Not as violently.
Louie can see his arms waving, his hands reaching out of the sea as if to grab hold of something, but now there is only air, since the boat has moved away, a little air, not enough, and spluttering, hoarse, stifled cries, a lament like that of the horns of ships lost in the fog. Louie wants it to stop, he blocks his ears, weeping.
Gradually they diminish, the eddies, and the foam tossed up by Ades’s contortions. Gradually the water grows calmer, engulfing to its depths the big powerful body and the terrible voice.
Closes over completely.
Louie shivers relentlessly in the sun. He murmurs, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
And then his heart starts to beat again.
He waits some more.
What if Ades comes up again from the sea.
After a long while he reaches for the oars and moves away, turning around often to make sure, both sick with remorse and terrified at the thought that Ades’s body might be following him, gliding under the water. Until he lands on the island where Perrine and Noah are mute and stunned to see him there alone, he is afraid some shape, some beast will cling to the boat and capsize it.
In his dreams that night, Ades becomes a huge seething wave, tearing after him across the ocean. His cries wake Perrine and Noah. The three of them sit under the tent made of sheets and silently nibble the last of the pancake; fatigue and insomnia are a thousand times better than Louie’s screams, which still make their hair stand on the end.
“We’re going to leave,” says Louie.
The three of them look at the boat.
“Do you think we’ll be strong enough?” asks Perrine.
“There are still some cans of fuel in the barn. We’ll get the motor going, that’ll mean we can go ten times faster.”
“Will we have enough?”
“I don’t know. And after that, anyway, we can row.”
They look at the boat again.
“I’m scared,” says Noah.
“Ades came in this boat, didn’t he?”
“I’d rather he were here with us.”
“You idiot, don’t you understand he was going to leave us here to die?”
The little boy lowers his eyes.
“Come on,” says Louie encouragingly, patting him on the shoulder. “We’ll take all the supplies we can.”
They spend the morning getting ready, somewhat feverishly; what if they forget something important.
Water. Food.
Blankets, even if it’s hot, and a tarp for the rain.
Louie looks behind him. He says, The hens.
“What?” asks Noah.
“The hens, we can’t leave them.”
“But… the cage will never fit.”
“No, no, we’ll take them without the cage.”
“Like that?”
“Loose, yes. They won’t go jumping in the water, will they.”
In the meanwhile, they gather all the eggs they can find, and add them to the ones that are left in spite of Ades’s appetite: Perrine boils them carefully then places them in a bag, there are sixty or so, which makes them feel better. I thought there’d be more, says Louie, nevertheless—but Ades ate so many just himself, and the hens themselves have been picking at them because of their hunger, the surface of the ground is no longer enough, they will have to keep a closer eye on them.
“And what are your hens going to eat on the boat?” asks Noah.
“We’ll see.”
A twelve-day trip, they recall.
They wrap up the pancakes Ades had set aside for himself.
“Serves him right,” murmurs Noah, feeling braver.
The boys take the cans of fuel from the barn and fill the fuel tank.
“Watch out, you’re spilling it,” says Noah.
Louie groans.
“It’s heavy.”
The two of them try to get the motor started. Perrine watches them from the shore. They pull on the starter rope, ten times, thirty times, their brows sweating.
“Stupid piece of crap!” shouts Noah.
“There must be something you have to do,” grunts Louie, checking the flywheel.
He lowers a lever, turns a knob.
“What’s that?” asks Noah.
Louie has no idea. But he’s the eldest, after all. So he tries it, he already heard Pata mention it.
“The choke.”
“Oh, right,” Noah agrees, not knowing what they’re talking about either.
Finally, the motor coughs to life, wheezing but regular. Then there’s the sound.
“It’s working!” shouts Louie.
He slaps Noah’s outstretched hand, then immediately switches off the motor. We have to save fuel for the trip. In the boat, he lashes down the extra fuel jug, and covers it with a sheet to protect it from the sun.
By noon they’re ready, and the boat is full. All that’s left is to load the hens, and the three of them, when the moment comes they hesitate, and gaze up at the house, their house, which they’re going to leave behind; no one can save it. They are overcome with sorrow, nostalgia for a dying world, the page they must turn on their childhood and their hopes, the island will disappear, and Pata didn’t come to get them. Saying nothing to each other, each one of them hopes they will see him on the sea, tonight, tomorrow, in two days’ time. If they didn’t believe that, they would probably not leave. The ocean frightens them, and the late August storms.
And something else: which way should they go?
A terrible question.
They don’t know the way to high ground. They just act as if—and no one talks about it.
Far to the east, Pata used to say. Louie remembers you have to head toward the sun in the morning. But only in the morning, because the stupid star doesn’t stay there in the east, it moves, it moves or the earth does, it doesn’t matter which one if the result is the same: if you row all day long with the sun on the horizon, by nightfall you’ll be back where you started, you’ll make a big useless loop, really, an endless journey. So, should you keep the sun on your left or on your right? Louie bites his lips: he has no idea. Maybe it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s at their back by nightfall.
But maybe it’s very important.
He goes over their supplies again, working out how many days they can last, not the twelve days of travel their father talked about, but the extra ones, for the unexpected, what if they get lost, no, they can’t, no matter how many times he counts, and plans for the tiniest portions of food, they cannot get lost, otherwise—otherwise what is the point of leaving, what is the point of getting their hopes up, what was the point of leaving Ades to drown after smashing his skull with the same oar Louie will be holding in his hands in just a few hours, or a few moments.
Sitting on a chair in the house, he puts his fingers on the globe and turns it slowly.
Where’s the sun, on this stupid globe? There’s not even any east. Nothing is indicated on it.
What am I supposed to do?
And anyway the world doesn’t look like this anymore. The blue color has swamped everything. With his index finger he traces the region where they are, there it is, to there. But east?
Fuck.
Louie shoves the globe away, exasperated. It hits a bump on the surface of the old oak table and rolls to one side; Louie just has time to stand up but not to reach for it, not to catch it, it lands with a loud, sharp shlack on the terra-cotta floor.
A tinkling of glass. The earth is on the ground, the globe shattered to pieces.
Inside, it’s hollow.
-
That’s it, they’re leaving. It’s two in the afternoon. The sun is baking.