The Breakers

by Claudie Gallay

  He turned away, gruffly, as if he wanted to involve the heavens as his witness.

  “For forty years I’ve had it in for the sea, and for that crazy old man! Forty years!”

  He went into the house. He came back out with his jacket. The car keys in his hand.

  “I want to hear it from him!”

  He left.

  I went back into the house, I tossed logs on the fire, I pulled over an armchair, stretched out my legs, and waited for him to come back.

  I woke up, the fire had gone out. It was dark. Lambert had still not returned. I had no idea what time it could be, midnight, or a bit later, no doubt. I made some coffee, I waited some more, then I went back down to La Griffue.

  From my room, I looked out of the window, toward land. The hill, in the night. The sky was black.

  There was no light in Théo’s house.

  The next morning, I woke up much later than usual. I had had trouble falling asleep. I could see the waves, the sea, it was pounding into my eyes and then I wondered what Lambert had done at Théo’s place. Several times I had thought of getting out of bed to go and see. Eventually I had dozed off, in the early morning. A dreamless sleep.

  In the morning, my face in the mirror, a battered expression.

  I drank coffee, very hot and strong.

  Théo was waiting for me at his gate. He did not talk to me about Lambert. Not a word about his visit. He did not talk to me about the birds or the cliffs.

  I thought that Lambert had not gone in. That he had stayed on the road, in the car, looking at Théo’s shadow in the kitchen. That he had stayed there until the light went out. He must have left after that.

  That is what I thought and I looked at Théo.

  Something was different from usual. His eyes were avoiding me.

  “I’ve heard Florelle is not doing too well just now.”

  That is what he said, those exact words.

  “I’ve heard she’s taken to running along the shore again, shouting out her speeches.”

  His hands were trembling.

  “I’d like to see her. Could you tell her that, on your way by, that I want to see her?”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  He did not say anything else.

  “Everything alright, Théo?” I said.

  He gave me a strange smile. He turned away without answering, went up the front steps and disappeared inside the house.

  Nan was sitting on a chair by the window, embroidering the dark cloth of a shroud. All I had to do was open the door.

  Raphaël had sculpted her like that, the seamstress of the dead, a figure bent over her work, with her madwoman’s locks.

  This was the first time I had come into her house. The room where she lived adjoined the large deserted rooms in the Refuge. I stayed by the door.

  “Nan?”

  She looked up from her work. In her lap she had a large pair of scissors, and a ball of cloth stuck with a multitude of pins with colored heads.

  “It’s Théo. He wants to see you,” I said.

  She gave a sort of low growl, like that of an animal that has been disturbed, and she went on working. I went closer. The needle pierced the cloth, I heard the sound of the thread pulling and the old woman’s tranquil breathing. The rustling of the shroud when she lifted the length of cloth over her thighs.

  She was using very fine, close stitches. There was a tin box on the windowsill, containing colored spools. The cloth of the shroud shone in the light.

  Nan was tracing the letters of the name.

  “It’s mine, my death cloak,” she said, pointing to the shroud.

  Embroidered on the gray cloth was her name, Florelle.

  She had not embroidered Nan.

  Nan was the name the living gave her.

  The cloth was cold.

  “Blue-gray, the color of the sea on days when the sea takes the living.”

  She looked deep into my eyes, her gaze uncomfortable, going through me without seeing me.

  “What does he want, Théo?”

  “I don’t know … To see you.”

  I stepped back.

  A painting was hanging above the fireplace. In tones of blue and green, too naïve, depicting the Refuge in summer. On the shelf there was a large clock, and photographs of children, dozens of them. Some were simply balanced against the wall. Some were bigger than others, and there were still others behind, that you could not see.

  “Are these all children of the Refuge?”

  She did not answer. The photographs were grimy, covered in fingerprints and traces of soot.

  “Are you the one who took them?”

  “I am.”

  She gathered up the shroud and put it on the back of the chair. She got up and went over to the photographs.

  “Some of them still write to me, for my birthday, at Christmas … The ones who went bad don’t write to me.”

  She took one photograph in her hands, that of a child alone, standing in the courtyard, his arms held out from his body. He was wearing baggy shorts.

  “This one was the son of some fairground folk. His father had a bear, he would walk it through the villages, just like that, at the end of a rope. They put their caravan in a field above Jobourg. They stayed for a few days. They left and they forgot the lad. When they realized, it was too late, they were far away. They picked him up again the following year.”

  She sorted through the other photographs.

  “I remember every face …”

  She showed me another photograph, with a scalloped edge.

  “This one stayed six years with us. We tried to find him a home, no one wanted him! Such an angelic face, though … A terror inside. Ursula and I said, finally, he’ll end up killing someone! It took him fifteen years, but he did.”

  She picked up another photograph, a little girl dangling a teddy bear by its leg. Her forehead low, a timid upward gaze.

  “She was a miserable little girl … Always wet, with rain, tears, piss… And filthy to boot! She infested the whole dormitory with her lice, even though we shaved her.”

  She put the photograph back in its place.

  “A hopeless case, that child …”

  She turned her head and looked at me, an even, very open gaze.

  “Why doesn’t Théo come here?”

  “The doctor doesn’t want him to go out.”

  She gave an odd laugh.

  “Since when does Théo listen to doctors?”

  She turned away from the photographs.

  There was a large wardrobe against the wall. Two doors in walnut.

  She turned the key, opened one side.

  “I sewed the names of all those children on my dresses.”

  She showed me. In the wardrobe, on hangers, there must have been fifty or more heavy black dresses, all the same. These were the dresses she wore to brave the storms. She ran her hand over them. She took one dress out and carried it over to the table, to the light.

  She took my hand, I felt the thickness of the cloth, the raised bump of the thread, the letters traced in gray against the black background of the dress.

  Names. Words.

  Her eyes were a few inches from the letters. There were sentences. The cloth smelled musty. She took out other dresses.

  “I wrote the whole story.”

  I do not know what story she was talking about. Was it her love for Théo, or the story of these children? I had counted more than fifty photographs, and some were hidden behind others, and some were so small you could hardly see them. And on some of the photographs there were several children.

  “And that child you loved so much …”

  She frowned.

  “Michel?”

  “Michel, yes …”

  She smiled and looked through her dresses. Her gestures feverish. She showed me the writing of the thread in the cloth, Today, Michel turned eight. Other things were written. She read them. Michel had fever all night long. We had to send for the doctor. There
were things on other dresses, Michel started at the lycée, the words sewn in large irregular stitches, Two years now Michel has been gone.

  Nan raised her head.

  “Has Michel come back?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  With an abrupt gesture, she picked up the dresses and shoved them into the wardrobe. She pushed them in, without hanging them up, and she closed the door. She came back to the photographs. She searched through them. Her hands were agitated, her face nervous. Some of the prints fell on the floor. As they fell, the glass from a frame broke. She finally found what she was looking for, a photograph of a child, and she held it against her chest, her hands crossed over it.

  “Michel …”

  She repeated his name and began to laugh.

  “The sea gave him to me!” is what she said.

  The photograph was partly hidden by her hands. Only the lower half was visible. The child’s legs, his feet in a pair of lace-up boots, and next to them a little wooden train that you could tell he was holding by a string.

  Nan swayed back and forth with the photograph, rocking. She went on laughing. I tried to talk to her, but she did not hear me. I picked up the photographs that had fallen. The pieces of glass from the frame. I looked for a rubbish bin to throw the shards away. I could not find one. I kept the glass in my hand and put the frame back where it belonged.

  “I’m going to go now …” I said.

  The frame without its glass. It was a medallion. I looked at the photograph, the little polo shirt with the boats … The child’s smile. I had seen that face somewhere. It took me a while. The face, the polo shirt, that angelic smile …

  The medallion was the one that Lambert had put on the grave. The one that had disappeared. Lambert assumed that Max had taken it.

  What was that picture doing here?

  Nan still held her hands crossed over her heart, swaying with the photograph.

  She had certainly stolen the toys. Why steal the photograph of a child, when she had so many already?

  She went over to the window.

  From the back, I saw her heavy plait. I imagined her hands, folded. She was humming as if she were alone.

  “You won’t forget to go and see Théo?”

  She did not reply.

  I looked at her one more time before going out. I slipped the medallion into my pocket, and closed the door behind me.

  The donkeys had gathered further down, in the little street near the wash-house. They were eating what the children had left for them outside the door.

  They say here that if you disturb a donkey you will die of solitude.

  I went along the footpath by the sea. With the shards in my hand. The photograph in my pocket. I knew this path by heart. I walked over slabs of stone, occasionally treacherous, and slippery soil, and the soft springy carpet of moss. I had the sea in my eyes. The dazzling light. I sat on a rock. I took the photograph from my pocket. The child had his eyes wide open.

  By stealing this photograph, had Nan wanted to add yet another face to her long collection? To take another child into a house that no longer took children in, as if the story of the Refuge should continue? Was that it?

  I slipped the photograph into my pocket, without really knowing whether I should give it to Lambert, or put it back on the grave and say nothing.

  I took the footpath as far as the beach at Écalgrain. A snake had come to die between two rocks. A long column of red ants was patiently gutting it.

  An egret plunged, breaking the water. It surfaced a moment later with a little silvery fish in its beak.

  Morgane was on the beach with a boy. They were walking together, their arms round each other. They stumbled into each other, from holding so close.

  Morgane was wearing her pink woolen jumper. I do not know who the boy was. I had never seen him before. They kissed.

  I looked at them through my binoculars. A kiss right on the mouth, unrestrained, and already their hands were searching, eager, asking for more. They were standing, facing the sea. They fell on to their knees. They went on kissing. Hardly hidden.

  Max was there too, concealed in the shadow. He was there, as if it were impossible for him to be anywhere else. He was speaking, words coming out of him.

  “Where Morgane goes, I go.”

  He was hardly moving his lips. He scratched his cheeks with his fingernails. An unpleasant grating.

  “The insides of her thighs, it’s like velvety, it’s like snow, when the snow has just fallen.”

  He was taking great strides toward the path, I thought he was leaving.

  He went back.

  “Morgane smells like chalk. When she washes, the water slides down her back, it makes traces of sunlight, like snail drool across the back of the rocks.”

  He spoke hurriedly, as if to get rid of his words. Then he too was on his knees, digging in the red earth, moist soil that he scratched up with his long fingers. He rubbed his lips with the earth. He was moaning.

  I would have liked to do what he was doing, to be capable of it. I squeezed my hands, and I felt the shards of glass in my palm.

  “You have to get up …”

  My hands were bleeding.

  His eyes.

  “One day, I will tear the men away from Morgane’s belly … Morgane will be mine. One day … It won’t take long.”

  He got up. He stepped back. He did not understand.

  “Some day, when she sees, she’ll have no other choice …”

  I threw my shards of glass into the hole he had dug.

  “You have to leave,” I said.

  I touched his hand.

  “It’s weather for going to bars …”

  He looked at me and looked at the sky. His lip hanging.

  “It’s weather for nothing,” he said.

  He looked again over toward the rocks, where Morgane had disappeared.

  “Come on now, Max, let’s get going.”

  He was right, it was no weather for going to bars. It was weather for nothing. I left him by his boat and I went back up to the village. Lambert was not at home. The house was closed, shuttered.

  Had he gone to Théo’s place?

  The FOR SALE sign was still hanging from the fence.

  The sky was white, with darker streaks above the sea. Streaks that were becoming blacker and blacker. It would end up being weather for rain.

  The next day, Max set all his butterflies free. All the butterflies he had been keeping for Morgane.

  He went to the top of the field overlooking the sea. He opened the cage. He let the butterflies go.

  The next day, I was supposed to meet the people from the Centre up on the cliffs. When I got there, they had already started removing egg samples. They had taken several, from various nests, and put decoys in their place. I was there to record the birds’ behavior, and keep track of their movements with the stopwatch. The birds were all screaming, the ones they had taken the eggs from, and the others. Below us the sea was rising, heavy rollers of white spume. The gulls flew low, skimming the cliff. It filled them with rage to have human hands on their nests. Two cormorants that they had taken an egg from flew away. I clocked sixteen minutes before the first one came back. He went to his place. The egg had been replaced by a decoy. He did not realize. I clocked nine more minutes before he sat on the egg again.

  The second bird came back three minutes after the first.

  I filled in my charts. The wind was blowing. I had special clips to hold the paper.

  Twenty-five minutes later another bird arrived. Rage in his eyes. His beak open. He began to walk on his nest, on the edges and then in the middle, he ransacked everything. The eggs that were still in the nest fell out on to the beach.

  Only afterward did the bird calm down, settling on a nearby rock to preen his feathers.

  The men from the Centre stayed a little longer. I waited for calm to return over the cliff.

  An albino sparrow came and landed near me. I gave him a few biscuit cr
umbs. It was the first albino I had seen. I should have drawn it. I didn’t feel like it.

  Lambert had still not come back. The house had been shut up for several days now. I went past it in the morning, and also on my way back from the cliffs.

  Morgane did not know where he was. Nor did M. Anselme. Even Lili didn’t know anything. When I asked her, she shrugged.

  I decided to go and see Théo.

  I took the long way round on my way back down to La Griffue.

  He was reading his newspaper. When I went in, he did not get up, but he jabbed his finger at an article.

  That night, a wild dog had attacked one of the goats … It had dragged it to a customs sentry box. The coastguard had found the animal by the side of the path, its head sticking out of the sentry box.

  Théo slammed his hand on to the newspaper.

  “Bloody dog!”

  I took off my jacket.

  The room was small, the stove was going full blast; it was always too warm in there.

  Théo talked some more about the goat and all the other animals that had been devoured on the moor. It was so that he would not have to talk about Lambert. The visit Lambert must have paid him. I looked round, as if I might find a trace of his passage. Théo went on talking. I am sure he was thinking about Lambert, too.

  At one point he folded the newspaper, his hands crossed on it. His head down.

  “Lambert came to see you the other night, didn’t he.”

  He nodded.

  “What happened?”

  “What do you want to have happened? He wanted me to talk about that night, I told him what I told you, nothing more.”

  Théo grumbled a few words between his teeth. He refolded the newspaper in half and then in quarters, smoothing the folds.

  “He came, we talked, he went away.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “How am I supposed to know? I asked you to go by Florelle’s place: did you?”

  I hesitated before answering.

  “I told her that you wanted to see her but I don’t know if she’s going to come.”

  “How was she?”

  “When I got there, she was sewing.”

  “And when you left?”

  I looked at Théo.

  “She was holding a photograph against her chest, cradling it. It was a photograph of Michel.”