The Breakers

by Claudie Gallay

  To live unhappily ever after

  And have lots of children.

  It was a poem by Prévert.

  We crossed the road.

  Lambert’s shutters were open. The Audi was parked a bit farther along. M. Anselme followed my gaze.

  “He’s a strange one, that Lambert, isn’t he? He was supposed to leave, and he isn’t leaving. Lili refuses to talk about him. What do you think of him?”

  “I hardly know him …”

  He squeezed my arm.

  “That’s very good. It’s never a good thing to get to know someone too well.”

  We went on walking.

  “My neighbor in Omonville, who is well acquainted with the notary in Beaumont, said that he’s asking a very tidy sum for his house. Incidentally, you can understand, the dwelling is a few steps from the sea, and even if the roof needs repairing, people from Paris are prepared to pay anything for that sort of place. What does he do in life?”

  “I have no idea.”

  M. Anselme stopped.

  He looked at me, hesitated for a moment, then went on walking.

  “You were seen going about with him, and I heard you were at the cliffs together. Does he make you laugh, at least?”

  He thrust the tip of his cane far ahead of him.

  “Because a man who cannot make a woman laugh … and your game of Ludo, how did it end? Did he let you win?”

  “We didn’t finish the game.”

  He thought about what I had just said.

  “There are times, you see, when I find it infinitely difficult to grasp the discrepancy in sensitivity between our two generations.”

  We turned off to the right, the road leading to the coastguard station. There were no more houses, only pastures. A few cows were enjoying the sun, their heads turned toward the sea. You could feel the breeze growing stronger the closer you got to the sea.

  “The man is boring and yet you find him attractive …”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  He squeezed my arm.

  “No, indeed, you did not say it, but the fact remains.”

  When we got to the coastguard station, we took a little dirt footpath that went along the coast.

  “Incidentally, don’t blame yourself, where attraction is concerned, we don’t choose. Look! Here we are! This tree is Prévert’s tree.”

  He pointed to a sad little tree, so scraggy that it did not seem to have a trunk.

  M. Anselme was proud.

  “Well, what do you think? Isn’t it lovely?”

  I walked up to the tree. It had been bent over by the wind. The leaves on the windward side seemed to have been sacrificed so that the others could live, the leaves clinging painfully to the branches on the leeward side.

  “You’re right,” I murmured, “where attraction is concerned, we don’t choose.”

  He took me by the hand and made me touch the trunk. The tree was skeletal. He pointed to the leaves, the buds.

  He placed his hands firmly against the bark.

  “Trees die, others grow, some stay as they are.”

  He listened to the tree’s heartbeat.

  We eventually sat down on a rock, our backs to the tree. We were in the sun, with the sea before us. A lizard was warming itself on a stone. Right next to it, a little blue butterfly was gathering nectar in a cluster of flowers. Its dark proboscis sank into the petals like a blade. The lizard looked at it. The flowers were a very pale yellow.

  M. Anselme looked first at the lizard and then the butterfly.

  “I had dinner recently at the home of Ursula Dimetri … She is a very dear old friend who lives in a charming house on the hills after the cove at Saint-Martin.”

  “Is she the one who used to cook at the Refuge?”

  “Do you know her?”

  “I saw a photograph of her at Théo’s place.”

  He nodded.

  “One thing leading to another, you know what conversations are like, we began to talk about you. Ursula said she had seen you in the yard, at Nan’s, near the bench …”

  He breathed in the sea air, several times, deeply.

  “Although Nan is not her real name … She’s called Florelle, but you must know that, too … No matter. So, we were talking in a friendly way when, one thing leading to another, we began to talk about that old person as well.”

  The lizard had gone closer to the butterfly. Moving very slowly, it raised one leg and then the other, its color mingling with that of the rock. It kept its eyes fixed on its prey.

  What happened next was predictable.

  I did not take my eyes from the butterfly.

  M. Anselme sighed. “All it would take would be a gesture on our part … a simple movement … for that poor butterfly to fly away, and its life would be saved.”

  He picked a little flower from among the ones that grew at the foot of the tree.

  Nature has no qualms about things, that is a major difference between us and nature. That was what I was thinking. M. Anselme twirled the flower in his fingers.

  “Man does things and often, afterward, he regrets them. This flower for example, I shouldn’t have picked it … There are no pots or vases for flowers this size … and even with a vase, one shouldn’t put a flower all by itself.”

  He looked at the flower. In the next instant, the lizard pounced. Its mouth wide open, it caught the butterfly and chewed it. The blue wings outside its mouth, still fluttering.

  We watched the lizard until it had swallowed everything.

  “You were talking to me about Nan …”

  “Nan, yes, indeed …”

  He put the flower on the spot where, a moment earlier, the butterfly had been.

  “I have been told … but this may be mere gossip … Well, in any event, there is always a grain of truth in the stories that people tell you.”

  He was looking at the palms of his hands, as if he would find there the best way to tell me what it was he had to tell me.

  “The orphanage in Cherbourg sent children to Nan, and she would look after them for varying lengths of time, orphans or a few children whose parents didn’t want them any more … Did you know that?”

  “Yes, I knew.”

  “Then you must also know that these children stayed at the Refuge the time it took to find them a family, which could mean several weeks to several months.”

  He crushed a bit of earth between his fingers. It was a loamy, white earth, impregnated with salt.

  “What were you doing that day, on the bench, with her?”

  His question surprised me.

  “I was just passing by …”

  “You took her croissants?”

  “I had them with me …”

  He smiled.

  “Springtime croissants! And what did you want her to tell you, that you were giving her such a treat?”

  I didn’t like his question, what he was insinuating. I stood up, abruptly, but he held on to my hand.

  “Such impatience! You can’t bear the slightest remark. Utterly typical of solitaries, you want to be careful, it can also be a failing.”

  He kept my hand in his, obliging me to sit down again.

  “Look at that lizard, rather …”

  On the rock, the creature went on chewing, staring into space. A little bit of blue wing was still stuck between its jaws.

  Do lizards digest butterfly wings? Maybe they spit them back out? This one seemed to want to swallow them.

  I wondered if there was blood in butterfly wings.

  M. Anselme waited for me to sit down before going on.

  “Ursula said that Nan keeps photographs in her house of all the children she took in at the Refuge. Every afternoon, weather permitting, she would walk on the beach with some of those poor wretches clinging to her dress …”

  I forgot my anger.

  I listened to him.

  He let go of my hand, he knew I would not leave now. As long as he was talking.

  “Ursula told me t
hat one day, a new boarder arrived, a skinny little thing like half a bird. They had found him in Rouen, in a place that, according to her, had been used as a mass grave during the great plague epidemics. His mother had gone to give birth there, on the ground, and she had abandoned him. He was three years old when he came to the Refuge. He was too small, and not very nice looking, and nobody wanted him. Ursula said that Nan got more attached to him than to the others. She also said that the child used to run away, but they always found him in the same spot, all alone, sitting on a rock by the sea. When they asked him what he was thinking, he said that he didn’t know.”

  M. Anselme talked for a while longer about this child with his gentle nature, who always came back without putting up any resistance.

  And yet he would leave again.

  The tide was coming in. Below us, the waves were lapping at the shore.

  “The most astonishing thing in this story is that Nan adopted the child.”

  I turned to look at him.

  “Nan has a child?”

  “As I explained. She sent him to school, first here then afterward in Cherbourg. According to Ursula, he was a very good student.”

  “But … where is he?”

  “I asked Ursula the same question, and she replied that she didn’t know.”

  With the sea rising, the wind grew colder. A damp breeze came to sweep over the coastline, from east to west. M. Anselme glanced at his watch. He adjusted his scarf and stood up.

  I followed him.

  “What happened to the child?”

  “He grew up, and one day, he left, and no one knew why. He was seen for the last time on the road beyond Beaumont, with a suitcase in his hand. No one knows where he went. He was seventeen.”

  “He left just like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he know that Nan was not his real mother?”

  “Of course he knew.”

  He rubbed his trousers, and straightened the folds of his jacket. I could not understand. Why do we always cause so much hurt to those who love us the most?

  M. Anselme bent over to wipe off the sand clinging to his shoes. When he stood up, he looked at me and said, “His name was Michel.” He said it the way you end a conversation. In a quiet tone of voice, almost playfully. Michel …

  He waited for me a few yards or so further along the path.

  “What’s the matter? You look quite strange.”

  “At the café, there was a photograph of that child you just told me about. He was at the farm.”

  M. Anselme nodded.

  “Nan’s child at Théo’s place—nothing terribly surprising about that. After all, the Refuge and the farm are not very far apart … And besides, children are always drawn to animals, and orphans probably a bit more than the others. Let’s go back now, if you don’t mind, the weather is deteriorating.”

  I walked next to him.

  “The boy left, and you say he never came back?”

  “I didn’t say it, it was Ursula. She also said that the Refuge closed a few months after the boy left. Apparently, Nan changed a great deal, from being a lively, cheerful woman, she became … the woman we know.”

  The wind was biting, now. We hurried our steps.

  All along the path, we talked about the child, inventing a thousand different fates for him. His mother had abandoned him in rags still full of blood. Had he left to go and look for her?

  When we came to the first houses, M. Anselme took me by the arm.

  “And by the way, that day when you shared your croissants with Nan, you went into the Refuge. What did you think you might find there?”

  “Nothing … There’s something about closed buildings. I like to visit the inside.”

  He cocked his head to one side.

  “Is that so …”

  I found Max on the deck of his boat. He was feeding the butterflies, pushing flowers coated in honey through the bars of the cage. The butterflies were dying one by one. It made him sad. He captured others. That way, he had always twenty or so in the cage.

  During the night the donkeys had come to wander round the yard, they had left their hoof prints outside the door. They had drunk from the buckets, eaten some hard bread and the gruel that Morgane had put out for the horse.

  Lambert was sitting in the sun, his back against the breakwater. I was not surprised to see him there. His house had still not sold. He did not seem to be in a hurry to leave. I knew you could stay like that for a long time, with your gaze on the sea, not noticing anyone. Not speaking. Not even thinking. When that had happened, the sea poured something into you that made you stronger. As if it were making you a part of it. Many people who experienced this did not leave again.

  I did not know whether Lambert was going to leave.

  I did not know whether I wanted him to stay.

  I left him there. For two weeks I had been watching three cormorant eggs: the parents took turns sitting on them. They were going to hatch, it was a matter of hours. Two days at the most. Sometimes the hatchlings were not quick enough to break their shell and they died inside. I had already seen this, on rare occasions, a ruthless law, and yet the parents seemed to remain indifferent.

  When I got there, the male was fishing in the rocks. The female was on the nest. I waited.

  I saw a few gannets fly overhead, on their way from Alderney.

  The employees from the Centre ornithologique had parked their four-wheel drive by the side of the road. I knew they would be there. They came to take samples from the nests. One of them abseiled down the cliff face. He took two nests and three eggs. You could hear the birds’ cries, the sharp clackings of their beaks echoing against the cliff.

  A lot of the eggs were dying and no one understood why. At the Centre they said there were parasites inside. They wanted to check the level of radiation. Last year’s samples had not yielded any results.

  “Hikers go through here,” I said.

  “There are fences.”

  “That doesn’t stop them.”

  I had a reputation for being taciturn. At the Centre they did not mind, they said I did a good job, and I was not being paid to make speeches.

  The director took note of the problem with the hikers in his notebook. He said he would send a guard for the summer season.

  “How’s Théo doing?”

  “Alright …”

  “Still have all his cats?”

  “Still does.”

  The wind was veering, bringing clouds. Rain was forecast for evening, but it would be here sooner. With the wind, it would be here in less than an hour.

  “Need a lift?” he said, pointing to the sky.

  Above the sea was the entire range of grays, to the darkest mass of the storm gathering out to sea.

  I thought about the eggs. The shells were cracked. The birds might be born in this rain.

  We climbed into the car. The first drops splattered against the windscreen. The director drove with one hand. He liked me. He was always patient with me. He told me they were looking for someone in Caen who could work on the data. He explained the job, his eyes on the road all the while. It was a steady job, and interesting.

  “You can’t stay here forever …”

  He looked at me.

  He was not wearing a wedding ring, but there was the trace of a white mark across the suntan.

  Lambert did not have a wedding ring, either.

  He had no trace.

  A first thunderclap broke above the sea. A red light rolled over the crest of the waves.

  “If the issue is housing, there’s a studio free in the Caen Centre.”

  “I like it better here.”

  He shrugged.

  “As you please.”

  We came to the first houses. He turned to me again.

  “A team will be coming by boat in the next few days. They’ll count the nests, from the sea. After that they’ll adjust the figures together with yours.”

  Another raindrop, and another. The win
dscreen wipers began to thump.

  “Where shall I drop you?”

  “At the bottom.”

  He did not say anything more until we reached La Griffue. He did not switch off the engine, but he took a notebook out of his pocket and wrote down his phone number. He tore out the page.

  “Call me whenever you feel like it.”

  He smiled.

  “If you change your mind about Caen …”

  “I won’t.”

  He nodded.

  “You never know …”

  Five minutes later, I pushed the door open. It was pouring.

  The walls of my room were moving, it was like the pitching movement in Venice or on the deck of an unseaworthy ship. It came and went.

  “It’s seasickness,” Raphaël said, when he saw me come back down.

  He laughed.

  He reached into his cupboard and took out an old wooden pipe that he stuffed with grass. He struck a match. The grass flared. It burned for a moment and then the flame went out. The wisps curled in the bowl.

  He pointed to the sofa. I lay down and stretched out. There were bread crumbs on the blanket. A remnant of a biscuit in its wrapping.

  “Have a draw, you’ll feel better.”

  The bowl was warm. There was a smell of burned vanilla.

  “I might be going to Caen,” I said.

  He made a gesture with his chin.

  “Smoke, we’ll talk afterward.”

  I inhaled one puff, then another. I was not used to this tobacco. It made me cough. Raphaël put his matches back in his pocket.

  “What would you do in Caen?”

  “I’d work. There’s this guy, I think he’s in love with me. Maybe I could love him …”

  He raised his eyebrows, skeptical.

  “For a day or two … and then what?”

  “After that, I don’t know.”

  The room was still pitching.

  I looked at him. His fingers were dry, whitened by the clay. The halogen lamp projected our shadows on to the wall.

  “You worked all night long … I heard you, you were walking.”

  “I can’t sleep, so I may as well work.”

  “Why can’t you sleep?”

  “Can you sleep?”

  I closed my eyes.

  He left me alone for a moment, and then he came and sat down next to me.

  “What are you thinking about?” he said.