The End of the Ocean

Chapter 28 DAVID

I was awakened by the first rays of the sun. It had absorbed the moisture in me, even if it was only early morning. In my mouth, the taste of dust, a dryness so intense that my tongue was paralyzed. And the smell of fire. All of me stunk, like a piece of smoked meat.

I lay with my cheek against the ground. The soil shifted beneath me. I could see the stripes in the landscape that was as wrinkled as the skin of an old man.

The dry wisps of grass still held the soil in place, but they would soon surrender, crumble into dust. And what once had been topsoil, arable land, would be blown away.

I got to my feet. At the bottom of a bucket someone had tossed away I found a few dirty drops. Dirty water, shouldn’t drink dirty water.

But I couldn’t help myself and poured them down my throat.

Spittle formed in my mouth. And a taste, which either came from me or from the water. As foul as poison on the tongue.

I walked to the hall. Gathered our things, the few clothes, a little food I had saved. Quickly packed it up.

I moved as quietly as I could. Marguerite was sleeping heavily and soundlessly on my bed.

Every time I bent over the backpack, my head pounded, the nausea rose. But I did nothing to prevent it. I wanted to feel the nausea, the headache. I deserved it.

Then I pulled on my backpack and picked up Lou.

Finally I was the one carrying her.

Today I was carrying my daughter. I should have been the one carrying her yesterday.

And I should have been the one who carried my son, August. I should have carried him too. He was too heavy for Anna. She must have stumbled. He was too heavy.

No.

Just this, just now. Lou. My child in my arms. She was alive. She was here. I could carry her to the ends of the earth.

There was nobody sitting by the exit when we passed. I didn’t see the guards when I left what had once been a camp.

I didn’t turn around to look back. Didn’t look anymore at the scorched ground, the sleeping people who would soon wake up to the drought—the drought and the flames they had fled from, but which had now caught up with them.

I moved slowly, with my backpack on my back and Lou in my arms. All of this was too much to carry, too heavy, but at the same time, too light.

I stopped from time to time but never sat down. Just stood there, motionless, breathing, waiting, and then continued walking when I felt I was up to it.

I stopped at every single farm we passed, put Lou down in the shade, and searched. Found food in a couple of places, but water in only one place, in an almost empty tank. I filled up some battered plastic bottles and put them in the knapsack.

My load grew even heavier, but I could take it.

Lou awoke from time to time. She didn’t say anything; she blinked, but never focused her gaze on me.

The boat was waiting for us, in the middle of the canal, safe and sound in its cradle. The ladder was leaning against the stern, as if it were welcoming us.

We can stay here, I thought. We can boil the muddy water at the bottom of the water tank. It must be drinkable if we boil and filter it.

We can stay here, Lou and I. We can play. We can play so much, play so hard that everything else disappears.

I can play like that. It’s perhaps the only thing I know how to do.

I put Lou down on the ground by the boat and shook her gently.

“Lou? Lou… You have to wake up, I can’t carry you up.”

Finally she came around. Got to her feet and waited, swaying. I put my arms around her. I wanted to hug it away, the entire night, the flames and Francis, who had carried her out.

But she didn’t respond to my hug, she was completely stiff. Finally I released her. She continued to stand in the same position, staring at me.

“We must go to the camp,” she said.

I didn’t answer. She was thinking of August, of Anna. Of how they might come.

“We have to go back now,” she said.

“Are you thirsty? I have water. Here.”

“I’m not thirsty.”

“We will find Mommy and August,” I said. “We just have to rest a little. Stay here for a little while.”

“No.”

“Do you want to sleep some more? You can sleep in the boat.”

“We have to see how the others are doing.”

“The others?”

“Marguerite. And Francis. And everyone.” Her quiet voice was full of stubbornness. “We have to go now, Daddy. We have to go.” She turned and took a few steps. Her steps were heavy and her neck determined as she walked across the muddy bed of the canal, up onto the bank.

“Lou?”

“We have to go there, Daddy.”

And she started walking more quickly on the cart road between the trees.

“Lou, no.”

I hurried after her.

“I’m going back,” she said.

“We can’t.”

“Can to!”

I pulled her close to me, wanting to hold her tight, but she twisted out of my grasp.

Such strength—I had no idea she was so strong, so tough.

I took hold of her again. But she struggled against me, she scratched, screamed and bit. At first without a word. Only a low hissing, fierce whimpers and moans accompanied her exertions.

But then the words began. Everything she was carrying. A lot of it I had heard before, but some words were new. Idiot! Shit father! Damn Daddy!

I restrained her by force, the force of a father, hating it, that I had to hold her like this. I’d never held her like this before. If a father holds his child like this, does it constitute abuse? Does it?

I held on to her, tighter and tighter. She screamed, louder and louder. Finally it came:

“I hate you. I wish you were dead. Just like August! Just like Mommy!”

It was only then that I released her.

I released her so abruptly that she fell down. Her body hit the ground with a thump.

And there she remained, breathing hard where she sat. Her hair hung over her eyes. I couldn’t see her face, and I wondered if she was crying, but she wasn’t sobbing. Only breathing, more and more slowly.

I could have screamed, too. Yelled back at her. Denied it. Objected. Put her in her place. Called it delusions.

Or comforted her. Said that you mustn’t think like that. Given her hope.

But I didn’t say anything. Because there wasn’t anything more to say. She’d said it all.

Finally she got to her feet. Turned away from me. Started walking again.

But she didn’t walk far. Because she knew I wasn’t following her.

She just walked a few steps into the forest, to a spot in the shade.

There she sat down, folding her legs underneath her.

“Lou?”

“Go away. Go to the shitty boat.”

And I turned away. Did as she said. Because she wouldn’t leave me, no matter what I did. She was a child, she couldn’t leave me. Hiding here between the trees for a little while was the extent of her daring. And that in itself, that I could rest assured that she wouldn’t leave me, was almost the worst part. The most unfair thing of all.

I climbed up onto the boat. Crawled into the forepeak.

When I opened the ceiling hatch, a breeze swept over me. A slight draft.

I lay down on the berth, feeling the woolen fabric in the mattress prickling against my skin.

And then I cried.

Then I cried.

I cried for everything I’d had.

The cramped apartment by the wharf. The rooms that were sticky in the heat. The tiny kitchen with clutter in all the cupboards. The sofa bed we argued on, made love on.

Mommy, Daddy, Alice.

Anna, her eyes, her mouth laughing, yelling. I cried for her body, the hollow in her neck, her breasts, everything I wanted to bury myself in.

I cried over August, God, how I cried for him. Our baby, the gurgling sounds he made, which nobody else managed to imitate. The porridge he spit out, how he laughed while spitting. His tummy, the belly button bulging against the world. Even his diapers, I cried for his diapers, which I hated changing.

And I cried about myself. My bungling. My voice that was too loud. That I always came home too late after a night on the town. I cried about the time I’d forgotten to pick up Lou from the babysitter’s. About the key hook I never put up in the hallway. About being the kind of person who was unable to pull out in time.

I cried over what had been a life, over how it had been taken away from me.

And while I was crying, it was no longer possible to keep that day at a distance. The day Anna and August disappeared.

Anna had wanted us to leave. She talked about it every day. Almost nobody we knew was still in Argelès. She wanted to go north, showed me photos of the camp near Timbaut. We’ll be safe there, she said, we can travel on from there.

The streets were empty. The stores closed. We had hoarded, but the food would soon come to an end.

But I couldn’t bring myself to leave. We had an additional responsibility, those of us who worked at the plant. That’s what we told each other, that’s what I told her.

And we had water, as much as we needed. As long as we had water, we could manage.

All the same, more people left, also those who worked at the plant. Finally, only Thomas, my boss, and I remained.

The electricity came and went, cut off for increasingly long periods of time. And without electricity, no production.

Thomas laughed about it, about how well we had messed things up for ourselves, we humans. It was the electricity production from coal-fired power plants that had contributed to creating global warming and the water shortage in the first place, and now we needed even more electricity to produce water.

He laughed about such things. He laughed about a lot of things. Even when we put too much pressure on the machinery and blew the fuses, he laughed. It’s just as worn out as I am, he said and chuckled.

But Anna wasn’t laughing any longer. She cried when I came home from work. She was startled by the tiniest noises. She just sat on the tiny balcony in our apartment. Vigilant. It was as if she knew something was going to happen.

Both of us knew that something was going to happen.

I had just eaten lunch that day. A chewy croissant I had taken out of the freezer in the break room. The last one. I turned off the freezer but didn’t unplug it.

The croissant had tasted like mold. I had nothing to put on it. The taste of mold was still in my mouth.

I was on my way out with the trash, it was my turn to take it out. We had to take turns. The cleaner, an Algerian refugee who had lived in Argelès since long before the five-year drought, had quit many weeks ago. He didn’t understand how we dared to stay. He had already fled from another drought many years ago.

The trash bag was half full. There weren’t many leftovers any longer, we ate every last crumb. The garbage cans were located a short walk away from the plant. I had to go all the way out onto the main road. They stunk in the heat. Nobody had emptied them for months.

The bag of trash in my left hand, clutched tightly between my fingers, white plastic against my palm, a knot. And then I noticed the smell.

I turned around. At first I saw only whitish smoke rising into the sky. Like a fog.

But it quickly grew darker.

Then the flames came. Small tongues over the buildings.

It was only then that I moved. Thomas, I thought.

He hadn’t had lunch with me. He ate on his feet, not taking breaks.

The last time I had seen him he was standing by the control and monitoring panel. There was something that wasn’t working, he said, something that had broken down again, yet another overloaded mechanism, another broken part. But he would figure it out, the way he always did.

I started running towards the building. Smoke rose towards the sky, towards me. More and more smoke billowed out all the time. Toxic smoke. And Thomas was inside.

It was only then that I dropped the bag of trash.

I ran, but the fire was spreading quickly. The flames blocked the main entrance.

I ran around the building to the rear. But the door was locked.

Back to the front. Spun around. Time passed.

The flames took hold. Ashes were already falling to the ground like snow. On me.

Water. Water. I needed water. A hose.

At that moment I heard someone calling from behind me.

“David?”

I turned around. It was Anna. She was holding August on her hip and Lou was running just behind them. They must have run out of the house the minute she noticed the smell of smoke.

Tears were running down her face and she screamed.

“David! Wait!”

“I have to go inside,” I called. “I have to find Thomas!”

“No,” she said. “No!”

With one bound she was at my side.

“You’re not going in there!”

“I have to!” I said. “Thomas is in there.”

But then she handed me August. She lifted him towards me and forced me to take him.

Then she lifted Lou onto her hip and Lou hid her face against her shoulder. I could hear her crying.

“Now we have to run,” Anna said. “You see that. Now we have to get out of here!”

I stood there holding August. He smiled at me, understanding nothing. A smile with four white teeth. I don’t understand a thing either, I thought.

“David!” Anna said.

“It’s growing,” Lou said.

I turned towards the plant.

The fire was a raging beast that ate everything.

The sparks spread, setting the dry grass on the dunes and the bone-dry trees behind them on fire.

The flames devoured everything in their path, they were a beast growing with everything it swallowed, growing ever larger and more powerful and at an ever-increasing pace.

Then finally I managed to run. August thudded against my hip. He laughed, thinking it was a game.

“Will we make it to the apartment?” I asked.

“Yes,” Anna said. “We have to make it. Our passports are there. Everything is there.”

We ran towards the city. Our breath tore at our throats, our eyes were stinging. We rushed down the esplanade where the old summer villas were, locked up and covered in dust.

We were faster than the fire.

“We’re going to make it,” I said. “It will be fine. We will make it. It will be fine.”

Again and again I spoke exactly those words, like they were a jingle.

Through deserted streets, past boarded-up stores. Up the stairs towards our apartment. It smelled so good, I thought. Home, I loved that smell.

Then I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror. A white man, covered in ashes.

“Here.”

Anna moistened a towel with water from a barrel and tossed it to me. I wiped the worst of it off me. At the same time she stuffed some clothing and a little food into a bag.

“And the passports,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “I already packed them.”

“Good job,” I said.

Actually I wanted to say more. Ask her for forgiveness. I should have apologized.

Apologized for making us stay. For not listening to her. For our still being here. For having to leave our home like this, without anything.

But I didn’t have a chance to say anything, because now a sound could be heard outside. A buzzing—no, a faint roar that grew louder all the time.

“It’s coming,” Anna said.

“But it can’t come here, can it?” Lou asked.

We didn’t reply. I picked up the bag. Lifted August. Anna took Lou’s hand. We ran outside.

“Mommy, don’t you have to lock up?” Lou asked.

But she received no reply to that question either.

We continued into the town, away from the beach, away from the plant.

I turned around. I couldn’t see the flames, only the smoke. There was a light breeze and a black wall rolled into the town on the wind.

My heart in my throat, breathing hard, August in my arms. He wasn’t laughing any longer.

Anna pulled Lou behind her but they weren’t moving quickly enough. She picked her up.

She balanced her on her hip. But that slowed her down even more. Lou was too heavy.

“Here,” I said and held August out to her. “You take him.”

We swapped children. That was when it happened. It was Anna and August. Lou and me.

Then we continued running.

We approached the downtown area. The bike rental. Ran past the smiling plastic figurines in the small amusement park on the corner. Past the pharmacy. All the ice-cream parlors. The hamburger restaurant that had once been the most popular place in Argelès. Engulfed in smoke so thick I could barely breathe.

Lou kept her face hidden against my shoulder. I could hear her crying. But I couldn’t console her. I just ran.

And forgot to turn around.

“Mommy?” Lou said suddenly.

It was only then that I noticed that Anna was no longer behind me.

I called for her in the smoke. Screamed. Yelled.

Lou screamed even louder than me, her voice high-pitched against the deepness of my own.

“Mommy?”

“Anna?”

“Mommy!”

But Anna didn’t come.

Then I turned around, ran back, towards the fire, towards the roaring.

They had to be here somewhere.

She had stumbled, I would find her.

“August? Anna? August?!”

No sign of her and no sound of him crying.

Soon there was only the sound of crackling flames. They spread with a swiftness that I wouldn’t have believed possible.

Spread through the dry landscape, which had scarcely seen rain in five years.

Everything could burn. And everything did. My entire world burned.