Ocean Sea (12 page)

“I would come here and I would take you away, forever.”

Ann Deverià smiles.

“Tell me again, Bartleboom. With exactly that tone of voice, I pray you. Tell me again.”

“D
OWN THERE
. . . there it is, down there!”

“Down there, where?”

“There . . . no, farther to the right, that’s it, there . . .”

“I see it! I see it, by God.”

“Three masts!”

“Three masts?”

“It’s a three-master, can’t you see?”

“Three?”

“P
LASSON
, how long have we all been here?”

“Since time immemorial, Madame.”

“No. Really.”

“Since time immemorial, Madame. Really.”

“A
CCORDING TO ME
, he’s a gardener.”

“Why?”

“He knows the names of the trees.”

“And how do you know that, Elisewin?”

“I
DON
’
T LIKE
this business of the seventh room one little bit.”

“What’s it to you?”

“A man who will not show himself, it scares me.”

“Father Pluche says that he’s the one who is afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“E
VERY SO OFTEN
I wonder what on earth we are waiting for.”

Silence.

“For it to be too late, Madame.”

T
HEY COULD HAVE
gone on like that forever.

BOOK II

The Womb of the Sea

F
OURTEEN DAYS AFTER
setting sail from Rochefort, owing to the captain’s incapacity and inaccurate charts, the French
naval frigate
Alliance
ran aground on a sandbar, off the coast of Senegal. All attempts to free the hull were vain. There was nothing else to do but abandon ship. Since the longboats
available were insufficient to accommodate the entire complement, a raft measuring about forty feet in length and half that in width was constructed and lowered onto the water. Onto it went 147
men: soldiers, sailors, a few passengers, four officers, a doctor, and an engineer cartographer. The evacuation plan called for the four longboats to tow the raft to the shore. Shortly after
abandoning the wreck of the
Alliance,
however, panic and confusion gripped the convoy that was slowly trying to reach the coast. Out of baseness or ineptitude—no one ever managed to
establish the truth—the longboats lost contact with the raft. The towing hawser snapped. Or someone cut it. The longboats continued toward land and the raft was abandoned to fend for itself.
Not even half an hour later, dragged along by the current, it had already disappeared over the horizon.

F
IRST
is my name, Savigny.

First is my name, second is the gaze of those who abandoned us—their eyes, in that moment—fixed on the raft, they were unable to look elsewhere, but there was nothing behind that
gaze, absolutely nothing, neither hate nor pity, remorse, fear, nothing. Their eyes.

First is my name, second those eyes, third a thought: I am going to die, I shall not die. I am going to die I shall not die I am going to die I shall not die I am—the water is up to our
knees, the raft slips under the surface of the sea, weighed down by the burden of too many men—going to die I shall not die I am going to die I shall not die—the smell, the smell of
fear, of sea and bodies, the wood creaking underfoot, the voices, the ropes to hang on to, my clothes, my weapons, the face of the man who—I am going to die I shall not die I am going to die
I shall not die I am going to die—the waves all around, don’t think, where is the land? who is taking us there, who is in command? the wind, the current, the prayers like groans, the
prayers of rage, the howling of the sea, the fear that

First is my name, second those eyes, third a thought and fourth the night to come, clouds against the light of the moon, horrendous dark, only sounds: shouts and groans and prayers and curses,
and the sea that is getting up and beginning to sweep that tangle of bodies from every angle—there’s nothing for it but to hang on to what you can, a rope, the beams, someone’s
arm, all night long, in the water, under the water, if only there were a light, any kind of light, this darkness is eternal and the wailing that accompanies every instant is intolerable—but
one moment I remember, under the slap of an unexpected wave, a wall of water, I remember, suddenly, the silence, a blood-chilling silence, an instant, and my screaming, my screaming, my
screaming,

First is my name, second those eyes, third a thought, fourth the night to come, fifth the mangled bodies, trapped between the boards of the raft, a man like a rag, hanging from a post that had
staved in his chest to pin him there, swaying to the dance of the sea, in the light of day that reveals those slain by the sea in the darkness, they take them down one by one from their gallows and
return them to the sea, which has taken them, sea on all sides, there is no land, there is no ship on the horizon, nothing—and it is against that landscape of corpses and nothingness that a
man makes a way for himself among the others and without a word lets himself slip into the water and begins to swim, he simply
goes away,
and others see him and follow, and in truth some
do not even swim, they just let themselves drop into the sea, without moving, they vanish—it is even
sweet
to see them—they embrace before giving themselves to the
sea—tears on the faces of men unlooked for—then they let themselves drop into the sea and draw the salt water deep into their lungs so as to sear everything, everything—no one
stops them, no one

First is my name, second those eyes, third a thought, fourth the night to come, fifth those mangled bodies, and sixth is
hunger
—hunger that grows inside and gnaws at the throat
and settles upon the eyes, five casks of wine and a single sack of ship’s biscuits, says Corréard, the cartographer: We cannot go on—the men are watching one another, studying
one another, it is the moment that will decide
how
the fight will be, if there is to be a fight, says Lheureux, the first officer: One ration for every man, two glasses of wine and a
biscuit—they are watching one another, the men, perhaps it is the light or the sea’s idle swaying, like a truce, or the words that Lheureux is pronouncing, standing on a cask: We shall
save ourselves, out of the hatred we bear those who have abandoned us, and we shall return to look them in the eye, and nevermore shall they be able to sleep or live or escape the curse that we
shall be for them, us, alive, and them, slain every day, forever, by their guilt—perhaps it is that silent light or the sea’s idle swaying, like a truce, but what happens is that the
men fall silent and desperation becomes docility and order and calm—they file by in front of us one by one, their hands, our hands, a ration for one—almost an absurdity, it comes to
mind, in the heart of the sea, over a hundred men defeated, lost, defeated, they form an orderly line, a perfect pattern in the directionless chaos of the womb of the sea, to survive, silently,
with inhuman patience, and inhuman reason

First is my name, second those eyes, third a thought, fourth the night to come, fifth those mangled bodies, sixth is hunger and seventh is horror,
the horror,
that breaks out at
night—the night again—the horror, the ferocity, the blood, the dying, the hatred, fetid horror. They took possession of a cask, and the wine took possession of them. Under the light of
the moon a man is hacking mightily at the lashings of the raft with an ax, an officer tries to stop him, they jump on him and stab him, he turns back toward us, bleeding, we pull out our sabers and
muskets, the moonlight disappears behind a cloud, it’s hard to understand, it’s an endless instant, then an invisible wave of bodies and screams and weapons beating down on us, the
blind desperation that seeks death, instantly and be done with it, and the hatred that seeks an enemy, instantly, to drag down to hell—and in the light’s coming and going I remember
those bodies running onto our sabers and the crackle of musket fire, and the blood spurting from the wounds, and feet slipping on heads crushed between the boards of the raft, and desperate men
dragging themselves along on broken legs until they reach one of us and, unarmed by then, sinking their teeth into our legs and hanging on, waiting for the blow and the blade that cleaves them, and
in the end—I remember—two of ours dying, literally bitten to death by that inhuman beast come out of the void of the night, and dozens of them dying, lacerated and drowned, dragging
themselves around the raft, staring hypnotized at their mutilations, they call on the saints while they plunge their hands into the wounds of our men to rip out their guts—I remember—a
man hurling himself on me, squeezing my neck between his hands, and while he is trying to strangle me he never stops whining “mercy, mercy, mercy,” absurd spectacle, my life is beneath
his fingers, and his rests on the point of my saber that finally cuts into his side and then his belly and then his throat and then his head that rolls into the water and then into what remains, a
bloody mess, crumpled between the boards of the raft, a useless puppet into which I steep my saber once, and twice and three and four and five times

First is my name, second those eyes, third a thought, fourth the night to come, fifth those mangled bodies, sixth is hunger, seventh horror, and eighth the ghosts of madness, they flower on that
species of slaughter, horrid battlefield rinsed by the waves, bodies everywhere, bits of bodies, greenish, yellowish faces, blood clotted on eyes without pupils, open mouths like wounds and wounds
like open mouths, like corpses vomited up by the earth, a disjointed earthquake of the dead, the dying, paved with torments trapped in the precarious skeleton of the raft on which the
living—
the living
—prowl, robbing the dead of worthless trifles but above all evaporating into madness one by one, each man in his own way, each with his own phantasms, extorted
from the mind by hunger, and by thirst, and by fear, and by desperation. Phantasms. All those who see land—land!—or ships on the horizon. They yell, and no one listens to them. One is
writing a formal letter of protest to the Admiralty to express his indignation and denounce the infamy and officially request . . . Words, prayers, visions, a school of flying fish, a cloud
pointing the way to salvation, mothers, brothers, wives appearing to dry the wounds and proffer water and caresses, one is frantically searching for his mirror, his mirror, who has seen his mirror,
give me back my mirror, a mirror, my mirror, a man is blessing the dying with curses and groans, and someone is talking to the sea in a low voice, talking to it, seated on the edge of the raft, he
is courting it, one would say, and listening to its replies, the sea replying, a dialogue, the last, in the end some give in to its cunning replies and, finally convinced, they let themselves slip
into the water to give themselves up to the great friend who devours them and carries them far away—while on the raft, backward and forward, endlessly runs Léon, Léon the little
boy, Léon the cabin boy, Léon who is twelve years old, and madness has taken him, terror has stolen him away, and he is running backward and forward from one side of the raft to the
other, screaming unceasingly in one long breath mother of mine, mother of mine, mother of mine, mother of mine, Léon of the gentle gaze and the velvety skin, runs like mad, a bird in a cage,
until it kills him, his heart, or who knows what, bursts inside, who knows what it was to make him drop like that, suddenly, with his eyes rolling and a convulsion in the chest that shakes him and
then hurls him motionless to the ground whence he is picked up by the arms of Gilbert—Gilbert who loved him—that hug him close—Gilbert who loved him and now weeps for him and
kisses him, inconsolable, a strange thing to see, there in the middle, in the middle of hell, the face of that old man bent over the lips of that young lad, a strange thing to see those kisses, how
can I forget them, I who have seen them, those kisses, I who have no phantasms, I who have death upon me and not even the mercy of some ghost or a sweet madness, I who have ceased counting the
days, but know that every night, again, that beast will emerge, it must emerge, the beast of horror, the nightly slaughter, this war we are fighting, this death we are spreading around so as not to
die, we who