The Stork got down off her chair, and she took a sweet wrapped in shiny paper from her pocket. She put it on the table, next to the glass of milk.
She came over to me.
“I want to do my writing …” she murmured, in her very particular voice, a voice heavy with restraint.
She handed me a pencil, and I drew her a model. I wrote, Lili’s dog has become a goublin.
She copied it out. Underneath the second line. The pencil lead snapped.
“Don’t press so hard …”
She started again.
On the third line, she made a mistake, she wrote, Lili’s goublin has become a dog. She burst out laughing. I laughed with her. Lili was still in the kitchen. Old Mother turned her head.
The child and I hid our laughter behind our hands. That is how Max found us, laughing.
“There’s a wedding in the village,” he said, sticking his elbows on the bar.
“So?” Lili said.
“I’m not going. It’s the priest … Even for the arrangement of flowers, he doesn’t want me there, only to sweep up after the great procession of the wedding couple, he lets me do that, and I have to go back after, when they’re all gone!”
He made an odd face. “Weddings are not as sad as the holes we dig for graves, but it makes you cry just as much.”
He was turning his hands, one inside the other, and looking at the three of us, Lili, the Stork and me. He looked at Old Mother, too, and then over by the pinball machine, where Morgane liked to hang out.
“I like it when the priest asks the question and then they say yes, the girl first and then it’s the boy …”
His eyes were shining. He stood up straight, went over to Lili, and grabbed her hand.
“I’m going to marry Morgane,” he said.
Lili did not bat an eyelid.
Old Mother opened her mouth a bit. Even the Stork showed her interest, turning away from her notebook to hear the rest.
“You can’t marry people just like that,” Lili said at last, hanging her tea towel on its nail.
She stepped closer to Max.
“First of all, they have to agree, you understand that, cousin? And you don’t get angry with them if they say no.”
Max folded his fingers one inside the other, almost twisting them.
“If they say no, you wait,” he murmured.
“You don’t wait,” Lili said.
Max insisted. “You wait and you go on loving them!” He was shaking his head.
On the television screen, images flickered by. Images without sound.
Lili sighed. “No, you change your love. And you find someone who loves you back, it makes things easier.”
Max looked all around, as if he were trying to read in the walls an explanation of what Lili had just said to him.
“Here, there is only Morgane to love!”
Lili did not say anything more. She returned to her work, and Max stared at her back.
He was wincing. With his teeth he bit at his hangnails, pulled at them gently.
He did that for quite a time, and then he turned away and he saw the little Stork. She had gone back to her table, with her glass of milk. He walked over, his face no longer so sad, he leaned his head to one side and held out his hand.
“Will you give it to me?” he asked, pointing to the sweet on the table.
The child looked at him, and nodded.
Max took the sweet.
Before leaving, I went over to look at the photograph. Lili in her simple dress, her hair in bunches, Théo and Old Mother. A dog on the end of a rope. The little boy she had talked about was standing slightly to the back, as if he were merely passing by, surprised by the camera lens, his hand raised as he went to stroke the dog.
“How old were you?” I asked.
Lili turned her head.
“Seventeen …”
“And the little boy, is that your brother?”
“I don’t have a brother.”
She held my gaze for a few seconds, unembarrassed.
“He’s a kid from the Refuge,” she blurted out, finally.
I had read something about the Refuge in a magazine I had found at Raphaël’s.
I leaned against the bar. “Can you tell me about it?”
“What is there to tell? It’s a place where they took in orphans, and they stayed there while they waited for someone to adopt them. It’s been closed for a long time.”
“Where did they come from, the kids?”
“Where do you want them to come from? From Cherbourg.”
“And where was it, the Refuge?”
“At La Roche.”
I thought for a moment. There were not so many buildings in La Roche that could take in children.
“You mean that big building next door to Nan’s place?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Who used to look after them?”
“Who do you think?”
She gave me no more explanations, but I understood that she was referring to Nan.
“Those are just useless old photographs,” she said, turning toward the wall. “Some day or other, I shall have to change them.”
I had often gone past the Refuge on my way to the cliffs, but I had not known that it was an orphanage. I had not paid it any attention, and Théo had never said anything about it.
I stopped at the fence.
It was a long, low building on two stories, with thick walls of gray stone. In the middle of the courtyard there was a tree. The place was maintained, and the roof seemed to be in good condition, but all the shutters were closed. Nan’s house was at the end of the building, its walls the same gray color, the same shutters, only the roof was lower.
Little blue flowers were growing on the low surrounding wall, roots that had taken hold in a tiny patch of earth. A little bit of moss. The emerald green of a few ferns. I wanted to go through the gate. To go and see Nan. To have her tell me about life at the Refuge when the children were there.
I do not know if she was there. The door to her house was closed, but I know she was in the habit of hiding, when she did not want anyone to see her. I scratched the wall with my fingers. I dug up a little bit of earth. My fingernails were black. The skin on my lips, with the wind, was like parchment.
I waited some more. Nan did not appear, and I went back to La Griffue.
Raphaël had been shut up in his studio for two days already. From my room, I could hear him walking. I saw the light through the cracks in the floorboards.
Morgane said he had begun his series of drawings. That was why he was shut in. She was bored without him.
She came up and knocked on my door.
She said, “When I speak to him he doesn’t answer.”
She paused, then said, “You want to go out and walk for a while?” I didn’t want to walk. Even a little.
“I just spent the day outside.”
She collapsed on the bed.
“What did you do?”
I told her about the Refuge. I asked her if she knew anything about the place.
She did not.
Her hands behind her head, wedged against the pillow.
“You go all soft over orphans, do you?”
“I don’t go soft, but at Lili’s place, there’s a photograph, of one of the children, he used to go and see the animals.”
She shrugged. She did not care.
“That’s Oliver Twist stuff you’re on about. When was it, the boy in the photograph?”
“A long time ago, at least twenty years …”
“I wasn’t here … Why are you interested in all that?”
I almost told her that Lili seemed upset, remembering him, and I would have liked to have known why. She pulled her hair back.
“Well, I feel like making love! Making love and getting paid. I’ve found an agency in Cherbourg.”
I looked at her.
“You want to be a whore?”
She shook her head.
>
“No … on the telephone. There’s no contact. To do it you have to have an extra phone line and Raphaël doesn’t want to.”
She looked straight at me. “Don’t you want to?”
“Get a phone line so you can do that?”
I thought she was joking.
She insisted. “It’s no more difficult than counting birds in the wind!”
She rolled on to her side. And then on to her belly, her head between her hands.
“You get the line installed, we don’t say anything to Raphaël, and I’ll give you a percentage.”
A madam! That’s the word that sprang to mind.
“We could work as a pair. It’s all just pretend love-making, after all!”
Even pretend love-making, I was not very sure I was up to it.
“Well, is it yes?”
“No.”
She groaned. She got up. She went over to the door, then stopped, her hand on the door handle.
“What a spoilsport! I’ll give the number of the call box and do it from there. Everyone will see me. I’ll make gestures, and you’ll all be ashamed.”
I had work to do, my drawings to finish, an entire file to fill with conclusions about the decline of migrating birds in the sector of La Hague.
I spent my day working on it.
I thought about getting out. I could have gone to Saint-Malo, it was not so far, Saint-Malo, and they said it was very beautiful, the ramparts.
I went back up toward the houses. I looked at the families sitting round under their lampshades. On dinner tables, plates with little flowers, orange borders, overflowing with food. Televisions lit. Shadows. As I walked past the stable, I heard the sound of chains. I went through the village.
The last street-lamp. After that, it was dark. That is where I ran into Lambert, in that borderline between shadow and light. His face hardly visible. From a distance, you would have said a wolf cut off from his pack. A beast alone.
We looked at each other. I wondered what he was doing there.
“It’s a lovely night.”
It was too dark a night.
I could not see his face.
We had met there as if we had planned it. We might have said, just as night falls, just past the last street-lamp. A vague area to wait. An old pylon by the side of the road.
We took a few steps along the road and then he went on and I could not. Because of the night. That darkness, like a pit. He disappeared into the trees, as if the road had swallowed him.
I heard his voice. “Ten steps further and you’ll see the light …”
What light was he talking about? I took a step. I held out my hand.
“It’s just darkness,” he said.
I held my hand out further. Suddenly, I felt his fingers, his hand grasping mine, pulling me forward. The cold surface of his jacket greeted me like a slap. It did not last, an instant, a few seconds, I swallowed the smell of it.
We stepped apart cautiously. Without looking at each other. The wind was blowing round us, causing the grass to sway. The air was full of pepper. It was in the earth, little white flowers that opened at night and released this heady perfume.
The scent mingled with the leather.
“Your teeth are chattering.”
I clenched my jaws. He turned away. The stars were pinned above us, billions of little lights.
“Normandy is a beautiful place …” he said.
“This is La Hague.”
“La Hague isn’t part of Normandy?”
“La Hague is La Hague.”
He walked on a few steps.
“Your teeth—is it because you’re cold?”
He untied the scarf around his neck and came back over to me.
“Do you think there’s still somewhere open where we could get a coffee?”
“Lili’s place.”
“And other than Lili’s?”
“At this time, it’s Lili’s or nothing.”
He tied the scarf round my neck.
I asked him if he had been in love with Lili when he was an adolescent. I think he smiled.
He did not answer.
A night bird flew by, beating its wings. I heard the rustling of its feathers. When nests are no longer occupied, they can be taken … I had more than thirty of them. Thirty in six months. I put them in boxes. Sometimes I took them out and looked at them.
The sea was too far. Too dark. We were too alone, as well. We came back toward the houses. At a window, a curtain was drawn, then fell back too quickly for me to see a face. The shadow stayed behind the curtain. Everything that went on in the street was seen. Anything that might make a story. Gossip. No one escaped it.
The Audi was parked a bit higher up. He opened the door. We looked at each other.
“I’ve heard that in Port-Racine, there are people who bathe all year round.”
He climbed into the car. I heard the dull sound of the car door as he pulled it to. It was a soft sound, muffled. I thought about the person who had invented that sound.
Lambert switched on the ignition. He waited, his hands on the steering wheel.
He drove with one hand, the other on the armrest of the door. I did not know where he was going. I did not ask him.
He was driving. I was with him.
It was a strange night.
“Have you sold your house?”
“Not yet.”
He drove on for another kilometer and we went through the village of Saint-Germain. At one point, he turned to me.
“My mother used to say that I was a child of love. In French, l’amour and la mort sound the same if you don’t articulate properly.”
He looked at the road again. “It’s hard to hear you, when you speak.” He switched off the headlamps, then switched them on again. He did that several times. When the lamps were off, he drove into the darkness. He seemed to like it.
“Everything seems disjointed tonight,” I murmured.
He smiled.
He had the slow gestures of someone who has all the time in the world. He did not seem to be in a hurry to sell his house or to leave. No rush. He had come here on a day of storm, and he had said, I’ll stay a day or two, and he was still here. Passing through.
There are birds that behave that way.
He slowed down.
He pointed.
“Look!”
The cove at Saint-Martin sparkled in the very dark night, a particular light, coming from the water. In this night emptied of people, the sea suddenly seemed to belong to us. Lambert let the car roll slowly down the winding road.
He parked on the flat.
He did not get out at once. He looked through the windscreen at the beach, the sea. The beach, like a breakwater. And then he opened the door.
“Are you coming?”
I nodded.
We were outside again. For a moment, next to each other. His arms folded across his chest.
He smiled faintly.
“You should stop your teeth chattering, you’re going to damage them.”
He threw himself into the water like an angry beast. I could not see him at all, but I heard him, his breathing, struggling against the cold, and the powerful thrashing of his arms breaking through the water. Was he naked? He had turned round and said, Aren’t you coming?
No one ever bathed here. Except in the summertime, a few regulars.
His man’s body melted into the night. Taken by the sea.
His living man’s body.
He disappeared. I waited for him to come back, my knees in my hands. Then pebbles beneath my fingers.
I looked at the stars.
He swam some more. The water was cold here, much colder than elsewhere.
Had he been to visit Théo? He had told me that he wanted to speak to him, but had he done it? Why was he waiting?
He came over to me, his shirt rolled up in his hands. The charcoal gray jumper against his skin.
“You swam a long way out …”
I
could feel his gaze in the night.
In the car, he put the heating on full blast. His hair was wet.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t come back.”
He spread his fingers. He closed them again. He made this gesture several times.
“I had to swim …”
He lit the headlamps and looked at the sea. This patch of night, illuminated. He let his head roll to the side.
And then he looked at me, as if to keep from seeing the sea.
He had a room at the Irishwoman’s in La Rogue. When we got there, a little lantern was lit by the entrance.
The door was open. I followed him down a narrow hallway papered in red velvet. At the very end, there was a big room cluttered with armchairs. Heavy curtains hung at the windows.
A woman was stretched out on the sofa among big velvet cushions. She was watching television, a popular series filmed in a big American hospital. There was a glass on the table. A handbag in white imitation leather. The room stank of perfume.
“No women here,” she said when I came through the door.
She did not turn round.
Lambert took off his jacket.
“She’s not coming up,” he said, tossing the jacket on to the cushions.
He pointed to the sofa.
The woman’s name was Betty. They exchanged a few words in a very rapid English.
“May we taste your whisky?”
She held a limp hand out toward Lambert’s leg and let it slide along his thigh. A sensual caress.
“You are at home here, darling.” She had the husky voice of a heavy smoker.
A smile crossed Lambert’s lips. He went to fetch a bottle and two glasses. He filled the glasses.
A lamp was hanging above the table, a large globe of orange paper with Chinese characters. The characters had been traced in black.
He handed me the glass.
“You’re cold …”
Because I had shivered.
Glenfarclas. You used to drink it too, sometimes. I liked the smell of it in your mouth.
I settled back into the armchair and closed my eyes. I drank slowly, looking at the light shining through the thin paper. A strange round ball that looked like a sun.
The Breakers Page 12