Off the Wild Coast of Brittany

by Juliet Blackwell

  “One or two, of course,” said Agnès. “This is Violette and Doura in front of the Bag-Noz, but you knew that. And this might be my cousin Jacques, but it’s hard to tell. . . .”

  “We had a question about Doura,” said Natalie. “Everyone says she and Violette were sisters, but there’s no Doura listed in the livret de famille.”

  “Oh! Que diable . . . ?” said Agnès, pointing to the photograph of the uniformed Germans in a cabaret. “What is this one?”

  “We were hoping you could tell us,” said Alex.

  Michou leaned over one shoulder to see, and Severine peered at it from the other side.

  “Do you recognize where that photo was taken?” Nat asked.

  “It looks like the Abri du Marin,” said Michou.

  “That’s what our friend Jean-Luc thought as well,” Alex said. “Was the Abri a café of some sort during the war?”

  Agnès shook her head. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “Do you recognize any of the women?” Nat asked.

  “Not with those masks, certainly. But they can’t be Fémans, can they, dressed like that?” Agnès asked Michou. “Of course I was too young to remember anything from the war years. And Michou was not even born. So we are perhaps not the best ones to ask.” She passed the photo album to Severine. “Let me see the cookbook. Oh, this looks like one from my mother right here,” Agnès said, delighted. “Look, she put in her recipe for Strïmpous de mamm-gozh. I should make that for you one day.”

  “What is it made of?” Nat asked.

  “Pork, prunes, onions, tripe—specifically, three pork stomachs and the large intestines.”

  Nat translated the ingredients for Alex.

  “Mmmm,” Alex said, and Christine laughed.

  “What do you think these numbers mean?” Nat asked, referring to the digits next to several women’s names.

  “They look like measurements to me,” said Agnès. “You see? ‘Entrejambe soixante-dix centimètres.’”

  “But . . . entrejambe would be an inseam, right?” said Natalie. “So it’s not for a dress?”

  Agnès shrugged and shook her head slowly.

  “We also found two robes noires et jibilinnen,” said Alex. She had looked up how to say this earlier in the day and tried her hand at the French. “Nous avons trouvé aussi deux robes noires et jibilinnen aujourd’hui.”

  Agnès hooted in delight and beamed at Alex.

  “Did you ever wear the jibilinnen, Tante Agnès?” Alex asked, with Nat’s translating help.

  “Non.” Agnès shook her head. “After the war it fell out of fashion. The young people then . . . we weren’t interested. We never learned Brezhoneg, and we didn’t wear the jibilinnen.”

  “My sainted mother did,” said Michou, his eyes misting. “Until the day she died.”

  “Can you tell us anything about the feathered costumes in the photo taken at the Abri?” asked Nat.

  Michou and Agnès both shook their heads.

  “Could the women be dancers brought in to entertain the German soldiers?” suggested Ismael.

  “That would make sense,” said Nat, “though it doesn’t explain why we found the costumes hidden in the attic.”

  “The only one on the island old enough to remember would be Ambroisine,” said Agnès. “She’s at least a hundred years old, if she’s a day.”

  “I’ve heard Ambroisine is a little . . . hard to approach,” Nat said. “But she’s related to Milo, and he’s agreed to help me try to track down some of the people who contributed to the cookbook.”

  Eyebrows rose slightly on every face around the table.

  “Really? Milo?”

  “You don’t need Milo,” said Christine. “I’ll introduce you. She loves me.”

  “Why would she love you?” Nat asked.

  Christine grinned. “There is no ‘why?’ Only ‘why not?’”

  Nat smiled. “And what do you mean by that?”

  “Only that there isn’t a house on the island into which I’m not welcome. Except for the Telesphore house, but they don’t count.”

  The others nodded and sipped their mead.

  “What happened at the Telesphore house?” Alex asked, intrigued. “Or should I not ask?”

  “A misunderstanding involving a haddock and a . . . How do you call this? A wrench, the kind where you change the truc-machin-chose . . . ?” Christine turned to Nat. “How do you say truc in English?”

  “Thingamajig.”

  “So this story involves a fish and a wrench and a thingamajig?” Alex asked.

  “The details do not matter,” said Christine with another wave of her hand. “The point is, Ambroisine is not my grandmother, but I adopted her. And I have learned a lot from her. She’s a healer, you know. Learned from the old louzaourian, the Celtic healers.”

  “I’ve never heard of them,” Nat said.

  “We don’t have a real doctor on the island,” said Christine. “Ambroisine has stitched up more men than Dr. Frankenstein.”

  Tante Agnès announced that dinner was ready, and they all got up from the little table in front of the fire and moved to the slightly larger table at the other end of the room.

  Dinner was simple: They began with rillettes de maquereaux à la moutarde, or mackerel rillettes in mustard sauce, served on small pieces of toast. This was followed by cotriade, a kind of fish stew, accompanied by fresh crusty baguettes.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask,” said Alex. “Why is the guesthouse named after a ghost ship?”

  “There are always legends of ships that wander the seas,” said Tonton Michou, wiping crumbs from his chin. “I remember hearing those stories when I was little.”

  “There are a lot of myths alive and well here on the island,” Agnès added. “It is because we live so close to the ocean, and many things are not explainable.”

  “I heard that during the Second World War, any boat approaching the island was supposed to come into the harbor for inspection and to pass customs,” said Severine. “But sometimes boats or ships would appear at night or under a cloak of fog and approach the other parts of the island. The Germans were not able to catch them.”

  Nat translated all of this to Alex, who raised her glass in a toast. “To the Bag-Noz who defied the Nazis.”

  “Yec’hed mat!” cheered the others.

  “I like the legend of Ankou,” Tonton Michou said. “Ankou is the coachman of death—if you hear his carriage pull up, you know you’re going to die. Especially on the Île de Feme, since we have no carriages here.”

  “Perhaps on the island Ankou drives a large charette,” suggested Ismael, and they laughed.

  “My favorite is the story of Dahut,” said Christine. “Do you know it?”

  Alex shook her head.

  “They say her father was the ruler of a great city called Ys, which was being swallowed by the ocean.”

  “Rather like our Île de Feme,” said Ismael.

  “Sorry. The city was called ees?” asked Alex.

  “It’s spelled Y-S,” said Nat.

  “Ys was built on land reclaimed from the ocean,” Christine continued. “But the sea takes what it wants. So the king built a system of dikes to keep the city safe during high tide, and the gates were operated by a special gold key he wore around his neck.”

  “Dahut was very wicked and stole the key,” Severine chimed in.

  Christine mock-glared at her. “Who’s telling this story? Anyway, I don’t see Dahut as wicked as some do. It was said that she took lovers at night and threw them into the ocean in the morning when she was done with them, but surely she was misunderstood. Just because she was picky, does that make her evil?”

  Alex laughed. “I imagine her lovers had a different perspective.”

  “Anyway, Dahut stole the key fro
m her father to open the gates to let someone in, but forgot to close them, or something like that, and the whole city flooded. Her father was the sole survivor, and as he was escaping on his horse, Dahut tried to ride with him, but the king pushed her into the ocean. His own daughter. Can you believe that?”

  “Our father might have done the same,” said Alex.

  “Probably would have,” Nat agreed. “Did Dahut drown?”

  “That’s where we come in,” said Severine. “According to legend, Dahut swam here, to the Île de Feme, where she was taken in by the Gallizenae, the nine women who lived on the island and practiced magic. The Gallizenae were able to transform themselves into—how do you say, sirènes?”

  “Mermaids,” said Nat.

  “‘The Little Mermaid’ is my favorite fairy tale,” said Alex.

  “They weren’t that kind of storybook mermaid,” Christine said. “The Gallizenae mermaids were capricious and occasionally vicious. I like them. Sometimes they’re shown with wings and claws, like fierce birds.”

  Agnès made a dismissive sound and waved a bony, blue-veined hand. “I never believed those mermaid stories,” she said. “I mean, perhaps a long time ago they existed, but not any longer.”

  “They say the ocean is female, psychologically speaking,” said Ismael. “Because the ocean is deep, mysterious, and unknowable, which is why it casts terror in the hearts of men.”

  The women at the table stared at him.

  “Why is it female to be deep, mysterious, and unknowable?” asked Nat.

  “Because the man who came up with that particular psychological theory wasn’t brave enough to just ask a few simple questions,” said Alex.

  Nat translated this, and everyone laughed.

  “I’ve heard it said that the mermaids sailors reported seeing were actually seals or dolphins,” said Severine. “The lonely mariners simply imagined beautiful women swimming by their boats, poor fellows.”

  “Speaking of dolphins,” said Ismael, turning to Alex, “did the dolphin greet the ferry when you came into port?”

  “The island has a dolphin ambassador?”

  “It hangs out in the harbor, follows the fishing boats. But sometimes it greets the ferry.”

  “Wait a second—I did see something in the water,” said Alex. “As a matter of fact, my first thought was of a mermaid.”

  “That was probably him! Or her,” said Ismael.

  “Not sure how one tells,” said Christine. “So, Ismael, how goes the climate initiative?”

  To Nat and Alex she explained: “Ismael is a scientist and has been working on sea-level rise for the island.”

  “I hear it’s a real threat,” said Alex.

  Ismael nodded and helped himself to another scoop of stew. “We’re focused on publishing a small-case study, to see if we can produce enough electricity through solar and wind to become a zero-emission island.”

  “We’ve been having a few electrical issues over at the Bag-Noz,” Alex said, ignoring Nat’s silent entreaties.

  “Really?” He looked at Nat. “I would be happy to take a look, if you would like. In fact, have you considered letting us install solar panels on the roof? We received a special grant from the government. If your roof is the right shape, it’s practically free. I don’t know why I didn’t think to mention it before.”

  “I’m afraid the roof would need to be repaired first,” Nat began. “I—”

  Ismael waved away her concern. “We could arrange to have the repairs done at the same time we mount the panels. Only if you agree, of course, but I’d be happy to take a look and see if it would work.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Alex said.

  “Yes indeed,” Nat said. “Thank you.”

  “Anyway, zero emission or not, we’re in danger,” said Ismael. “Most of the Île de Feme is only a few meters above sea level, eleven at our highest point. Climate change is a challenge to our very survival.”

  “We’ll lose the entire island if the sea level continues to rise,” said Agnès, in a small, sad voice. “We’ll be swallowed up, just like Ys.”

  There was a long silence, everyone lost to their thoughts.

  “Maybe that’s why I feel so at home here,” Alex whispered to Nat as they stood to help Agnès collect the dinner dishes. “It’ll be the End Times for the island.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Natalie

  Natalie watched as Alex—straightforward, non-French-speaking Alex—managed to win over every single person at dinner. Natalie had known all of them for nearly a year, and yet they seemed more at ease with Alex than they ever had with her. What was that about?

  Not that they weren’t friendly to her. They frequently invited her to join them for dinner or apéro, though she usually declined, she realized. Especially recently.

  But perhaps there was more to it than that. Alex was a survivalist, and when it came right down to it, the Fémans were, too. They looked at the world through a different lens from the “city folk” who expected everything to be easy. They snorted at the way the tourists whined about the rain, or bemoaned the lack of food options on the island. There was no theater and not many recreational activities except for kayaking, swimming in the ocean in the summer, maybe a pétanque game or two. When the electricity went out, which was not infrequent, the tourists didn’t know what to do with themselves. Meanwhile, the islanders lit a candle and read a book, chatted over a slice of kouign-amann, or played cards.

  It was a simpler life, lived within the constraints of the ocean and the storms, their only consolations the wild beauty of the island and the bounty of the sea.

  Sometimes Natalie reminded herself of the tourists in Paris, walking along the Seine, their backs to the view as they posed for selfies, grinning into their phones. Fueled by a strange mélange of hope and fear, they hardly seemed to even see the City of Light as they desperately curated their exterior lives, making things look beautiful on social media to mask the inward jumble of thoughts and feelings, the icky, ugly, messy innards.

  After they cleared the table of the soup plates, Michou placed on the table a huge cheese platter, including a local cheese called tome le ty pavez. The cheese was followed by a simple green salad. And then it was time for dessert.

  Tonton Michou began to pour cidre bouché, a kind of flat hard cider that was served it in terra-cotta mugs and often paired with pastries.

  When Natalie’s desserts were brought to the table, there was much oohing and aahing, and Alex embarrassed Natalie by explaining how long they took to perfect. Unfortunately, when the group tasted them, they realized something was missing. The desserts weren’t bad, but they weren’t great, either.

  “It might be the butter. The butter has to be very cold,” Agnès said, nodding in concentration. “I would be happy to show you, Natalie. Alex mentioned you know how to butcher. Perhaps we could work out an exchange. We have some chickens we would like to have killed.”

  “I . . . uh . . . sure,” said Natalie. “At some point.”

  “I really like the cidre bouché,” said Alex.

  “Then you must take the bottle with you,” said Tonton Michou.

  Later, after clearing the rest of the dishes, Natalie decided it was time to go. At the door they traded effusive thank-yous and bonsoirs.

  “One more thing, Natalie,” said Agnès, handing her what look like a bundle of dirt wrapped in burlap. “This is a rose root ball, from the yellow rose you always admire. You told me it made you think of your mother. I would like you to have it.”

  “That’s so thoughtful of you, Tante Agnès,” Natalie said. It was so typical of the islanders to give up a rose for the memory of a near-stranger’s mother. “Merci beaucoup.”

  Christine grabbed her coat and walked out with them.

  As the three women left the warmth of Agnès’s home, they were enve
loped by the salty, damp night air. The breezes carried the sweet scent of something in bloom, and a night bird cooed softly.

  “We’ll go to see her now,” Christine announced.

  “Go see who now?” Natalie asked, lighting up a cigarette and ignoring her sister’s disapproving look.

  “Ambroisine,” said Christine.

  “Now?”

  “She’s a night owl,” said Christine. “We’ll bring her the cidre bouché. She’ll love it.”

  “I have to confess something, Christine,” said Natalie.

  “Can’t wait to hear this,” Alex muttered.

  “I think Ambroisine cursed me.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” Christine said. “The only reason she curses people is for taking her photo without permission. Also, liars, she does not like this.”

  Two for two, Natalie thought. Yup, I’m cursed.

  “Just out of curiosity,” Alex said. “What happens if she did curse Nat?”

  “I think . . .” Christine looked at Natalie and burst out laughing. “Serious? Okay, good thing we have cidre bouché. And you have more cigarettes? We give her those, too. I told you, she likes me. It will be fine.”

  There were walkway lamps within the village itself, but the only light on the path that led past the hotel was from the sliver of a moon high overhead. Luckily each woman was armed with a flashlight, and the circles of light bobbed as they strolled along. On either side of them, along this narrow stretch of the island, the ocean was a dark mass just barely shimmering in the mellow moonlight. Up ahead, a single window in the little stone cottage glowed orange.

  A low growl brought the trio to a halt. Korrigan stood in the middle of the path, her head hung down in a threatening manner.

  “That’s why I brought some bread,” said Christine, tossing a few crusts to the dog, who wolfed them down, then turned and trotted off to stand at the door of the cottage.

  “Does Korrigan belong to Ambroisine?” Natalie asked. “I thought she was a stray.”

  “Korrigan belongs to herself, but she is often at Ambroisine’s cottage. They are well suited: They are both grumpy and powerful, eh?”