Slow down.
She shakes her head at the thought, like a stubborn animal.
She hasn’t brought enough to eat and drink, if she has to spend two days on the water to reach the island. And yet she has no choice, she resolves to paddle slowly, letting herself ride on the currents which, fortunately, are going her way, moving the boat a little, slightly. From one hour to the next her gestures become more automatic, and she begins to make headway, stiff, breathless. Has she been overambitious? She did not think it would be like this. To her mind, a mother driven by determination to find her children knows neither fatigue nor resignation; the truth is completely different. The truth is that Madie hasn’t been eating or sleeping or moving for days. Her body is imploding. Her arms are swelling, her veins are bulging, her blood is pounding against her flesh. And now her heart has begun racing, erratic, refusing to beat steadily, obliging her to stop rowing for several minutes—yes, this is all very different from the irrepressible élan with which she leapt in the boat shortly before dawn, very different from the magical currents that would carry her straight to Levet, or so she thought.
In fact, she reckons she is doing four miles an hour, and according to the map she still has between fifteen and twenty hours ahead of her.
So she’ll have to stop for the night.
This reinvigorates Madie, because the thought of spending a night alone on the boat, of feeling the darkness enclose her, deadening her vigilance, her sight, her gestures, makes her so frightened that she has a sudden burst of energy from who knows where. She won’t make it to the island but she prays she will find a small hill where she can land and tie up the boat, even if she has to go off course, just not to fall asleep in the middle of the ocean with black shapes swimming underneath her that she cannot see, and waves forming inexplicably, murmuring threats, dull sounds from the depths of the water hatching into growls as they break through to the surface and up the sides of the boat into her ears.
But the thing is, no matter how she struggles and pants and sees strange sparks before her eyes when she closes them, the night has forced her to a halt, and she hasn’t found a single island to land on. So she throws the anchor out into the middle of the ocean, terrified by the shaking of the chain which seems to go endlessly down, fathom upon fathom, she tries not to imagine what is down there, waiting for her, sniffing around her. Intermittently drowsy, she wakes with a start whenever the boat moves; her heart, her arms are full of palpitations, slicing her irregular sleep with an exhausting shuddering. Once dawn turns the sky to gray she dreams of a few hours’ sleep; the fear of sleeping too long sends her back to her oars, without rest, she feels the fatigue draining her face to the bone, her eyes sinking into the black circles beneath them which she rubs now and again when her vision blurs.
All day long Madie stifles in the never-ending summer heat. The compass on one knee and the GPS on the other, the map open on the floor of the boat, on she rows, sometimes just barely skimming the surface because her body, resistant to deeper water, refuses to fight. With each forward thrust she gives out a moan, bone-tired, in pain, jaws clenched not to give in, with the effort to plow through the sea and hold back her guts which want nothing more than to spill out of her, burning, about to burst, she thinks, she is making so little headway that she cannot understand it when she measures her pace across the water—so she stops looking, her eyelids red from the sun and the silver reflections on the water; her hat is no longer enough to protect her.
At 18:07—Madie will remember this because she checks her watch, an old habit—she crosses the border into the Canton of Levet. It’s not because she recognizes the place, everything is still as empty and flooded as one hour or five hours earlier; but the GPS beeps. She had keyed in their address in the field marked “destination,” astonished, moved that the little box still knew where their house was. And when the electronic voice calls out, You have reached your destination. Your destination is on the right, Madie feels a lump in her throat, she sets down her oars, is overcome by a sudden trembling: she is here, she has made it.
And the trembling grows stronger, but not because she has won. Around her there is nothing left.
On the map, on the GPS screen, this is the place.
In the mother’s eyes: a void.
This time she knows there is no mistake. She has circled all around, in ovals, in a spiral, she has crisscrossed the calm ocean, she has gone back and forth in tight rows across the water, like a dog looking for game, always returning to the central point where the house should be.
The boat knocked against something, she leaned over to look at it. A stone. A brick and a piece of metal. This is when she understood. She put her hand in the water and it is as if she could see it with her eyes, she is that familiar with the shape, she remembers it so well, three or four years ago, the little Yagi antenna.
So she is home.
She looks around her, to the left, to the right. Water, everywhere.
Home.
She has no more home.
She does not want to think about what this means, which is so much more painful: Louie, Perrine, and Noah are dead. For the moment, the words fail her. There is just this awful sensation of her legs refusing to support her, her trembling hands, her heart stopping, and to be honest she doesn’t need any words to fall to her knees in the boat, to pull her shirt tight over her chest with pain, to gasp for breath, just a little bit of air, she can’t breathe, everything is severed, everything is finished. Yes, because now Madie has seen that she was wrong, against all expectation; she was so sure of the opposite, the conviction was rooted in her flesh, vibrant, but it was worn away as she plowed through the sea, that’s it, contrary to every law of nature, Madie is floating above her house and sobbing.
Just when, hundreds of miles from there, Madie is crying that there has to be a mistake, yet another one, a huge one, Pata comes home from work and it is greeted by the little girls’ screams.
Daddy, Daddy!
And it’s not an exaggeration to say that his heart skips a beat or two when he hears them shrieking like this, because he has grown accustomed to misfortune, he knows that bad news often takes advantage of absence to surface. Only this time he is wondering: why, what else, what more, is it fated never to end, and he throws his jacket on the ground to run into the house, already crushed, eyes wide. He has time to see Liam, Emily, and Sidonie in the garden downstairs, calling to him, waving their arms, and he turns to them, searching for the baby, his little Marion, where is she if the others are there? Breathless, he arrives with a shout, What, what?
But the children are laughing, and Sidonie is clapping her hands and saying, Daddy!, and only then does the father see Marion clinging to Liam’s legs. He tells himself he panicked a bit too soon, that nothing has happened at all, but with what life has been throwing at them he has an excuse, after all, at least that is what he thinks immediately afterwards, knuckles white, heart racing, he laughs too, for no reason, tries to steady his voice as he looks at them all:
“Is everyone all right?”
“Look!” exclaims Emily.
She picks Marion up in her arms and walks a few steps away. The baby kicks her legs, beaming, and lets out a delighted cry.
“Marion,” says Emily very seriously, “do you see Liam?”
She sets Marion on the ground, holding her with her fingertips.
“Do you see him?”
Liam crouches down and holds out his arms.
And Pata sees his littlest one, his last-born, let go of Emily’s hands, and so delicately balanced a single puff of air would blow her over, her eyes riveted on Liam’s as he encourages her, she takes tiny steps to reach for her brother’s fingers.
Sidonie bursts out laughing.
“She’s walking, she’s walking!”
Marion collapses against Liam, who picks her up and swings her around, singing, She’s a big
girl, not a baby anymore—and the little girl giggles for all she’s worth, radiant, waving her arms to be let down on the ground to do it over again.
“So that’s why, so that’s why . . . ” stammers Pata, still shaken with the fear he felt on coming home. “That’s all it was . . . ”
Sidonie frowns.
“But it’s great!”
“Yes. Yes, of course . . . ”
And in front of the squealing, chattering children, all focused on the baby who is no longer quite a baby, Pata slips to the ground, his hands in theirs, with tears on his cheeks because he wishes Madie were there with them, wishes she hadn’t missed Marion’s first steps and the children’s joy in the garden, so she could see that even if there are only six of them, they are still a family, if only she would try, if only she were here; yes. They kiss, cuddle, and tell each other stories, enjoying the soft air for a long while, running their hands through the tickly grass. Let’s have supper out here, suggests Pata, I’ll go get some ham and cheese, some sausages and fruit. Emily jumps up:
“I’ll come with you.”
By the time they return, Liam has gathered some branches and made a fire, despite the heat.
“We’ll be glad to have it once it gets dark, otherwise we’ll get cold.”
“And this way there won’t be any mosquitoes,” says Sidonie, pointing to her bare arms and going to huddle next to her father, on the other side of Emily, who is holding Marion.
They eat, and jabber away. Pata gave Liam a glass of wine, then another one, and now the eldest’s head is spinning and he’s laughing at everything. Emily and Sidonie beg to try, too, just a sip, that’s all, to see if it does the same to them; when the father gives in at last, they take a swallow and make a face, then burst out laughing a moment later.
“Me too, I feel the same as Liam!” says Sidonie, thrilled.
Liam knows that’s impossible, he looks at Pata with a shrug, if they’re enjoying it, and the father returns his laughing gaze—it’s fine. Emily snorts and looks at her sister; they both collapse in inexplicable, uncontrollable laughter, and Liam and Pata cannot resist it, either, even Marion, she doesn’t understand why but her clear laugh rises on the evening air, and as he catches his breath Pata listens to them, their high-pitched tones, their voices of babies of children of almost grown-ups, a disorderly joyful clamor, as if echoing a time so recent and so long ago when they were all together, all eleven of them, so some remnant of their strength and complicity is still alive, something lives on, Madie has to come back and see this and begin to live again, with them; that’s what he thinks.
* * *
During the few hours of daylight remaining, huddled in the boat, Madie roared at the water, insults and abuse and a promise to destroy the earth if it didn’t restore her children to her, she has torn at her face and her clothes, rent the air with her threats, but there’s nothing for it, nothing has been restored to her, not even a cry or a mutter.
Now Madie is on her knees but not praying: she is trying to go inside her shattered body. She wants to dissolve, so there will be nothing left to think, nothing to suffer from. To disappear, because all other solutions are illusory. For a few moments she gazes at the water around her and temptation slips by; it would be so easy to tip overboard. But she knows her reflexes and her instincts, and her capacity for struggle; she remembers those twelve days of suffering on the water, her hatred ripening, her fear and anxiety, and that is what keeps her back, in fact, fear—Madie does not want to die in the water.
But she does not want to go back to the place where she failed, either, crushed with shame, disappointment, defeat.
So she reaches her decision: she won’t go back.
She won’t go home.
She knows what this means: never to see them again. And what is even more certain at this moment: she does not have the strength to see them again. Her sorrow is proportional to her dashed hopes: immense. Madie is inconsolable. And the ocean doesn’t give a damn.
There is nothing inside her of a mother anymore, she is like a little fish that the current is rolling endlessly toward the shore, and which has given up on the open ocean, allowing itself to beach on the sand where the lack of water will seal its fate, and it listens to its breathing getting weaker, then stopping, a few instants, one two three, its belly rises and falls a bit more, one two, mouth open, one, nothing moving, zero. She, too, will stop living. On this boat out of gas. Madie throws the last of her supplies overboard. She knows the temptation will be too great, once thirst begins to dry her lips and hunger turns her stomach inside out, she will no longer have the will; so she makes the first move, she takes out the bag with the food, the bottles of water, hesitates. But this is what she wants. She clenches her teeth. In a single gesture she flings it all over the side, as far as possible. She hears the sound it makes as it falls into the water, the sound of life slipping away. She thinks: that’s it.
She is there in silence.
The moon illuminates her gestures.
Once the sea has swallowed the bread, the cheese, the dried ham, and the bottles, which she uncorked, when the last dish towel has stopped floating at last and darkness has erased every trace, Madie breathes slowly. There are no more solutions, no more alternatives.
She pulls up the anchor, yes, in the middle of the night.
The boat hesitates, rocks back and forth, sways. Gradually a current bears it away, very slowly, imperceptibly. If Madie were standing on the chimney of her drowned house, she would notice that the boat is drifting, whispering, surely going away; but she is lying on the floorboards, and she can’t see anything other than the sides of the boat around her and the sky pricked with stars. Eyes wide open she stares at the darkness and the millions of flickering lights.
She knows she won’t get up again; this is her final battle.
Madie dozes, wakes, falls asleep again. Whether from exhaustion or emotion, her pain feels as if anesthetized, folded over on one side, buried. She has forgotten that she doesn’t want to go home because she has failed; she has forgotten hope, shame, collapse.
She has forgotten that she has a family.
Madie is alone on earth in a boat on the ocean; all that is left of her is a scrawny body empty of all will, of the memory of the children she had, living or dead.
She has been drifting for hours without even looking where she is going. Maybe she turned over, lying on the wooden floorboards which hurt her shoulder; maybe she crawled a few inches to put her head in the shade of the seat when the sun rose and began beating down. She can feel its burning rays on her clothes, the sweat of her body underneath.
She is already thirsty.
Never mind.
A faint, sour smell in her sweat attracts the flies. Madie is afraid. She wishes it were already over, that death had taken her, since that is what she has decided. But deciding wasn’t the hardest part: now she has to wait. This body that hasn’t wanted food for days, which can no longer stand this burden of woe, her body is still holding out. Let go, dammit, murmurs Madie, not opening her lips.
But it won’t.
The hot air burns her throat and sinuses—it’s not air, to be honest, it’s as if she were breathing above a pot of boiling water, she opens her mouth to let it into her lungs, the heat is stifling. Already a dozen times she has been tempted to wet her hair; a shudder, the time to get a hold of herself, no, no, now she just has to get it over with.
The sky is dropping down behind her closed lids, the light is fading. Madie doesn’t need to open her eyes, she can tell the clouds are gathering, doesn’t need to see to know a storm is brewing, because the wind has picked up a little, caressing her face, and the insects are buzzing around like crazy, after the skin on her face, and she no longer brushes them away. Much later, when she doesn’t know if this grayness is from the storm or the falling darkness, when she can no longer swallow because thirst
is tearing her throat out, she can hear the rolling of thunder in the distance—it’s a storm, she remembers it so well. Just then, she feels a pang inside, because she would like to waste away, tranquil in her boat, as if she were simply falling asleep, but she has a premonition that it won’t be completely serene, but still—to die obstinately and slowly, that’s what she would like, on the water but not drowned, not caught in a whirlpool or a swell, or a storm. A tiny little ball of anger lodged deep in her guts is stirring, she thought it was gone for good, it makes her feel sick and she spits the bile overboard, she gulps, they’ve won, they have made her open her eyes—the gods, the devils, the bastards of this world. And it doesn’t make much difference, this opening her eyes, now that darkness has settled over the ocean. If there were land, if there were trees and houses, Madie would see shadows; but all the way to the horizon there is nothing, and the horizon stops where the darkness has engulfed it, just there, only a few yards away. The boat and the mother are rocking from side to side, back and forth, in the middle of the night. The boat doesn’t care, but the mother is clinging to the edge: already the wind has disheveled her, she knows the storm is on its way. She cannot tell where it’s coming from, or how strong it will be.
Just After the Wave Page 16