-
By the second morning, they are already little animals, pale and hairy, wordless creatures who rub their eyes as they look at each other, grumpily, as if each one of them was guilty for the terrible abandonment, as if anger had grown during the night and all it would take was one misstep, one word, one gesture too many, a sneeze. They get dressed without washing, without combing their hair—in fact they don’t get dressed, they simply put trousers over their pajamas and go barefoot to the kitchen where there is no smell, no movement. Then they look at each other and remember; until now it was only a dream. Noah sits on the floor. They wait.
How long?
To see if their mother is simply late. If she’s going to get up.
A quarter of an hour, a bit more. In silence. If their mother hums behind the door, they’ll hear her.
But there is no one humming.
Reality takes hold of them again: their parents are gone. There is no more dream. They wander aimlessly, empty of all desire, sitting at the table the way they did when their mother was still there to give them breakfast, pancakes and tea, hot chocolate, or hot water with a few grains of coffee just to give it some taste, sometimes fruit or a crêpe, or bread and honey. They look at each other. Who is going to make breakfast? Louie slips off his chair and opens the cupboards. He knows that in one cupboard there are cookies and candy, at the very top; he knows, too, that Madie must have taken them with her, but he tries all the same, and lets out a shout. The shelf is nearly full, the candy is there, all the ones they’re only allowed to have from time to time, green, red, blue, pink, or yellow, it’s junk, says Madie, Pata buys it to keep the children happy, what’s the point if we can’t eat it?
Louie takes everything down and puts it in the middle of the table, next to Noah, who bursts out laughing and holds out his hand. Louie crushes his hand with his.
“Just one. Otherwise we’ll be sick.”
They tear the packets open, furiously. In the beginning they count them, because Perrine told Louie that they could have three each, but those three go too quickly, they’ll stop at five, six, eight, and then they forget, the sugar sticks to their gums and saliva whenever they stuff their mouths with a licorice or a marshmallow gummy bear, and they laugh. Of course they don’t leave a single one, and they already feel sick to their stomachs, but in defiance, vengefully, they will devour every last one, right down to the grains of sugar that fell on the floor, until they put their hands on their tummies, hesitant, and Noah murmurs, “I’m gonna puke.”
They scatter, prey to the strange experience of making themselves sick with no one there to scold them, no one there to hand them a basin or a damp cloth, afterwards, when they’ve run outside bent double and stayed on their knees in the grass for a long time, one after the other, each one in their own little spot, they come back together hanging their heads, eyes red, mouths still grimy, We shouldn’t have eaten everything, whispers Louie.
The morning goes by in a sort of semiconsciousness between disgust and sorrow, a time in between where nothing gets done, where they wander absently and shuffle along until they end up on the shore, overwhelmed, distraught. They forget to have lunch, the candy has upset their stomachs. In the house they take out a game, then another one, and spread them across the floor. They don’t begin to play. Don’t feel like it. Don’t have the energy. They go on sitting on the old parquet floor, heads to one side, gazing at the cards spread before them, the dice, the pieces, and they don’t touch them, they’re not interested. They sigh, frequently. I’m bored, says Noah. The others shrug.
Melancholy, at a loss, they eventually fall asleep. Something inside them has realized that sadness fades during sleep, that many hours gone by, stolen hours during which they don’t need to live, are tiny, vital moments of respite. If they could they would sleep for two weeks. But the wind and sun and hens wake them. They go on lying on the floor—why should they get up? Eyes floor level, they glance at their abandoned games, not seeing them. From time to time one of them cries for a spell. Then it passes.
To rebuild a world, they hang sheets between the upturned beds in their room and make forts: closed at the top and on all four sides, cocoon-like tents where they can find refuge. They have taken the mattresses off the beds. They tell each other stories in a hushed voice. Memories, made-up things, quiet laughter.
They doze. They only go out to use the toilet or bring some food and drink back. They stay there for hours. At the end of the corridor the door is still open and the hens have wandered into the house; they hear them cackling, ferreting, pecking at things; they don’t care. Their food is hidden in the cupboards. The chickens bring some life, they listen to them and say nothing. Louie decides he won’t shut them inside the flooded chicken coop ever again. He wonders if the cage is big enough for them to take the hens along when their father comes back, or if any of them are missing, although he doesn’t know where they could get to. He’ll count them, later on. And if any are missing: so what.
But when night begins to fall, the children haven’t moved, and Louie hasn’t counted the hens. They find some candles which they place on saucers in the middle of their tents.
“Careful,” says Louie. “Not to start a fire.”
They burn little pieces of paper to make long flames. Perrine has tied her hair back with a blue rubber band. Before long the heat bothers them, so they open the sheets to let the air through and snuff out all the candles but one, and they lean around it on their elbows, close together.
“We should close the door,” says Perrine. “It’s nighttime.”
Louie smiles. There’s no one here.
“Still.”
He slips out of the tent, making fun of her. As he walks along the corridor, glancing at the stairs that lead down to the ground floor and to the cellar, off-limits because of the flood, he notices that the water level has risen a little more and is covering the third step. At the moment, he doesn’t really pay it much attention. Tomorrow, or maybe the day after, once he’s decided to brave the sea again, he’ll go down for their half-submerged fishing rods, and then he’ll have a look. And he’ll number the steps with chalk, from four to thirteen, so he’ll have a gauge, so he can keep an eye on it—whether there’s any point, he has no idea.
Too much sun, too much heat: when there were birds, Louie, Perrine, and Noah thought the birds went quiet when they were overcome by the heat, that they went to cluster in the tree branches, sheltered from the burning rays; but they haven’t heard any birds for days. Only insects have survived the invasion of water, they cling and whirr, little brown or yellow flies that buzz in their ears and stick relentlessly to their sweaty skin, impervious to being flicked off, immediately returning, pests, pains in the butt—that’s what Louie cries, beside himself, in the heat of the third day.
“What shall we do?” asks Noah with a sigh.
Too much freedom, too much indolence. The other two are sitting on the grass, silent.
They are waiting. That’s all.