Just After the Wave

by Sandrine Collette

  So she shoves the plastic tarp away without thinking, her eyes wide open, just the words pounding in her head, I’m scared, I’m scared.

  Louie’s shout.

  “Are you crazy?”

  He yanks the tarp back over them; on the horizon, the light is yellow and pink. He points his finger into the distance.

  “It’s getting calmer. We’re not in the worst of it.”

  They keep an eye on the far end of the sea, clinging to the gunwale not to be knocked off balance by the waves; their fear doesn’t dissipate. For endless minutes the ocean tosses, whips, rolls them, and Louie needs a great deal of conviction to go on believing it’s only a little storm, he won’t let go, the sky is clearing and the wind growing steadier. The sea terrifies them, however, it has taken over the world, it is so dark that they can no longer make out the boundary between the ocean and the gigantic clouds, there’s only a vast black world engulfing them, It’s like being in the belly of a whale, murmurs Noah, but the others don’t hear him.

  Then they can again see the shapes of the clouds, gray lights in the sky. Black, somber masses charged with a fierce rain go by on their left.

  “Look,” says Louie.

  They watch the downpours moving past, whirlwinds, and they’re at the very edge, pelted only by jagged little bursts of spray that sting their faces; over there the sea is rough, with towering waves that strain skyward.

  Pray it doesn’t come this far.

  Pray the wind will keep the waves away.

  They cannot take their eyes off the storm as they move along it, graze past it, helpless to get away or to stop the storm from taking them with it, should the currents change, but they don’t think of this, they’re too busy clutching the boat, bracing their legs, regaining their balance when they slip.

  Not as strong.

  It’s getting calmer, says Louie again, in a low voice.

  Waves slapping on the ocean.

  Yes, not as strong.

  A tiny burst of joy in their thoughts. Is it over? asks Perrine.

  Almost.

  Five, ten minutes. No more black. Gray, blue, a little bronzed yellow, as if the sun were trying to break through, to rip open the thick clouds. A single ray of light, unexpected, incongruous, inscribes an arrow of light from the sky to the sea. The boat has stopped shaking them about.

  Noah looks up. And that?

  Then they see it.

  Behind them, raised by the elements, a renewed onslaught of waterspouts.

  * * *

  Before their gaping eyes, the sea has risen again. A sort of nightmare starting over, a bad dream they cannot escape, toying with them, making them believe that—and then.

  The boat gesticulates on the sea—that is really the word for it—it twists, distends, a wooden body cracking and contorting, slamming the surface of the water every time it comes down, hemmed in by a pellet spray of lightning all around the children. In the beginning they shouted advice, orders, questions; now there is only a long wailing when the sea buffets them, half capsizing the boat, which rights itself just in time, they can’t even bail the water that is gradually making it heavier, it’s all they can do to huddle down, cling on, stay on board. The tarp tore away immediately, they saw it fly off into the sky, whirling, descending, heading off again—then they didn’t see it again, the storm took it, it’s gone; they hold on.

  A dozen times, rattled by a breaker, a wave, a dreadful trough, they thought they would let go. Did let go, a hand, a foot, they slipped, by some miracle the three of them are still all in the boat, with the hens, which roll from side to side, beating their wings. The only thing they can feel is that their strength is waning, that the storm will get the better of them, their arms are braced, their aching fingers can no longer close tight enough around the ropes, and sometimes their gazes meet, full of fear, then look away, trying to find some sort of support, a place to hold onto.

  Suddenly the wave is there: the one they dreaded. Broadside, all at once. A terrible sound, as if the boat is being torn apart.

  They roll over.

  In a sort of a hiccup the boat rights itself then crashes into the trough of the wave, tearing the children’s hands from the ropes and the gunwale, sending them crashing against the bow. They cry, scream, no one hears. No one to help. They don’t even say to themselves that they are going to die. Words are silenced.

  Don’t even look at one another.

  Everyone for themselves; the world around has vanished. No more thoughts, nothing that is not straining fully toward those clinging hands, those curving fingers, all breath choked by showers of spray.

  There is only fear.

  And the howling of the wind on the sea, like the terrifying cry of a ghost looking for lost children, parting the walls of storm with great gusts and blasts of rage.

  When the wave recedes, they slam together where they have been hurled to the bottom of the boat, their noses bleeding unnoticed, they scratch and graze each other, and the hens in turn lose their balance, slide out from under the seat where even their frenetic beating of wings cannot restrain them. The children hear their squawking and cackling as if from another world; a moment later, the hens come tumbling on top of them, lacerating them with their claws as they struggle to right themselves, wings spread, flapping, hindered by the storm. Several of them roll from one end of the boat to the other, and Louie knows, reaches out, too late—they are catapulted against them, bounce, are projected overboard, they can hear the furious squawking, a few seconds, then nothing more, the children huddle under the seats, terrified by the sea’s momentum and how it has taken their hens, nothing more, no, just Perrine’s scream.

  “My eyes!”

  But Louie and Noah don’t reply, they don’t understand, the storm has petrified them. Bruised from falling, colliding, they cling on, hopelessly, instinctively, it’s not anything they can control, their arms are paralyzed. Only Perrine is no longer holding on; her hands are pressed against her face.

  But once again, they do not see.

  Everyone for themselves.

  Not out of selfishness: because they are terrified of death, it fills their minds, absorbs the last of their strength, their last breath.

  Perrine is lying to one side.

  And this time, the storm recedes.

  * * *

  Despite the rough waves Louie has crawled on his knees over to his sister, once her moans entered his panicked mind. Wading through the water that has swamped the boat, he shakes her; her hands are still held to her face.

  “What is it?”

  “The hens . . . they scratched my eyes with their legs . . . I can’t see, Louie, Louie I’m blind!”

  She has long gashes of open flesh on her face, as if they had been made with a dull needle on which a great deal of pressure has been placed. There is blood everywhere; her eyelids are torn.

  “It hurts, it hurts . . . ”

  “Take your hands away so I can see!”

  But Perrine is protecting herself, doesn’t want to be touched; her cries are gut-wrenching to Louie and Noah, this never-ending pain they cannot ease. Louie pours some water on a cloth, cleans Perrine’s cheeks where she will let him touch her, her forehead, he braces himself against the seat not to slip, with the ongoing tremors, he encourages her in a quiet voice, Take your hands away, I have to clean it—and she cries, No, no, no!

  Noah, holding the water bottle, cries out:

  “You want me to make her?”

  Louie shakes his head; his gestures jerky with the backwash and the waves, he gives up: he’ll only hurt her. He places the cold cloth over Perrine’s eyes.

  “Just hold it like this, it’s cool, it’ll feel better.”

  Her little fingers close around the cloth between two sobs. Louie stays by his sister for a few moments, then slips over to the edge to look out at t
he sea. Noah kneels beside him.

  “She’s really unlucky, huh.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And she already lost one eye.”

  “Yes.”

  “You think we’re going to die today?”

  “Leave me alone with your stupid questions!”

  Noah withdraws into himself, goes back to Perrine, who is moaning.

  “Does it hurt?”

  She doesn’t answer. The boy nods.

  “Yeah, me too when it hurts I don’t feel like talking.”

  He sits cross-legged, takes her hand.

  “You don’t have to say anything.”

  And adds:

  “I hope we won’t sink.”

  Later, he’ll boast that it was only a little bitty storm—he’ll even say, because he’d heard his father use the expression, that they caught the tail end of the storm—and Louie will give a shrug:

  “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. We were lucky, is all.”

  Just as the rain stopped all of a sudden, the storm has subsided. Or did it go elsewhere? They don’t know, they know only that the boat is no longer pitching, that the wind is no longer howling, and that the sky, for the few remaining hours of daylight, is clearing. Louie bails with a bowl.

  Murmurs: Incredible.

  Yes, they were lucky.

  Except Perrine.

  The two boys sit around the girl. Noah raises his eyebrows.

  “She’s been crying for a while.”

  She doesn’t stop.

  And the pain, has it stopped?

  Noah asks: Are you all right?

  “Shut up,” scolds Louie.

  They watch her in despair. Louie spreads his hands as if they could do something—an idea, a miracle; he keeps them open on his lap. Noah blows gently onto his sister’s face. It was their mother who taught them to do this, when one of them would fall, or bang himself, or scratch herself, she would blow on the hurt, and the suffering would abate, disappear. He leans closer:

  “Does that feel better?”

  The little girl shakes her head, does not stop crying; Noah is not Madie. Louie gently lifts off the cloth, soaks it with fresh water, replaces it. Gradually night has fallen and he can no longer see her wounded face. But Perrine’s moans haunt them until dawn; she sleeps intermittently—and then Louie can feel his nerves let go, and fatigue gets the better of him. He opens his eyes the moment she starts to sob again. In a quiet voice he says, I’m here. And then these stupid, senseless words: We’ll find a doctor for your eyes.

  In the early morning, while Perrine is sleeping, as the cloth has slipped to the floor, he looks—and immediately turns away. Perrine’s good eye, the one most damaged by the hens, is swollen and red, oozing a yellowish pus between her lashes. But Louie does what he can, pours some water to clean it a little; and even though he expected it, he is startled by his sister’s cry as she wakes.

  “It’s all right,” he murmurs, “I’m not touching it, it’s just water. Here’s the cloth. Put it on if you want.”

  Before they raise the anchor he gets out some breakfast, but Perrine doesn’t want anything to eat or to drink, she moans, complains of the heat—The heat? says Noah with surprise, for he put on a sweater against the chill from the storm.

  Louie puts his hand on her brow, and it is too hot.

  He knows this isn’t a good sign.

  Folded on himself, he holds his head between his elbows. There are too many problems in his head, too many things he cannot deal with, this wound to take care of, the land that isn’t there, his little sister’s tears piercing him to the bone.

  Where are they, now that the storm has turned them every which way, ruining all their efforts, their nonexistent landmarks, the hopes they had raised to keep going?

  So Louie reaches for the oars.

  Tells Noah: She has to drink. We have to make her drink.

  And he pulls hard on the oars.

  That’s all they can do: go forward. He says it to himself all day long, except for the moments when he stops to straighten his back and relax his tetanized arms, when he manages to convince Perrine to eat half an egg, then nothing more, so this is really the only thing he has left, to go on, with his lower lids burning from holding back his own tears, because his sister’s tears are breaking his heart, he can’t stand it, and he no longer knows the way to the coast.

  This void inside him is a chasm spilling out of his body, and the boat, and the sea; a hollow that goes right to the bottom of the world, where even the seabed has vanished, and the rock is hot, so close to the core of the earth. That is where Louie would like to be, curled up in an inaccessible recess, deaf to every lament and every pain, alone if he must be, not to go completely mad, if it’s not too late. Alone, and have done with it.

  No one left on earth.

  So between the drops of sweat that sting his eyes, he looks at Noah kneeling by Perrine, and he wonders if that is not the solution.

  Have done with it.

  “What?” says Noah.

  Louie said it out loud. He bites his lips.

  “Nothing.”

  Knock the two of them out and drown them. Afterwards he will tie himself to the anchor with a rope and let it unwind. He imagines it. Going straight to the bottom.

  No more children.

  No more suffering.

  The thought runs through him like an electric shock.

  No.

  And suddenly, Noah screaming and turning to him.

  There! There!”

  Louie drops the oar with surprise, and it falls with a bang onto the seat and rebounds against his leg. He makes a face. Doesn’t even hurt.

  Noah’s face, between exaltation and madness: You see it?

  So Louie leans closer, all thoughts erased. And yes, he sees it.

  “What . . . what is it?”

  “Dunno. A rock? A house, maybe?”

  “It’s little, looks like.”

  “Can we go there, Louie? Let’s row there?”

  No.

  He looks at Perrine, motionless on the floorboards.

  “No noise, then. We don’t know who lives there.”

  Without a word, they reach for the oars. There is renewed vigor to their gestures, urgency, too, because of the little girl who has a fever and who has stopped talking, and their urgency is mixed with apprehension, more than that, a dread which is twisting Louie’s guts—will they find someone on that island in the distance, someone who will be ready to help them, or will they be killed for the boat and the food, and the water and the hens. Louie stops thinking: for now, they are going forward. And yet in his gestures, as they get closer, something is slowing him, imperceptibly, his fear is too great, there is superstition, too, will their luck see them through. Noah, on the other hand, is rowing diligently, his eyes staring at the horizon. The two brothers keep watch on the sea. A sort of latent instinct reminds them that the sea is all the more treacherous just when they think they might be about to escape, and that the traps are always laid for them just when they think they’re home safe. But the storm the night before has cooled the temperature, and, before night turned it gray, the sky wore a sparkling blue. Still, they are wary, they study the water all around them, the eddies, the currents they think they can see. Their hearts and throats constrict whenever they get the impression the sea is changing—uneasy, rising. In spite of their fear, they are so eager to reach the island that the air fills with their hopes and seems to vibrate in their eyes and ears; they want it to bring them luck. They have no choice: they have to save Perrine. Urgency transcends all their hesitancy, their fear, the trembling in their arms. Taking turns, they encourage their sister; she doesn’t answer.

  “We’re nearly there.”

  “We’re going to make you better.”

&nbs
p; But just when they finally understand what is there ahead on the water, they look at each other, stunned. Noah murmurs,

  “Are those . . . houses?”

  He doesn’t say, Floating houses, but that was what sprang to mind. And only one of the houses is still above water, the other two, closer to them, are almost completely engulfed. All that is left of the first one is the roof, and they can see the upstairs windows of the second one.

  “Yes,” says Louie in a low voice. “Houses.”

  The third house, the one they can see from behind, and where they are headed, floats above, with a long wooden terrace level with the water, which makes it look as if it is sailing on the ocean. For a few moments they get the impression it is coming toward them, drifting, trundling along, and they pause to take a good look.

  There are two figures on the terrace.

  Louie and Noah both recoil, instinctively; What do we do? Louie starts to scan the surface of the sea, his heart pounding, looking for a wave, a current betraying some invisible presence, gliding through the water, he is already holding his oar aloft, he feels this throbbing inside him, too insistent.

  But then he glances down, the same image as before, little Perrine asleep with the cloth over her eyes, her moans and sobs stifled by fever. And Louie makes up his mind all at once.

  “Let’s go there. Perrine is really sick.”

  “What if . . . ”

  Noah doesn’t finish his sentence. Louie nods his head, knowingly.

  If it’s people who want to get rid of us?

  But he hasn’t erased from his memory the despair that only minutes before made him imagine a terrifying outcome, a vision that will return to him if they don’t find any help, because the fatigue is there, deep inside him, and it’s more than fatigue: it’s renunciation. If he had to explain to Noah, he would just say that he can’t cope anymore. That his thoughts have shut down, that he has no more solutions to suggest, nothing, just emptiness of a kind he’s never known, vast and frightening, saturating all the space.