Off the Wild Coast of Brittany

by Juliet Blackwell

  “What do you think Hans was planning to do to the boys?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing good, you may be sure of that.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “I told them they were just children, and he knew very well what mischief children could get up to, especially when their fathers weren’t around. His own father was severely injured in the Great War, and was unable to leave his bed.”

  “He seemed very angry.”

  “Hans has always been angry, and I fear this war has fueled that anger. But he has put in for a transfer, and I hope he will get it. This island is far too tame for him. He would like to be in Paris, or even on the front. He has always been a man of action.”

  “You mean a man of violence.”

  Rainer sighed. “That, too.”

  “I thought I heard him say something about a cabaret.”

  He grimaced. “Very good. You’ll be speaking German in no time.”

  “Was he talking about your father’s cabaret?”

  “Right again. As I told you, the Nazis declared it an ‘immoral attraction.’ It doesn’t mean anything,” Rainer said with a shake of his head. “He was just trying to insult me. He knows his commanding officer respects me as a reasonable man, so Hans doesn’t want to push me too far, lest I make a case against him.”

  “Well, that’s good, then, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Maybe. But if Hans doesn’t get his transfer, I will have a target on my back.”

  We sat in silence for quite some time, both of us looking up at the lighthouse.

  I kept thinking of Salvator and how impossible my situation was. Within a matter of months I had gone from being a carefree, headstrong girl desperate to leave the Île de Feme, to a pregnant, clumsy woman married to a man I liked but did not love. What kind of future did I have to look forward to? I was bone-tired of the incessant hunger, of the soldiers and their random provocations and bullying, of wondering what was happening with our men, of this wretched war—the reasons for which I still did not understand.

  I teared up. I never used to cry so easily; it made me angry.

  “What is it, Violette?” Rainer said softly.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” I said.

  “I might surprise you. Tell me.”

  “I am in love with my brother-in-law,” I blurted. Saying it aloud, hearing those words I could not take back, petrified me. And yet I could feel the slightest shifting of my burden, as though the weight of the secret was lessened. Père Cecil always preached that confession was good for the soul, but why would I tell a German soldier, when I never would have admitted these feelings to my priest?

  “Your . . . ? Oh my,” said Rainer with a shake of his head. “That is something worth crying about.”

  “I married Marc, but it is his older brother I love. Whom I have always loved. Marc is a good man, but Salvator is that one I yearn for. I can’t seem to stop my unruly heart.”

  “Is Salvator the father of your child?”

  “No, oh, no, of course not.” I blushed at the very idea, but couldn’t keep a wry chuckle from escaping my lips. “That would be an even worse problem, wouldn’t it? No, the child is my husband’s. And now I am part of a family that includes the man I love, Salvator, but I am forever denied him. I just don’t feel the same way about Marc as I do about Salvator, and I can’t imagine how I ever will.”

  “That is indeed”—Rainer paused, as though searching for just the right words—“difficult.”

  “Yes, thank you,” I said tartly. “I am aware of that.”

  “Wait. I’m not done. Of course it is a problem. But think of it this way: Do you realize how lucky you are, to know whom you love, to be able to be near him, to be related to him in some way, even if not in the ideal manner?”

  I let out a sigh, frustrated at my inability to put into words what I had been hiding in my heart.

  “You can’t know how it feels to love a man when you’re not supposed to,” I said.

  “Oh, but I do.”

  “I don’t mean the way a man loves his brother, or an officer loves his men. I mean romantically, as a woman loves a man.”

  There was a long pause. Rainer trailed his fingers in a tide pool, not looking at me, but said, so quietly it was as if he were speaking to himself, “I mean the same.”

  “You . . . What are you talking about?”

  He shook his head. “Never mind.”

  “Rainer, I have noticed that when you speak quietly, it is something important. Please tell me what you meant.”

  Another long moment passed, but he remained mute.

  “When you were arguing with Hans earlier,” I ventured, “he used the word ‘homosexuell.’ It sounds the same in both our languages.”

  When Rainer finally straightened and turned to face me, the stricken expression on his face both terrified me and broke my heart.

  “That was because of my father’s cabaret. Hans resents me and will do anything to discredit me.”

  “That does not surprise me. But there is more, isn’t there?”

  He hesitated. “Do you remember that photograph you found in my drawer?”

  “From Sascha.”

  He nodded.

  “It was signed ‘in liebe’,” I continued. “‘Liebe means ‘love,’ right?”

  He held my eyes for a long moment, and nodded again.

  “You’re in love with Sascha? But he’s a man.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  I had heard of such things, whispered in a crude joke or risqué tale at the café. But I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. That a man could love another man, as a man does a woman? I thought back to my wedding night, and the two nights that followed, and tried to imagine a man in my place. How would that even work?

  I cursed my lack of knowledge, about people, about relationships, about sex. Monsieur Saint-Juste kept Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses in a locked cabinet behind the counter in his store, their forbidden nature making them all the more enticing. He would not allow me to read them, thinking to protect me, but now I wondered whether it would not have been better to have gone into my marriage bed with more information. If only I had been able to read more, to learn more, not just about sexual relations but about the world in general.

  “I have shocked you,” said Rainer.

  “No, it’s not that. I mean, yes, I guess I am a bit shocked. . . . I didn’t realize.”

  “You didn’t guess I might be in love with a man?”

  “I didn’t know it was even a possibility. I’m not very worldly, I suppose. Why did you tell me?”

  “I’m not sure. I guess because you trusted me with your secret, I thought I could trust you with mine.”

  “It is a secret, then?”

  “Violette,” he said, a fierce tone entering his voice, “you must understand: No one can know what I told you. No one. People like me are being sent to the camps. If anyone were to find out . . .”

  I searched his face. “Why would you be sent to the camps?”

  “Being homosexual has been illegal for a long time, but it was tolerated before the war, at least in Berlin. But now . . .” He shook his head. “The Nazis say we are degenerates, not worthy of life.”

  “But . . . that’s appalling.” As I said it, I realized: Rainer might wear the German uniform, but he was a victim of this war, just as we islanders were. “I think you’re a lovely man.”

  “Thank you, Violette,” he said softly, though he winced at my words.

  “And I will never say a word to anyone,” I assured him. “Never. We shall keep each other’s secrets, you and I.”

  He nodded.

  “And Sascha, is he also like you?”

  Rainer chuckled. “He is, yes. I mean . . .
he returns my affection. I met him at my father’s cabaret, as a matter of fact. I occasionally filled in for one of the performers, dressing up as a woman for a show. Sascha plays the piano—much better than I. He’s talented and funny, and so very smart. He’s not the easiest person in the world, but I’ve been enamored of him from the start.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He is still in Berlin. He wasn’t eligible for service because of a lung condition. He writes to me occasionally, though not so often as to arouse suspicion.” He paused and looked out to sea. “It is a terrible thing, to love someone in secret. To fear that person, to fear the love one feels. To fear the response of one’s own heart, one’s own body. As though one’s very nature is wrong, twisted.”

  “You aren’t wrong or twisted, Rainer,” I said. “You are simply who you are. I’m no expert, and I suppose I don’t know much about the world, but in my eyes, you are a wonderful man.”

  “But that’s just it. . . . I don’t know how to explain this to you, or even to myself, but I’ve always felt more like . . .” He trailed off.

  “Like what?”

  “I know it makes no sense, but I’ve never felt more myself than when I dressed up as a woman, in those long-ago cabaret days. But afterward, when I put on my regular clothes, I would feel somehow . . . empty. Wrong. I can’t explain it, even to myself.”

  I gazed at him for a long time, not truly understanding what he was saying but reading the suffering in his face, hearing the strained emotion of his words.

  I squeezed his hand. “Rainer, all I know is that you are who you are. And for me, you have made this terrible time of war . . . endurable. It might sound strange, but I wish you would stay here with me on our island of women forever.”

  I leaned into him. He was solid and warm, and when his arm wrapped around me, I felt safe, and understood, for the first time since my grandmother had died.

  “I wish you could have known my mamm-gozh,” I said with a sigh as I laid my head on his shoulder. “She would have loved you.”

  * * *

  • • •

  As we were picking our way back along the rocky shore, we encountered Hans and two soldiers on their way to the lighthouse.

  Hans smiled unpleasantly, his eyebrows raised. He said something to Rainer, and his colleagues snickered.

  “So, this one, this one is not as innocent as she seems, eh?” Hans said in French so that I could understand the insult. “But she grows fat with child. Is it yours?”

  Rainer fixed him with a cold stare. “You forget yourself, Hans.”

  “Trust me, my friend, I forget nothing. Heil Hitler!”

  “Heil Hitler,” Rainer answered, returning his salute.

  Hans sneered and walked away, laughing and speaking in rapid German with the two soldiers.

  “This is not good,” said Rainer to me. “This will cause trouble.”

  “I don’t see why. If Hans is trying to say you are a homosexual, this will only help your reputation.”

  “Yes, Violette. But it will ruin yours.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Rainer was right, of course. I did my best to ignore the whispers, much worse than before, that followed me as I walked through the village the next morning. I held my head high and headed to the shore to collect goémon.

  Noëlle had gotten there before me, and the women did not greet me with their usual warm bonjours. As I worked, I heard Noëlle utter Vichyste under her breath.

  “Do you have something you wish to say to me, Noëlle?” I demanded, straightening.

  “I have nothing to say to you,” she replied.

  “Then keep your unkind thoughts to yourself,” I said. “Anyone else?”

  The women shook their heads and returned to collecting the goémon.

  Although I had never felt as if I fit in on the Île de Feme, the rejection I saw in the eyes of those whom I had known my entire life cut me to the quick. As the days went on, I read condemnation in the eyes of Marc’s mother, and even my own maman. But I could not tell the truth.

  Rainer felt like the only one on the island who truly understood and cared about me, yet I felt I had to give him a wide berth. He was right. We had been too free, too open with our friendship. Knowing our relationship was innocent had blinded us to the perception that we had sinned.

  One afternoon, while I was working in the garden, Rainer approached me. I looked around, worried someone might see us.

  “We’re alone,” he said, extracting a bundle of letters from a knapsack. “These are the letters from the Anglais. You must be very careful. If you are caught with them . . .”

  I nodded. “I won’t be caught.”

  “But if you are—”

  “If I am, I’ll say I found them at the cove, that one of the English boats must have dropped them.”

  “No one will believe you.”

  “No one believes me anyway. I’m becoming accustomed to it.” My neighbors needed to hear from their loved ones. And I needed redemption in their eyes. “I’ll carry them in the cookbook, say I’m collecting recipes. What could be less suspicious?”

  The islanders assumed I had gotten the letters by sleeping with Rainer. The better sort felt torn: on the one hand, disdainful of my betrayal, but on the other hand, happy to accept the extra rations I brought them and, now, the precious letters. And no matter his uniform, Rainer had shown himself to be a reasonable man, even the staunchest Féman could see that.

  November came, and then December. As weeks turned to months, we muddled along. Storms thrashed the island, flooding our walkways, the winds ripping off shingles and occasionally upending charrettes. We were always cold, even when it was not raining. The winds blew off the water, icy and relentless, and collecting goémon became even more miserable, our hands chapping from the salt and the cold.

  As I visited neighbors, I continued to work on the cookbook, now with renewed interest. My mother approved of my collecting recipes, so it was something we could do together, at least. And it gave me an excuse to visit the neighbors, most of whom by now seemed to have made peace with the fact that, although I was sleeping with Rainer, he was helping us. We soon realized that we could pass messages back and forth through the cookbook I always carried with me.

  And whenever I was stopped in the pathways I would produce my papers, but the young soldiers were uniformly dismissive of a cookbook, something so trivial, so feminine. They never looked closely at the “recipes.”

  One day, my ankles swollen, feeling awkward with my growing belly, moving around the kitchen, cooking for the officers while making notes in the cookbook, I wondered: Had I become my mother, just one more island woman bound forever to this rock? And was it such a bad thing?

  My unruly heart.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Alex

  Alex loved everything about dinner that night.

  It reminded her of the rare occasions when the family visited The Commander’s parents, who lived in a regular ranch house with a real indoor toilet and hot water and soft beds and frilly curtains and little ceramic figurines. Alex’s very favorite part of that house was the family photos hanging on the walls, which gave her an appreciation of the past and a suggestion of the future. Living on the compound, in The Commander’s world, was all about surviving the here and now. There was no time to be sentimental about the past or hopeful for the future.

  After Agnès and Michou greeted them at the door with smiles and kisses on both cheeks, Agnès showed Alex around the main floor, with its crowded but neat living room and dining room.

  Agnès’s house was similar to the Bag-Noz: Most of the big houses on the island had been built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of stone from the same quarry. But where the Bag-Noz was very much a work in progress, Agnès’s home had a warm and lived-in look, with lace curtains in the
windows, the rooms crowded with old furniture, tchotchkes, and framed paintings of the island.

  Alex knew it was tedious for Nat to have to translate everything, especially since Agnès and Michou thought nothing of talking over each other and rarely paused to take a breath.

  Luckily, joining them for dinner was another couple, both of whom spoke some English: Severine, whom Alex recognized from the grocery store, and her husband, Ismael, a portly, red-faced fellow with an easy laugh.

  “We have one more guest coming,” said Tonton Michou. “But she always runs late.”

  Just then Christine walked in without knocking, saying, “I heard that, old man. I had to shower off the fish guts, you know. I thought you’d appreciate that.”

  Tonight the fishing boat captain was wearing clean jeans and a T-shirt under a blue button-down shirt, her feet in sneakers. Had Alex seen Christine walking down the street in downtown Albuquerque, she would never have guessed she was French.

  “Voilà, the Americans are here!” Christine proclaimed, greeting everyone with kisses on the cheek. She handed Agnès a blowsy bouquet of roses and hydrangeas, which the older woman rushed to put in a pickle jar and set on the dining table.

  They sat around a small table in front of the fire for aperitif, during which Christine insisted everyone taste Uncle Michou’s home-brewed mead, which the French called hydromel.

  “I’ve heard of mead,” Alex said. “But I’ve never tasted it. What is it?”

  “It’s fermented honey and spices,” Christine said. “It’ll keep you going on long, cold nights.”

  “I’ll bet,” Alex said. The mead was extremely sweet and not especially to her taste, but Alex enjoyed the tiny little glasses in which it was served, which made her feel as if she were in a dollhouse.

  “I wanted to show you all a few things we found at the Bag-Noz,” Natalie said, passing around the photo album and the cookbook.

  Agnès and Michou were particularly interested, making little hmmms and ooohs as they looked through the pages.

  “Do you recognize anyone in the album?” Alex asked.