won’t think of her. A long time from now. If they don’t all die during the voyage.
What did she think, Lotte, when the current bore her away? Was she afraid? The mother hopes it went quickly, that she didn’t even realize. Please.
She doesn’t want Pata to try and console her, there is no possible forgiveness. Don’t you dare tell me there are eight left. She doesn’t care if they need her: it is Lotte she wants. Give her back to me. A dream? But the little girl doesn’t come back. The world has come apart.
Now there are ten of them on earth.
And the mother lying inconsolable on the bottom of the boat.
She would like to fall asleep and never wake. Or curl up in a hole, a lair, a burrow, and be left alone for good, she deserves no better, hide way at the back, far from a worthless life, as if sleeping, to escape from life, to forget. So the pain will go away, the knives lacerating her womb. Count sheep, she used to tell the little ones, but whatever for, she doesn’t care about sheep.
Sleep eludes her, her sorrow is too great. She speaks in silence, her eyes awash with tears, My little girl . . .
When the boat makes landfall an hour later she does not get out. There’s nothing for it, neither the father nor the five children—she thinks, the five children left. Almost half. Four out of the nine are missing, on the evening of August 21. A carnage.
And an empty place next to her on their small craft as it rocks gently, moored to a pole planted there by those who were there before them, a place for nothing, for no one. After the storm, she almost asked the father to go back to their hill. In two days they can’t have gone that far.
But who would they take?
There’s only one place.
She cannot bear having to choose anymore. And besides, Pata would not have wanted to. Two days to row back to their island, two days and they’d be back to square one. Lurking squalls. And yet again, who? Madie stifled her question because she knew it was pointless. And so, walled up in silence and boundless sadness, she looks at the useless empty place next to her.
The boat rocks. Madie feels a presence next to her, keeps her eyes closed. To be alone and wretched. She can hear a child breathing, saying nothing. It lasts a long time; she does not have the strength to speak. At one point there is a hand on her arm, stroking her. A little hand. Not Liam, not Matteo. Tender, awkward. The mother shivers, they mustn’t make her weep anymore. The gentle rubbing is filling her with too much emotion. Stop, she thinks.
No, don’t stop.
She opens her eyes. Sidonie is gazing steadily at her.
There you are, thinks the mother.
A pale smile. The little girl smiles back, her hand still stroking.
“Will you come and eat with us?”
“I’m not very hungry . . . ”
“Because of Lotte?”
The way she says it. A lump in her throat, the mother replies: Yes.
“Are you sad?”
“And aren’t you sad?”
“I am, but maybe she’ll come back someday.”
“I don’t think so. She drowned in the sea, you know.”
“What does drownded mean?”
“It’s when you go all the way down in the water and you can’t come back up again, because of the waves or the storm.”
“Like fish.”
“Not exactly. But a little bit.”
“So you see, if she’s a fish, she’ll come back.”
Madie wishes it were true. For hours she has been wondering when, where, Lotte slipped from the jacket she was clinging to. It’s pointless, of course. But she can’t help it. Trying to find those last seconds, the instant when Lotte was still alive. Her face against the hand that was holding the jacket, her body buffeted by the storm—the mother remembers hearing her cough several times when she swallowed water, or maybe that was Marion, she honestly doesn’t know anymore, it all got mixed up in the wind, the only thing for certain was that one second earlier Lotte was still there.
After that, a black hole.
Until Sidonie’s clear little voice.
“Are you coming to eat? You have to eat to be strong.”
Then the mother’s slow wrenching. She feels as if steel slings are holding her to the floor of the boat. It takes her several minutes to sit up, her head is spinning, a mixture of sorrow and exhaustion. Standing next to her, eyes smiling, Sidonie holds out her hand.
She takes it.
When did the days begin to pass so slowly, wonders Madie, shriveled in upon herself as if she were a hundred years old. Since when, her features as ravaged as a drunkard’s, her guts and her courage in a tailspin, vanished, null; and how many days? Nine, ten. Who knows. Time slips over her. Lotte’s death has woven a strange shell around her. No one else can see it, a transparent web that brings muffled sounds, veiled images. Lights are dim, voices distorted. The mother can’t do anything about it, it came all by itself. Sometimes it suits her; sometimes she would like to get away from it, because something inside her is aware that this odd lethargy must not prevail, in the long run, she has to stop it, otherwise she will founder once and for all, which wouldn’t bother her all that much, God, but there are the others, after all. She cannot see that her heart is slowly mending, going back and forth along a path toward a kind of healing that will never truly be one, a bandage, perhaps, a compress, pressing hard where it’s bleeding, just enough to keep going, to get up in the morning; an ointment for the vanished child.
But Madie wouldn’t dare, it’s too soon. She cannot imagine that necessity could get the better of pain in such a way, with so much indifference and abnegation. Sorrow devours her and deserts her. If she had time, if she had an inkling to—yes, perhaps, if things had been that way, she would have knelt on the ground and begged, for weeks. But it wasn’t like that. There are the five children on the boat, and the three who st
ayed on the hill. There are currents, and storms, and the beginnings of hunger; there is the beast she sometimes sees behind them, concealed in the boat’s wake. There is Pata who is wearing himself out rowing, while Liam and Matteo take turns, the father is white as a ghost, when he lets go of the oars in the evening his hands tremble, they have nothing left to squeeze—everything speaks of urgency and Madie can feel it as strong as her suffering, so she straightened her knees, like a scarecrow kept ramrod tall in his field by a stick, she went back to her place, the mother was once again the mother. Now she observes her family, six ghostly figures—as if they had lost their consistency in the course of these ten days, gradually fading, shadows, dotted lines. The little ones don’t even ask to leave the boat when they come upon island hills, more and more frequently, almost every day now, they don’t shout, don’t throw tantrums. They are enveloped in a sort of torpor, and if she could choose, the mother liked it better when they were insolent, rather than listlessly lapsing into this strange stupor, their gazes drifting on the water, their eyelids swollen with the bites of mosquitos they don’t even bother to brush away. That is why she has started talking again, started pointing to grassy patches or clouds, picked up stories where she left off. She is pretending. She murmurs in silence to herself that everything is the way it used to be.
And yet something huge has changed: the number of children on the boat. Madie forces herself not to count. She remembers. One by one, between dreams and delirium, she goes back over the children’s names, the memory of each of their nine births, the ones that were difficult, the ones she hardly felt. To pass the time? To lessen the pain of Lotte’s death, to bring her back to life, to give birth to her again and again. She spends more time thinking about that particular birth. And it’s true, her mind fills with emotions, when she recalls those moments of pain and joy.
Just After the Wave Page 11