Just After the Wave

by Sandrine Collette

  “Untie the boat. Let’s go.”

  Louie unties the rope, jumps into the boat next to Ades. He can sense the man’s indifference with every pore of his skin, he knows that for Ades they do not exist, not Perrine or him or even Noah, who took to him right away, they are nothing to him, they will not even weigh on his conscience.

  During the first minutes in the boat everything opposes them, the little boy and the thief: one who is gradually shrinking, tiny and defeated, and the other filling the air with the rhythm of his powerful, regular breathing, taking the boat to the island, toward salvation, his heart swelling with a fierce joy. This time Louie begs the storm to come, even if it capsizes them, even if they lose their crop, and if he has to lose his life, too, he is prepared to do so; but he cannot watch Ades strip them down to their last egg, their last pancake, and climb into the boat and row away to high ground without them. Louie prays in silence and the sky is still blue, the sun burning his arms and his neck, the sea more polished than a sheet of steel. If he looks straight ahead he can already see their hill, where Perrine and Noah are waiting. If he turns around, he can still see the island where the useless potatoes will rot, and wherever his vision takes him, it is incredulous and petrified, he no longer believes in Pata’s return. But this doesn’t bother Ades, who is monumental and vile, untouchable Ades getting to his feet, causing the boat to rock, handing Louie the oars.

  “Your turn.”

  Without a word Louie does as he is told, does not try to cry out or protest that he is tired, when he has just dug up three sacks of spuds while Ades sat there smoking by the side of the potato patch—since there’s nothing for it, he takes the paddles, settles into the middle of the seat, dips the wood into the water, and pulls with his arms. Ades faces the sea and unbuttons his trousers with a laugh.

  Louie hears the stream splashing into the water.

  An instinct: he looks.

  A flash that makes his heart race. Ades has his back to him.

  Don’t think. No time. Already his hands are trembling.

  On his feet in the split second that follows, with all his might he slams the oar into the man’s head.

  He drowned,” says Louie in a quiet voice.

  His siblings look at him, stunned; Louie with his hands still throbbing. He has just landed on the island.

  Alone.

  They didn’t say anything, it was just the way they looked at him.

  And Louie murmured, He drowned.

  They wait.

  He drowned is not enough. So Louie adds:

  “The boat turned all of a sudden. He fell overboard.”

  Silence courses between the three of them, between their questioning eyes and the words they don’t dare to say. Louie won’t tell them the rest of the story.

  How the bones cracked when the oar hit Ades from behind, half knocking him out and pitching him into the sea, or the sound of the water opening to take in his heavy body, a huge, dull sound, like a rock falling from a cliff, or so it seemed to him. Louie cried out. Ades raised his arm, and as mad as it might seem, at that moment the boy lay across the edge of the boat to hold the oar out as far as he could for the man to grab, to fish him out again, to save him, yes. He even felt the vibration of Ades’s fingers on the flat surface of the wood, a long scraping motion, that left a trace on the oar—until he began to splutter and wave his arms, sinking into the water up to his mouth, his eyes rolling backwards in shock and the gash on his head bleeding profusely, until Louie realized that Ades didn’t know how to swim, and he scrambled backwards in the boat with a scream.

  If he saves Ades, Ades will kill him.

  Not for one moment did he think he could ever be the winner in this strange combat. When he hit him, he didn’t really believe in it. He was convinced Ades would reach up and stop his gesture; he simply tried.

  It was instinctive, as always. To act as quickly as possible so Ades wouldn’t have time to sense the movement behind his back—quicker than any intuition of motion in the air, in the rhythm of the oars, in the sound of oars tearing through water.

  But even then Louie couldn’t believe it. Not with an opponent like Ades.

  And then.

  And so, gripped by panic, convinced the man was going emerge like a madman from the gray waters to come back to the boat and grab the edge, Louie reached for the oars. And his fear just as he dips them into the water: what if Ades grabs them from beneath the surface, and pulls, and leads him away. Louie rows, then pauses, looks all around him, his heart pounding.

  Not pounding: racing, skipping, a little animal gone mad with a fear that has made him breathless, after a few yards he has to stop and sit there without moving, unable to breathe; and what if this is dying.

  Wait.

  Madness.

  He ought to row fit to tear his arms out, to get away, beyond reach.

  He can’t.

  He bends double, begs his heart to start beating again, he can see the ripples, too near. He doesn’t know if he’ll have the strength to strike again. All he can do is tremble.

  Over there, four or five oar lengths away, Ades is still struggling.

  Not as violently.

  Louie can see his arms waving, his hands reaching out of the sea as if to grab hold of something, but now there is only air, since the boat has moved away, a little air, not enough, and spluttering, hoarse, stifled cries, a lament like that of the horns of ships lost in the fog. Louie wants it to stop, he blocks his ears, weeping.

  Gradually they diminish, the eddies, and the foam tossed up by Ades’s contortions. Gradually the water grows calmer, engulfing to its depths the big powerful body and the terrible voice.

  Closes over completely.

  Louie shivers relentlessly in the sun. He murmurs, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  And then his heart starts to beat again.

  He waits some more.

  What if Ades comes up again from the sea.

  After a long while he reaches for the oars and moves away, turning around often to make sure, both sick with remorse and terrified at the thought that Ades’s body might be following him, gliding under the water. Until he lands on the island where Perrine and Noah are mute and stunned to see him there alone, he is afraid some shape, some beast will cling to the boat and capsize it.

  In his dreams that night, Ades becomes a huge seething wave, tearing after him across the ocean. His cries wake Perrine and Noah. The three of them sit under the tent made of sheets and silently nibble the last of the pancake; fatigue and insomnia are a thousand times better than Louie’s screams, which still make their hair stand on the end.

  * * *

  “We’re going to leave,” says Louie.

  The three of them look at the boat.

  “Do you think we’ll be strong enough?” asks Perrine.

  “There are still some cans of fuel in the barn. We’ll get the motor going, that’ll mean we can go ten times faster.”

  “Will we have enough?”

  “I don’t know. And after that, anyway, we can row.”

  They look at the boat again.

  “I’m scared,” says Noah.

  “Ades came in this boat, didn’t he?”

  “I’d rather he were here with us.”

  “You idiot, don’t you understand he was going to leave us here to die?”

  The little boy lowers his eyes.

  “Come on,” says Louie encouragingly, patting him on the shoulder. “We’ll take all the supplies we can.”

  They spend the morning getting ready, somewhat feverishly; what if they forget something important.

  Water. Food.

  Blankets, even if it’s hot, and a tarp for the rain.

  Louie looks behind him. He says, The hens.

  “What?” asks Noah.

  “The hens, we can’t leave
them.”

  “But . . . the cage will never fit.”

  “No, no, we’ll take them without the cage.”

  “Like that?”

  “Loose, yes. They won’t go jumping in the water, will they.”

  In the meanwhile, they gather all the eggs they can find, and add them to the ones that are left in spite of Ades’s appetite: Perrine boils them carefully then places them in a bag, there are sixty or so, which makes them feel better. I thought there’d be more, says Louie, nevertheless—but Ades ate so many just himself, and the hens themselves have been picking at them because of their hunger, the surface of the ground is no longer enough, they will have to keep a closer eye on them.

  “And what are your hens going to eat on the boat?” asks Noah.

  “We’ll see.”

  A twelve-day trip, they recall.

  They wrap up the pancakes Ades had set aside for himself.

  “Serves him right,” murmurs Noah, feeling braver.

  The boys take the cans of fuel from the barn and fill the fuel tank.

  “Watch out, you’re spilling it,” says Noah.

  Louie groans.

  “It’s heavy.”

  The two of them try to get the motor started. Perrine watches them from the shore. They pull on the starter rope, ten times, thirty times, their brows sweating.

  “Stupid piece of crap!” shouts Noah.

  “There must be something you have to do,” grunts Louie, checking the flywheel.

  He lowers a lever, turns a knob.

  “What’s that?” asks Noah.

  Louie has no idea. But he’s the eldest, after all. So he tries it, he already heard Pata mention it.

  “The choke.”

  “Oh, right,” Noah agrees, not knowing what they’re talking about either.

  Finally, the motor coughs to life, wheezing but regular. Then there’s the sound.

  “It’s working!” shouts Louie.

  He slaps Noah’s outstretched hand, then immediately switches off the motor. We have to save fuel for the trip. In the boat, he lashes down the extra fuel jug, and covers it with a sheet to protect it from the sun.

  By noon they’re ready, and the boat is full. All that’s left is to load the hens, and the three of them, when the moment comes they hesitate, and gaze up at the house, their house, which they’re going to leave behind; no one can save it. They are overcome with sorrow, nostalgia for a dying world, the page they must turn on their childhood and their hopes, the island will disappear, and Pata didn’t come to get them. Saying nothing to each other, each one of them hopes they will see him on the sea, tonight, tomorrow, in two days’ time. If they didn’t believe that, they would probably not leave. The ocean frightens them, and the late August storms.

  And something else: which way should they go?

  A terrible question.

  They don’t know the way to high ground. They just act as if—and no one talks about it.

  Far to the east, Pata used to say. Louie remembers you have to head toward the sun in the morning. But only in the morning, because the stupid star doesn’t stay there in the east, it moves, it moves or the earth does, it doesn’t matter which one if the result is the same: if you row all day long with the sun on the horizon, by nightfall you’ll be back where you started, you’ll make a big useless loop, really, an endless journey. So, should you keep the sun on your left or on your right? Louie bites his lips: he has no idea. Maybe it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s at their back by nightfall.

  But maybe it’s very important.

  He goes over their supplies again, working out how many days they can last, not the twelve days of travel their father talked about, but the extra ones, for the unexpected, what if they get lost, no, they can’t, no matter how many times he counts, and plans for the tiniest portions of food, they cannot get lost, otherwise—otherwise what is the point of leaving, what is the point of getting their hopes up, what was the point of leaving Ades to drown after smashing his skull with the same oar Louie will be holding in his hands in just a few hours, or a few moments.

  Sitting on a chair in the house, he puts his fingers on the globe and turns it slowly.

  Where’s the sun, on this stupid globe? There’s not even any east. Nothing is indicated on it.

  What am I supposed to do?

  And anyway the world doesn’t look like this anymore. The blue color has swamped everything. With his index finger he traces the region where they are, there it is, to there. But east?

  Fuck.

  Louie shoves the globe away, exasperated. It hits a bump on the surface of the old oak table and rolls to one side; Louie just has time to stand up but not to reach for it, not to catch it, it lands with a loud, sharp shlack on the terra-cotta floor.

  A tinkling of glass. The earth is on the ground, the globe shattered to pieces.

  Inside, it’s hollow.

  That’s it, they’re leaving. It’s two in the afternoon. The sun is baking.

  “This way,” said Louie, when Noah looked at him questioningly.

  Twenty-six hens, the rooster, and the three of them on the boat.

  But Louie was wrong: when he starts the motor and the old machinery begins to hum, the hens jump in the water. They make it back to the island as best they can, those that jumped in right away. The others stay, the ones that didn’t dare, forced to remain once the land is too far away. They pace back and forth in the boat, squawking anxiously, wide-eyed, brushing up against the kids who look at them and wonder if these ones, too, won’t eventually make a run for it.

  But gradually they calm down, lie down next to each other under the foredeck, where Louie spread some old hay from the chicken coop. They don’t like it, and they still squawk from time to time just to make their point. The rooster is there, too; Louie wishes that one had jumped overboard, too.

  So now it’s eighteen hens and the three of them on the sea.

  “Too bad for them,” says Noah, facing their island as it shrinks slowly from their field of vision.

  The boat doesn’t go fast but they’re pleased all the same. Louie is holding the tiller, it seems so easy but he can’t keep the boat going straight, it zigzags this way and that like a drunken boat, What are you doing? says Perrine. Louie gets annoyed: “I’m trying!”

  After a few minutes have gone by, he understands that he mustn’t try to keep an absolutely straight line, mustn’t keep adjusting their heading in order to go east, it makes it worse. They are moving slowly, the motor sometimes acts as if it is out of breath, spluttering, and yet they do seem to be gliding effortlessly over the water, the air on their faces red with sun and excitement. Noah bursts out laughing, drags one hand in the water, making bubbles and foam, he splashes Perrine and she cries out. Louie says nothing, his back to the island that is gradually fading behind them. Sometimes he closes his eyes for two or three seconds, and only opens them again when a sort of dizziness comes over him, he makes sure they are still heading in the right direction, the one he chose when they left, he prays there will be some sort of landmark on the sea sooner or later—another island, a mountain, a concrete pillar—something he can follow without worrying about drifting off course: then he’d be sure and could breathe easy at last. But nothing appears and he dreads the moment when their island will be gone for good, with no new country, no coast or cliff appearing on the other side. The nakedness of the ocean terrifies him. Water as far as the eye can see, not a root to cling to, no grass to look at, a fathomless desert, a liquid abyss. Oddly, this vastness oppresses him. Only their tiny boat, between earth and sky, is an acceptable refuge.

  And yet so frail.

  Noah would like to try, too, to drive the boat, as he puts it. Louie lets him but stays right by his side. And explains: you have to keep looking at the horizon, relentlessly, stare at a spot in the distance and not let go, ot
herwise the boat will go around in circles.

  “A spot?” says Noah, astonished. “But there’s nothing there.”

  “There is, you have to find something.”

  “Can I use a cloud?”

  “No, clouds move.”

  After only a few minutes, Louie has to adjust the course his little brother has taken. You’re going too far to the right. Noah starts to get up, abandons the tiller.

  “Here, you can do it.”

  “You’re stopping already?”

  “I feel sick.”

  He crawls over to Perrine, and Louie hears him say again, I feel sick. And then Noah leans overboard and throws up, into the ocean. Perrine reaches for a rag in one of the big bags they filled for the journey. Then Noah sits back down and closes his eyes.

  “No, don’t do that,” says Perrine, shaking him; she’s the one who always gets carsick. “Look straight ahead otherwise it will start all over again.”

  “I’m sick,” whines Noah.

  “You’ll get used to it. Remember how when we go on vacation, I’m like that in the beginning, and then after a while it gets better.”

  The boat chugs along for hours. Noah eventually fell asleep and Perrine put a sheet over his face so he wouldn’t get sunburned. She and Louie have tied kerchiefs on their heads, they can feel the heat burning their skin. Of course it would have been better if they could have hung some sort of awning over the boat, but they didn’t have time, obsessed by the thought that they had to leave the island as quickly as possible; they simply didn’t think. Now they’re sorry—even though Louie knows what a struggle it would have been to build some sort of solid shelter, fastened onto nothing, and the first gust of wind would have blown it away, so he pushes up the rag on his brow, convinced he has become some sort of pirate.