The End of the Ocean

Chapter 30 DAVID

I cried until there was nothing left of me.

Afterwards I sat calmly on the berth, with my legs curled up underneath me, the way Lou usually sat.

There was a new kind of silence in me. Now that I remembered. Now that I couldn’t forget. A silence like inside a shell, I thought. A shell, an empty mussel shell.

The tears had left dried salt behind on the stubble on my cheeks. The salt made my skin stiff and dry.

I passed my tongue over my lips. They tasted of salt too.

I was salty from tears, salty from sweat.

Salt.

It dried me out until I started to crack. Until it woke me up.

Salt was perhaps the only thing I knew anything about.

I placed my feet on the deck and went into the saloon.

The only thing I knew anything about.

I opened the map table and found a bundle of maps. I turned them over. The backs of the maps were blank.

On the table I also found a chewed-down pencil with an eraser on the tip.

And then I started to draw.

A pump. I needed a pump. Maybe I could use the water pump on board, in some way or another hook the machine up to it.

A container. I would have to search the surrounding farms. Somewhere or other there had to be something I could use.

And a cylinder. A pipe. The cigar, Thomas called it.

I tried to remember everything he had taught me about reverse osmosis.

And then I sketched it as quickly as I could.

The water was supposed to go into the cigar, where it would be channeled through a spiral-wound module. The water with the finest molecules would be pressed into the core. This water would be completely desalinated. The rest of the water, what he called the concentrate, would stay on the outside. And be sent out into the ocean again.

It was an eighty-to-twenty ratio. Twenty liters of clean water for every eighty liters of concentrate.

He had shown me the cylinder. Inside was a pipe with holes. It should be possible to build one. Between the layers in the pipe lay the feed spacer. It resembled chicken wire. That shouldn’t be so hard to find.

But the membrane… my pencil stopped drawing on the paper.

I needed something that was almost impervious. A fabric. With a weave so dense that it seemed watertight. But nonetheless, the finest water molecules should be able to pass through it.

I stood up. Hurriedly, I climbed down off the boat.

I rushed through the forest and up to the house.

I went into the bedrooms, opening cupboards and drawers, but I didn’t find anything I could use.

Sweaters, socks, T-shirts. Everything smelled old, like it had been in storage for a long time.

I walked down the hallway. Along the wall hung a row of outdoor garments.

I lifted the jackets. In the back I found a yellow raincoat.

An oilskin, the old kind.

Rain gear. There had been a time when we needed rain gear.

I tugged at the material. It was solid. Completely waterproof. Maybe it could…

“Hi.”

I turned around.

It was Lou. I hadn’t heard her coming. She was holding my drawing in her hands.

“What is it?” she asked.

Not a word about my restraining her by force. About everything she’d screamed at me.

She looked up. Looked at me. And waited.

I waited too. Were we testing each other’s resolve?

No. We were starting over, my child and I.

I drew a breath.

“We’re going to build a tank,” I said. “A water tank.”

She nodded slowly.

“For what water?”

“Salt water. From the ocean. We’ll fill it up completely.” I pointed at the tank I had drawn. “The water will be pushed through the pipe. Through this material.”

I held up the raincoat.

“And then it will be fresh water?” she asked.

“Then it will be fresh water,” I said.

My clever little girl. She knew about this.

“And we can drink it?”

“Yes.”

“When we’re on the ocean.”

“When we’re on the ocean.”

She nodded.

“Then we won’t need water. We just need the ocean.”

She smiled faintly. The pressure in my chest relented.

“And then we can stay out there for weeks,” I said. “For months. As long as we want. We can eat fish and make our own water. We can live on the ocean for the rest of our lives.”

“I want to,” Lou said. “I want to go all the way to the end of the ocean.”

“Me too,” I said.

For a moment she was silent. Her smile disappeared.

“But first we have to get there,” she murmured. “To where the ocean starts.”

I took a step towards her.

I wanted to hug her but felt that it was too soon. Instead, I smiled as broadly as I could.

“If only the rain would come,” I said. “If only the rain would fill up the canal.”

“Yes,” she said. “If only the rain would come.”

“Sooner or later, it has to start raining again.”

“Do you think so?”

“I know so. Sooner or later the rain will come.”

In the days that followed, Lou didn’t ask any questions, not a single one.

She just worked by my side. She went with me to the neighboring farms where we searched for food and materials. Carried as much as she could manage, more than I thought she could.

She ate what little I fed her, without grumbling.

No complaints when it tasted bad. When there wasn’t enough.

On the whole, she said very little.

But she was there, with me, beside me.

She didn’t even ask questions in the evenings.

We sat on deck and watched the light over the trees, the lights from the camp. Sometimes we heard sounds from there. They reached us from across the silent landscape.

Shots.

Screams.

I shouldn’t have allowed her to see the lights, hear the noises. But initially during the evenings I sat watching as if transfixed.

Then I started putting her to bed earlier. Lying down beside her. Slipping out when I thought she’d fallen asleep.

But she got up again. Every single night. And sat down beside me, just as captivated by the sight of the light above the trees as I was. Just as alert to the sounds of the people we had known.

She only asked me once.

“Caleb, Christian, Martin, where are they now?”

I was unable to respond immediately. I didn’t know what I should say. Then I came up with something.

“They’ve taken the tractor,” I said. “We said they could have it, remember?”

“Yes.”

“They’ve taken it and driven away.”

“That was smart.”

“Yes. That was very smart.”

With each passing night, there were fewer lights. The screams and shots diminished.

And then one evening there was only darkness above the trees. Silence from the camp. As if it had never existed.

She didn’t ask any questions then either.

She never asked about Francis. And never asked about Marguerite.