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.
“Is it cold?” asks Noah.
“Of course.”
The little boy touches the ashes.
A bit further along, the sea has scattered pieces of wood; they nudge against the shore.
“Look,” says Perrine.
Boards. They go closer and Noah leans down to pick one up.
“Is it the boat?”
Without a word, they study the broken plank, and reach for a few other laths and lengths of wood.
“It looks like it,” nods Louie.
“We were lucky, then,” murmurs Perrine.
They don’t add anything: they prefer to believe it. That the boat was shipwrecked: it’s a consolation. They feel almost happy, suddenly. And so, silently to themselves, they decide that yes, the boat capsized the day before, once it had sailed past their island. They even hope that everyone on board died: it is Noah who says this. Louie puts his hands on his hips, watching the sea.
“For sure they’re dead. They all drowned.”
He doesn’t add, Serves them right. But the faint smile in their eyes indicates there’s no need to say it.
They don’t think about the fact that this is cruel. When your parents abandon you, you have every right. And it really does cheer them up, they run to the house, laughing, because they’re hungry again—not the kind of hunger that wracks your belly because there’s so much you’ve been missing, but a proper hunger, voracious and joyful, which makes them grab one pancake after another from the plate, smearing them with honey and jam, swallowing the whole lot with that sensation of power; they are alive, the three of them, the only ones who are alive, without a doubt, and they are celebrating. In the end they open a bottle of soda and the bubbles sting their noses.
The heat catches them unawares: by ten o’clock, they’re sweating, the excitement has passed, boredom is already catching up with them. When Noah opens his mouth, Louie raises a finger in warning.
“If you say, ‘What are we going to do,’ I’ll wallop you.”
Noah stands there, mouth agape. Then he closes it.
“Yes, but—”
“Did you hear me?”
So the little boy keeps silent. He wanders off in the house, from room to room, opening doors and closing them again noisily, to the last one.
“Can I open this one?”
“Why shouldn’t you?” says Louie, exasperated.
“It’s the one to the stairs.”
“So?”
“Well, there’s the sea down there, isn’t there?”
“Not all the way up.”
“Are you sure?”
“Just have a look.”
Noah decides to laugh it off: I’m scared. Louie glances at Perrine, mocking. Walks over.
“Okay, let’s check it out.”
He puts his hand on the door handle. Noah is standing a few yards behind him, leaning forward to see. They haven’t opened it for days, this door leading to the basement, doomed by the rising sea. Last time, they were in water up to their ankles, it felt strange to be walking on flooded tiles.
“Are you coming?”
Noah hesitates. Wipes his hand cautiously over the walls.
“There’s no light.”
“There’s been no electricity since the storm,” Louie reminds him.
They go slowly down the steps. Very quickly their feet are in water.
“It’s risen,” says Louie, stopping when he’s in up to his knees.
“Have we reached the bottom of the stairs?”
“Not yet.”
“Look, over there, the fishing rods. They’re not far.”
Louie reaches for them, hands them to his little brother behind him.
“Here, we can go fishing.”
“Are we going to keep going down?”
“I don’t think so. We’ll be in up to our waists, and besides there’s nothing left down here.”
The bottom of the house is dark and wet, it smells of things rotting—old furniture, cloth, carpets. Louie can make out objects floating, caught prisoner in the room; a dull fear overcomes him, that the sea might rise all of a sudden, and they’ll be trapped inside. So he stays on the stairs, clinging to the banister. Noah wrinkles his nose.
“It’s kinda gross.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think the sea will go all the way upstairs?”
“I don’t know.”
“What will we do if it does?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will we drown?”
“Why don’t we go fishing?” says Louie, to shut Noah up, so that the fear around his throat will finally loosen its grip.