Сандрин Коллетт - Just After the Wave

Thirty bottles to sail a door?

Louie sighed and looked at the five-gallon jugs his father used to store all sorts of things, and which might have worked—yes, if they’d had the lids. With Perrine and Noah he turned the barn upside down looking for them—upending crates, digging in the drawers of moldy old wardrobes, in boxes of rusty nails, in vain, well, they did find just one, under a pile of newspapers, broken in three pieces; they gave up.

No jugs.

They threw three or four logs into the water, just to see. And they stayed afloat, but as soon as they put their hands on them they sank, and Louie shook his head—if they sink with the pressure of just one finger…

What floats, dammit?

The three of them are sitting in the grass in the sun. Before them lies the expanse of sea, without a wrinkle, blue as the sky. They dream of going swimming, of thinking about nothing, it’s just that there’s this goddamn water that keeps rising and spoiling all their fun, and the days on Perrine’s paper are crossed off too slowly, making the parents’ return seem improbable, or worse still, pointless. Louie doesn’t know whether his siblings realize this, if they too are afraid but don’t dare say so, or if it’s over their heads and he, Louie, is the only one who suspects the terrible future ahead—in the end, maybe it is better this way.

“And that?”

Noah points to the dozens of bits of wood the storm brought to shore and which are washing back and forth against the land. Louie sits up and looks. What could they do with those stupid dead branches—but now he remembers. Father used to call them driftwood.

Driftwood.

He is thinking out loud.

What if we make a mattress of branches all tied together, and we put the door on that?

“Yes!” shouts Noah.

So they hurry over, bend down, grab, pull. They go all around the island and bring back enough to make a huge pile, and they’re a little frightened at the thought they will have to put it all together, a gigantic mattress of gray, twisted wood, like some giant crown of thorns, they hesitate, wonder where to put their hands and how to interlace the branches, which catch and resist being brought together, a tangle of recalcitrant spiny pitchforks, refusing to be disciplined, ending up in a chaotic cluster. Perrine best expresses their bewilderment when she stands back to gaze at the vaguely rectangular mass, rubbing her chin:

“That?”

Louie bites his lips. But if he runs a rope through, here, here, and here… ? Try. It wobbles every which way, it comes together, it comes undone, but he pulls and winds, sends Noah to fetch every last rope, he’s making them a sausage, a roast so well trussed that they won’t even be able to get a finger in it, it takes time but he is rather proud of the job he’s done. The three of them set about tightening the last ropes, the last knots, and Louie wipes his brow, with a smile.

“There we are.”

“There we are,” echoes Noah.

“Do you think it will hold?” asks Perrine in her clear little voice.

They decide to put the mattress in the water on its own: for a start, it will be a test, and besides, they won’t have the strength to lift it once the door is fastened to it. Louie ties a line around a bush so they won’t risk losing their strange float. They shove it to the edge of the water.

“… two, three!”

They let go.

There’s a loud splash.

“Shit,” says Noah, as the mattress sinks like a stone.

Louie gazes wide-eyed at the ripples of water, the gray and black hole. He can’t believe it: everything has vanished. On the trunk of the nearby shrub, the rope is taut, the leaves rustle. Then suddenly, like some creature emerging from the bowels of the sea, a huge shadow appears all at once, lacking only the powers of speech—and they are convinced they can hear a terrible roar just as the branches that are no longer branches break through the surface, they look as if they are clinging to the waves to stay afloat, and Perrine lets out a shout, or is it Noah, or even Louie, who has his hand in front of his mouth, a monster, yes, it is a monster rising there before them.

“Oh, my, God, that scared me!” shouts Noah, to banish his fear.

Perrine laughs, It came back up! It’s floating!

They pay no heed to the fact it’s cracking and pitching and wobbling, they’re too happy, too noisy, as they observe this strange creature-like, almost-living shape, this entanglement swimming on the water like a giant fish, and if they really did look closer, with the critical eye of those who will have to trust the creature and climb on its back, they might see the ropes coming loose, the poorly tightened knots the water is already undoing, yes, they would know how fragile it is, this craft put together by children.

The three of them are lying side by side at the edge of the grass.

Silence.

Louie and Perrine, their eyes closed, so their tears will not overflow.

Noah gazes at the sky and counts the clouds.

A bit further away on the sea, out of reach, the raft is in the water, half-submerged.

Come on, come on! shouted Louie, elated, kneeling on the door they had tied to the branches, holding in his hand one of the two boards from which they had removed all the nails so they could be used as oars. Come on! And he’d pulled on the line, they’d climbed on board without getting their feet wet; Louie had had to help them, however, because the raft was listing.

Once they were on it, they didn’t dare move.

Perrine murmured, We made it.

What she didn’t mention was the dull fear she felt at the thought of trying to sail anywhere on the thing.

This time she heard the cracking and strange sounds, impossible to identify, which had settled beneath her, in the cluster of branches under the horizontal door. And she wasn’t the only one. Louie’s smile was unusually wan.

“Shall we take it out?” Noah asked, waving the other oar.

Wait.

He had waited.

Oh, not for long.

First there was a branch that came loose from the float.

Louie was paddling slowly in a circle, not far from shore. He could feel the raft sinking—rather, he could hear it. Gurgling sounds. Sucking noises, a sort of grumbling, the water making its way, sniffing the branches, clinging to the underside of the door. He knew already.

But still, maybe.

Just then he saw Perrine and Noah who, aware of the vanity of their efforts, were in one corner of the raft holding hands, crestfallen, and he cried, Don’t sit there, not on the edge! But they were already there, and they didn’t move, paralyzed by the sensation that, terribly slowly, they were sinking, and right there, the craft had begun to founder.

“Jump!”

Were they were, they could almost touch bottom, it was maybe not quite four feet deep, maybe a bit more. But the fear remained: the cavernous sea, eddies, the black bottomless water. No, no! whimpered Perrine, not letting go of Noah’s hand.

And what if they were sucked down to the bottom?

Jump!

Finally they had let themselves slide, the edge of the raft nearly leaving them with a long gash to the head or the side. Louie had let go of the rope. Spitting out the water they’d swallowed, they struggled out of the water, slipping on the silty soil of the shore, clinging to tufts of grass. Once all three had managed to reach the top of the hill again, the half-drowned raft drifted further out, lopsided. Louie could have dived in to retrieve it before the current bore it away—he’d done far harder things over the years. But he didn’t. Like his brother and sister, he watched the small craft drift away, not lifting a finger, not saying a word.