“I like it when Matteo isn’t here because that way he can’t pester me and yank on my pajamas.”
Above all, don’t scold them. There is nothing more alive than his little girls, and what could be more right than they are, rooted in the moment, oblivious of the past, unconscious of the future when it goes beyond the next hour or the next meal. He envies their animal spontaneity, the mindless momentum that propels them toward the future come what may, selfish and proud, virgin souls who know nothing of good and evil; his marmots, his little girls. He dozes for an hour or two, his gaze filled with love. If they were not here, he’d be dead already.
At dawn, wandering by the water’s edge, he finds Matteo’s body.
Of course, it’s only a body. But still.
Pata stepped back once he’d pulled it up on the shore and turned it over to gaze at it. Vomited some bile just there, couldn’t help it, it happened too quickly, seeing the boy’s face half torn off, his arm missing below the elbow—the right arm, the one that had been holding the knife. Matteo’s flesh exhibits the violence of the final moments. The father looks behind him; the others are still sleeping. In a burst of panic he takes his son in his arms and runs to the farthest point on the island to bury him. Madie mustn’t see him, not Madie or Liam or the girls, no one, he wants to conceal everything that has damaged Matteo, he wants to keep pure the image of the little boy they had brought up to be a fine lad. But the island is nothing but hard ground and scrabble, and Pata breaks his nails trying to dig a grave, terrified at the thought that Madie might wake, he tries three or four different spots, and fails every time. So he runs to the boat and takes a rope. Picks up the biggest stones and winds the rope first around the stones, then around Matteo, all bound tightly together. When he’s sure the rocks will be heavier than his boy he shoves the strange coffin to the edge of the water, but gently, as if it might still have an effect, this infinite care taken by something deep inside him that is not quite dead, murmuring words of comfort, a final caress on the cheek that is intact—he won’t look at the other one. One more gesture and Matteo’s body slips soundlessly into the sea. For a moment it seems to want to float on the surface, and the father fears it might never sink. Then the water fills the spaces, takes hold, sucks it down, and the boy’s ravaged body vanishes beneath the tranquil ripples, no more than a shadow. And then nothing. Pata kneels on the shore, his face in his hands. He stays there for a long time, his mind completely empty, his fingers gripping the fierce pounding in his skull, he huddles over his heaving heart, his insane thoughts. What if he loses them one after the other? Is this his punishment for abandoning Louie, Perrine, and Noah on the island, will three of his children on the boat die now to make him regret his decision, to tell him he shouldn’t have chosen those children, but how could he know, how can he be forgiven—nothing is possible anymore, he can only go back to sea and pray he won’t finally get there with three empty places, pray that land will appear soon on the horizon, mountains rising up before him, tomorrow, today, in an hour, it is time, they can’t take any more of this. Already it is time to get up. In his body Pata feels like an old man.
When Madie wakes, he tells her in a whisper about Matteo. Gives no details, just that he’d been injured, that she wouldn’t have wanted to see him. What he did with the stones. Her eyes lowered, the mother nods, says nothing. On her drawn features there is a sort of wretched relief. The father almost adds, I’m sorry, but then recalls he has said this already, too often. Silence absorbs them as they ready the boat to leave, Liam at the oars, holding the boat steady against the shore for the girls to climb in. For a moment Pata feels a dull fear in his gut, wondering what the sea has in store for them on this new day, and he looks out, lost, at the vast surface of the water. Then, so what. Does he have any choice, now? He grabs the oar Liam holds out to him. Are we off? The boat seems to weigh so heavily in his arms. He forces it away from the stagnant water.
Emily was the first to see it. What were the others looking at just then, to miss it like that, when they’ve been looking for it so eagerly for days, when it’s been their ultimate goal, their salvation: land. Not an island, not a scrap of ground above the surface of the water in the middle of nowhere the way Pata briefly thought it was, no: real land.
The coast. For hundreds of yards, even miles, like a long curving back above the sea, lost in the mist, a place to stand on, to walk for hours without meeting a barrier of water. For now it is only a very thin line at the far end of the horizon, and Pata rubs his eyes to make sure. It does not vanish.
So there it is. He says so, his voice tremulous:
“Land.”
They all turn and strain toward it, as if the wind were driving them all in the same direction, on their knees on the boat’s damp floorboards, and Emily claps her hands, I saw it first. Madie kisses her, her eyes welling with tears.
“How soon will we be there?”
The father frowns.
“Tonight, tomorrow… By noon tomorrow, I’d say.”
His eyes meet Madie’s, and in the yellow light he can tell they are thinking the same thing: just one day, give or take, and Matteo would have reached the shore, too. They had been so close. They suffer in silence, everything seems vain. They curse the days that have gone before, the day that drowned Lotte, the day that took their boy from them. It does not help. The mother squeezes her clenched fists against her lips. They have to hold out until tomorrow.
Liam on the left, Pata on the right, rowing regularly, for hours. They would like to go faster but their bodies refuse, their muscles seem paralyzed, their bones ready to snap. When the boat can drift all on its own, they let it go, resting their arms, closing their lids on their red, strained eyes, and when they open them again they are blinded by the glare of the sun, and they shield their eyes with the palms of their hands. Shortly before twilight the father motions to lower the oars.
“We won’t make it.”
The land has expanded before them, it almost seems they could reach out and touch it. A painful illusion, when Pata knows they will need at least several more hours to make landfall, just as this morning they thought the shore was within reach, deluded by the obliteration of distance on the smooth sea and their own desperate gazes, he doesn’t want to get lost during the night, he orders Liam to drop the little anchor. While they share some of the fish, the father steals glances at them. Their tired, dirty faces, tangled, filthy brown or blond hair, their clothes and skin smelling of silt and damp—they look like an army of beggars, and he shudders: not the sort of people anyone wants showing up at their door. And as they eat in silence, turned toward that land fading gray with nightfall, the sea rolling under them, Pata wonders what the future has in store, if there is a future, and who will give them a chance, so that his children might never tell him some day that, all things considered, they would have done better to drown back there, on their own island.
-
All through the short night on the boat Pata is startled awake. He knows that bad luck always strikes at the last moment, just when you think you’re home safe at last, when you cry victory too soon, so when the little girls asked him, before they went to sleep, to tell them what life would be like on the new land, he put a finger to his lips. Sshh. Above all, when they’re so close, mustn’t rouse any ghosts or evil spirits, no making light of them until we… . A murmur, and a smile to the girls. We’ll find out tomorrow.