Now I made my way to her small cottage, the House of Meneï, the only dwelling past the hotel on the path to the lighthouse. Most of the island’s houses are two or three stories; the small size of the Île de Feme meant we have of necessity built toward the sky. But Madame Thérèse’s cottage was but one floor, including a kitchen, a living room, and a single bedroom. There were few windows to let in the light, though a large one looked out to the sea. Madame Thérèse was a woman with no family and no past, and had always been that way. It was rumored she came to the island as a shipwreck victim, like my own mamm-gozh, though some villagers suggested she was a morgen, a siren, a witch.
Not even the bravest among us, however, dared to say that to her face.
I sometimes left biscuits or a pie on her doorstep to keep in her good graces. It was always business with Madame Thérèse; one didn’t stop by for a mere social visit.
I hesitated now, in front of her door on which a large “H” had been painted in red paint. As I reached up to grab the fish-shaped knocker, the original brass finish having turned a chalky blue-green from the brine of the sea, the door opened.
“Violette,” she said, her eyes raking over me.
“Madame Thérèse,” I replied. “Why is there an ‘H’ on your door?”
“It stands for ‘Hexe,’” said Madame Thérèse. “They think I am a witch.”
“And aren’t you?”
She laughed. Madame Thérèse’s thin white hair was pulled back and affixed to the top of her scalp with a wooden pin pushed through a leather strap imprinted with an exotic design—probably a gift from a grateful sailor. Her once-piercing green eyes were now foggy and she had lost several teeth. She grew shorter every year; I remembered thinking of her as huge when I was a little girl. I wasn’t particularly tall myself, but now I towered over her.
Her eyes slipped down to my belly.
“Tu es enceinte,” she said before I had spoken a word.
I nodded.
“You want to be rid of it?”
“No,” I said, though a part of me wondered if I was sure. “Of course not.”
“There is a problem?”
“I . . . There was blood this morning.”
“Come in and tell me about it,” she said, opening the door wide.
The house was smaller than I remembered, just one room with a kitchen in the back. A single door led to her bedchamber, and there was a cot in the main room. One big window looked north, and a smaller one looked south. As I remembered, her shelves were full of shells and feathers, old jars and bottles of herbs and dried roots and mushrooms.
Hovering in the background was an adolescent girl named Ambroisine. Ambroisine’s father’s boat had gone down in a storm before she was born, and then her mother died in childbirth. Madame Thérèse had announced that her breech birth might be a sign that she would be a skilled healer, so when she turned twelve, her grandparents had allowed her to be apprenticed to the louzaourian.
“Ambroisine, bring us some of the tea I mixed yesterday,” ordered Madame Thérèse.
Madame Thérèse told me to sit at the table in front of the hearth, where she peppered me with questions before handing me several bits of bone and instructing me to splay them out on the tabletop. She then proceeded to “read the bones,” and we spoke of blood and periods, of the fluttering I had felt and the date of conception—the things of women.
“We women are tied to our bodies in ways that men are not,” declared Madame Thérèse as she laid me down on the cot and palpated my belly, her touch sure and surprisingly gentle. “This is a gift, though it may not always seem so.”
“It is the fault of the Germans she is having troubles,” declared Ambroisine. Madame Thérèse silenced her with a hard look.
“The child is right, though,” said Madame Thérèse. “Our occupiers are like a disease; they make us sick. Ils nous rendent malades.”
I nodded.
“But you like one of them,” said Madame Thérèse. “I have seen you walking with him and sitting on the rocks.”
I should have known nothing escaped the eyes of the islanders. Not even the foggy eyes of an ancient woman with few windows.
“He is not like the others,” I said.
She snorted.
“I care not what you do, nor with whom,” Madame Thérèse said. “Life is pain, and war is worse. Here is my advice to you: When you leave here, you must bring a loaf of bread to the chapel and lay it at St. Corentin’s feet.”
“Where do I get the bread, madame?”
“That is your burden.”
“I understand. But, madame, Saint Corentin’s chapel was built on the heads of the Gallizenae.”
“You think a little stone building will stop the Gallizenae?” Madame Thérèse scoffed as she pinched two dried leaves from a stem, placed them in her mortar and crushed them with her pestle. She mixed me a tonic, and then a salve for my skin.
“This will help?” I asked. “It is important . . . I think it is important that this child live.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, stunned at the question.
“Why is it important that this child live, when so many others die? We sent our sons to war, did we not? As did the German families. Those boys in their uniforms, they are someone’s children, too.”
I placed a hand on my belly, thinking of Marc, and the happiness in his mother Gladie’s eyes when I told her I was expecting. I thought of Salvator, and of the others who had left us. I thought of what they must be seeing in war: the carnage, the terror.
“I want this child,” I said with renewed certainty. “It is my child.”
Madame Thérèse smiled her gap-toothed grin and nodded. “Don’t we all, ma fille. Don’t we all.”
She turned back to her counter and mixed something noxious into a base of beeswax and olive oil.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Now that the Germans are here, the spirits of the Gallizenae will fill the womenfolk with power, and we will force their retreat.”
I wished I could believe her.
“As for your condition, a little spotting is common,” she said. “Not all babies live, you know. I have come to believe this is determined at conception: Some take, and some don’t. This baby seems healthy enough and should remain so as long as you don’t work too hard, and get enough to eat.”
As I was about to leave, Madame Thérèse handed me a jar she had filled with the ointment she was mixing. “Bee venom.”
“How do I use it?”
“It is not for you, Violette. It is for your soldier’s knee. I have seen him limp. If he is a good man, as you believe, he must not let on that he is injured. These Germans, they do not believe in infirmity. They are like a pack of wolves and will fall upon those who show any sign of weakness. Now, let us discuss my fee.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Alex
The ferry doesn’t run during storms, so no grocery delivery today after all,” Nat said as they gathered back in the kitchen after washing up.
Alex had been surprised, and pleased, at how steadily Nat worked. She was a little sloppy, but soon got the hang of it once Alex showed her how to neatly apply the mesh and the mud. Between the three of them, they had made short work of the front hall and even started on the dining room.
“Fortunately, Christine brought us a whole John Dory,” Nat said, “and we have some greens from yesterday.”
“And I have energy bars in my pack,” Alex mentioned. “Nobody’s going to starve.”
Nat cleaned and filleted the fish, then sautéed it and made a quick sauce with white wine and capers. Jean-Luc fixed a salad and arranged cheese and pâté on a plate, while Alex opened a bottle of wine.
As they carried the food and wine into the parlor, Nat grabbed a box of broken matchsticks and an old deck of cards, so
ft with use.
Alex stoked the fire, and they took seats around a coffee table in front of the hearth, serving themselves from the food Nat laid out on a small side table while Jean-Luc dealt the cards for a game of gin.
“This remind you of anything?” Alex asked Nat.
“You mean playing cards in the storage cellar and waiting for the world to end?”
“Remember? Every damned storm,” Alex said. “Mom would say, ‘Let’s go, girls,’ and down we went to sit in the dark. I half expected the sun to turn red and the water to run like blood.”
“Where do you suppose Dad got all that religious imagery from?” asked Nat. “He believed in The Change, not the biblical prophesies.”
“Probably just stole it from a preacher,” said Alex. “The Commander liked a rhetorical flourish as well as the next person. He’s many things, but no one’s ever accused him of being boring.”
“Remember the time Faith didn’t come home from town, and Mom thought she must have drowned trying to cross the river, sure the bridge was out?”
“What about the time The Commander started the generator and anybody who touched a metal surface got shocked because the wiring was so bad?”
Nat let out a hoot. “I was afraid to move for days. Electrical work was not The Commander’s strong suit.”
The sisters laughed, though Jean-Luc looked vaguely appalled.
“When I was a child the worst thing I could imagine was when the other children made fun of my haircut,” said Jean-Luc. “Waiting for Armageddon seems . . . seems like a childhood without a future.”
“Oh, we had a future,” said Alex with a sigh. “It was just a grim future for which very few of us would be prepared.”
“I always figured I’d wind up as zombie food anyway,” said Nat with a shrug, casually throwing a card on the stack and declaring she had gin. “So I wasn’t too worried about it.”
She looked up to see Alex’s eyes on her. “What?”
“I wouldn’t have let the zombies eat you,” said Alex.
“Thanks,” said Nat softly. “I guess. Anyway, growing up expecting the end of the world makes it nice now, since it’s a relief to know that a storm might cause a mess, but it could have been worse. It could have been Armageddon.”
“I don’t know, Nat,” said Alex. “With some things, like water damage, one storm can make all the difference. There may be no going back.”
“Let it go, Alex, will you?”
“I’m just saying, not every mess can be cleaned up.”
Nat caught Jean-Luc’s eyes and gestured toward her sister with her head. “Ladies and gentleman, may I present the Grump of Albuquerque.”
Alex nodded her head. “I accept your accolades. Except I may have to surrender my title because I’m not sure I’ll go back to Albuquerque. Maybe I’ll stay on the island and become the Grump of the Île de Feme, give Milo a run for his money.”
“Milo? From the café?” asked Jean-Luc, seizing on the new subject. “He is rather . . . What is the word in English? Taciturn? Truculent? We say grincheux in French.”
“Spelled like the Grinch,” said Nat, “though it’s pronounced like gransh.”
“Is that where Dr. Seuss got the name from?” Alex asked.
“I have no idea, but I like it,” said Nat. “Maybe Dr. Seuss spoke French. There are lots of synonyms for ‘grumpy’ in French. Grognon, for example. I like that one because it rhymes with onion. Or bougon or renfrogné.”
“What was the other one you taught me this morning?” Alex asked. “Re-lay?”
“Râler,” Jean-Luc corrected her. “The ‘a’ has a little hat over it. L’accent circonflexe.”
“You see, Alex?” said Nat. “It’s easy. You’ll be speaking French in no time. Anyway, Milo might be a little grumpy, but I think underneath it all . . .”
“Sometimes a grump is just a grump, Nat,” said Alex. “They’re not all the cute guy on . . . What was that show you mentioned?”
“Gilmore Girls,” Nat said, blushing.
“I love that show!” said Jean-Luc. “But tell me, do you think the French are grumpy, as a rule? Do you find me that way?”
“You’re the exception that proves the rule,” Alex replied. “You’re the antigrump.”
“I agree,” Nat said. “I don’t think you’re a typical example of your countrymen, Jean-Luc. Must have been all those years tucked away in a government bureau, filling out forms.”
Jean-Luc raised his wineglass and said: “Then let us lift our glasses to bureaucracy. As they say in Bretagne: Yec’hed mat!”
“Yec’hed mat!” Nat and Alex joined in.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Natalie
Hours later, the storm still raged. The card game had been abandoned, another bottle of wine had been opened and consumed, and the conversation had turned philosophical.
“It wasn’t all that bad, for a divorce,” Jean-Luc said. “I think people underestimate how relaxing it is to be able to live without having to justify one’s actions. That was my favorite part of living by myself.”
“You felt you had to justify yourself to your wife?” Alex asked.
“It is simply part of living with someone for so long. You do not want to let them down. Or let yourself down,” he replied. “I bear Odile no ill will. She raised our son and daughter, and they are intelligent and kind and pursuing their own careers: Marie-Claude is in banking in Toulouse, and Gilbert plays the violoncelle as a symphony musician. He supplements his income by giving music lessons—do you have any idea how much just the archet costs for the violoncelle?”
“What’s an archet?” Natalie asked.
“I don’t know the English word. It is the thing one uses to play the strings. . . .”
“Oh, the bow.”
“Oui, c’est ça. This bow, she is very expensive. My son asks for money rather frequently.”
“And you give it to him?” Natalie asked.
“What are fathers for?” said Jean-Luc.
“Our father might argue that point with you,” Alex said.
“I do not mind helping him. Gilbert’s passion reminds me that a fervent love for something exists. I suppose that is the true work of an artist, to remind us of such things.”
“Speaking of instruments,” Alex said, turning to Natalie, “do you play the piano?”
Natalie shook her head. She had tried picking out a few tunes when they first arrived, but had never learned to read music. François-Xavier used to cover his ears, teasing her about her lack of musical ability.
“Too bad. When we were kids, Nat used to play the recorder,” Alex explained to Jean-Luc. “She was the only one in the family with any musical talent.”
“Wow, that was a long time ago,” said Natalie, her head nestled on a pillow, searching the ceiling for drips. “I haven’t picked up a recorder in years.”
“I always loved it when you played.”
“You did?”
“Of course I did. That’s one of the reasons I left those candy bars for you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“During The Trial, remember? Surely you found the candy bars I left for you.”
Natalie blinked. “I didn’t realize you were the one who left them there.” Natalie could still taste that sweet chocolate on her tongue. She had been so hungry, and so frightened, and to stumble across a cache of candy bars in the forest was to experience a true miracle. Nothing, not even the ambrosia she had tasted in the finest patisseries in Paris, could compare to that one moment of sheer bliss.
“Who did you think left you food?” asked Alex, adding more wood to the glowing embers in the fireplace.
“I . . . I honestly didn’t know. I suppose . . . I thought some hunter might have hidden the stash for later. I always felt a little guilty that I had stolen it from
someone.”
Alex gave a low chuckle. “Well, if you had stolen it, Dad would have congratulated you for it. All’s fair when it comes to the End Days.”
“You know what this house needs?” said Jean-Luc suddenly as he started shuffling the discarded deck of cards.
“A new roof?” suggested Alex, picking up the cards Jean-Luc was dealing.
“One-track mind,” muttered Natalie.
“A cat,” said Jean-Luc. “Can’t you just imagine one curled up in front of the fire?”
“Dad didn’t believe in pets,” said Natalie. “‘Animals are for eating,’ he used to say.”
“What about Bobox?” asked Alex. “I saw you checking on her when the storm began.”
“She’s not a pet. We’re . . . more like acquaintances who mind our own business. We’re on the same wavelength.”
“I found a dog in a junkyard,” said Alex. “After you left, Nat. Named him Buddy. Dad never liked him, but he tolerated him.”
“I didn’t know that,” Natalie said. “What happened to him?”
“Hit by a car after I moved to New Mexico,” she said flatly.
“I’m so sorry,” said Jean-Luc, gazing at Alex. She kept her eyes on her cards. “I had a beloved cat, back in Paris.”
“You mentioned that.”
He nodded. “I meant to adopt a kitten, but I fell in love with a ten-year-old calico. I named her Dossier, which I suppose is a joke only a fontionnaire might find amusing. She had a problem, with inside her ear?” He made a twirling motion with his finger. “She would roam in circles around the apartment, keening softly to me.”
“Poor little thing,” Natalie said.
“It was all right. She had a good life. Most of her time was spent reclining on a little bed I made her out of a silk pillow. It was silly, I know, but I adored that cat.”
“There’s nothing wrong with adoring your cat,” Natalie said.
“It’s just that, for the first time in my life, I felt like I actually had something that was mine, you know? Free and clear. The children were always more Odile’s.”
Off the Wild Coast of Brittany Page 23