Сандрин Коллетт - Just After the Wave

“There aren’t any left,” says Louie.

“There isn’t anything left, here. It’s stupid.”

Again they let their gazes drift to the horizon—or to where they suppose it must be, they can’t see very far for the curtains of fine rain, that faint drizzle you don’t think will get you very wet which gradually soaks you to the bone, freezing your skin and your clothes. Wind, clouds, rain. Noah shouts, clenching his fists as he leans toward the window.

“Wind, clouds, rain! I’m sick of it!”

And that shape all the way at the end of what is visible out there on the ocean, a black mass half hidden by sudden cascading downpours, Noah frowns, stiffens. Takes a step back and looks anxiously at the others.

“I think there’s another dead body.”

“A what?” asks Perrine.

“A dead body like yesterday. Only it’s far away.”

Louie shoves the little boy aside and takes his place at the window.

“How can you see that from here?”

And then:

“Oh!”

“What?” says Perrine.

“Is that what it is?” says Noah.

Louie turns to them, frenetic.

“No! It’s a boat!”

All three of them cluster suddenly at the window, squint, shout.

“Yes, it’s a boat!” exclaims Noah.

“We have to call them!” says Perrine, fidgeting with impatience.

They run out of the house, mindless of the rain, scramble down to the shore and wave their arms.

“Hey!” they cry, sweeping their arms over their heads and jumping up and down.

“Over here!”

“Here, here!”

Perrine sobs:

“They can’t see us.”

Now and again it looks as if the vessel has disappeared behind the clouds and is going away, and then it reappears for a few seconds, at the mercy of the waves and the spray; they wait for the square shape to turn and head toward them, to come closer, but it doesn’t.

“A fire!” cries Louie. “We have to build a fire!”

“But it’s raining,” says Perrine.

“We have to try! Noah, you and Perrine go and get some kindling in the barn.”

“And you?”

“I’m going to take a burning log from the stove. That way it will work.”

He rushes to the house, lifts some brands with the tongs and drops them into a metal bucket, slips a box of matches in his pocket. When he comes back, Perrine and Noah are there with wood and pieces of cardboard; Noah gushes, Cardboard will burn really well!

Louie tips the bucket out on the ground. The embers hiss in the rain, it makes a funny sound, some are going out already.

“Give me the cardboard!” shouts Louie, tearing it up to get the fire started again. “Stand around it to shelter it from the wind!”

They kneel on the ground, still watching the shadow in the far corner of the sea as it sails in a disorderly dance, they go on screaming, one after the other, so that the boat will hear them, until Louie gives up: No point shouting, we have to make the fire, just the fire. A few flames rise, licking the cardboard. Noah yells.

“It’s started, it’s started!”

Louie adds some wood, a little bit, not too much, leans closer to listen to the tiny fire, wishes it would crackle; for the time being only the cardboard is burning.

“Come on,” he says, urging it on.

“There’s smoke!” says Noah, clapping his hands.

“But this is nothing, they won’t see it, it’s not big enough. If we don’t have big flames it won’t work.”

Perrine leans down, blows on the embers to kindle them. The boys do likewise, hair sticking to their brow. Louie has tears in his eyes, he remembers how he helped Pata burn branches over the years; Pata would grumble, Fire never starts the way you want it to. Either it’s hot, and it burns too quickly, or it’s cloudy and you can’t get it going.

Smoke rises from the embers as they die one by one. Louie hears the hissing sound, carefully watches the pieces of cardboard that are still burning. He cups his hands around the twigs that don’t want to catch, the rain snuffing the sparks the moment they appear. Noah has already given up, he stands up straight and turns to the sea. He goes on shouting, his little voice covered by gusts of wind and the roaring of the sea, there’s nothing else to do, so he tries. Louie cannot even feel the warmth of the flames on his hands anymore, cupped over the brands. He won’t give up. He shouts again.

“Come on!”

Suddenly an idea flashes through him: the lawnmower fuel, in the jerry can. Pata used to take a little to get a fire started, when he’d been struggling for half an hour with his leaves and his green branches and nothing happened. Louie leaps to his feet, runs to the barn, returns quickly, the jerrycan banging against his legs. He remembers it’s dangerous. He steps back, removes the cap to pour out a little fuel, holding the can at arm’s length.

Nothing.

So he takes two matches from the box in his pocket.

Scratch.

He tosses them onto the fire. The whoosh surprises both him and Perrine, who has already stepped back: they give a start.

“It’s beautiful!” says Noah, his arms lowered, as he watches.

A flame three feet high.

Then a foot and a half.

Then, after only five or six seconds, less than a foot, six inches.

And it goes out.

“Put some more,” shouts Noah.

Louie tries again. And again the scary sound of the puff of fuel catching fire, the flames eager for sustenance. Louie steps back, stumbles. From a distance he watches the flame rise, orange against the gray sky, then immediately subside. The embers remain red for a few seconds, he hopes the wood will catch.

Nothing.

Soon there is a fine column of smoke, like when you blow out a candle.

“Again!” shouts Noah.

Louie shakes his head. Looks out to sea.

No more boat.

“It’s gone,” murmurs Noah.

The rain hammers down on their shoulders, icy. Let’s go in , says Perrine. Louie doesn’t answer. Facing the ocean, he waits for the boat to come back.

It doesn’t come back.

After a few minutes, Perrine takes him by the hand. Come , she says quietly. She squeezes his fingers. Not saying a word, head down, he lets her lead him away.

By the next day the rain has stopped. In the house, the children’s clothes are spread over the backs of chairs, still wet from the day before. The two younger children sleep late, exhausted by their dashed hopes, by their determination to keep watch on the sea through the window, what if the boat came back. They ate pancakes by candlelight, and went to bed with their eyes sticky from tears.

Fatigue keeps them sprawled in their beds, arms outspread, crucified. Only their open eyes are proof they are still alive, and their hoarse voices, which gradually regain their usual timbre, once the words are ready to be spoken.

“Maybe it wasn’t a boat,” whispers Noah.

Perrine shrugs.

“What was it, then?”

“A whale?”

“There aren’t any whales, here,” says Louie.

After a halfhearted breakfast, they open the front door with the strange impression of another world, when what is left of the garden lies between lingering dew and the first warm rays of the sun. They can tell it is going to be a fine, hot day. Perrine tilts her head to one side, thoughtful. Yesterday’s bad weather, the almost surreal vision of the boat on the horizon, the crushing return to the house after they gave up on the fire: it all seems too distant, too unreal.

Maybe they dreamt it?

The little pile of dead embers, somewhere on the shore, slowly restores things to her mind. Louie squats down and scratches at the ashes with his fingertips.