The Breakers

by Claudie Gallay

  We drank.

  He talked to me about his mother.

  I did not tell him about you. He took a photograph from his wallet and showed it to me. His mother was indeed very beautiful. His father, small eyeglasses, a mustache, fairly tall.

  “They were very much in love …”

  We drank some more.

  Betty went off to bed.

  He put the photograph back in his wallet.

  “I have a few memories, details … the smack she gave me one day, when I answered her back.”

  He smiled.

  “But I cannot remember the color of her hair, though I know I loved to touch it. She let me brush it. Very soft hair.”

  He looked at his hands.

  “I’ve even forgotten their voices. Before, when I looked at the photographs, I could remember. I saw them the way they were, when they were alive. Now, I can no longer see them, it’s as if they had died for a second time.”

  He sat there for a moment, his gaze lost in his glass.

  “My brother is still in the water.”

  He pressed his glass against his mouth.

  “When I think about him … He would be forty years old now.”

  He took a gulp of whisky.

  “In the years that followed, I imagined everything, that he had clung to a rock, that a boat had picked him up. He was too small to say his name. I thought I would get a letter some day, and that I’d find him again. I was sure of it, but at night, in my dreams, I saw him in the water, drowning.”

  He looked up at me.

  “The lifeboats found my father, the empty sailing boat, they kept looking and then went back. For a long time I was angry that they had not searched for longer.”

  “It was night time …”

  He shook his head several times.

  “When they drowned, I was asleep.”

  Did he feel guilty that he had not gone with them? That he had not died with them? Could he feel that?

  “Have you been to see Théo?”

  “Not yet … But I will.”

  He filled his glass and emptied it without blinking.

  It was a little after midnight when he drove me back. He left me by the gate.

  Morgane was waiting for me at the door.

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  Not even a good evening. That was all she said. She followed me down the corridor, came right up against me to sniff my skin.

  “Go on, tell me!”

  I shook my head.

  “No.”

  “I don’t believe you! You stink of alcohol!”

  I placed my hand on the banister. “I have to get some sleep …”

  “Where were you? At his place?”

  “No.”

  “At the Irishwoman’s?”

  She kept walking round me. I was sleepy. She would not let me go.

  “He brought you back, he dropped you off there, outside the door … And you didn’t sleep with him?”

  “No.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It can’t be! He must have said something before he left you?”

  “He said goodnight.”

  I woke up with a headache. I drank some hot milk, my eyelashes in the steam.

  The weather was fine.

  Lambert and I had agreed to meet the next day at ten o’clock, to go to the caves. A quick arrangement, just as he was dropping me off at the gate. It must have been close to ten.

  I went over to the window. He was sitting on the terrace at the auberge, the same table as on the first day. I did not feel like going out. Space changes, when there are two of you. Silence is no longer silence, even if the other person says nothing.

  I took a shower. I put on a jumper.

  When I came to his table, he pointed to the quay.

  “From this table, you can see exactly where my father used to anchor his boat.”

  The sun was shining. It was not warm, but we had a few hours ahead with what looked like calm weather. To go to the caves you had to walk a long way.

  He smiled at me, as if he could read my thoughts.

  “Don’t worry, I can be quiet to the point of being mute.”

  We left by the path along the sea, side by side, we hardly said a thing all the way to the first houses at La Roche. Then we walked one behind the other, along the footpath. Sometimes he walked in front. Other times, I did. The landscape was beautiful. The sea luminous. From time to time he stopped and looked. He didn’t speak. When he stopped, I stopped too. We kept going and I got used to walking with him. At the cove at Établette, we looked at each other.

  He said, “Everything O.K.?”

  I hesitated and said, “Yes, everything’s O.K.”

  The caves were just below us.

  He recalled having taken this walk often with his parents, but he had never gone down to the caves. It was too dangerous. The path was too rough. We left the footpath and headed down a little track the goats had made that wove in and out among the bramble bushes. It was a narrow track, very slippery, and at the very bottom it came out at the sea. In places we had to cling to the branches and slide on our feet.

  We jumped down to the beach. A dead gull was floating on the water, its white wings bobbing on the waves. Black seaweed, rising on the waves, too. It was a moving world, not exactly the world of water any more, but not that of land either. Somewhere in between.

  The caves were there, the Grande and the Petite Église, and the Lion. The earliest legends of La Hague were born in these caves. Legends mingling animals and men.

  The entrance was a bit further along.

  We walked along the cliff.

  A deep fissure disappeared into the side of the cliff. It was a narrow breach that opened out again beneath the church at Jobourg.

  We went into the cave and walked for several meters. We came to a place where we had to hunch over to keep going.

  Beneath my fingers I could feel the dampness of the walls. Animal skulls were embedded in the rock, I ran my hand over them. Birds’ skeletons. The wind had smoothed them. I scratched at one until a fragment of bone came away. The taste was salty in my mouth. The bone brittle beneath my teeth.

  We went deeper into the wall then came back to the entrance.

  I said, “Let’s make a fire.”

  There was some old wood. Dry branches. He took out his matches. I tore a few pages from my notebook. The wood caught. We sat round the fire, our arms curled round our knees, and we looked at the flames. Our shadows danced against the wall of the cave.

  “Do you feel better now?”

  He was looking at me.

  I did not understand.

  “My presence—can you stand it?”

  “Yes …”

  He smiled.

  He lit a cigarette. He smoked it down to the filter, without saying anything.

  I watched him, his hands stretched toward the fire. I thought of the hermit M. Anselme had told me about. A man who had lived for several years in this cave. He drank rainwater, and someone brought him bread. To sleep, he had a mat made of gorse branches. A few animal skins to cover him. Years without seeing a soul. Without speaking. Looking out on the sea. And one day he got up and went out. Peasants who were working in the fields saw a man go by, his beard and hair so long they touched the ground. By the time they had straightened up, the man had vanished.

  Lambert crushed his cigarette on a stone. I went on poking the fire. A few cinders escaped, flew up and eventually vanished, swallowed by the darkness.

  I told him the story about the hermit. When I had finished, he looked doubtful.

  “Your taciturn bloke must have said a few words to the man who brought him his bread, no?”

  “No … The bread was put in a bucket and the bucket was tied to a rope. They didn’t see each other.”

  He nodded.

  “And how long did it last?”

  “Several years. Almost ten, I think.”

&nb
sp; I dug in the ground with the tip of my stick. I took away a clump of brown earth. I held it in my fingers. It smelled good.

  “What I’d like to know is, why he ever left his cave.”

  I looked up at Lambert. He was watching me.

  “He had been here for years, and one day, he got up and he left! Don’t you find that astonishing?”

  “I’d rather know why he went into the cave …”

  “There are always lots of reasons to lock yourself away. Going back out again is much more difficult.”

  He picked up some tiny pebbles that were there in the cave, on the ground. He kept them in his hands. He was shifting them from one hand to the other.

  “I talked to you about my brother the other evening … For a long time, I didn’t want to believe in his death. It felt as if I was betraying him.”

  The branches continued to burn before us.

  “The notary said that the house ought to sell within the next three months. You wouldn’t know anyone who could help me clean up the garden?”

  “Max could do that.”

  “Max, yes …” He rubbed his lips with his thumb.

  “Don’t do that …”

  He looked at me. I did not explain.

  He set the little pebbles down in a pile next to the fire.

  Max was making the most of the dull weather to go and fish on the rocks. It was a place where you could catch bass. He was wearing his yellow oilskin. His bucket was blue. We could see him from far away.

  When we went past on the path, he called out to us and showed us his bucket. There were no bass, only a few mackerel, some sea bream, and a fine herring. He joined us for the walk back. As a rule, anyone who wanted to buy some fish would be there, waiting by the stern of the boats. There was no one.

  Lambert asked Max if he would agree to help him clean his garden. Max did not answer.

  He sat down at the edge of the quay, and he cleaned his fish, emptying them into the waters of the harbor. The scales, anything he could scrape out of the guts. Children were watching him.

  Seagulls circled above the bucket.

  Max cut off the herring’s head. The head floated for a moment between two hulls, its round eye staring at the sky.

  It is said that the herring has a soul, and that whoever meets that soul can question it, the way one questions a wise man.

  And the soul replies. It is also said that a sea bream will change color seven times before dying.

  I looked at Lambert’s face against the sunlight. The deep shadows in the hollow of his cheeks.

  Max’s dream was to go to sea and bring back a porbeagle. To do that he had to finish fixing up his boat. He said that once the boat was repaired, he would know the great bedazzlement of the sea.

  “A porbeagle can weigh over a hundred kilos!” he said, scraping the scales with his knife.

  “And what would you do with a hundred kilos of porbeagle?” I said.

  “I’d drive a hard bargain at the fish market in Cherbourg and with the money I’d buy petrol and I’d come back.”

  “So you’re going to be rich?”

  He laughed. He turned toward the house. Ever since we had talked about butterflies, he had been capturing them. He shut them away in a cage. He wanted to wait until the cage was full to release the butterflies all round Morgane’s face.

  After a few days in the cage, the butterflies died.

  A seagull dived in front of us, and came back up with a herring head in its beak. Lambert followed it with his gaze.

  He turned round to look at Théo’s house on the side of the hill.

  “Will you come with me afterward?”

  I followed his gaze.

  “No …”

  He nodded.

  Max smiled. “For the garden cleaning, it’s agreed, I come!”

  That is what he said, I come.

  Lambert said he had things to do and he left. He took his car and drove up the hill. I do not know if he was going to Théo’s place.

  On the shore, a seagull cried.

  “I’ll buy your little fish from you,” I said. “For Théo’s cats.”

  Max slid the still squirming small fry into a plastic bag. He closed the bag. I took some money from my pocket, but he did not want to accept it.

  “It’s agreed with him, in trust,” he said.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  He rubbed his hands on his trousers and shining scales clung to the cloth.

  “It’s agreed,” he repeated, pointing to Théo’s house.

  He took his bucket and went to see if the patron of the auberge wanted his fish.

  I went through the door.

  “I’ve brought you some fish …”

  Théo was at the end of the corridor, emptying out the basins he used to collect the water leaking from the roof. There were several of them. He had to empty them often.

  “The tiles need changing …” he tried to explain, pointing to the roof.

  He was calm. His eyes, his hands. I immediately understood that Lambert had not come. I had been afraid I might find him there. What other option did he have? The past haunted him. He had an intuition about the truth, and he needed to hear it.

  Théo turned to me.

  “What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”

  “No, everything’s fine …”

  When the yellow cat saw me, it came out of the kitchen, went along the wall, and came up to rub against me.

  “This one likes you a lot … You see, as soon as it hears you, it comes out.”

  The cat could smell the fish inside the bag. Théo looked at the fish.

  “You can just put all that in the sink …”

  There were other basins higher up, on the steps. He told me he had to go and get them, to empty them, too.

  I went into the kitchen. The little white cat was lying on the table. This was her place, her protected spot. The other cats knew it. It wasn’t hatred, among them. It was something else. Mistrust. Jealousy, too.

  I left the bag in the sink.

  There was an envelope on the table. Théo’s name and address written in pen. Large, sloping handwriting. The ink was blue. The postmark was Grenoble.

  I turned the envelope over. There was no name on the back.

  There were other envelopes on the desk, all covered with the same handwriting. These envelopes were gathered together in a cardboard box. The box was open. There were dozens of them, perhaps a hundred.

  I lifted the flap of one of the envelopes. Without taking the letter out, I read the beginning, the opening words. Dear Théo, It snowed this morning. I was able to go out and I went … The rest was hidden. I slipped my finger inside. I read, Thank you for your long letter. I am glad to hear that you are better, and thank you for your packages. With the brothers, we shared … I lifted the flap on other envelopes. Behind one of them, there was a name, Michel Lepage, followed by an address:

  Monastery of La Grande Chartreuse, Saint-Pierre.

  I put the letter back in its place.

  Beyond the window, it had begun to rain.

  Théo came back.

  “I put the fish in the sink,” I said, stepping away from the desk.

  He saw I was near the letters. He probably realized I had touched them.

  I showed him the bag.

  “Max caught them. For payment, he said—”

  “I know what he said.”

  He gauged the quantity of fish in the bag and pulled a note from his pocket. He put it down next to the bag. He went round the table and put the lid back on the box containing the letters.

  In the silence, I could hear the rain falling. I thought I should go. I took the note, and went to the door.

  Théo had pulled his cap down to his eyes. He added some wood to the stove. I could see him, his back, his narrow shoulders in his dressing gown.

  The letter was still on the table. Raindrops were running down the wallpaper, behind the bed. Floorcloths were spread along the base of th
e wall. A drop fell. The cats looked at each other. Théo opened an umbrella and placed it on the bed.

  “Rain from the south,” he said. “Not the coldest, but it gets in under the tiles.”

  Now the drops were falling on the umbrella, sliding on to the floor then along to disappear in the barrage of floorcloths.

  Théo moved the little clock. Every hour, the needles got stuck, and it lost two minutes.

  “You hear that? Two minutes an hour, that’s what it loses. Some little defect in the system, I should have got it fixed.”

  He shook his head.

  “It’s turned into something like an appointment between me and the clock, just that moment when the two minutes get lost.”

  He looked up, and stared hard at me for a long time.

  “Some day I will tell you about those letters.”

  He was about to add something when the door opened. It banged. The cats looked up. It was Nan, wearing her long black dress, her hair dripping. The water seemed dirty and dark. Over her dress she was wearing a large hand-knitted woolen shawl.

  She made as if to come in, then she saw me and stayed on the threshold, one hand clutching her throat. Her other hand was curled around something she held tight against her.

  Strange priestess, fish-woman: she seemed to have come out of the water or some other subterranean world, and on her face she wore the terrifying mask of a Gorgon.

  “I was just leaving …” I said.

  She pressed back against the wall. As I went by, I could smell her strong odor of sweat and peat.

  I did not see what she was hiding in her hand.

  Lambert had talked to me for a long time about the disappeared, the bodiless dead who could not be buried. We were together in the cave. The fire was burning. He said, they are dead without proof.

  The dead the sea has kept, with whom there is no farewell.

  The darkness around us had added meaning to his words. Words that I had heard, remembered, and that came back to me.

  He had said, My brother’s disappearance has made me a person without balance. He had tried to smile. I thought about you. I had seen you, dead, but dead long before your heart gave way. The work of the shadow, day after day. The cry of a madwoman, afterward, but I had been able to cry for you, to become a dead woman myself.

  How could I have cried for you, if you had disappeared?