Майя Лунде - The End of the Ocean

When we arrived, people were running in all directions, carrying away the few personal possessions they had or running towards the fire, hoping to help.

Caleb pointed.

“It’s the sanitary barracks,” he said. “Someone has set the sanitary barracks on fire. It’s those bastards from up north, I’m sure it’s one of them.”

“Is that the women’s shower?” Lou asked. “Daddy, is the women’s shower burning?”

We ran closer, Christian, Caleb and Martin in the lead. I followed right behind them, holding Lou by the hand. Marguerite took up the rear. And we stopped only when we could feel the heat of the blaze.

For the time being only the barracks were burning. It looked harmless. It looked like something that could be controlled.

“No, the trees,” Christian said.

The trees, the shady trees that had kept the camp cool, were a firetrap. The branches stretched towards the ground. If they should catch fire, that would be the end. Then we would have no other choice but to get out of there. Run away, as we had run away from Argelès.

People were running back and forth with half-empty buckets. Some stood with hoses in their hands. Feeble streams of water were sent into the flames, only to evaporate and disappear.

“The water,” Marguerite said softly. “They’re using up the water.”

She was right. The fire was consuming the last of the camp’s water.

The woodwork caught fire, the flames ate their way inwards, upwards and disappeared in a tail of thick black smoke.

Martin, Christian and Caleb had also thrown themselves into the fire-fighting effort. They carried a plastic water tank between them, a few liters sloshing at the bottom.

“More for the hoses,” Caleb shouted.

More people ran past us, so close to me that somebody rammed into me, a hard shoulder against my own. I almost lost my balance.

Lou tugged at my shirtsleeve. “Daddy? We have to help! We have to stop them! We have to stop the fire!”

But then she discovered something. “Francis.”

She walked a few steps closer. “He’s doing it!”

The light from the fire illuminated him.

He was standing, strong and tall, holding a hose in his hands. Suddenly he was a man, no longer an old-timer.

He walked steadily forward, fighting the flames, in the front lines. He gave orders and everyone did what he said. He, too, was on fire.

He shouted that everything around the barracks had to be removed so there would be no fuel for the fire.

Caleb and Christian started taking down a tent while Martin joined those who were spraying water onto the flames.

I walked further ahead, away from Marguerite and Lou. Marguerite stood with one hand on Lou’s shoulder. Taking care of her.

I have to help out, I thought. I must do something, too. But there were no tasks in need of doing. Everything was already being done. There was nothing I could do.

So dizzying. The smell of smoke. The heat from the flames. The ashes descending like snowflakes to the ground. The sound of the fire, a creaking, crackling roar.

All I managed to do was stand completely still.

But suddenly somebody was screaming, drowning out everything else. “The child! No!”

At first I didn’t understand what they meant. Then I spotted Lou’s purple singlet on its way into the burning barracks. And after it: a hose she was dragging with her, a green garden hose that was being pulled into the roaring building.

She was inside.

I heard nothing but my own breathing, heavy, rasping, as the smoke filled my lungs and my chest contracted.

Lou in the flames. Anna in the flames. August’s face in the light of the hot tongues of fire.

It wasn’t illness that would take Lou from me. Not a water shortage. It was fire. I would also lose her to the fire.

My entire world would burn up. And there was nothing I could do.

“David.”

Marguerite thumped hard on my arm. I still was unable to move.

“David!”

And she ran towards the flames herself. That woke me up.

I ran after her, towards the heat.

But Francis got there before us. He was quicker. He jumped lightly over a burning beam on the ground, followed the hose, and disappeared in the direction of the purple singlet inside.

Time stopped, time flew by.

I just stood there.

And then he finally came out.

I had no idea he was able to move so quickly.

She was on his back. I couldn’t see her face. She hid it. His back became a shield for her.

He ran towards the flames that separated them from us, ran straight into them, protecting her with his body. And in that way he saved my daughter.

In the meantime, the flames consumed the barracks behind them. Soon there was nothing left.

But I was no longer staring into the flames, only at Lou, whom I held in my arms.

I brought her to the first-aid barracks. Somebody had opened the door, broken the lock. There were a number of people who needed help, who had burns on their hands from fighting the fire. But no doctors or nurses were to be found.

Instead people helped each other. Took what they needed in the way of Band-Aids, bandages and pain relievers.

Lou was the only child there and everyone let her through. Children still came first. Some things were still as they ought to be.

Every single injury from the fire was dressed and bandaged by Martin, who worked with practiced hands. He had apparently done this before.

Lou didn’t ask about Francis. Maybe she had already figured out what had happened. That he was lying in the next room, that Marguerite and Caleb were with him, that they were doing what they could.

No, he wasn’t what she asked about.

“The women’s shower, Daddy, did it burn down? Did everything burn down?”

She could hardly sit still on the hospital cot where Martin had left her. The whole time she wanted to jump down and run away.

“Wait,” Martin said. “The barracks burned down but nothing else. We were able to put out the fire before it spread.”

But she wouldn’t listen.

“We have to go, Daddy. We have to go back. There’s something I have to check.”

Martin rubbed some ointment on her and put on a final bandage. Far too big for her minor injury.

“There’s no fire damage in the rest of the camp,” he said calmly. “You mustn’t be afraid. Hall Four is fine. Your bed is still there.”

But Lou clung to me. “I have to go and see. We have to go now.”

Finally Martin let her go. He smiled at me apologetically.

“I did the best I could.”

I didn’t have time to answer. I had to run after Lou.

It was starting to get dark. Smoke still hung over the camp like a dry, scorching fog.

Embers lay glowing on the ground where the sanitary barracks had been. Christian and a number of other people my age were sitting in a circle. All of them were covered with black soot, and they were grimy and exhausted. Several were holding half-empty water buckets in their hands.

They were guarding the fire. If they saw any stray embers, they put them out immediately.

Water, water, even more water wasted.

Lou ran all the way to the smoldering ruins before she stopped.

She stood in front of it, scanning the blackened ground.

Then she put her hands over her face. A tiny sob escaped. “Everything’s gone!”

Gone? What was gone?

“Lou?” I placed a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s all burned up,” she said without looking at me.

She grasped a scorched wooden stick with one hand. And then she started walking in, across the red-hot rubble, while poking with the end of the stick.

“Where was the women’s shower?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”