Сандрин Коллетт - Just After the Wave

“I don’t think so, no. It was flooded a long time ago.”

“But when are we leaving?” insists Noah.

“When Perrine is all better.”

“I’m better,” says Perrine.

“Not quite.”

A day or two more of respite—a sad respite, to be honest, because Louie feels a dull dread gnawing away at his guts, and every sunny morning is spoiled by the fear of the voyage they must undertake, the impossibility of finding landmarks once they’re alone again in the middle of the ocean; at the thought of the boundless blue-gray expanse Louie loses his appetite, cannot drink, a sort of bile simmers inside him, burning his flesh, Lucette ruffles his hair the way Madie used to and he turns his head the way a kitten does to heighten a caress, he’s upset, and lost, they have to help him, he doesn’t want to be the one who has to answer for everything, he doesn’t want to be the big brother.

Louie takes his fishing pole over to Noah and kneels once again at the edge of the terrace. They’ve been there for nearly three hours. Just behind them he can see shadows fluttering over the old ladies’ faces from the uneven torchlight. It reassures him to know that Adele and Lucette are sitting behind them; the night doesn’t seem as dark.

And yet: when he looks up, there is no moon. An ink-black night.

Perfect , said Adele happily a while ago.

Because they need fish, lots of fish.

“We tried,” said Noah when they started. “They don’t bite anymore. There aren’t any more fish.”

“But were you trying to fish in the daylight?” asked Lucette.

“In daylight?”

“Aha. So you do have a few things to learn.”

Yes, loads of fish, because they need to feed all five of them, Adele, Lucette, Noah, Perrine, and Louie, on the boat for days—they don’t know exactly how many. And since there aren’t enough hens anymore, and they have to be fed too, there won’t be enough eggs.

Thousands of fish , agreed Noah with a laugh, when they cast their lines.

Because they are going to leave together.

No, it wasn’t what they planned.

Yes, now, it’s decided.

They will go all five of them to the higher ground, that’s what the old ladies promised when they came out of the house this morning. You could see that the decision pained Adele; Louie looked at her on the sly and he could tell she was in a bad mood, he could tell that Lucette must have cornered her between the four walls of that room where they had heard their voices raised shortly before dawn, and she wouldn’t let her leave the room until she got her way. Louie knows this because Lucette whispered the secret to him, yesterday.

She didn’t picture it like this, the end of her life. She thought she would be on her own, a peaceful decline, until one day she would fall asleep and simply not wake up. And besides, she was sure it would go quickly. But instead, she is in pain, Lucette, her entire body radiates with a word that Louie can’t remember and that makes her cringe over her joints, she says, it feels as if everything inside her is shrinking and gradually drawing her in, and if this goes on, she won’t be able to bend her arms or her legs, you just can’t imagine how painful it is, this feeling of being sucked inward, it takes her breath away.

Louie didn’t say anything. He frowned; he understood that something was wrong but that Lucette was right when she said he could have no idea what she was going through, and he refrained from turning his head to ask where the others were, whether they had started the meal, whether the hens were all there. Then she murmured something about a sort of impossible battle, convincing Adele to leave, all together on the little boat, and at last Louie looked her right in the eyes:

“Really?”

Oh, such immense hope in those eyes, Lucette found it hard to look away. In a low voice she said, Yes .

But it won’t be easy.

This she did not say, not to dim the glow in the wild gaze there before her. Convincing Adele to go with the three children who arrived on the wave. And go back to die among her family, on solid ground, not the one gradually shrinking away beneath her own feet. Lucette also has another idea behind all that: to put an end to her suffering. There are times when the simple vibration of Noah’s steps running toward her on the terrace is enough to make her wince with pain. And it’s not the few remaining aspirins that reassure her, when she shakes the tube, not to see how many days are left; then what, the absence of relief, Adele’s poultices: on her, they don’t work.

Lucette’s day, yesterday, went by in a sort of indecision, between the pain in her body and the excitement of her promise. A thousand times she opened her mouth to speak to Adele; a thousand times her courage failed her. Last chance , she thought, at midnight, when they said good night after a cup of lime-blossom tea—and she let the last chance slip. It gave her an odd palpitation in her heart, made her breathless for no reason. Adele finally noticed and asked her if she was all right.

“Yes,” replied Lucette in a meek voice, inwardly cursing herself.

They went to bed, each in her own room, soundlessly, by candlelight, and Lucette still hadn’t said anything. Perhaps she didn’t sleep all night long, or maybe it was just an impression, but at six thirty she heard Adele moving around on the other side of the wall and this time, she went to knock at the door, even if it would mean her heart stopping for good.

So of course it’s because of her if Adele is in a bad mood today. But she doesn’t care.

She got her way.

She said as much to Louie, exactly like this: I got my way.

And the little boy began laughing and crying at the same time.

Today, Lucette feels almost no pain. She rubbed the tube of aspirin and thought of how now there’d be enough for an extra day, that with a bit of luck she’d make it to high ground, she wouldn’t disappear before then, dragged down by her shrinking body; and it is her wildest desire, to see for herself that somewhere there is land as far as the eye can see, to forget this maddening ocean that blinds her in the sun and worries her when the wind gets up.

What she had to do in order to get Adele to comply, she’ll forget about that, too. How she moaned and wept and went down on one knee despite the terrible pain. She’d have thrown herself in the ocean if she’d had to.

All that just to go and die somewhere else , she thinks, taking a fish from Noah’s line.

For a moment she stands still: maybe she won’t die yet, if they can treat her, there ?

As for Louie, he stopped counting when they pulled the fiftieth fish from the sea. He doesn’t know what part of the night it is, the beginning, the middle, he just knows that Noah can’t keep his eyes open, now, and he has to keep nudging him in the ribs to keep him awake. Perrine can’t help them, but she has removed her bandage to watch. Every time Louie or Noah catches a fish she takes it to the old ladies for them to kill. The buckets are nearly full.

Right at the edge of the terrace are two torches, burning with a raw, yellow light, and they attract the creatures, fish and insects, like tiny lighthouses, everyone bustling around them, mosquitos and flies, kids, old ladies holding out empty fishhooks to be cast back in the water, buckets filling with dead fish. Sometimes tiny moths fly too near the torches and their wings make the sound of rustling paper; a little flame in the air, sometimes a mere puff of smoke, the rest plummets. Louie goes on pulling out fish, Noah has stopped shouting whenever one bites. They spent the afternoon preparing their bait with corn and pieces of potato— Double or nothing , murmured Adele gravely.