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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.
Next to her the boys walk like old men, broken and silent. They are thinking of their basket swallowed by the storm, with four, almost five, fish. And it was pointless for the sea to reclaim them, because they’d already killed them, their father had taught them never to let animals suffer, suffocating in the air, and they had done everything as they should—and look what happened. No more basket, no more fish. No more fishing poles, they too went out with the wave, they were surely snapped in two by the wind and the water; and it’s not with a branch of hazel bush and a length of yarn, the way their father used to keep Noah happy, that they’ll be able to catch anything.
“We could try anyway,” whispers Noah.
It annoys Louie when Noah spouts nonsense, he knows very well they don’t even have any more hooks. What, they’ll just ask the fish to bite the yarn as a gesture of goodwill? Noah hangs his head. It might work.
“Yeah, sure,” says Louie.
They change into dry clothes, they’re still shivering. Perrine has taken the eggs, broken three of them and beaten them with sugar to add to the pan with a pancake. In another saucepan she is heating the milk and a few squares of chocolate, and she orders Noah to stir it slowly. The time it takes to put on a sweater and it already smells of pancakes browning. Their mouths are watering, eyes shining. Eating reconciles them with each other, relaxes them: they talk about the storm, exaggerating slightly, laughing at their bruises and their luck. Not once do they wonder if the sea is about to rise again soon. They look outside, the waves are still rough, the wind is hurling rain through the windows, it makes them jump every time, their hands held up against the gusts of air. Divided between a cozy sentiment of sheltered safety and the fear that a gust will blow the entire house away, they chatter, interrupt each other, go on chattering. The storm worries them, even though its strength is waning; they clench their teeth in silence, listening out for the sound of water and wind and hoping it will all go away. An hour later the sea is almost calm, still they watch, the sea and the detritus it has washed up from the dark depths, bits of wood afloat for months or years and which the underwater eddies have restored to the surface, scattered flotsam drifting on the surface, like dead fish.
The sea is calm and there they are, the three of them, with a strange pain in their chests, on the upper left-hand side. They rub it in vain with the palms of their hands to make it go away, a pain as if they’d been jabbed with a needle and something was pressing it, a sting, an itching, discomfort. Then they know that something else has happened that they don’t understand, elsewhere, differently, but which their skin and their guts can sense through this unpleasant tingling, and this something is bound to be bad, they can tell from the impression of emptiness and want and fear that passes over them, they don’t speak of it, they gobble down the sweet pancake and lick their chocolate mustaches; it’ll go away eventually.