Сандрин Коллетт - Just After the Wave

“It’s raining!”

Noah pulls on his rod— I’m almost there! says Louie, kneeling by the water’s edge, his net outstretched, and behind them the sea has suddenly risen, like a dragon curling under the waves to toss them skyward, along with the wind, slapping and blowing; Perrine is afraid. The time it takes for her to look again and the heavens are upon them, a cloudbank so low that she thinks it will swallow them up, black monsters with gaping mouths, half concealing the breakers the sea is bowling impatiently toward the shore.

“Let’s go, let’s go!”

But the boys don’t hear her, all attention focused on the fish, which is struggling as they drag it slowly toward them, and that is why she is the only one who sees it, little Perrine, the wave forming out there on the ocean, a wall of water, distant at first, then too near, a thundering sound, Perrine screams in vain, runs back—while Louie senses his sister’s movement on one side, hurrying away, and he stands straight, heart pounding, to see what it is she is fleeing from, then a rush all through his body, danger, danger.

“Noah!”

He grabs his brother, tearing away the fishing rod. He leaps away with a roar.

“Perrine, go to the house! The house!”

At the same moment he stumbles, and Noah falls between his legs, The fish! The line, the rod: everything has been sucked into the sea. But that isn’t what Louie is looking at, his eyes open wide.

It’s the wave.

The same one.

No, not the same one.

Not as high, not as strong.

But the fear is the same. The same as on the evening of the great tidal wave. Again Louie sees the water rising dozens of feet above him—how he ran to reach the house, to slam the door behind him. Again he sees Madie’s astonished gaze as he clung to her, he sees his own hands, trembling as he tried to explain, and couldn’t find the words.

All of that in a few fractions of a second.

And in that moment he knows that he and Noah won’t have time, the sea will be upon them before they can get away. He flings himself to the ground behind the hazel bush, dragging Noah down with him. He puts his arms around each side of the bush, grabs his brother’s arms. His voice, hoarse and trembling: We don’t let go of each other. Even if you die, you hold onto me. You hear me?

The wave crushes them. Louie counted as he watched it coming—four, five seconds later. He would have liked to be sure Perrine reached the house, to hear the door slamming behind her, hear her steps vanishing into the shelter of the thick walls. But he couldn’t. First of all, because he didn’t have time; and then because he was incapable of turning away from that wall of gray water bearing down on them, hypnotized by the way it was moving, spouting and swelling, a living thing, of that he is certain, howling, creating the deep trough to take them out into the core of its power; Louie has rolled Noah’s sleeves in his hands to grip them tighter.

When the wave flattens them, the impact is so powerful that Louie cannot be sure he has not opened his hands. For several seconds he stops breathing, his belly crushed by the blow. Immediately afterwards, he can feel the water receding, tugging at his body, his torso, his legs, clashing with the hazel bush over them, pulling them out of joint in a rage, maybe he and Noah have already been separated, he doesn’t know, he can’t see, there is only this terrible painful shaking in his shoulders and arms that makes him hope they are still clinging on and that the bush will withstand the surge. He doesn’t feel the blood on his face, doesn’t hear Noah calling him, he is blinded, one by one his fingers are pulled back by the prodigious force of the sea, the little boy cries his name, Louie, Louie! as the waves turn him on his side like a wisp of straw, twisting his arms, smashing his back against the hazel bush, no, Louie hears none of that, his eyes are closed, his voice is reciting his fierce determination to survive and his refusal to be carried away, this voice that no one can hear, saying, No, no, no.

The wave recedes, a few seconds have gone by, ten, fifteen at most—an eternity. It will come back. The wind announces it and precedes it, this wave or the next one, already rumbling in the distance, forming and dissolving, building up anger to return to the shore, to grab hold of anything running, living, and to drag it down to the bottom of the sea, Louie knows he must be quick. Coughing and gasping, he tries to catch his breath, to turn his head toward the sea, which has taken possession of the land, a liquid force incorporating everything, pulling him back again, toward the ocean, toward the vastness and the void, he throws up, he is filled with water, too light, too weak, around him there is nothing left but the roaring of the waves, the whistling of the wind, and the shouts inside his head.

The land is covered with sand and silt, rivulets of water returning to the sea in tiny shining trenches which Louie observes, lying on the ground, his cheek pressed into the abandoned puddles his fingers are still clutching, instinctively, and which he cannot stop. His shoulders and belly are still trembling, his breathing comes fitfully from his throat with a metallic rattle.

Think about nothing.

Fear has taken everything.

Don’t look.

So as not to see the catastrophe all around.

Finally, listen: light footsteps on the sodden ground, going splatch splatch as they come nearer, little steps first walking, now running, the sound of water being squelched underfoot, that’s all, no words, no cries.

Louie tells himself he should turn his head and have a look.

Doesn’t move.

Sudden terror: what if he is paralyzed. He moves an arm, rolls to one side. It’s okay. He lets out a long sigh. Slowly, the thought that there is nothing left at his fingertips, nothing holding him or clinging to him, works its way into his brain: but for the time being, it doesn’t affect him. Emotions have not yet returned, nor has consciousness. Just breathe. Listen.

Louie?

His name.

Louie?

Yes, that’s me.

Are you all right, Louie?

He doesn’t know. Can’t speak. He sticks out his tongue, loosens his frozen jaw, sure that the hoarse, croaking sound that has just come from his throat was a word.

Louie?

I’m here.

Louie…

This voice, insisting, a little girl’s voice. Perrine?

Louie, are you dead?

A little boy this time.

Then a shiver of immense, wordless joy turns him over onto his back, still with his eyes to the sky, but he sees them, the two figures kneeling next to him, that is what gives him this huge smile, this swallowed sob, he murmurs, Holy cow. Perrine leaps up and claps her hands, joyfully.

“You’re not dead.”

He sits up, cautiously, his body aching. Guess not. He gently taps Noah’s palm as he holds it out to him.

“So there you are. I thought the sea had carried you off.”

The little boy laughs.

“Were you afraid?”

“… But you’re here.”

“I hung on the way you told me.”

“When the wave went back out I wasn’t holding you anymore.”

“I was just next to you, behind the hazel bush. You didn’t see me. It’s true, I let go of you. But the water went back down just then, good thing, too, otherwise I would’ve been done for.”

Louie nods. The three of them look at the sky, the movement of air, the storm interrupted. It won’t be back, he says. Not right away, anyway.

They head back, taking streaming little steps, shivering despite the soft air. Perrine thinks about the hot chocolate they will heat up on the old stove, exactly the same chocolate that Madie makes when they come home from school or from helping Pata out in the rain in the garden, at the end of the road or of their chores, drenched to the bone, hair clinging in wet strands to their foreheads. When she sees them coming Madie lets out a cry and a laugh, Oh, just look at those mops, go quick and get changed and then come back! They run to remove their wet clothes, they toss them in a ball into the laundry basket; they clatter down the stairs and back to the kitchen where Madie has put the milk on to boil and she stirs in the squares of chocolate to make them melt, none of that tasteless readymade chocolate but a sort of magical brew that stays in their mouths and throats with a sweet thickness, and its aroma fills their noses; clicking their tongues they try to keep it at the back of their palates as long as possible. Even on days when something has made them very unhappy it brings consolation. Yes , says Perrine, that’s what I’ll do.