With Liam, it lasted twenty-seven hours, yet he wasn’t a big baby; then only four for Matteo. At the time she figured she could go on having children, since they came so easily, now that her body was acclimatized. But then for Louie she had suffered again, over a day, and she thought: why have so many children? She and Pata had already decided to have seven or eight, they didn’t know why, probably one day they were horsing around and came up with that number, and it stuck in their memory, they didn’t discuss it any further, it was self-evident. And the reason was not that either one of them came from a big family—Pata had only two brothers, and Madie one sister and one brother, both younger—nor a shared dream or a challenge or anything like that, it was really just a game, random chance, a lack of imagination, perhaps, and then after Liam, Matteo, and Louie, Madie desperately wanted a girl. So Perrine was born eighteen months later. Pata thought that was a bit too soon. Madie wept with joy. And the birth went well, and quickly, she was in a sort of trance until they put the little girl on her belly, Madie was dying to see what she looked like and wasn’t disappointed: the most charming baby on earth. So it had been all that much harder, three years later, when Matteo, playing around with a stick, had blinded Perrine in her left eye, at the hospital the doctors couldn’t do a thing, and she became a one-eyed little princess, with her pretty face and her good nature, and now her blank eye—because she didn’t want to hide it, she said she wasn’t ashamed, just as on the day of the accident she had said it didn’t hurt and would they stop talking about it. But in any case, the day of her birth, since that was what Madie was thinking about now, had been a fine day. And it was in part because of it that Madie figured she was game for another round, and she would gladly hatch a few more children, how many exactly she hadn’t decided, that would depend—on desire, fatigue, Pata’s joyful incursions. And clearly they both went at it heartily, because not eighteen months had gone by when Noah came into the world, ever so calm and weighing less than four pounds; now that they had both boys and girls, Pata and Madie decided to keep the sex of the child a surprise, and it was only on the day of his birth that they became acquainted with the baby they would call Noah. If he had been a girl, they would have called him Emily.
And the mother stuck to her guns: she wanted another daughter now, so that they could name her Emily. The father had sworn he’d give her three more little lads first, but fate proved him wrong yet again: along came Emily two years later. In return for which it hadn’t been all that easy, since the baby was in a breech position and refused to turn, it took a long time and Madie, as she put it later, had gone through the mill. It had taken a bit more persuasion on Pata’s part to convince her that two out of three births went like clockwork, and that therefore they ought to keep going—which they did, successfully, because Sidonie was born exactly one year and five days after Emily. And while Madie had to concede that the birth really had been easy as pie, she was beginning to drag her feet when it came to heading back out onto the battlefield—the expression was Pata’s—and for a while she took a contraceptive, which he tried to hide from her now and again, to give them a chance, so he said, but she didn’t find it at all funny.
No one really understood why Madie tossed her pills in the garbage one day. She complained that she’d been putting on weight but, logically, successive pregnancies were more at fault than contraception. She also complained of lethargy, dizziness, nausea—in short, all the poor excuses you come up with when you want to get rid of something, and maybe that was the only reason, Madie wanted to go off the pill without losing face, without admitting that she was wrong, that her fate was that of enthusiastic, disorderly procreation, or at least that was what she thought at the time. In any case, chemistry hadn’t caused her organism any harm because she got pregnant immediately afterwards. What no one could have predicted, on the other hand, was how long that subsequent birth ended up taking, or perhaps it was the midwife who got it wrong, thinking that labor had already begun. Forty-eight hours later Madie was still at the hospital, exhausted, and her epidural had gone to waste. When the pain became noticeable, she endured it with courage: C’mon girl, we’ll do it like in the old days. But in fact the pain quickly got the better of her goodwill, and she ended up screaming so loud that a quaking Pata quickly retreated to the other side of the door. Then they’d had her torn perineum to sew up, because Lotte weighed over eight pounds on the hospital scale.
Thus, it was with great reticence that Madie greeted Pata’s joyful outbursts when she came home from the maternity ward, particularly as she refused to take the pill again for the same somewhat obscure reasons she had given before. So they came up with a compromise, which made Pata complain and Madie tremble: during her fertile days, the father would resort to the withdrawal method. He sulked, frustrated. The mother was terrified she might make a mistake, until she got her period and was reassured for two weeks or so. Yet it was because of a miscalculation—unless Pata let something out and didn’t say anything—that she found herself pregnant again. And although, once she had digested the news, she accepted the father’s pirouettes with good grace up until her eighth month, after Marion’s birth she moved her mattress to the other side of the room and decreed that that was it. To be honest, Pata did not protest initially. And by the time he did, Madie had already gotten used to the change and didn’t often go back on her decision.
There’s no way of knowing whether things would have stayed like that forever, that regular, forced abstinence, but the huge tidal wave, at that very point in their lives, confronted Pata and Madie with far more pressing concerns. The mother deemed that between nine births and a major flood, fifteen years had gone by without a lull. She would have liked to have a moment of rest—but there it was, there were storms, wind, and the ocean constantly devouring their land, chasing them from their home precisely thirteen days after the catastrophe, and life had been nothing but catastrophic ever since.
So there is nothing to thank the heavens or fate or anything for, ruminates Madie. She’s had her fill of pain, and if she brought children into the world, it was not so that they would be taken from her. It will be a long while before she’s ready to forgive the world. She’s filled with spite, is Madie: a week of mourning and fate figures they’re even? A likely story. She’s hardly had time to come to terms with it. Moreover, Madie plans to get even with the heavens, and she’ll start by covering them with scorn. She spits in the water when Pata has his back turned. Makes a vengeful fist, casts a furious gaze. She likes that the heavens would feel hurt. Deep down, she’s scared out of her wits. Never mind, she will be brazen. She bets the heavens wouldn’t dare come after her twice in a row, not all that soon.
But nothing eases her sorrow. When she has finished thinking about her children, when she has finished imagining what she could do to get even with the heavens, she is crushed with pain all over again. It’s like a bad flu, her body aching all over, her throat burning, her head caught in a vise that no one can loosen. Madie puts her hands on her head, tries pressing to make it stop. It doesn’t stop.
Leaning over the side, she sees her reflection in the ocean. Recoils. Even in the gray water she can see how pale she is, her features drawn and bruised with grief. She will keep these marks to the very end. She knows: from now on, she will be the mother of a little ghost.
At lunchtime on the tenth day, Emily and Sidonie begin to cry: there isn’t enough to eat. The eggs are long gone, the bags are empty; fishhooks stay bare. Neither the father nor the two eldest have the strength to fish once they put down their oars—and besides, they’d have to stop on an island and make a fire to cook the fish, because no matter what Madie says the little girls will not touch raw flesh, she can just picture their noses wrinkling, their disgusted expressions, It’s yucky. But they will have to make landfall soon: the mother has only a dozen raw potatoes left, so there, too, she needs a fire. In the meanwhile she divides up the last, moldy, pancakes, rather hesitantly; what if it makes the
m sick. She watches the children nibbling and feels her own stomach rumbling, stirring up emptiness and bile inside, her hand deep in the bag strokes the last two eggs she’s hidden from the father, they’re for the baby, she’ll give them to her when everyone’s asleep.
Madie clears her throat.
“If we find an island . . . ”
She doesn’t finish her sentence. Pata is bound to turn around and ask her.
“You want us to stop?”
“An hour or two, if there’s some wood to make a fire. For the potatoes. And if we could try and fish . . . there’s nothing left.”
The father nods. He doesn’t tell her that he’s been scanning the water for days and hasn’t seen a single fish. Maybe the beast that is still following them off and on is the reason for the penury, devouring or terrifying everything it sees, circling around them as if they will be its last feast, he’s sure it’s because of the beast. He thinks he can smell its stench of slimy skin and the deep, every morning when they get started again after he has cautiously raised the little anchor that breaks the surface, bringing up the mustiness of the silt. He alone knows that sometimes the beast comes up to rub its back against the boat, testing its resistance; yes, it’s like the storm, Pata can tell the animal is getting ready. It’s a strange combat they’re engaged in, the two of them, muted and mean, and the father wishes he could read the creature’s mind, to know what it is planning, to take the measure of his own chances to reach higher ground before it comes to a confrontation, to outpace it; does it know they are getting closer to the mountains?
If only they had a rifle.
Make landfall and stay for days on end, as long as it takes, until the creature grows weary. But with Madie who’d shout that they have to get going . . . with deserted hills where there is nothing to eat, not even roots. The father shudders, scans the horizon. Hopes for an island. They’ve seen three in two days, a sign they are in an area of higher altitude. He was hoping some of these islands might still be inhabited. Find help, food, a few indications about their route. But the land is dying from salt water and abandonment, people have sought refuge further away. Yesterday they saw the head of a statue above water, incongruous in the middle of the sea, a solitary statue, nothing else.
“Do you think there was a city here?” asked Liam.
Pata nodded. He recognized the stone face of Joseph, he couldn’t be sure but it seemed probable, which would mean they were in the region of Vallone, where the statues had been put up twenty years earlier—there should also have been the one of Mary with the child in her arms, but Mary is smaller, so she’s surely below the water now, forever, so small, or knocked over—Vallone, thinks the father suddenly, so they must have drifted south, they’ll have to change course. Saying nothing, he adjusted his rowing. Behind them, the creature rippled to follow them, the only one who noticed the boat’s new direction.
The little girls’ restrained tears hover in the air, they sniffle and sob, Madie calms them with a gesture. On land she would have kept them busy with a game. The first one who brings me a. The first one who finds—a blue flower, a round stone, a forked stick. How many flies on that spot of sunlight, how many ricochets on the water when you toss a flat pebble. But what can she give them, here on this boat? Water, water, and more water. The number of planks it took to build the boat, the color of the oars? Who cares. Even the game of Happy Families: they can’t stand the sight of it, they’re sickened by all the times they’ve played since leaving home, storms interrupt them. The mother feels as if a drill were piercing through her flesh, this image of the little girls crying, silently, and there’s nothing she can do, just ignore them so she won’t burst into tears herself, tears of rage, turn away not to see, clench her fists; these cursed days that never end.
“There.”
Pata points to something the mother cannot see, a shadow on the horizon, she squints. An island. She says it, to be sure.
“An island?”
He smiles.
“Yes.”
The children stir, suddenly excited.
“Are we going there?”
“Are we going to get off?”
“Is there food there?”
Don’t know. Matteo, at the oars, rows even harder. Just pray it isn’t a mirage, thinks the mother, gazing at his tense face.
“When will we be there?” asks Sidonie.
“Another hour.”
“Is it long, an hour?”
“Yes,” says the mother.
“No,” says the father.
But it is Madie who is right: even the final minutes seem to last forever. And for what? A place of loose stones, a sort of callus emerging from the sea. A plateau, several hundred yards square, brambles, dead bushes, then nothing. I don’t believe it, sighs the father, as he brings the boat gently ashore.
Sidonie, Emily, and Matteo, too: after ten days of rocking on the water, when they step out on land they fall down. They get up, walk unsteadily, fall again. They start laughing.
“I feel dizzy,” says Emily, ecstatic.
“It’s weird,” murmurs Sidonie.
Matteo runs sideways, his arms spread like a bird’s wings. His legs stiff and painful. He says, I’ve got pins and needles.
Madie waves to bring them together.
“Come on, let’s tour the place.”
Tour, honestly? They can see the island from where they are. We’ll count our steps. The little ones try. Fifty-four, fifty-five. It’s hard. In her mother’s arms, Marion squirms this way and that to see where they are going. Suddenly they start with surprise. Blackberries, blackberries! The brambles are covered with them. Even Pata trots over and gives a cry. They’re everywhere. The mother hurriedly rummages for a bowl, while the children stuff themselves with everything they can reach. They are covered in scratches and stains; it doesn’t matter.
“Don’t eat the red ones, they’ll make you sick,” warns Pata. “They’re not ripe yet.”
They eat the red ones.
Madie slaps their hands.
“Leave some, we have to have some for tomorrow.”
They don’t stop. They laugh. She fills the bowl and keeps them from reaching into it, kicking them away if need be, scolding them halfheartedly. Their mouths and cheeks are purple. Pata has gone to find some dead wood to build a fire, hoping to find other treasures—but the island offers nothing more than a carpet of moss, where they sit and stare at the flames, their bellies happy, their eyes riveted on the potatoes waiting to be buried in the embers; their mouths are already watering.
Afterwards they lie on the ground, astonished not to have to bend their legs or share the space. Madie motions that they should get up but Pata holds her back, the kids are overwhelmed with fatigue, as is he, and the mother.
Let them sleep.
He wants to stay overnight; Madie refuses. She’ll be patient, the time it takes for a nap, she looks at their faint smiles, hears their breathing—including the father’s, he has collapsed on his side and begins to snore when she stops kicking him gently with her toe, and finally Madie too succumbs, curls around the baby and falls asleep, all seven of them lying in a circle around the dead fire, seven survivors looking like neatly laid out corpses, and the warm gray air lulls them until the end of the afternoon.
But they had to go back to sea, and the next day their bellies were just as empty as when they landed on the island; the blackberries were long gone, the potatoes a sad memory. This time, they have nothing left. Madie took some moss and a few twigs, what are you doing, scolded Pata, you’re not going to make them eat grass now are you. He is relying on the approaching mountains, imminent landfall—and yet, as far as the eye can see there is nothing but water, and at times he loses heart. He saw one or two hills so far off their route that he didn’t say anything; they would have wasted hours. A wager: if there was nothing but loose stones, the fa
ther had been right. If there were trees, fruit, berries, his decision to keep going had been disastrous. But he’ll never know. It’s better this way. No regrets. Just hunger.
And the little girls whining and chanting, I’m hungry, I’m hungry. It breaks his heart. He’s always been so proud of feeding his family, even during the difficult years, when he lost his job because the factory closed. Madie’s little salary had not been enough, and so while waiting for better days, Pata did piecework, never mind what they offered him, field work, gardening, household maintenance, trimming hedges, driving old ladies on errands, which hardly paid for the gas he used, even cleaning house. The eleven of them weren’t exactly fat but they managed. They never got the impression they would die of hunger, whereas now . . . A hair’s breadth. The father glances at the baby sleeping in her mother’s arms. That’s good. Marion cried for two solid hours, she doesn’t understand, can’t accept. So then Emily and Sidonie started up, so what, who could tell whether it was better to shout at them to shut up—it’s not as if they were starving them on purpose!—or to let them go on, even join in, because there’s no solution, and there’s this constant temptation to turn around, but after eleven days it would be madness to turn around. A stupid idea; exhaustion is turning him into a moron. And besides, he knows.
The answer to the mother’s question last night, full of resignation: Why haven’t we seen land yet?
Yes, he knows. He didn’t say so, of course. He also thought that with a bit of luck by the tenth day they would start finding islands. They’ve seen nothing, or virtually. Because the waters are still rising. There’s your answer: the sea has covered still more ground and the water level is ever higher. So, should they go home? The father has a lump in his throat. He has no idea what might be left of their hill. He presses his hands on his face not to think of the three little ones left behind, who might have drowned already. For days the word has been drifting through his mind, and comes back when he least expects it. Murderer. But he didn’t think of it all on his own: it’s the word he saw in Madie’s eyes when they set off with six children and left the other three on the island, eleven days ago—and it could have been a thousand days ago and it would have made no difference: since that dawn, he has become a murderer. The question remains: how many has he killed? One, two. Four. All of them. He’ll find out when he gets there.
Just After the Wave Page 12