The Breakers

by Claudie Gallay

  “I had a house, before, where I was born … A house in a real village …”

  “And what happened to your house?”

  “Nothing … Every autumn, they organize a car race on the hill. It makes a hell of a noise. They are also destroying the old walls, and building zones, and they say it’s for business …”

  Raphaël nodded.

  “Good taste is not something you can decide to have.”

  I smiled.

  He placed a finger on my lips.

  “Be quiet now.”

  He could have run his hand over my belly if he had wanted, I would not have struggled.

  “I wouldn’t have struggled, you know.”

  “Why are you saying that?”

  “No reason …”

  I was not a woman any more. Nor was I a mother. I could not remember having been a girl. Still less a sister. Unable to be a spouse. Unable to belong. To depend on a man or an affair. There were men who had loved me. I had always loved the ones who did not love me.

  Until you.

  “I love you, Raphaël …”

  “I love you too, Princess …”

  “But you and I will never sleep together?”

  He looked at me, amused.

  “Never, Princess.”

  I took another puff. He put some music on. After a while, it felt like it was snowing in my head. It was snowing and the sun was shining through the snowflakes. One sun per snowflake. I had not seen snow in a long time. I liked it.

  “From the top of the Nez de Voidries, on a clear day you can see the Channel Islands …”

  “Be quiet …”

  He took a blanket from the cupboard and came to spread it over me.

  The suns of snow went on shining behind my eyelids.

  “When the snow falls, it will be beautiful …” I heard myself murmur.

  Lili said the donkeys would stay all summer, then one day they would leave again. Without warning.

  Just like birds, then, the donkeys.

  Just like the child that Nan had loved and who had gone away.

  There was a full moon. I could not sleep. I went out. The sea was as bright as in the middle of the day. I walked along the beach.

  I was bleeding. For some time, I had not bled. For months. And now I was bleeding. Oddly, this blood flowing out of me was soothing. I went to sit on a rock and watched the blood drip on to the sand. Seeping.

  This blood coming back, it meant forgetting you, I was not sure it was something I wanted.

  Your face, your smell, everything had gone inside me, from your skin to my pores. When I sweat, it is still your sweat. When I cry. And when I desire?

  I got undressed and slipped into the water. In the darkness, the sea was black. The moon, glinting on the water. A cold water.

  Nobody knew that I was there.

  That anyone was there.

  Even the ships passing with all their lights. I swam. A wave of salt water came into my mouth. I spat it out. I could have swallowed it. And kept swallowing until I joined you. They would not have found me. Or only after a very long time, my body unrecognizable, a handful of bones. Some clothes.

  The silence at La Griffue. For several days now, I could not even get the radio.

  The female had been dead for days, and the two tomcats stayed by the hole. Théo said they slept there, and neither was willing to give up his place to the other.

  He called them. He took them food so that they would not die.

  He put the plate down between them and the female. The cats would not touch the food. They would not even sniff it. For days.

  “They are even fighting over their time of mourning.”

  “You should go and get them …”

  “It would serve no purpose.”

  “We could shut them in?” I said. “For a while … separate them. In Venice, they shut the cats in the cellars so that they’ll kill the rats.”

  Théo turned away.

  “We’re not in Venice here …”

  He walked toward the house. He went round the growling cats’ bowls. His leg was trembling. It had been like that since his fall, his body more fragile.

  “I brought you some bread, milk and ham. Some soup, too. Lili says you have to heat it up on the gas.”

  He held on to the iron railing and went up the steps. He stopped on the landing to catch his breath and look at the sky.

  Night was falling, long before it was time.

  He looked out toward the lighthouse. For a long time. I looked with him.

  “Did you put it out?” I said, and I saw his hand tighten around the railing.

  He turned away slowly. His face in the shadow.

  He pointed to the yard, the gate. “I’m not keeping you here.” He opened the door and disappeared into the house. I went in behind him, put the bag on the table.

  If I left, I would not come back.

  He had his back to me. He was checking the fire in the stove. I sat down at the table.

  “There are fewer nests over by Jobourg,” I said.

  He lifted up the cast-iron lid and dropped in a log. He stuffed the remaining space with newspaper, and struck a match. He waited for the fire to catch.

  “Fewer nests and fewer chicks in the nests … They’re going elsewhere to breed,” he said, poking at the fire with a long iron bar.

  Another team had located some cormorants in the bay at Cherbourg. They had come from La Hague and found refuge in the rubble of the forts, sheltered from the currents.

  I talked about the cormorants with him, gave him details.

  When I had finished, he turned to me.

  “How can you be sure that they are cormorants from La Hague?”

  “We’re not sure about anything … Except with the ones who’ve been ringed. But not all of them have been.”

  “It will have to be done …”

  “We’re planning to.”

  The fire was burning.

  He put the iron lid back and pushed aside the cats that had gathered round him. He filled their bowls. Then he took off his jacket, and hung it on the coat rack. He put his dressing gown on over his clothes; the wool was threadbare, and he kept it closed with a belt.

  When he walked, I could hear his soles scraping against the floor.

  “Last time, you talked to me about the fishing zones …”

  “There’s nothing very precise about that either … Cormorants fish anywhere, wherever they feel like it, depending on the wind or their inclination.”

  “Have you been able to follow them?”

  “In Jobourg it was impossible, there were too many currents, you never know where they’ll come back up. But in Écalgrain, yes.”

  Théo nodded.

  “What else?”

  “They have work for me in Caen.”

  He went to rub his hands above the stove. The room was not cold, but the air was damp. He had to breathe it, all the time.

  The bag was on the table. He had not touched it. Hardly looked at it.

  “You ought to put the ham in the fridge,” I said.

  He shrugged.

  He went over to the window.

  “Have you noticed, there is someone lurking about.”

  He stood aside to let me see. I could not see anything except the shadows of the growling cats.

  “It’s not the first time. Already yesterday and the previous evenings.”

  He sat down again at the table.

  “He thinks I can’t see him.”

  He raised his head and our eyes met. There were just those few seconds where I thought about the lighthouse that night, and he thought about it, too.

  “Théo …”

  I did not need to ask the question again. He had understood. He pressed his lips together. I think he had wanted to smile. There was a moment of hesitation, between a laugh and a wince, and finally he grunted.

  “Go away.” In a very low voice, and he repeated it.

  I got up. I pushed the chair back
.

  I went over to the door.

  I had my hand on the latch. It was freezing; or was it my skin?

  I heard his voice.

  “Sometimes at night I would wake to the heavy thud of birds crashing against the glass of the light.”

  His words, caught in that voice from the back of his throat.

  “Magnificent birds … They threw themselves blindly into the light.”

  I turned round.

  Théo was sitting down. He was looking at me.

  After a very long time he said, “You would have done it, too, you would have put out the light.”

  He said that, then pointed to the chair across from him. I came back and sat down.

  None of the cats was moving. There was an odd silence in the room. As after a loud scream. Waiting for the echo.

  Théo emptied his glass. He scratched at the table top with the point of his knife.

  “I remember the day I did it for the first time.”

  He smiled faintly.

  “I put it out for a few minutes … Afterward, I got into the habit. I did it when I was alone. The moment I lit the lamp again, more birds crashed into the glass.”

  The tip of the knife left marks in the wood. I could hear the sound of the blade sinking in.

  “I didn’t see the birds that I saved, only the ones that died …”

  He raised his eyes to look at me.

  “The storm panes were double. I could see—the bodies, the feathers, the blood—I could see all that, but there was no sound.”

  He tried to smile again.

  “It was like being in a silent film. The birds were drawn by the light, blinded. Their flight had death for an ending. They’d appear suddenly out of the night, beating their wings, looking for a space. The luckiest ones smashed against the window and didn’t know what hit them.”

  Théo fell silent. He got up to fill his glass at the sink.

  He checked the fire. I heard the ticking of the clock.

  “I remember the first bird that crashed that evening, the night of the shipwreck. It was a goose, flying with others.”

  He was not looking at me now; he was staring at the wall behind me, at a spot just above my shoulder.

  “I put the lantern out. Not for long …”

  He jerked his head, as if trying to get away from the grip the image had over him. A stubborn memory. His eyes stayed glued to the wall.

  “Time is so long, at sea …”

  He said that and wiped his hand over his face, over the new traces his confession had left.

  “Nowadays, the birds still crash into the light, but no one is there to see them any more.”

  He took a swallow of water.

  “The passes are narrow … In places, the rocks show on the surface… you have to know them. That night, the weather was not as bad as all that. How could I know there would be that sailing boat?”

  He looked over at the door as if someone were there.

  There was no one, only memories.

  “It was Captain Gweener who led the search. They found the man’s body some hours later. The woman they found the next day, the currents had brought her back, on the beach.”

  He was rolling his glass between his hands. I could see the sea in his eyes, the sailing boat, I saw everything he had seen, it was spilling out of him.

  A confession, in a hushed voice.

  “You should have told Lambert. You owed him the truth, it was his due.”

  He winced. The little white cat padded across the room with her swaying gait and went to lie on the jumper, between the feet of the stove.

  He waited for her to settle, her paws tucked beneath her.

  “I went on keeping the light for one more year. Never once did I put out the lantern again. At night, when the birds crashed, I looked at them. I never looked down. Never looked away. I forced myself to see them to the end, their bodies bursting. I felt as if I were paying. There were so many that crashed into the light that last year.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the truth?”

  He laughed.

  “Out of cowardice, no doubt.”

  “Lambert thought of coming to kill you.”

  “I waited for him for a long time. One day, a few years after the accident, he came, he spoke to me at the gate, I thought he was going to come again the following night to kill me. I stayed up very late that night.”

  “Would you have defended yourself?”

  He shook his head.

  “I had left the door open. Old Mother was upstairs, with Lili, they were asleep. I waited for him.”

  He looked at his hands for a long while, and said nothing more.

  I went past the house perhaps a dozen times. There was a light on in the kitchen. I did not dare go in, perhaps because it was nighttime. Or because of what I had to tell him. He was there, and it was so late.

  I went through the gate and looked in the window. I saw him sitting by the fireplace. Looking at the fire. He was wearing a thick jumper of light-colored wool, like a ski sweater.

  He was just looking at the fire. And I was looking at him, and I understood that I had no choice but to go in.

  I had to do it.

  I would want him to do it for me.

  I opened the door.

  He hardly looked up. The only light in the room was from the flames. I saw his hands in the glow, his face. A smile passed over his lips, and I could not have said whether it was joy or sadness, most probably a mixture of the two, but it may also have been something less definable.

  I closed the door behind me.

  It was warm in the room.

  I took off my jacket. I brought a chair, to sit next to him.

  There was a bottle of some alcohol on the floor, by his feet. He bent down, filled his glass, and handed it to me.

  I took the glass in my hand.

  He knew that I had come from there. The prowler that Théo had seen, that was him.

  I drank, a sharp swallow that turned my stomach. My eyes burning, welling with tears. I waited for it to pass. I stared at the flames. He was in no hurry, neither was I. I took another swallow. My eyes were used to it now, the alcohol did me good.

  I told him everything that Théo had told me, everything, the night, the sea, the light. I told him about the death of the birds.

  I told him about the other nights. The birds bursting out of the night, born of it.

  He took the glass from my hands. He filled it. We drank some more.

  It was a strong alcohol, I felt myself sweating. His jaw was clenched.

  I kept strictly to what Théo had told me. Nothing else.

  “The night of the wreck, he saw a flock of birds coming, migrating, a magnificent formation. They began to crash into the light, by the dozen.”

  I told him about the lighthouse lamp reflected in the birds’ eyes, and the immense pity that overcame him, because he saw them flying toward him with so much trust.

  “He said there shouldn’t have been anybody on the sea that night. And he said that he couldn’t bear to watch all those birds dying.”

  “And an entire family that dies, that’s nothing to him?”

  I did not answer. I waited for him to calm down, and I told him the story again. I do not know how long it lasted. A long time. There were moments when I was silent, I looked at the flames.

  “Ten or fifteen of them crashed into the light, that night.”

  Lambert stood up. He walked behind me, somewhere in the room.

  “Théo was on the other side of the glass, he could feel the thud. When he opened his eyes, he saw the blood.”

  I heard the sound of the glass breaking violently against the wall. I looked at him. His hand against his thigh, trembling.

  “At what point did he say to himself, I’m going to put out the lamp and never mind if there are boats?”

  “I don’t know if he thought about that.”

  I added some wood to the fire. I stayed for a moment on my knees, staring at
the flames.

  “Théo realized that something had happened when he heard the sirens. He saw the lights on the quay, and the doors wide open, and a lifeboat going out. When the lifeboat reached the place of the wreck, there was no one left on board the sailing boat. They searched the sea. It was nighttime. They had lamps, but the waves were strong.”

  “They didn’t search hard enough …”

  “Théo said that they could not have searched any more.”

  Lambert shook his head.

  I finished my glass.

  That truth was something that he had wanted to hear. There was another long pause. I had told him everything. To tell him more would have been cheating with memory, accusing or forgiving. I did not want that.

  Or to invent any memories.

  It was his story.

  “And my brother, the sea kept him. The sea took its due, as they say round here.”

  “Yes, that’s what they say.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  He walked over to the door. He went out. I thought he was going to leave but he stayed there outside, in the garden. It was cold. It was dark. He was clutching his arms with his hands, as if they were fastened there. The door had stayed open wide. Nocturnal insects gleamed in the dew. I could hear them. I followed him.

  “In the morning, they came here … I was asleep. That’s what my mother had said before she left, If we’re late, go to bed …”

  He turned to me.

  “When they died, I was asleep.”

  I could not see his face, only his eyes.

  “I woke up, I heard people talking in the kitchen, I thought it was my father. I went down. Two firemen were there, with the mayor … I looked at them. I think I understood straight away. I turned, I wanted to go back to bed, back to my blankets, not to hear what they had to tell me …”

  He looked down, and stared at the ground between his feet.

  “I was ashamed, ashamed I hadn’t gone with them. That I hadn’t died, too.”

  He looked up.

  “The day of the funeral, the entire village came. We went to throw flowers on the sea. Lili was crying. Everybody was crying. It was toward the end that I heard a bloke say that perhaps the light had been put out again.”

  He smiled at me.

  He handed me his cigarette, we smoked it and we lit another.

  “As for Paul … the sea kept him. He has no earth, no place … That is the hardest thing to accept.”