Louie didn’t say anything. He frowned; he understood that something was wrong but that Lucette was right when she said he could have no idea what she was going through, and he refrained from turning his head to ask where the others were, whether they had started the meal, whether the hens were all there. Then she murmured something about a sort of impossible battle, convincing Adele to leave, all together on the little boat, and at last Louie looked her right in the eyes:
“Really?”
Oh, such immense hope in those eyes, Lucette found it hard to look away. In a low voice she said, Yes.
But it won’t be easy.
This she did not say, not to dim the glow in the wild gaze there before her. Convincing Adele to go with the three children who arrived on the wave. And go back to die among her family, on solid ground, not the one gradually shrinking away beneath her own feet. Lucette also has another idea behind all that: to put an end to her suffering. There are times when the simple vibration of Noah’s steps running toward her on the terrace is enough to make her wince with pain. And it’s not the few remaining aspirins that reassure her, when she shakes the tube, not to see how many days are left; then what, the absence of relief, Adele’s poultices: on her, they don’t work.
Lucette’s day, yesterday, went by in a sort of indecision, between the pain in her body and the excitement of her promise. A thousand times she opened her mouth to speak to Adele; a thousand times her courage failed her. Last chance, she thought, at midnight, when they said good night after a cup of lime-blossom tea—and she let the last chance slip. It gave her an odd palpitation in her heart, made her breathless for no reason. Adele finally noticed and asked her if she was all right.
“Yes,” replied Lucette in a meek voice, inwardly cursing herself.
They went to bed, each in her own room, soundlessly, by candlelight, and Lucette still hadn’t said anything. Perhaps she didn’t sleep all night long, or maybe it was just an impression, but at six thirty she heard Adele moving around on the other side of the wall and this time, she went to knock at the door, even if it would mean her heart stopping for good.
So of course it’s because of her if Adele is in a bad mood today. But she doesn’t care.
She got her way.
She said as much to Louie, exactly like this: I got my way.
And the little boy began laughing and crying at the same time.
Today, Lucette feels almost no pain. She rubbed the tube of aspirin and thought of how now there’d be enough for an extra day, that with a bit of luck she’d make it to high ground, she wouldn’t disappear before then, dragged down by her shrinking body; and it is her wildest desire, to see for herself that somewhere there is land as far as the eye can see, to forget this maddening ocean that blinds her in the sun and worries her when the wind gets up.
What she had to do in order to get Adele to comply, she’ll forget about that, too. How she moaned and wept and went down on one knee despite the terrible pain. She’d have thrown herself in the ocean if she’d had to.
All that just to go and die somewhere else, she thinks, taking a fish from Noah’s line.
For a moment she stands stilclass="underline" maybe she won’t die yet, if they can treat her, there?
As for Louie, he stopped counting when they pulled the fiftieth fish from the sea. He doesn’t know what part of the night it is, the beginning, the middle, he just knows that Noah can’t keep his eyes open, now, and he has to keep nudging him in the ribs to keep him awake. Perrine can’t help them, but she has removed her bandage to watch. Every time Louie or Noah catches a fish she takes it to the old ladies for them to kill. The buckets are nearly full.
Right at the edge of the terrace are two torches, burning with a raw, yellow light, and they attract the creatures, fish and insects, like tiny lighthouses, everyone bustling around them, mosquitos and flies, kids, old ladies holding out empty fishhooks to be cast back in the water, buckets filling with dead fish. Sometimes tiny moths fly too near the torches and their wings make the sound of rustling paper; a little flame in the air, sometimes a mere puff of smoke, the rest plummets. Louie goes on pulling out fish, Noah has stopped shouting whenever one bites. They spent the afternoon preparing their bait with corn and pieces of potato—Double or nothing, murmured Adele gravely.
It’s a winner.
Like Lucette.
Tomorrow they will smoke the fish, so they’ll keep for the length of the journey, and they’ll filter the water to fill the empty bottles. They’ll inventory the last potatoes, and the last cans in the larder, they’ll check for hiding places where the hens might have laid eggs. They’ll picture how to arrange the boat to hold the five of them, with cushions for the grannies’ old bones—this was their request. But for now they still need a few more fish, until Adele finally gets up and stops Noah and Louie as they’re about to cast their lines for the hundredth time. Very precisely, she puts her hands on their shoulders and says:
“I think we have enough, now. Time to get some sleep, to build up your strength.”
And everything stops.
-
Time doesn’t go by; that’s what they are thinking the next day, as they make endless preparations for the voyage. The water, more than anything, is slowing them down, taking so long to filter, but Adele won’t have it any other way, she wants to fill their thirty-four bottles and not a single one less. Under the baking sun Lucette explains to Louie and Noah how to rig poles in the boat on which to stretch a canvas. They are afraid it will blow away with the first gust of wind, like their tarp during the storm: never mind, says the old lady, it will last as long as it lasts. And besides, in September the spring tides are over, the storms less frequent. Even if the seasons have gone haywire.
The two boys exchange glances. Their memory is of storms coming one on top of the other.
Maybe they were the last of the season.
But maybe not.
Lucette hums a tune they don’t know, a song her grandmother used to sing, she explains, a long time ago. She and Adele have been up since dawn, cutting the fish and preparing the fillets: by the time the children woke, they had lit the fire and already extinguished it again so that only smoke remained. No flames or embers; and yet you had to keep it going underneath, otherwise it would all go out, and the fish would never get smoked. They showed Louie how to keep an eye on the hearth. The first fillets had been carefully arranged on a grill.
“It stinks,” said Noah, “it makes me feel sick.”
So he went to get the boat ready.
Perrine stayed with the old ladies.
Hours of waiting, clenching their fists to urge the fish to cure and the water to flow more quickly, and accept the fact that it wouldn’t help at all to blow on the fish or to stir the water to filter it—an entire day, a wasted day, according to the children; they chafe at the bit, they wish they were already on their way, to have it behind them, because in reality one day more or less makes no difference, but, when the children see how Adele and Lucette gaze at the houses—what’s left of them—and sigh, and lower their heads as they come back inside, walking slowly, they’re afraid one of them might get cold feet.