The End of the Ocean

Chapter 24 DAVID

“We’re feeding the wood,” Lou said.

We’d found sandpaper, oil and brushes in the toolshed. Now we were spreading oil on the surfaces of the cracked benches. The wood absorbed everything it was given, like dry soil absorbs water. The oil altered the surface. Softened it. Turned it a warmer shade of brown.

It was the three of us and the boat. I never found out what had happened to the Red Cross. I just wanted to stop time.

We cleaned out the cupboards. Found old books, some cans of food, bedding.

Marguerite dragged a stack of cushions into the cockpit. They smelled moldy.

“The sun will take care of it,” she said, and put the cushions out to air.

While we were working, I thought about Marguerite. About her lips against mine.

I wanted so much to kiss her, constantly, to put my arms around her waist and bury my face in her hair.

But then Lou was there. With her high-pitched voice and those quick eyes of hers that didn’t miss a thing. Or missed everything, I couldn’t tell.

And I didn’t want her to leave us alone, because I liked seeing her close to Marguerite. I liked hearing them talk. Hearing them laugh.

Three days passed.

We didn’t talk about the day before, Marguerite and I, didn’t talk about the day that would come, about the drought, about how long it had been since it had rained.

We just talked about what we ate, the water we drank, about the sun in the sky, the trees along the roadside. About the boat.

Every time we approached another subject, I made sure that we stopped. Or she would, as often as I did. Even Lou helped out, with her chattering and laughter.

She talked a lot about Francis. They had a game, she said, were in the midst of a game. But I didn’t ask what the game was.

Three days passed and then the fourth day came.

Suddenly Lou didn’t want to come with us to the boat. She was going to play with Francis, she said, all day. They had agreed on that.

I gave in. Far too easily. Because I knew what this meant, that we could be alone, Marguerite and I.

We walked to the boat. Neither of us said anything along the way. I didn’t look at her, only at the road in front of me, at the dust that was stirred up by the hot wind. We didn’t walk close to one another, didn’t touch one another, but nonetheless at all times I could feel her body beside mine.

Then we climbed into the boat.

She undressed. It was the first time I had seen her naked in broad daylight.

This time she didn’t remove my hands from her abdomen, from the stretch marks.

I wanted her to tell me, but she said nothing. Said nothing, but didn’t stop me either. Let me get close to her.

It had been a long time since we had showered. We were sticky, salty. A layer of dry dust coated our bodies, was between us, became a part of us, a part of it.

Afterwards we lay there in silence.

I couldn’t resist looking at the marks. I stroked them again.

There had been someone inside her. But she wasn’t going to tell me about it.

Just as I didn’t say anything about Anna.

Anna. Suddenly, I was unable to look at Marguerite.

My Anna… after the pregnancies her stomach had been round. But no stretch marks. And her breasts… She claimed they had changed. But they were the same as before. Small and round, they fit into my hand. The feeling of them against my palm…

Anna wasn’t shy. Could argue with me without any clothes on. We shouted and screamed at one another. Argued often. Probably more often than most couples. She distracted me with her tits. Stood there with them pointing straight out. The young, pert breasts. And then she might suddenly laugh, in the middle of the argument. Because she discovered how my gaze flitted back and forth, from the screaming mouth to the smiling tits that resembled two eyes in the middle of her body.

Marguerite sat up, reached for her dress. She pulled it over her head, covering her freckled, pale skin. Anna tanned easily. Golden brown. She never used sunscreen.

A deep sob struggled out of me. I curled up, turned away. I couldn’t let her hear it.

“I’m getting up,” Marguerite said.

“Yes,” I said.

“You coming?”

“Mmm.”

But I was unable to move, closed my eyes, could see only Anna.

Anna when we went running. Anna with August on her arm.

I had lost her. I had lost August. I left Argelès without them. What kind of man does such a thing? What kind of father?

And now I was lying here fucking another woman. A much older woman, to boot. A woman who just happened to be here. Who was available. I had fucked her for one sole reason: because I needed a woman.

That’s the kind of guy I am.

I got out of bed quickly, pulled on my clothes and went out into the cockpit. I had to escape from myself. Had to do something.

Marguerite was sitting on the recently aired-out cushions and looking up into the trees. She’d done up only half the buttons on her dress and I could make out the cleavage between her breasts. She didn’t turn around when I came out.

I thought I could hear the stand under the boat creaking when I moved outside. A stranded boat on a stand. It didn’t belong here. It was just as out of place as I was.

And suddenly I knew what I should do.

“We have to move it,” I said.

“What?”

Now she looked at me.

“We have to move the boat back to the canal.”

“We do?”

“It has to be ready for when the rain comes.”

She looked at me in wonder.

“It’s going to start raining,” I said.

And suddenly the words poured out of me. “The rain will come back. Sooner or later it has to start raining again. I don’t mean a pathetic kind of rain like we’ve had the past four winters. I mean a proper autumn rain that lasts, weeks of rain. All the rain we haven’t had. Sooner or later it has to come back. Sooner or later. I will do everything I can,” I said. “So the boat will be ready when the water comes.”

Marguerite still didn’t say anything, but she got to her feet. And buttoned up her dress all the way.

“Will you help me?” I asked.

“Of course I will,” she said.

It took us two days.

I invited Caleb, Martin and Christian to lend a hand. They accepted the task without asking any questions. We’re happy to have something to do to fill the hours, they said. To get out of the camp, where everything is just getting worse.

We broke into a couple of barns and found what we needed: materials, tools, an old cart. Caleb attached a log to the wall of the house. He’d gotten hold of some pulleys, drilled deep holes into the wall. Constructed a mainstay.

We used all the old ropes from the tarps, throwing out only those that had decayed the most. Wound them around the boat, again and again. They would have to support the full weight, they had to hold.

The second night we broke into the generator cabinet in the camp and pulled a long power line all the way out to the road. We charged the abandoned tractor, stealing no more power than we needed, just exactly enough so it could drive the few meters to the house and from there through the underbrush to the canal.

The key was in the ignition. The tractor started immediately and drove without complaint down to the yard, over to the boat.

Caleb had converted the old cart into a trailer. On it he had built a cradle. Now we attached the trailer to the back of the tractor.

The air stood still when we hoisted up the boat.

The hull rested solidly on floral couch cushions from the abandoned house.

It was so big and heavy. The weight would stall the tractor, I thought.

But when I turned the key and started the engine again, it pulled the trailer easily. Both the tractor and the boat on the trailer rolled forward.

Through the garden, down the path, towards the canal.

Lou ran beside me.

Marguerite took her hand. “It’s working. It’s working.”

“Come on, Daddy!”

I backed up to the canal, had to keep turning around in my seat to keep my eyes on the boat at all times. My hands were sweaty. Imagine if it didn’t work, if the cradle collapsed, if the trailer didn’t hold?

It was steep, too steep.

I closed my eyes and continued. Could feel the boat pulling. It had gained momentum.

Was on its way down towards the canal.

I no longer needed to use the gas. The trailer was rolling by itself. Gravity did all the work.

“Stop!” Martin shouted.

“Brakes!” Christian howled.

I did as they said, but the weight of the boat produced its own momentum.

Now it’s tipping over!

But it didn’t tip over.

It just slid out into the canal. Exactly the way we had planned.

The trailer hit the muddy bottom.

“Wait,” Caleb called.

As if I had any choice.

The back wheels of the tractor were on the bank of the canal, about to roll down.

Caleb and Christian ran over to me and loosened the trailer. I put my foot on the gas pedal and drove a few meters forward, back towards the yard.

“Hurrah,” Lou called, and jumped up and down.

Everyone clapped.

Because there was the boat, in the middle of the canal. Resting solidly in the cradle on the trailer, which was now securely stuck in the mud.

There it would remain. Berthed in the mud.

As stable as a post, until the rain came.

Caleb, Martin and Christian didn’t want any payment for the labor. Not that I had anything to give them.

“But the tractor,” Christian said, “you don’t need that, maybe.”

“Just take it,” I said.

Christian took his seat behind the wheel.

“Come on,” he said to Lou in his broken French. “On y va.”

She ran over and climbed up beside him.

“You too!” He turned towards us.

We piled onto the rusty vehicle, all six of us, and drove back to the camp.

The thudding sound of the tractor vibrated inside me.

To move like this, without any exertion… it was so given and yet something I’d never thought about before, back when I was driven and transported around all the time, by cars, busses, trains and airplanes. I hadn’t needed to make an effort, no energy was required to move from place to place.

It had been so simple.

I took pleasure in sitting like this, carried along by the noisy engine.

But the tractor didn’t hold out for long. Just a few hundred meters. Then it ran out of electricity.

We left it behind, in almost the same place we’d retrieved it from, and had to walk the rest of the way to the camp. But we walked with light steps.