Just after the Wave by Sandrine Collette

Author:Sandrine Collette
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2019-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

Only Liam and the father had the strength to drag the beast’s body onto the shore, a creature over six feet long, it was stupid but Pata couldn’t help figuring its length, that of a bed, roughly, that was it, six feet of power and rage. The mother and the girls are weeping helplessly as they watch them tugging the gray mass, scored with knife wounds, blood still flowing. They don’t want to go closer. The father sobs as he slices open the animal’s belly and empties it, throwing the guts into the sea. He cuts its head off cautiously, as if its sharp teeth could still tear off his arm. Fucking monster . . . Liam is kneeling next to him, his big eyes full of silent tears. His hands curved over the gleaming skin—if he could tear it off, shred upon shred, if the beast were still alive, if it could feel pain the way he does, piercing his heart, a knife wound, a strangling. Pata next to him carves and cuts, slices, skins, a bit more than he needs to, for sure, anger, despair. Liam agrees:

“We’ll eat the whole goddamn thing.”

He hides his disgust, the nauseating smell, the viscous flesh he is reluctant to touch. The father gestures toward the fire and he skewers hunks of flesh onto wooden stakes and puts them on to roast. Not hungry. And yet. Despite the sorrow, despite the shock which has silenced them all, when the air fills with the smell of fish they go closer, for three days they’ve been eating the last crumbs of pancakes and potatoes, a few blackberries, and air, they hate themselves, the way their gazes are riveted on the fire, their weak, famished bellies, the saliva at the corners of their lips. Pata goes on slicing, they’ll cook the surplus during the night and take it with them the next day, so that it will have served some purpose—to allow them to land, to eat, it had saved them, at last. His hands tremble on the knife blade.

They have not found Matteo’s body. Perhaps drifting, perhaps twenty feet under. The father doesn’t know. He took the others to shelter on the island, surrounding the keening mother, to keep her from diving in, he murmured in her ear to convince her, and so that the girls would not hear, He’s dead, Madie, he’s dead, you have to look after the girls now, you hear me? Jumping in the water won’t bring him back. And she wails with despondency, her suffering greater than the open sky when it rains, her arms straight in front of her. He had to calm her like a little child. Wept with her when she said:

“Another one. Another one.”

Pata keeps busy, so as not to think. The fire, the boat turned on its side on the shore to provide shelter for the night, the image of the beast floating on the surface of the water, then carving it up. He goes from one child to the next with a tender word, a smile, a caress.

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