“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.
And after that he lay down and closed his eyes because of the tears—the tears that welled up because he had failed, and the tears of relief that he would never, ever, have to get on that raft again.
-
It’s the water that is driving them mad, Louie is sure of it. He has decided that every morning he will open the door to the staircase and measure the rising of the water level, in addition to the stakes he has been planting in the garden as benchmarks. Every morning his heart begins to beat faster, his hands tremble. He can sense the sea there in front of him, behind him. On either side. He can hear the seepage, sometimes the waves, the faint laughter. He can smell the odor of warm stagnant water on the land, slightly rank, slightly nauseating. Sometimes he is sorry he didn’t go after the raft to try and build something better; a split second later he remembers the gurgling sounds and the fear, and he is not sorry at all.
But now this is driving him crazy, this ocean creeping closer, especially at night when no one can see it, at dawn the sea surprises them with its silent waves, ever higher, and the hens squawk because there is hardly anything left to peck at on the last bit of land that is holding out—for a few days the children fed them potato peels but now there’s nothing left. They’ve begun to eat their own eggs, and the children have to collect them earlier and earlier if they want there to be any left.
Louie thinks about the other island, full of potatoes. He could have taken the hens there, they would have found enough to eat—and he could have picked a pile of little potatoes, they could have had golden new potatoes in the pan, just the thought of it sets his stomach to rumbling. An entire island all to themselves, Louie, Perrine, and Noah, which they can neither reach nor eat, because the rubber raft was punctured and they cannot build a wooden one. This makes the older boy all the angrier on those mornings when the sea is licking at the land, ever nearer, and the hens leave the house, complaining. He can’t swim that far—or maybe he could, with a board to help him, God knows he’s thought about it often enough, but he’d have to be sure there were no storms or currents, and he cannot swear to anything anymore, the weather changes too abruptly and the summer has become treacherous. If one day the sky is an immense blue carpet, should he try his luck?
A panful of potatoes before drowning.
Stupid.
In the end none of that changes anything, the water everywhere around them makes them say foolish things, makes their minds unsteady, and yesterday a red hen ran to the sea, jumped off the shore with a little rustle of feathers, splish splash, then swam away with the horizon in her sights, Perrine cupped her hands around her mouth and called, Where are you going? The hen didn’t turn back, didn’t try to come back. They saw no more of her. Louie wishes he too could just leave like that, so that the fear and abandonment would cease. No more feeling the tightness in his throat, his arms dangling by his sides because he’s run out of ideas, doesn’t know what to do anymore, what to hope for. Let it all go. No, he can’t.