The End of the Ocean

Chapter 34 DAVID

We moved into the house that very evening. It was only once we were there, inside the cool stone building, designed to absorb the heat, that I realized how confined and hot the boat had been.

The airiness was a relief. Lou ran through the rooms. So much space, she’d never had so much space before.

She changed her mind three times before she decided where she wanted to sleep. In a floral-patterned attic room begging to be inhabited by a little girl. With lace curtains and soft pillows on the bed.

For a few days… she would live there. For now.

I poured all the water we had into a transparent plastic container in the kitchen.

We would run out of water sooner now that there were three of us. Much sooner. It wouldn’t be enough, it wouldn’t last until the rain came.

But we weren’t going to live long anyway, and right now, right here, this was the life we had.

Dogs experience time differently from humans. For them, each day is like several weeks, for an ant the days are even longer. That’s how I thought, that’s how we thought, that was the kind of thing we said to each other, Marguerite and I.

We didn’t have the strength to fight any longer, to struggle. We just wanted to be here, together.

The few days that were ours would become a life.

When Lou had gone to bed beneath the flowery sky in the attic, when she had curled up, reveling in the clean sheets, then Marguerite and I came to life.

The energy we had formerly spent on struggling, fighting for our lives, we now applied to one another.

I invested all my strength in her and she invested hers in me. And the heat intensified everything.

We made our way around the house.

We were everywhere. First in the beds. Then on the couch. Against the kitchen counter. In the bathroom, in the dry shower. On the coffee table.

But then an evening came when the heat was intolerable, when it felt impossible to move inside the house.

So we took the blanket outside, lay down on the dry grass, on the ground under the trees, beside the trace of what had once been a brook, while the day slowly faded away.

There we had sex again. Quickly. It was too hot to continue for long.

Afterwards we lay beside each other, breathing hard.

My gaze slid across the darkening landscape. Across trees releasing dry leaves to the ground. The soon-to-be empty branches, where no birds were singing any longer.

My gaze slid onward, into the darkness between the trunks.

I jumped. Because there she stood. A little, white face. An astonished child’s face, which slowly changed as she gradually realized what she had just witnessed.

All at once there were tears in her eyes and she turned around and ran.

Dammit!

“Lou!”

Everything was ruined now, I thought. The last days would be painful. What little time we had left would be turned into something ugly.

I ran behind her through the forest.

I was naked, barefoot. I stepped on something. A stone, it hurt like hell!

I had to stop, bend over to catch my breath.

And when I straightened up again, she was gone.

“Lou? Lou!”

Marguerite came after me. She had pulled on a sweat-shirt and shorts. She handed me the blanket. I wrapped myself up in it.

“Lou?” Marguerite called.

Again I was thirsty, so thirsty, my mouth so dry. Sweaty, my body was losing fluids with every passing minute.

Then we found her. She was standing completely still a short distance up the slope leading to the only knoll in the landscape.

I rushed towards her.

“Lou! Wait!”

But when she saw me, she started running again.

“Lou!”

She kept running up the hill.

I was breathing hard, the soles of my feet were already scratched, but I kept my eyes glued to her back as I ran after her.

I didn’t catch up with her until we had reached the top. The highest point in the landscape, a bump amidst all the flatness.

It was brighter here. The trees didn’t block out the pale evening sky.

I thought she was crying, because she was leaning forward. I thought she was doubled over and sobbing.

But then I discovered that she was busy investigating something on the ground. She knocked one hand against something. It sounded odd. Hollow.

I approached her cautiously.

Leaned down to see what she was looking at.

Large plastic containers. Two rows of them, half buried underground, almost hidden by dried vegetation.

She tried lifting one, but it slipped out of her hands.

I tried helping her and it was heavy. Slippery, solid, hard blue plastic between my hands.

Now Marguerite also joined us. She looked searchingly at Lou, and then at me.

“We’ve found something,” I said. “Lou found something.”

Marguerite took hold of another container. She was also startled by how heavy it was.

“Is there something in them?”

“Yes,” I said.

Because now we could hear the sound. A sloshing sound from within.

I put the container down on the ground and tried to remove the lid, but it wouldn’t budge. My hands were shaking. I found a stick, gave it a try, but it was too thick.

I found another one. It fit. I wriggled it down into the crack between the lid and the container.

Finally it opened.

We leaned over the container, all three of us.

The contents were packed in plastic. I pierced a hole in the packaging with the stick.

Lou poked one finger inside. Lifted it up. Tasted it.

I did the same thing, stuck my hand in, just the way I used to do in the ocean at home. But this time I tasted it.

Water. It was water.