It was seven o’clock; the sun was setting. The sky was so blue! It was like a velvety blue blanket, sprinkled with flecks of gold from the setting sun. I had never seen the village drift off into so sweet a sleep. The rosy tint faded from the rooftiles. I heard a neighbour laughing, then I heard some children at the nearby bend in the road; further away, there was the vague noise of distant herds trooping back to their stables. The Garonne rumbled on all the while, but I was so used to it that it sounded just like silence. The sky turned pale; the village drifted further into sleep. It was the kind of evening that you get after a fine day. All of our good fortune, I thought – our excellent crops, our happy home, Véronique’s engagement – was raining down on us from the heavens. We were being blessed.
I went back to the table where the girls were busy gossiping. We were listening to them, smiling, when, in the peace and quiet of the countryside, we heard a sudden scream. It was a scream of distress – and death.
‘The Garonne! The Garonne!’
2
We rushed to the yard.
Saint-Jory lies at the bottom of a hill half a kilometre from the Garonne; tall poplars on the meadows hide the river from view.
We saw nothing. Still the cry rang out:
‘The Garonne! The Garonne!’
Suddenly two men and three women came running out onto the road in front of our house; one of the women had a child in her arms. They were the ones doing the screaming. They ran as fast as they could, terrified. They kept looking round nervously, as if chased by a pack of wolves.
‘What’s up with them?’ asked Cyprien. ‘See anything, granddad?’
‘No. Even the leaves on the trees are perfectly still.’
It was true. There was nothing to be seen on the sleepy horizon. But I was still speaking when the others cried out; the people were running away from what looked like a pack of grey, yellow-spotted beasts, rushing over the long grass through the poplar trees. They sprang up from all sides, wave upon wave: it was a foaming, earth-shaking stampede of water.
Now we were the ones screaming.
‘The Garonne! The Garonne!’
The two men and the three women were still running. They heard the terrible rushing sound get closer. The rolling waves massed together and then crashed in like troops on the charge. The first strike smashed three poplars, sweeping away leaves and swallowing up branches. It demolished a wood cabin. A wall crumbled. Unhitched carts flew away as if they were made of straw. But the water seemed to be after people most. It swirled around the steep bend in the road and flooded the plain, cutting off their escape. They kept trying to get away, splashing about, mad with fear. Now nobody screamed. The water was up to their knees. A giant wave flung itself over the woman who carried the child, and everyone disappeared.
‘Come on! Come on!’ I shouted. ‘Get inside! The house can take it. There’s nothing to worry about.’
We ran upstairs, just in case. We sent the girls up first; I insisted on being the last to go. The house was built on a mound up above the road. Though we could hear the faint sound of water creeping into the yard, we weren’t very scared.
‘This’ll be nothing,’ Jacques assured us. ‘In ’55, the water came in just like it’s doing now; a foot of it, then it cleared up, remember?’
‘Bad news for the crops, all the same,’ Cyprien murmured.
‘No, no, it will be nothing,’ I said, seeing the girls and their big pleading eyes.
Aimée had put her two children to sleep in her bed, staying at their side together with Véronique and Marie. Aunt Agathe talked about heating the wine that she had brought up; it would give us all courage. Jacques and Rose were looking out of the window. I was at another window with Cyprien, Gaspard and my brother.
Our two maids were wading through the yard. I called down to them. ‘Why aren’t you up here? Don’t stay there getting soaked.’
‘But what about the animals? They’re frightened. They’re killing each other in there.’
‘We’ll see later. Come up, come on.’
Saving the livestock would be impossible if things got worse. But there was no point scaring everyone. I made an effort to sound optimistic. Leaning at the window sill I chattered on while observing the flood’s progress. After the first wave of attacks, it occupied even the narrowest lanes. The water wasn’t charging in any more; instead, it was going to strangle us, slowly. The dale on which Saint-Jory stood was turning into a lake. Soon the water in our yard was a metre deep. I watched it rise. But I insisted that it wasn’t rising. I even said that it was receding.
‘So there you are, young man.’ I turned to Gaspard. ‘You’ve no choice but to sleep here. Unless the roads clear up soon – it could well happen.’
He looked back at me, saying nothing. His face was white. I saw his eyes switch to Véronique’s; the idea made him feel awkward.
It was half past eight, and it was still bright outside. The pale sky looked sad. Before they came upstairs, the servants had thought to fetch a couple of lamps. I lit them in the hope that they’d brighten up the darkening bedroom where we camped out. Aunt Agathe had wheeled out a table into the middle of the room; she wanted to get a round of cards going. She shot me a glance; she knew what she was up to – she was making sure that the children were distracted. Her cheerfulness masked great courage. She laughed in order to fight off the growing fear that she felt around her. The game started; Aunt Agathe bundled Aimée, Véronique and Marie into chairs, stuffing cards into their hands, playing as if she wanted to win, packing, cutting and dealing, talking so much that she nearly drowned out the noise of the water. But you couldn’t fool our girls. They were keeping an ear out, pale, their hands restless. Every other minute, they paused. One of them turned to me and asked quietly:
‘Granddad, is it still rising?’
It was, and at a frightening rate.
‘Not at all. Enjoy your game. Nothing to see here.’
Never had I been so tormented as I was then. The men all stood in front of the windows, to block out the terrifying sight. We tried to smile. The lamps cast comforting haloes of light on the table, and I remembered our winter evenings gathered around it; the room was just as cosy now, warm from our love for one another. Inside, it was peaceful; behind me, I heard the roar of a river let loose, water rising all the time.
‘The water is three feet from the window,’ said my brother Pierre. ‘We have to say something, Louis.’
I shushed him, grabbing his arm. But we couldn’t pretend any more. We heard the maddened cattle shrieking and whining in the stables. The horses were bellowing; they knew that they were about to die. You would have heard those screams no matter how far away you were.
Aimée shot up, clutching her face, shaking all over. ‘My God! My God!’
We couldn’t stop the girls from running to the windows. They looked out, mute and rigid, their hair standing on end. It was getting dark now. The moon cast a dull light, floating over the yellow expanse of water. The pale sky was like a shroud thrown over the ground. Smoke trailed in the distance. It was getting foggy. A day of fear was fading into a night of death. And there wasn’t a human sound to be heard; there was nothing but the roar of that sea, swollen to infinity, nothing but the bleating and braying of the animals!
‘My God,’ the women whispered, as if too frightened to speak. ‘My God!’
A terrible crash silenced them. The animals, crazed, had burst through the stable doors. We saw them rolling along, carried in the current of the dirty water. The sheep were swept up like fallen leaves, in clumps, spinning in eddies; the cows and the horses fought to stay on their feet, then fell. Our big grey horse, especially, didn’t want to die; it bucked, twisting its neck, snorting like a smithy, but the water wasn’t going to let go. It snatched him up, rump first, and we watched him give in, defeated.
That was when we started crying. The tears welled up in our throats; we couldn’t help it, we had to cry. We reached out to all our beloved animals, gone
now; we had stayed calm, but now we wailed and bawled, mourning their death. We really were finished! The harvest was lost and the livestock had drowned. Our luck had changed in a matter of hours. God was unfair. We’d done nothing to Him, but He had taken it all away from us. I looked at the horizon and shook my fist. Our afternoon walk, the meadows, the wheatfields, the vines that we had believed were so full of promise – was all that a lie? Happiness is a con. The sun had set so softly and so peacefully on that mild evening. But it was a trick.
The water was still rising; Pierre was keeping an eye out. ‘We must be careful, Louis – the water’s touching the window!’
The warning lifted us from out of our gloom, and I snapped out of it.
‘Money’s nothing,’ I shrugged. ‘So long as we’re all still here, there’ll be no regrets. We’ll be ready to get back to work.’
‘You’re right.’ Jacques was fired up. ‘And we won’t be in danger. The walls are sound. Let’s get to the roof.’
It was the only safe place left. The water had lapped stubbornly step by step up the stairs; it was already coming in under the door. We hurried to the attic, afraid, needing to keep close together. Cyprien was gone. I called out to him; he came back from next door, looking upset. Like him I’d noticed that our two maids weren’t with us, and I wanted to wait for them. Cyprien gave me an odd look.
‘Dead,’ he said, very quietly. ‘The corner of the shed under their room just collapsed.’
The poor things must have gone back to get their savings. He told me, still speaking quietly, that they had used a ladder as a bridge to get to the nearby building. I told him to say nothing. A shiver ran down my spine. Death had entered our home.
We joined the others upstairs, not stopping to put out the lamps. The cards were left spread out on the table. There was already a foot of water in the room.
3
Fortunately, the roof was big, and it sloped only gently. We got up through the skylight, where there was a kind of platform. We all sheltered here. The women sat themselves down. The men searched for a good vantage point. Leaning against the skylight, I scanned the horizon.
‘Help must be on the way,’ I said, putting a brave face on things. ‘They have boats in Saintin. They’ll be passing through here… Look! Down there, isn’t that a lantern on the water?’
But nobody answered. Pierre had lit his pipe, almost without noticing, and was smoking so hard that he had to spit out bits of the stem after each puff. Jacques and Cyprien looked miserably into the distance, while Gaspard carried on prowling around the roof with his fists clenched, as if looking for a way out. The women were huddled in a heap at our feet, shivering in silence, hiding their faces so as not to see. Rose looked up, though. ‘Where are the servants? Why haven’t they come up?’
I avoided the question. She looked straight at me. ‘So where are they?’
I looked away. I couldn’t lie. I had felt death’s chill already; now I felt it pass through our wives and darling daughters. They knew. Marie stood up and sighed before breaking down in tears. Aimée hid her two children in her skirts as if to protect them. Véronique had her head in her hands and wasn’t moving any more. Aunt Agathe had turned white and was crossing herself wildly, stammering Our Fathers and Hail Marys.
For all that, the sky around us was spectacularly beautiful. It was a clear summer’s night. There was no moon, but the sky was dotted with stars. It was such a pure blue that it seemed to cast blue light everywhere. It could still have been dusk, the horizon was that clear. The vast sheet of water spread out before us, glowing white as though luminous, every ripple sparkling under the phosphorescent night sky. You couldn’t see any land now; it seemed as if the entire plain had been invaded. For a moment I forgot that there was any danger. I had once seen the sea like this at Marseille, and I had been transfixed by its beauty.
‘The water’s rising. It’s rising,’ said Pierre, his pipe still in his mouth. It had gone out.
The water was no more than a metre from the roof. It wasn’t a sleepy lake any more. Now there were currents. The hill no longer offered protection. In less than an hour, the water had become violent and dirty, rushing at the house, carrying paving stones, clumps of weeds, pieces of wood, smashing up barrels. We heard the distant echo of water attacking walls. Poplars were cut down with a deadly crack, and houses crumbled as if they were cartfuls of gravel being emptied at the roadside.
‘We can’t stay here,’ Jacques said, over and over. The tears of our women broke his heart. ‘We must try something. Father, please, let’s try something.’
‘Yes,’ I stammered, ‘yes, let’s try something.’
And we didn’t know what. Gaspard offered to swim across with Véronique on his back. Pierre talked of a raft. It was crazy. At last, Cyprien said, ‘If only we could reach the church.’
The church, with its little square steeple, was still standing firm above the water. There were seven houses between us and it. Our farm, the first in the village, backed on to a taller building, which in turn leaned against another property. We might be able to reach the parsonage by climbing over the rooftops. From there it would be easy to get into the church. Lots of people must have taken shelter inside already; we heard voices, though there was nobody around us. They could only have been coming from the steeple. But it was so risky getting there!
‘No way,’ said Pierre. ‘The Raimbeaus’ house is too tall. One ladder wouldn’t be enough.’
‘I’ll go and take a look anyway,’ said Cyprien. ‘If it’s no good, I’ll come back. But otherwise we’ll all go. We’ll carry the girls.’
I let him go. He was right. It looked impossible, but we had to try. He had managed to get onto the next house, by lodging an iron hook into a chimney, when his wife Aimée looked up and saw that he wasn’t with us.
‘Where is he? I don’t want him to leave me. We live together, and we’ll die together.’
When she saw him on the roof, she ran over, still holding her children.
‘Cyprien, wait. I’m coming. I want to die with you.’ She insisted. He leaned over to plead with her, assuring her that he’d return, that it was for everyone’s benefit. She looked wild, shaking her head. ‘I’ll go with you,’ she repeated. ‘I’ll go with you. Why not? I’ll go with you.’
He had to take the children. Then he helped her up. We watched them on top of the house. They trod carefully. The children were crying; she had taken them back in her arms. At each step Cyprien turned around to help.
‘Get her somewhere safe,’ I shouted, ‘and come back quickly!’
I saw him wave, but the roaring water drowned out his reply. Soon we lost sight of them. They had dropped down to the next house, lower than the first. After five minutes we saw them again on the third roof. It must have been steep; they were crawling on their hands and knees. Suddenly I was afraid. I put my hands to my mouth and called out as loud as I could, ‘Come back! Come back!’
Then we were all shouting, Pierre, Jacques, Gaspard, shouting for them to come back. They stopped for a moment when they heard us, but then they carried on. They reached the corner in front of the Raimbeaus’ house. The roof was at least three metres higher than any of the others around it. They hesitated. Then, nimbly as a cat, Cyprien climbed right to the top of the chimney stack. Aimée stayed down below on the roof tiles; he must have persuaded her to wait. We saw her clearly, as if magnified, black against the clear sky, pressing her children to her breast. The horror began.
The Raimbeaus’ place had been built as a factory. It was flimsy. The front of the house faced the current head on. I thought I saw it shake under the onrushing water; as I watched Cyprien walk across the roof, I had a lump in my throat. We heard a sudden rumble. The moon rose in the sky like a lamp, round and yellow, lighting up the vast lake: we were going to see every last detail of this tragedy. The Raimbeau house collapsed. When Cyprien disappeared we screamed in terror. The house sank. We saw nothing but a whirlwind of waves tearing through the wreck
ed roof. Then there was peace, and the surface of the water was smooth once again. A carcass of broken beams poked out from the black hole that had engulfed the house. Among the tangled debris I thought I saw something move; something living was making a superhuman effort to get free.
‘He’s alive!’ I cried. ‘Praise be! He’s alive… There’s a God all right!’
We laughed nervously, clapping with joy.
‘He’s climbing free,’ said Pierre.
‘Yes, yes, see,’ Gaspard explained, ‘watch him get a hold of the beam to his left.’
But we stopped laughing. We didn’t say another word, choked with fear. We had just realised how much trouble Cyprien was in. When the house fell, his feet had got jammed in between two beams. Now he couldn’t free himself. His head hung just centimetres above the water. It was sickening. Aimée was still on the next roof with her two children. Trembling, she watched her husband die. She didn’t look away. She just kept on howling like a mad dog.
‘We can’t leave him to die this way,’ said Jacques. His eyes were wild. ‘We must get down there.’
‘Let’s shin down the beams,’ said Pierre. ‘We’ll free him.’
As they set off for the nearby rooftops, the second house collapsed. Their route was blocked. We froze. Instinctively, we gripped each other’s hands, squeezing them until we were sore, unable to stop watching this unfolding horror.
At first Cyprien had tried to keep his body straight. With incredible strength, he had kept himself out of the water and stayed horizontal. But the strain was too much. He struggled. He tried to grab a beam, throwing his hands around in search of something to cling on to. Then he gave up and fell back limp, hanging. Death took its time. The water, rising patiently, licked Cyprien’s hair. He must have felt the cold around his skull. One wave splashed his forehead; the next shut his eyes. We watched Cyprien’s head slowly disappear.