The End of the Ocean

Chapter 4 DAVID

Lou clung to me tightly as we walked from the Red Cross to Hall 4. Her sticky little hand did not let go of me. It felt like she had not let go of me since we left home. She never objected to anything, did everything I said and didn’t let go.

Being alone with a child is like being a person and a half. It is completely different from being alone with a girlfriend. A girlfriend is just as old as you are, or almost anyway. She can satisfy her hunger pangs on her own. Make sure she’s hydrated. Change her underwear. She can hold you, hold you tightly, support you. She can carry half the burden. When you’re alone with a child you are always the one doing the holding.

The hall was located right behind the sanitary facilities. A huge, run-down factory, divided up into long corridors and small cubicles by old awning cloth that had been hung from the ceiling. Striped yellow, blue and red fabrics, cheerful colors.

There were beds in all the cubicles. Most of them were empty. The floor was clean and the doors were open; a refreshing draft cooled off the hall.

“Look,” I said. “Number thirty-two. That’s ours.”

Our own little nook, with two military-green cots, a metal cupboard and a plastic box for storage. There were sheets on the beds and a bottle of antibacterial handwash for both of us. Maybe there wasn’t enough water for hand washing.

“The walls are made of cloth,” Lou said, and touched the striped awning cloth with her hand.

“Isn’t it nice? Like a theatre,” I said.

“No. Like a tent. It’s like we’re on a camping trip,” Lou said, and finally let go of me.

“This can be our camping table,” she said, and pulled the plastic box out between the beds. “And this is the tablecloth.” She pulled her dirty handkerchief out of her pocket and placed it on top.

I tossed our bag into the cupboard. It occupied only half the space.

Everything we owned, in half a cupboard. I used to own an apartment, a small, flat-screen television, a cell phone, easily fifteen T-shirts, at least seven pairs of pants, eight pairs of shoes, a heap of socks that were never matched and folded in pairs, a table, four chairs, a couch, curtains, cutlery, two good knives, a cutting board, a bed, two children’s beds, an entire shelf of books, a calfskin wallet, two potted plants that Anna took care of, three flower vases, bedding for four, a solid heap of towels, most of them faded from the wash, two warm jackets, three scarves, four hats, five caps, two half-empty bottles of sunblock, shampoo, dishwashing liquid, a dishwashing brush, a toilet-paper rack, cleaning bucket, mop, seven washrags, a changing table, diapers, moist towelettes, two floor mats, a poster with a picture of Manhattan before the last rounds of spring flooding, a wife, two children…

I pushed the door to the cupboard shut.

In the cubicle opposite ours I caught a glimpse of the old man from the line. He was lying down with his face to the wall.

I started making up the beds. The mattresses were thin and wrapped in sticky plastic that smelled of disinfectant. One sheet underneath, one on top. No pillow. Lou could continue using her sweater for a pillow. She had done so during the days we were on the road. She liked rolling something up to put under her head when she slept.

At that moment the man in bed moaned. I could hear him writhing in pain. The bed emitted a metallic squeak. And he wailed. A soft whine of suffering.

I went out into the hallway between the cubicles. The man didn’t notice me. Again he writhed in pain and turned his bandaged hand over.

I ventured into his cubicle. He didn’t react as I drew close to him. The bandage was brown with filth and on one side of it there were yellow stains where puss had oozed out.

He smelled bad. Rancid and a little rotten. All of him or perhaps just from the hand.

He moaned again and opened his eyes, stared straight at me.

“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to disturb you.”

He sat up. His movements were stiff, his eyes glassy with pain.

“Do you have any…” he asked in French and held up his hand. “Something or other. Just so I can get some sleep?”

I shook my head and pointed at the bandage. “How long has it been since you had that changed?”

At first he didn’t reply. He looked down at the filthy dressing.

“My daughter dressed it.”

“Your daughter?”

“She’s a nurse.”

“But was that long ago?”

“I don’t remember.”

“It has to be changed.”

Fortunately the man didn’t object and let himself be led. I held Lou by one hand, and with the other I guided the man gently forward.

I asked where he came from. What his name was.

Francis, he mumbled in reply. He’d made his way here from Perpignan.

That made me happy.

“We’re almost neighbors,” I said. “We’re from Argelès.”

He didn’t reply, perhaps didn’t think it was very close, and he would be right about that.

Then we reached the first-aid barracks.

No line here. We were admitted immediately and welcomed by a nurse in a bleached white uniform. She smelled of soap.

The room was cool. The air dry. A box on the wall emitted a low humming sound; there was air conditioning in here as well.

Francis sank down into the chair she pulled out for him and placed his hand on her lap. We stood right behind him.

The nurse carefully loosened the bandage and he whimpered. There were tears in his eyes and his face twisted.

As the bandage was slowly unwound, the odor intensified, the stench.

“Go sit over there,” I said to Lou.

For my own part, I couldn’t refrain from watching.

The wound was deep and festering, more yellow than red, a long gash in his flesh. The color of the skin around it was a sickly color, grayish.

“Wait a minute,” the nurse said, and left the room.

A little time passed. I tried talking to Francis, about Lou and me, about how we were supposed to meet my wife here.

He nodded in response, but said nothing about himself.

Finally the nurse returned with a doctor. They had clearly already conferred, because the doctor sat down with the man immediately, took his hand in his lap and studied the wound.

“How did you get this?” she asked softly.

The man looked away.

“I cut myself… on a saw.”

“A saw?”

“I was going to saw some wood. Didn’t have an axe.”

“This is not a cut from a saw,” the doctor said. “It will be easier for me to know what to do if you tell the truth.”

He raised his head and gave her a look of defiance but suddenly relented. “A knife. Three weeks ago yesterday,” he said loudly. “Three weeks and one day.”

“You were lucky,” the doctor said. “Had the cut been an inch or so higher up, it would have hit the aorta.”

“Lucky?” Francis said, and I could hear him swallow. “I don’t know about that.”

“I’m going to give you antibiotics,” the doctor said after a moment. “And you must come in every other day to have the wound cleaned.”

“What’s the point of that?”

“The antibiotics will get rid of the infection.”

“And the point of that?”

“Of what?”

“Getting rid of the infection?”

“Do you want to lose your hand?”

He said nothing more.

The doctor surrendered her seat to the nurse, who poured disinfectant over the wound with expert hands and rubbed in an ointment.

Francis was no longer concerned about hiding his pain. Now he swore energetically.

“Hush. The child!” I said.

“Sorry,” he said.

“That’s OK,” Lou said from her corner. “Daddy says things like that too.”

Francis laughed.

But then the nurse brought another bandage which she wrapped carefully around his hand.

“It’s too tight,” Francis said.

“How’s that?” the nurse tried.

“Still too tight.”

“I’m loosening it now.”

“It feels like it’s stopping all the blood circulation. You’re going to give me gangrene.”

“It must be wrapped snugly.”

“It must be that damn ointment. It stings.”

“When you clean a cut, it’s supposed to sting,” Lou said softly from her corner.

He peered up at her. All of a sudden there was something boyish about him.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’d forgotten about that.” He stared down at his hand wrapped in the white gauze bandage that contrasted sharply with his dirty skin, and said nothing more.

“Does it feel all right?” the nurse asked.

“Yes,” he said. “All right.”

Then he discovered the old bandage. It was lying on a steel tray on a table beside the nurse.

“What are you going to do with it?”

The nurse looked at him, uncomprehending.

“With the bandage?”

“What do you mean? The old one?”

“Are you going to throw it out?”

“Yes, of course.”

Francis didn’t reply.

“Look here,” the doctor said, and handed him something blue in a transparent wrapper. “You can cover the bandage with this when you bathe.”

He made no move to accept it, so I reached out my hand and took it for him.

“Are you relatives?” she asked.

“No, we just live in the same hall.”

“Do you know whether he has anyone?”

I shook my head.

“Keep an eye on him, would you please?”

Francis moved sluggishly on our way back to the hall. As we walked away from the barracks his pace slowed more and more, until finally he stopped walking altogether.

“I just have to…”

He didn’t say anything else, but turned towards the first-aid barracks again. Then he walked quickly back and disappeared inside.

“What’s he doing?” Lou asked.

“Wait outside,” I said.

She released my hand and went to stand beside the barracks. I walked over to the door and opened it a crack.

The first thing I heard was a scratching sound. The room was empty—the nurse had left, but Francis was standing in a corner.

He was busy digging through a trash can and didn’t notice me. Then he evidently found what he was searching for. The old bandage. He quickly stuck it into his pocket with a furtive movement. I ducked away from the door and hurried back to Lou.

“What did he do?” she whispered.

But at that moment he came out. His steps were lighter.

“It feels better already,” he said. He turned towards Lou and suddenly he smiled. “That’s a good one you’ve got there,” he said to me.

I pulled Lou close to me and nodded.

“Yes, she’s a good one.”

The first night in a bed in twenty-four days. When I closed my eyes, an image of the faces of Anna and August flashed through my mind. Then I fell asleep before I could think anymore.

But then the dreams came. Worse than before, maybe because I slept so deeply.

I was falling—no, sinking through water. Towards the bottom, and I let myself sink, I didn’t struggle against it.

I would soon run out of air, my chest contracted, but nonetheless I did nothing to get back to the surface again.

I couldn’t breathe. Mustn’t inhale, mustn’t fill my lungs, mustn’t drown.

The surface above me, light blue, a shimmer of bubbles where I had fallen.

That is where I am headed. That is where I have to go.

But all I did was sink.

I woke up with a jerk.

Drew a breath. Filled my lungs. Air.

Around me it was light. It was morning already.

I turned over and lay in bed watching Lou as my breathing calmed.

She was sleeping on her back with her arms sticking out and her legs splayed in opposite directions, like a starfish. She was in constant movement. Took up room. Demanded space. When she was sleeping, she forgot to make herself small.

We’d had her far too soon. I knew we shouldn’t have started having children so early. I was only nineteen years old, and Anna had just turned twenty. We blamed it on the water crisis, on the shortages that came along with it. Because everything was in short supply. Condoms as well. I was happy about that, that Anna blamed the crisis and not me, given that I had actually promised to pull out in time.

She asked me if we should get rid of it. If I was sure. She could manage, she thought, if I didn’t want to have the baby.

And I didn’t want to have the baby. But I didn’t want to get rid of it, either. Get rid of it, like it was a thing. I got angry because she used those words. We argued. Her belly grew. We argued some more. Then it was too late.

Then there she was, the little child, pink and wrinkled up like a raisin, and the life I had had before suddenly felt like it had belonged to somebody else.

Morning sounds around us in the hall. Hushed voices, footsteps, the igniting of a cooker, a bed creaking as somebody gets up.

I let Lou sleep. Her internal clock was turned upside down, she went to bed far too late in the evening.

I had been so strict about the bedtime business before, back when there were things to show up for—work, school.

But after the school closed, we started letting Lou stay up later. There was no reason not to.

I would straighten this out now. When Anna arrived, I would enforce a clearer schedule. Set bedtimes, set mealtimes. Maybe we could also practice reading a bit. Maybe there were books here. She had missed out on many months of school already.

Lou’s body twisted and she rolled over on her back. Her mouth opened, she was breathing rapidly, fearfully, her eyes were moving behind her eyelids. What does one dream about when one is a little girl who doesn’t know how life will turn out?

She whimpered loudly. “No…”

She twisted and turned again, her crying grew louder. It was so defenseless, so full of pain. The tears trickled out of her sleeping eyes.

“Don’t… Stop… ”

I leaned forward quickly and shook her.

“Lou, Lou?”

She turned away from me, still in the dream.

“You have to wake up, Lou.”

I took her child’s body, warm with sleep, into my arms, lifted her up. She resisted, as if she wanted to stay in there.

“Lou, please.”

I stroked her hair, dried the tears on her cheeks.

Finally her eyes fluttered open. She stared up at me. For a second she was far away, and then suddenly she sat up, ready to run.

“It’s burning, Daddy, it’s burning!”

“Lou, no,” I took hold of her. “No, sweetie, it was only a dream.”

“But it smells of smoke. I can smell it. We have to get out of here!”

She turned towards her clothes, snatched up her shorts, started pulling them on.

I stood in front of her, bent my knees so my face was level with her own. Gently, I took hold of her shoulders.

“It’s not smoke, sweetie. There’s no fire.”

“But I can smell it!”

I sat down. Pulled her up onto my lap, feeling how she tensed up all her muscles.

I held her tight. Spoke softly:

“Take a whiff, what do you smell?”

She sniffed quickly.

“Smoke.”

“Try again.”

She sat completely still, sniffed again.

“Smoke.”

“Give it one more try.”

She didn’t sniff anymore. She just breathed more calmly.

“…Nothing,” she said finally.

“Nothing,” I said.

Her body was relaxed now.

I leaned my face towards her head. Sniffed. Yes, it smelled of smoke, but it came from her hair, her clothing. The way I also stunk.

“You know what we get to do today?” I said.

“No.”

“We get to take a shower.”

“A shower?”

“Yes. We get to shower every Tuesday.”

“Is it Tuesday today?”

“Yes. So we get to take a shower.”

“We need it.”

“Yes. We need it.”

Lou held the towel she’d been given with both hands. Then she opened it, like it was a present, the stiff creases from the folds still in place.

She lifted it to her face.

“It smells of soap.”

I felt my own towel. The stiff fabric was rough against the skin. A clean, pure scent.

“You have to go there,” I said, and pointed at the “Ladies” sign.

“And what about you?”

“I’m going to the men’s shower.”

She nodded. I could see that she didn’t want to be alone, but she didn’t make a fuss about it.

“Remember to wash your hair,” I said. “Use one spurt to get it wet and then work it into a lather using both hands.”

I demonstrated with my fists in my own hair. “And then you have to use the next two spurts to rinse it. Get all the soap out.”

“I will.”

“Remember that you only have three spurts. First one. Afterwards, two.”

“And get all the soap out of my hair.”

The shower had no heating unit, but the water from the first spurt was lukewarm anyway. It never really got cold in this heat.

The spray hit me on the back of my head, hammering against my skull. I tried to absorb the sensation of each individual drop against my skin, taking pleasure in every single one.

Then the spurt of water abruptly came to an end. I turned towards the shower head. A little water was still trickling out, less and less, until there was no more.

One tenacious drop hung there. Finally it dripped off the shiny head and fell to the floor. Then nothing more.

There was a soap dispenser on the wall. I was almost a little moved by it, that someone had remembered that we needed soap, too.

I pressed it. Liquid soap in the palms of my hands. I rubbed my hands together, worked up a lather.

I washed myself thoroughly and for a long time. Hair, neck, hands, feet, crotch and behind.

The lather was slippery against my skin, removing all the grease. Removing the ash.

I had never been so dirty before, so sticky, so dry, so stinking of sweat. And smoke.

For a moment I didn’t think of anything else, not even of Anna, not of August, just about the soap, the water, about how it was like getting my body back, shedding a layer of skin.

I did as I had told Lou to do, using the last two spurts to rinse my body. The soapy lather lay in soft heaps on the floor by my feet.

I quickly dried myself off. The rough towel felt good against my skin and turned a light-brown color when I rubbed my arms with it, massaging away dead skin cells.

Then I took my clothes out of the bag. They were just as dirty, just as smelly. I would have to ask if we could wash them, too.

Beneath the clothes were Anna’s and August’s passports. I picked up Anna’s and held it in my hand, as I had done so many times in the past weeks. The cover was slippery beneath my fingers. I opened it.

Anna wasn’t smiling in the photograph. It was black and white, making it difficult to recognize her. You couldn’t see that her hair had a golden tint. Or that there were green flecks in her eyes. Or that she had one of those quick strides, as if she were a bit busy and cheerful, even when she was feeling the opposite.

But it was the only photograph I had.

I lifted the passport to my nose, sniffed it. It still smelled of smoke.

I was clean now. Had washed the fire off me.

I had removed the memory of her when I washed the smell of smoke off me.

Abruptly I hugged the T-shirt against me, inhaling the acrid smell of smoke. She was still there, she and August. They were still here.