Сандрин Коллетт - Just After the Wave

“Louie! Louie!”

He just manages to grab the stern with a shout, Row! Perrine and Noah sit back down at once, grab the oars and try, pull, they’re moving, yes, not fast, but enough for the exhausted man to give up on them. With a huge effort Louie presses his elbows then his arms over the transom, for support, he leans on it, kicks his feet as if he could make the boat go faster, as if he could push it, hard, he doesn’t want the others to stop rowing and he nods at them, Keep going , he constantly looks behind him, oh this horrible sensation that the man is grabbing his feet underwater to drag him down into the depths, but he isn’t, he’s floating, over there, half alive half dead, thirty feet away now, then sixty, Go on , says Louie again.

On the island, several figures have appeared, waving and screaming.

“Who is it?” cries Perrine. “What do they want?”

Louie answers in one breath.

“Our boat. Our supplies.”

“But why?”

“Because they haven’t got anything left, either. Maybe they want to go to the high ground.”

“But who was he?” She points to the man’s head still floating above the water: two adolescents are now swimming toward him from the shore.

“I don’t know. Their father? Keep rowing, don’t look. We have to get out of here, so they don’t try to catch us.”

“We’re too far now.”

“Not far enough. Not yet.”

And he lets the sea carry him, gazing toward the island behind them, at the man who wanted to take everything from them.

“Do you think he would have killed us?” asks Noah.

Louie doesn’t know. The only image he has at the moment is that of the man rising up out of the sea like a monster, a shark, a beast, his arms pressing down on the boat as if to capsize it, oh yes, he was afraid, that the force would take them to the depths of the water, enfold them, suffocate them. Louie’s hands squeezing the boat, he trembles just to think of it, he still doesn’t understand. Those people laid a trap, they were concealed on the island already last night, of course they’d noticed the boat, they were waiting for first light to take it, and maybe they would have thrown the three of them into the water, Louie, Perrine, and Noah, to let them drown, if they wanted everything, yes, for sure they would have; and right now the three of them would be floating on the surface of the sea, their bellies swollen. Louie shakes his head, the tears stream down his cheeks, salt like the ocean. They won’t stop anywhere again, he swears. Ever.

Only after a quarter of an hour has passed does he let the little ones help him back onto the boat. And even then, removing his soaked T-shirt and shorts to let them dry in the sun, he doesn’t take his eyes off the island, of course he can no longer make out the figures of the inhabitants, but he can still feel his hair standing on end, he looks at the sea, a few gentle ripples, what if that were another man. He pushes Noah out of the way, takes the oars, and, as if he had the devil at his heels, rows hard toward what he hopes is the east.

And truly he does hope it is, for the sky has turned grayer, the weather seems stormy, he can sense it, and he doesn’t know where to go, he looks for the place where the light pierces through the clouds, without being sure that the angle he’s trying to follow is the right one, but at least they’re getting away from the island, after that there is only guesswork, only pretending, when the little ones ask him, if he believes in it hard enough, it will be the right direction.

They had been expecting it. Louie had told them as much. But until the last minute they prayed the storm would pass them by, would turn back, into their thoughts they drummed the conviction that fate wouldn’t do this to them on top of everything else, not after it had almost served them up to a family even more wretched than they were, not after the fright, fate owed them this much, a moment of respite. Well, no.

And yet, when the waves began to form, Noah still thought the storm might trail away any moment now, a false alarm, just bluffing, and he waved his arms as if to shoo it away, spread his arms into the wind to stop it, shouting, Go away!

“Idiot,” said Louie.

And Noah seemed to shrink, right then and there.

He sat down next to Perrine, clutching the seat, and rolled his eyes, looking out at the surface of the ocean, spotted with whitecaps and spray.

Silence.

They watch.

Try not to notice the gusts of wind mussing their hair and splashing them with spray. They turn their heads every which way, as if an island might appear by magic, they’d force Louie to land, in the end the storm is far more terrifying than the crazed inhabitants of islands.

On the floorboards the hens have begun squawking, coming and going in a confused parade. The children know that the birds, too, can tell bad weather is on its way. They check the ropes along the boat, they’ll need to cling to them if it starts pitching too violently. They watch one another, trying to come up with what to say, what to think.

Noah thinks of the sunken worlds underwater.

Perrine thinks of Madie.

Louie wonders if the hens will slide into the water, or if they’ll manage to hold on. He decides to spread a tarp across the boat and ties it with string. Noah raises his hand and smiles:

“It’s like an umbrella. It will protect us from the rain.”

“I hope the wind won’t rip it off.”

And the impression they get is a very odd one when the storm suddenly wraps itself around them and sets the boat to dancing, because they can’t see anything, they’re trapped beneath the plastic, but there are just moments when the lightning illuminates the sea—at those moments, it’s almost as if the tarp had blown away. And yet a second later it’s there again, they can sense it in front of their eyes, they can feel it over their heads. Perrine is frightened: what if they sink. What if they get their legs and arms all twisted in the tarp and can’t get free, imprisoned like worms in cocoons that are too tight, drowning without a chance, without a gesture, chrysalises sinking to the bottom of the sea glinting blond and blue.

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.