We looked at each other. We did not say anything. We munched away on it all with bread and butter.
And washed it down with wine.
“It’s really deserted here,” he said.
“That’s because it’s not Sunday … on Sundays it gets lively. People come from Paris, to see the sea.”
“I’ll have to come on a Sunday then … What day is it today?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know. We went on eating our shrimps.
“The sea was clearer yesterday,” I said.
What a stupid thing to say.
I said things like that, from time to time. When I met you, it was on a square. I had four hours driving ahead of me, I was a bit nervous. Well, let’s kiss goodbye! That is what I said to you. At the first stop sign, I pulled over. I had your address in my pocket. That night, I wrote to you.
“Because of the mist,” I went on, “you can’t see the surface of the water.”
Lambert was looking at me. There was something of a brutal tenderness about him, an awkward charm. His gestures were slow. His eyes gray. The first time I saw them, they seemed blue.
“They’re talking about you in the harbor.”
“The harbor’s not all that big.”
A drop of wine slid down his glass. It left a spot on the tablecloth.
“In the evening this is where I have dinner, that little table over by the lobsters.”
He turned, and looked at the table.
“Could I come and count the birds with you, one day?”
“Why, you’re not leaving?”
He said yes, he was going to leave, soon, but between now and soon, there was a bit of time. And that he would like to use that time to go and see the birds.
The cliffs were my paths of solitude. I no longer knew how to walk there with another person.
A cork had been forgotten on the windowsill. Lambert took it in his hands and rolled it back and forth in the light.
“Do you know what I saw here one day? Some kids had caught a fish and they stuck its back with corks like this, then they put it back in the water. The fish couldn’t dive any more. They thought it was funny.”
He was still angry, so long afterward, as if the kids were still there on the other side of the window, over by the rocks, up to no good.
“We ought to be able to sort through our memories, don’t you think? Sort through them and only keep the best ones …”
He put the cork down.
I looked at him. “Is that why you’re here? To find the best memories?”
He smiled. He filled our glasses.
“Could be, yes.”
I liked drinking that wine, with him, that first day. We talked some more about his holidays here, and about the south.
At one point, we turned our heads because Nan was there, on the other side of the window, and she was looking at us. She had done her hair in a long thick plait. She stayed there for a minute, perhaps two. She was staring at Lambert. It lasted a very long time.
After that, she went away.
He went on peeling his shrimps. Some of them had eggs, pink clusters stuck to their middle.
“I had a little brother … But you know that, don’t you? You must have seen his photograph? The medallion, at the cemetery … His name was Paul.” He shook his head. “The bloody sea took him away.”
He munched on a shrimp.
“The night before, we’d been to Cherbourg, my mother had bought us clothes for the rain. I remember she’d got a little polo shirt for Paul, with boats on it. Sailing boats. When we came back, my father wanted to take a photograph of us in our new clothes, and he put Paul in front of the window. The next morning they took the sailing boat and went to Alderney. I stayed here. I was fifteen, I needed my space … By the time I got the film developed, they were all dead.”
He looked up at me. “You’re not eating …”
I took a shrimp. I removed the head and tail. The pink shell all around, like a thick skin.
He took a sip of wine.
“That was the first time they had left me all alone. For a long time I wondered whether I had been lucky or not … At the end of the day, I suppose I was lucky after all.”
He looked up, the shrimp between his fingers.
“Apparently they’re still alive when they throw them into the boiling water …”
His voice was like La Hague, it had the strength of the place, and the indifference, too. I told him that, I said, “Your voice is like La Hague,” and he nodded, as if he understood.
We went on eating for a moment, not speaking.
“So what are people saying about me in the harbor?”
“That your parents died in this sea … between here and Alderney.”
“Closer to Alderney. Do they say anything else?”
“They see you hanging about …”
He raised his glass, as if to drink a toast to everyone who was talking about him.
The sky had cleared. The wind had managed to break through the clouds, and was already drying the road.
“It wasn’t Lili who took your flowers,” I said.
“I don’t bloody care.”
I rolled my glass between my hands. I thought back to that moment between them, the other day, at Lili’s place, that very tense moment when he had implied that Théo was responsible for the shipwreck.
“The other day, at Lili’s, your argument …”
“It wasn’t an argument.”
I took a sip of wine. I held the glass with its cold surface against my lips.
“Was Théo keeping the light that night?”
“Yes.”
“You said he’d put the lamp out … Do you think he’s responsible for your parents’ death?”
He gave the strangest smile. “That’s a nice way of putting it …”
He looked at his glass. The bottle, almost empty.
“Is Théo your friend?” he said.
“Yes.”
He put his glass down next to mine. He made them touch. And chink together gently. He looked up at me.
“Théo put the light out. I don’t know why, but I know that he did. I’ve always known.”
“Is that why you came back?”
“No … I came to sell the house and to clear out what’s inside … But since I’ve been here … Théo put the lamp out and I want him to tell me why.”
I shook my head. “He must have known how dangerous it was, he wouldn’t have done that.”
“But he did.” He pressed his hands together. “Their death is like a film you stop right in the middle. I’m still waiting for the rest. Forty years is a long time.”
“Théo is an old man.”
“That’s no excuse.”
There were no more shrimps. No more wine. We went out.
Nan was there, pacing back and forth along the breakwater. Insects rustled in the sand, or was it in my head, all the wine I had drunk.
Fleas by the thousands, on the brown seaweed.
He took his packet of cigarettes from his pocket. On the shore, a child with blond hair was running to make the seagulls fly up.
He watched him as he lit his cigarette. Who was he seeing in that child? Himself, or the memory of the brother who had disappeared?
M. Anselme had told me that Lambert’s mother had been very beautiful. On the medallion at the cemetery, it was the father’s shadow that was cast over the gravel in the yard.
Nan stopped at the end of the breakwater, her face turned to the sea. At one point, she turned around. She was far away. Lambert did not say anything. He did not comment on her looking at us. He smoked his cigarette down to the filter, and crushed the butt.
We went further. The pebbles rattled together under the water. It was a sound from inside the sea, a muted scraping. The seagulls were searching in the water, watching for crabs. At this spot along the coast, the rocks formed a small island where sterns came to rest. The island was shaped like a nest. At high tide, it was engulfed.<
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Lambert went down to the beach. He went off among the rocks. On the sand there was a trace of furrows where a few rivulets drained gently away. Lambert knelt down and placed his hand against the sand. Above him, two huge gulls were playing at defying the sea. Caught in the whirlwind, they went skimming over the crest of the waves, letting out their long, strident cries.
He got up. He looked at the sea. Do people who wait always have the same obsessions?
I retraced my steps.
When I was outside the auberge, I looked back. Nan had gone up to him, was circling round him. She seemed very agitated.
He was a strong man, he could have chased her away. He was walking, slowly, along that beach, and Nan was following him. At times, he paused. I do not know if he did it to wait for her.
He was looking at the sea, as if his lost brother’s presence in the icy waters of Le Blanchard had brought him close to the old madwoman.
The Stork watched me as I came over, her little child’s hand wide open against the windowpane. For a long time, I had thought that Lili was her aunt or her grandmother, but Lili was nobody’s aunt, and she had no children.
I went in. The Stork took a notebook out of her school bag. She laid it down flat before her. She showed me her real name on the label, written in red ink, Ila. She opened the notebook, slipped her hand into her pocket, and brought out a handful of pencils. She chose one, and began to draw her lines. Lines and circles. All over the page. Her head bent slightly against her shoulder.
Her pencils smelled of wood.
“Your pencils, you ought to put them in a case … That’s why the leads are breaking.”
In the silence, I could hear the lead scratching over the paper. Her breathing, her shoes scraping against the floor because she was swinging her legs. Her feet did not touch the ground. Only her toes.
“Circles and lines, that’s not enough … You have to learn to make letters.”
She did not know how.
I drew a model for her.
Eyes wide open, she followed what my pencil was writing. I read it to her, Ila’s dog is called Soft Spot.
She nodded.
She looked at me. Sometimes, when she was writing, she would caress the mark she had on her lip.
Under the sentence I had written, she went on tracing her lines and her circles. I looked at her. Was she like the child that I will not have, our child, the one you will never give me? That was what I had asked you for, a child, before you go … You did not want to do it. You explained gently why we must not. I did not understand, at all.
I held the Stork against me. I clasped my hands round her.
“Do you want me to tell you why the robin has a spot on his breast?”
She nodded.
I told her.
At the end, she looked up at me. She wanted to know who had managed to take fire to man.
I shook my head. I did not know.
The next day was Saturday. Lambert arrived at noon. Lili was smoothing a paper tablecloth in front of me.
He said hello.
When I saw the three plates on the catalog table, I understood that they were eating together. Old Mother came over, with her walking frame. Lili said she had a clock in her stomach.
“If you knew how many times I’ve had to pick her up!” she said, as if to apologize for the walking frame.
She had made mussels with rice. She served me a whole potful. I pulled over the newspaper.
They sat together, the three of them. I heard him ask whether Théo and Old Mother were still married. He must have seen the ring on her finger, that old, dull ring, still caught in her flesh.
“Divorce is for city people,” Lili said.
She filled up their plates. She spooned the rice into little bowls. Old Mother’s medication, a little pile next to her glass. The glass was full of water.
“The wedding ring is part of her body. Unless you cut her finger off, she’ll be buried with it.”
Lambert nodded.
When she saw the mussels, Old Mother plunged her fingers into the shells, then scraped at them with her gums. She threw the empty shells into the bowl. When she missed the bowl, the shell fell on the ground with a little noise.
“Mussels are her favorite. That, and dipping sponge fingers.”
Lili bustled about.
“She’s not difficult. As long as I can, I’ll keep her with me. You can talk to her! Tell her who you are …”
“Who I am?”
“Why not, who you are!”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t?”
“No.”
Lili shrugged. She glanced over my way to see if everything was alright. At last she sat down. I could see him from behind. Leaning over her slightly. I had not expected to see him back here.
In the village, on the quay, in the bistro, the men were talking about him. Without saying his name. With their eyes. Or in a low voice. It was gossip.
Nobody can get away from gossip.
“Your mother used to make us cakes … Brioches covered with icing sugar, we loved that … We would go and eat them on the rocks. We wouldn’t even wait for them to get cold. It made our tummies swell up,” said Lily.
“We would run all along the seashore, and catch crabs. Once, we climbed up on the roof to look at the sea,” said Lambert.
They talked about their childhood. Lili said, “You should have let us know …”
“Let you know what?”
“That you were coming back.”
He shook his head.
“Have you been to Alderney?” she said.
“No.”
“Are you going to go?”
“I don’t know … Perhaps.”
“If you decide to go, I know a fellow who has a boat, he can take you over.”
I was eating my mussels and reading the newspaper. I was listening to them, too.
“What have you been doing all this time?”
“Not much … I live in Le Morvan. My grandparents were from there, they’re the ones who took me in.”
“Is it nice there, Le Morvan?”
“Yes, it’s a good place, a bit like here, with meadows, cows, quiet little roads.”
“Except out there, you haven’t got the sea.”
This made him laugh.
“No, we haven’t got the sea … And we haven’t got a nuclear power plant either,” he said, referring to the Cogema.
Lili shrugged.
She went to get a facecloth from the kitchen, and scrubbed her mother’s hands.
“And now, what are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
She glanced over at my table. When she saw I had finished, she put down the flannel.
She brought me a slice of strawberry tart.
Old Mother got her sponge finger.
“Why don’t you give her some tart?” he said.
“Strawberries? They make her break out … You want her to die?”
“You don’t die from a rash …”
“You can die from whatever!” Lili said, clearing the plates.
The television was on, the midday game shows.
The television without the volume, the picture showing a wheel turning.
“All these years, I thought I would see you again … Why didn’t you ever come back?”
“I did come back.”
“Yes, at the beginning … And afterward?”
“Afterward, I couldn’t.”
“And now, all of a sudden, you can?”
“Yes.”
He hesitated before going on.
“My father was forty when he died. Now I’m older than he was. That’s also why I came back.”
“Because now you’re older than he was?”
He nodded.
Lili cut him a slice of tart. She slid it on to a plate.
“I remember him, he was tall.”
“He wasn’
t that tall …”
“Seemed tall to me.”
Lambert looked at her.
“Do you remember when he found the hedgehog’s nest? It was right there, behind the wall. He called us over … He made us swear not to touch anything. We all swore, hand against hand, in the garden. Do you remember whether my mother was there?”
“I don’t know.”
“The hedgehogs died. My father made us crêpes to console us. It was the last year.”
Their eyes met.
“I don’t like talking about the past,” she said.
“And my brother, do you remember him?”
Lili picked up her glass.
“No, he was too small, we didn’t see him.”
“On the day of the hedgehogs, was he there?”
“I don’t know …”
Her voice remained suspended, for a long moment.
“He probably was, yes …” she said at last.
She ran a hand over her face. She said, “He was so little, your brother, your mother kept him inside all the time.”
She shook her head. “That’s all in the past … You’d do better to eat.”
But he could not eat.
He left his fork in his plate, with the knife on top.
He pushed the plate to the middle of the table.
“It was your father who was keeping the light that night.”
Lili sat up. “Is that why you came back? To rehash all that business?”
She had spoken loudly. She turned toward her mother, but the old woman was staring at the screen, sucking on her sponge finger, and she wasn’t paying attention to them.
“We were fifteen years old, Lambert …”
“So?”
“I know what you think! The police carried out their investigation, they came to see my father … The lamp was not put out that night. They wrote it black on white at the end of the file. What more do you want?”
“Investigations get it wrong sometimes …”
“Not this time! Besides, my father was not alone in the lighthouse, the bloke who kept it with him testified that nothing out of the ordinary happened that night.”
“It wasn’t his watch. At the time of the shipwreck, he was asleep.”
Lili could not calm down.
“It may be hard to swallow, but it was an accident, a simple accident at sea …”
He got up.
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