Ades snorts with laughter. No way.
“Sure there are.”
“Then these two rows here will be enough. Go on, start digging.”
“Me?”
Louie is about to say that it will go faster if Ades does it himself, with his strength and endurance, then he sees the way the man is looking at him, the gleam concealed in his vague smile, narrow, chilling, and he swallows his words. Ever since Ades got there, he has sensed something strange—a diffuse, disquieting feeling, not unlike the way the hens react when Ades walks by them, something instinctive: he knows the man is no good.
And he knows that the man has a boat. Even if there’s no more fuel, the boat has oars, the means to go forward. He thought about it all night long, was tempted to wake Perrine and Noah before dawn to escape in the little craft, just like his parents did ten days ago, and this time it would be Ades who got left behind, it would be their turn to sail away as fast as they could, to get back to high ground. But he didn’t do it. He remembered all of a sudden what Pata had said: the journey would take nearly two weeks.
Two weeks of supplies on the boat. That’s what Ades is planning now—for himself alone. The children can’t leave without taking something. And they can’t start stockpiling food without Ades noticing.
Ades who won’t take them with him, ever. He has no intention of doing so, doesn’t even think about it. It’s not even on purpose: he just doesn’t care, that’s all. Louie is sure of this, Ades will let them drown, let them die, beyond a shadow of a doubt. He, Louie, doesn’t have much time, very little time, to come up with a plan. The potatoes were one way of gaining a day. But he has been pressing on the spade, bringing up earth and potatoes for nearly an hour, and he can’t think of anything.
He stands up straight, carefully, his back aching, and wipes his forehead. An instinctive glance, because the sky has imperceptibly changed color. Yes, that is the only thing he can think of: a storm, or at least a good squall. So Louie drops everything, the spade and the potatoes scattered around, and he runs to stand in front of Ades who is smoking a cigarette of dark tobacco, We gotta go.
“But you haven’t finished.”
“There’s a storm coming.”
Ades shrugs. So what?
“If we wait, we won’t make it back. I already capsized once. You can’t steer the boat through the currents.”
Now Ades looks at the sky. I wouldn’t know.
“We have to go back,” insists Louie, and he points to the potatoes scattered in a jumble by the plants he has unearthed: “We’ll come and get them later. There’s no time now.”
The wind is already blowing his hair into his eyes, and there are small waves on the sea; in the distance there are rollers. He shivers, his entire body feels the swell coming.
“You’re afraid,” says Ades.
“Last time I nearly drowned. And I lost the raft.”
“Okay.”
He stands up. Do we have time to get back?
“Yes.”
“Take a few spuds. We can have them tonight.”
Louie quickly stuffs his pockets, then runs down to the shore. Come on! Ades follows him, taking a last draw on his cigarette. It’s as if he’s never seen a storm, thinks Louie, or else he suspects me of making it up to stop harvesting the potatoes.
The boat is already dancing on the water.
“Goddamn,” says Ades when he sees how it is rocking, and he goes pale.
Ah, so you do see.
“Are you sure it will be alright?”
“There are currents here because it’s where the sea divides above the two valleys. We have to get out of here quick.”
Idiot, he adds, to himself. If only you’d hurried a little.
Ades grabs the oars.
“How long will it take to get back?”
Without even waiting for a reply, Ades pulls hard on the oars, creating so much momentum that Louie stumbles and catches himself on the edge just in time, then bursts out laughing.
“I don’t know, maybe ten minutes if we go this fast all the way, or fifteen. That is, if everything goes well.”
“It had better go well, because—” But Ades breaks off, and doesn’t say why it had better go well, and without knowing why, Louie is still laughing. It helps him to master his fear, because only a few hundred yards from there the sea looks just as he remembers it from the storms he’s been through, the last one above all, when they went fishing, with the crests forming and breaking until they’re big enough to swallow the surface of the earth.
Louie has stopped laughing. He looks at the clouds and extends his arm.
“That way.”
To circumvent the strongest currents.
“Hurry.”
Ades grumbles, I’m doing the best I can.
Louie knows that if they go to the east of the hill, they will lose six or seven minutes, but they will have the storm at their back for longer. The wind is propelling them, and Ades’s straining muscles are like steel chains; Louie looks at him despite himself, fascinated, he has never seen such strength in a man. He’d like to be like that, later—but he will probably look like Pata, who is soft and pudgy, and maybe it’s better that way, even if he’ll never have the kind of strength that emanates from Ades, magical, almost superhuman, the boat continues to plow straight through the water until they meet the crosscurrents and the waves make the boat pitch and rock, and Ades cries out with rage, Row, bastard! and Louie looks at him—it has to be said—with wonder in his gaze, until finally the island appears and they realize Ades has rowed faster than the wind, faster than the storm and the tall waves, the time it takes them to secure the boat, to pick up the potatoes that have fallen from Louie’s pockets, and they’re on land, and Perrine and Noah are greeting them with rain jackets to protect them. So Louie bursts out laughing again and only stops once he’s sitting in the house, his hands trembling, and his voice murmuring, Incredible, incredible.
The next day is like all those strange mornings after a storm, clear and calm, a calm no one can believe in at first, and then it becomes obvious, the wind has gone on its way and the waves have given up, no matter how hard you stare at the horizon there is nothing moving. But it’s hard to trust the sky, when you know how quickly it can cloud over, and Ades has been watching for an hour, muttering into the coffee Perrine gave him, his second cup. Fucking country. Fucking water. And fucking children, always in the way when he would like to be alone, running around outside just when he wants to bring them to heel. So he motions with his chin to Perrine:
“Call your brother. The big one.”
She runs off. Ades can’t make up his mind whether to go back to the potato island. He can still feel the tension from the day before in his aching arms, and he’s looking for signs of bad weather. He plunges his hand into the platter of French toast and gobbles down the full day’s portion. The kids can just make something else for themselves. Earlier that morning the girl watched him eating all the pancakes, with tears in her eyes, and he almost told her that it was better to eat now before they all ended up drowned, for all the difference it made. But he just barked, Eat some then, instead of sniveling. She shook her head. He doesn’t like that pale, sad little girl. To be honest, he hates brats of any kind. He really must need Louie, to speak to him in an almost kindly fashion when the boy comes over, breathless.
“Can we go,” says Ades.
He doesn’t make his words sound like a question. It’s a sort of hesitant remark waiting for the decision to come from the boy, a way of reminding him, if things go wrong, that it wasn’t his idea, or not completely, anyway. He looks at Louie who is studying the sky now, too, pressing his lips together, and Ades grasps the sheer incongruity of the situation, leaving the matter up to a ten-year-old kid.