“I did.”
“Excellent.”
I arranged the groceries in the fridge, and on one of the bottom shelves I encountered the skeleton of the fish that my cousin had forgotten years ago. I picked it up and it disintegrated almost immediately. Disgusting. I laid the table. I looked for candles in the cupboards and lit them. We sat down to eat and I cut the fish in half and each of us received his portion.
“Mmmm – delicious,” said Alex. “What an exceptional fish. And the shellfish? Have you tasted them? Why aren’t you eating? Your know what I feel like? Scorpions. Tomorrow we’ll go and get some. What a meal you made. Fantastic!”
“There’s a salad too.”
“Perfect. With a lot of lemon?”
“Yes.”
We ate in silence. We opened clams and sucked them out, seafood shells piled up on our plates.
Suddenly the house rocked slightly. The lamp rocked. The table rocked. The fishbones fell.
“What is it? What is it?” asked Alex and stood up. “An earthquake.”
“What,” I trembled and held onto the swaying table.
“An earthquake, let’s get out of here.”
He seized my hand and ran for the door. The elite fashion designer Sisi and her husband Alex die in an earthquake in Normandy. Tens of thousands of others perish too. Two hundred thousand left homeless. These were the headlines I saw in the seconds that passed before we reached the path where the car was parked. I looked towards the village.
“Look, everything seems stable there.”
“Yes,” he said. “It must have been a minor earthquake. Still, I don’t think we should stay in the house.”
“Hey, Alex, look,” I pointed to the white foam that looked very close to the house.
“Aha, it’s just the tide.”
“Aha.”
“It affects the foundations of the house. Rots them. Would you like to go to a hotel?” “Yes.”
We went back into the house to pack. From time to time a wave rocked the house.
“What am I going to do with all these shellfish?” I asked.
“Throw them into the sea.”
I opened the window and threw out the shellfish the salad and the baguette. Down below everything was black with only a bit of white foam on the water here and there. I heard the fish leaping and snatching crumbs from the meal and disappearing again beneath the surface of the deep water.