“My eyes!”
But Louie and Noah don’t reply, they don’t understand, the storm has petrified them. Bruised from falling, colliding, they cling on, hopelessly, instinctively, it’s not anything they can control, their arms are paralyzed. Only Perrine is no longer holding on; her hands are pressed against her face.
But once again, they do not see.
Everyone for themselves.
Not out of selfishness: because they are terrified of death, it fills their minds, absorbs the last of their strength, their last breath.
Perrine is lying to one side.
And this time, the storm recedes.
Despite the rough waves Louie has crawled on his knees over to his sister, once her moans entered his panicked mind. Wading through the water that has swamped the boat, he shakes her; her hands are still held to her face.
“What is it?”
“The hens… they scratched my eyes with their legs… I can’t see, Louie, Louie I’m blind!”
She has long gashes of open flesh on her face, as if they had been made with a dull needle on which a great deal of pressure has been placed. There is blood everywhere; her eyelids are torn.
“It hurts, it hurts…”
“Take your hands away so I can see!”
But Perrine is protecting herself, doesn’t want to be touched; her cries are gut-wrenching to Louie and Noah, this never-ending pain they cannot ease. Louie pours some water on a cloth, cleans Perrine’s cheeks where she will let him touch her, her forehead, he braces himself against the seat not to slip, with the ongoing tremors, he encourages her in a quiet voice, Take your hands away, I have to clean it—and she cries, No, no, no!
Noah, holding the water bottle, cries out:
“You want me to make her?”
Louie shakes his head; his gestures jerky with the backwash and the waves, he gives up: he’ll only hurt her. He places the cold cloth over Perrine’s eyes.
“Just hold it like this, it’s cool, it’ll feel better.”
Her little fingers close around the cloth between two sobs. Louie stays by his sister for a few moments, then slips over to the edge to look out at the sea. Noah kneels beside him.
“She’s really unlucky, huh.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And she already lost one eye.”
“Yes.”
“You think we’re going to die today?”
“Leave me alone with your stupid questions!”
Noah withdraws into himself, goes back to Perrine, who is moaning.
“Does it hurt?”
She doesn’t answer. The boy nods.
“Yeah, me too when it hurts I don’t feel like talking.”
He sits cross-legged, takes her hand.
“You don’t have to say anything.”
And adds:
“I hope we won’t sink.”
Later, he’ll boast that it was only a little bitty storm—he’ll even say, because he’d heard his father use the expression, that they caught the tail end of the storm—and Louie will give a shrug:
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. We were lucky, is all.”
Just as the rain stopped all of a sudden, the storm has subsided. Or did it go elsewhere? They don’t know, they know only that the boat is no longer pitching, that the wind is no longer howling, and that the sky, for the few remaining hours of daylight, is clearing. Louie bails with a bowl.
Murmurs: Incredible.
Yes, they were lucky.
Except Perrine.
The two boys sit around the girl. Noah raises his eyebrows.
“She’s been crying for a while.”
She doesn’t stop.
And the pain, has it stopped?
Noah asks: Are you all right?
“Shut up,” scolds Louie.
They watch her in despair. Louie spreads his hands as if they could do something—an idea, a miracle; he keeps them open on his lap. Noah blows gently onto his sister’s face. It was their mother who taught them to do this, when one of them would fall, or bang himself, or scratch herself, she would blow on the hurt, and the suffering would abate, disappear. He leans closer:
“Does that feel better?”
The little girl shakes her head, does not stop crying; Noah is not Madie. Louie gently lifts off the cloth, soaks it with fresh water, replaces it. Gradually night has fallen and he can no longer see her wounded face. But Perrine’s moans haunt them until dawn; she sleeps intermittently—and then Louie can feel his nerves let go, and fatigue gets the better of him. He opens his eyes the moment she starts to sob again. In a quiet voice he says, I’m here. And then these stupid, senseless words: We’ll find a doctor for your eyes.
In the early morning, while Perrine is sleeping, as the cloth has slipped to the floor, he looks—and immediately turns away. Perrine’s good eye, the one most damaged by the hens, is swollen and red, oozing a yellowish pus between her lashes. But Louie does what he can, pours some water to clean it a little; and even though he expected it, he is startled by his sister’s cry as she wakes.
“It’s all right,” he murmurs, “I’m not touching it, it’s just water. Here’s the cloth. Put it on if you want.”
Before they raise the anchor he gets out some breakfast, but Perrine doesn’t want anything to eat or to drink, she moans, complains of the heat—The heat? says Noah with surprise, for he put on a sweater against the chill from the storm.
Louie puts his hand on her brow, and it is too hot.
He knows this isn’t a good sign.
Folded on himself, he holds his head between his elbows. There are too many problems in his head, too many things he cannot deal with, this wound to take care of, the land that isn’t there, his little sister’s tears piercing him to the bone.
Where are they, now that the storm has turned them every which way, ruining all their efforts, their nonexistent landmarks, the hopes they had raised to keep going?
So Louie reaches for the oars.
Tells Noah: She has to drink. We have to make her drink.
And he pulls hard on the oars.
That’s all they can do: go forward. He says it to himself all day long, except for the moments when he stops to straighten his back and relax his tetanized arms, when he manages to convince Perrine to eat half an egg, then nothing more, so this is really the only thing he has left, to go on, with his lower lids burning from holding back his own tears, because his sister’s tears are breaking his heart, he can’t stand it, and he no longer knows the way to the coast.
This void inside him is a chasm spilling out of his body, and the boat, and the sea; a hollow that goes right to the bottom of the world, where even the seabed has vanished, and the rock is hot, so close to the core of the earth. That is where Louie would like to be, curled up in an inaccessible recess, deaf to every lament and every pain, alone if he must be, not to go completely mad, if it’s not too late. Alone, and have done with it.