The Breakers

by Claudie Gallay

  She looked at me.

  She nodded her head, and said that she was sure.

  “Why are you asking me that?”

  “No reason …”

  I slid the photograph into my pocket and went out. The old women watched me go by.

  Outside, on the line, sheets were flapping in the wind.

  I had to see Lambert, but when I went back up to the village, the house was closed. He was not at home.

  I went to wait for him at the café. His brother might be alive. It was Nan who had raised him, who had brought him up. How could I tell him that? From the window, I could see his gate.

  The Stork was there, tracing her letters. Lili was sweeping under the tables. The broom banging into things. Old Mother deep in her armchair, her expression somewhat agitated, lost, now that Nan was dead. Nan, the other woman, the rival.

  She knew it, but had she understood? Had Nan died accidentally, or had she let herself be carried away? Everyone said that she was used to going out in the rowing boat. I took the photograph from my pocket. And what if I were wrong? I began to have my doubts. The child was wearing the same polo shirt with little boats, but sometimes there are coincidences. And the resemblance, so disturbing.

  The Stork was pressing too hard. The letters made an imprint on the page underneath. And when she made a mistake, she rubbed it out. Too hard, as well, the rubber making a hole in the paper. She picked up the little shreds of paper, put them in her palm, and then in her pocket.

  “Why are you rubbing that out—it’s correct.”

  I ran my fingertip over the place on the paper. She frowned.

  “It’s important to learn to erase,” I said.

  I glanced into the street. I brought my chair closer. I showed her how.

  Old Mother began calling for Théo. She was shouting. Lili said that it was because of her dentures, that she did not shout as loud when she was not wearing them.

  “You only have to rub out what is wrong,” I tried to explain to the child, but she was not listening.

  Later, Max arrived, he was carrying a rabbit. He had been poaching.

  It was for Lili.

  He had been poaching for years. With the money she gave him, he bought jerry cans of petrol to fill the tank on his boat. He also bought some fishing line, and boxes of hooks. He kept all his money in a little tin box somewhere at the back of a cupboard at Lili’s place.

  “Have you seen Lambert?” I said.

  He nodded.

  “He went to Alderney.”

  “What’s he doing there?”

  He shrugged, as if to say he had not a clue.

  He went over to the Stork, and leaned over to see what she had written, her notebook with its mysterious tracings.

  He always watched her write with infinite quantities of envy.

  “I am going to dig the hole for the entombment of the body,” he said.

  He talked quietly. He did not want Old Mother to hear.

  The child went on tracing her letters.

  Max looked one last time at her notebook and went to get his money box. He sat down, alone at a table. He did not know how to write, but he could count. His tongue between his teeth, he did his calculations with a lead pencil scarcely three centimeters long, held between his fingertips.

  Lili came over to me.

  “You look really out of it today …”

  She had blood on her hands, the rabbit’s blood.

  “You should get out, go to Cherbourg …”

  She went behind the bar to rinse off the blood.

  “There are cinemas in Cherbourg, places where you can dance … I’d go and have a good time myself if I didn’t have this bloody bistro.”

  “And couldn’t Morgane keep it for you?”

  “Morgane? Leave her the bistro for an hour, perhaps, but any more than that and she’ll turn it into a brothel.”

  Lili had prepared a daube for lunch. She said, “A daube takes time, nearly the whole morning on a low flame.”

  In the room, there was a smell of carrots, meat and sauce.

  She filled a plastic box for Théo.

  “Can you take it to him?”

  She did not talk about Nan. She did not say a word. And yet Nan was there, everywhere, in every thought.

  She put the bag on the table and came to lean against the window.

  The FOR SALE sign was gone from the fence. She did not talk about that either.

  “I went to Cherbourg, and a seagull shat on me. I had to go in and buy a top at the Prisunic. It was too small, but I managed. They charged ten euros! Ten euros for a synthetic top. The saleswoman made fun of me …”

  The postman came in. He was wearing low boots that laced up. He left streaks of mud on the floor. Lili fussed. She went back behind the bar, took a wet rag and mopped up the streaks.

  M. Anselme arrived immediately afterward.

  “I was looking for you,” he said when he saw me.

  He wiped his feet for a long time on the doormat. He pulled out a chair.

  “Nan has died …”

  He said it the moment he sat down. He removed his scarf.

  “Ursula called me to let me know. She also said she had seen you there, with the dead woman, and that you seemed—how did she put it?—evaporated, that’s the word she used.”

  We talked about Nan.

  Lili went on mopping the floor. M. Anselme kept giving rapid glances her way, he was trying to attract her attention so that he could order.

  “I went by your house … Your friend, the sculptor, he doesn’t seem well at the moment. He didn’t want me to go up and knock on your door. He put some sort of huge rock in the way …”

  He turned round again, but Lili was still not paying any attention to him.

  “He told me that the presence of that rock alone should prevent me going past. He looked me up and down the way a beggar would.”

  “Beggars don’t look people up and down.”

  “Oh, but you’re very much mistaken, some of them do!”

  He looked at me.

  “Is there anything else? What’s going on?”

  And he put his hand on mine.

  “You seem to be … elsewhere. It can’t be the death of an old lady that is making you so sad?”

  I wasn’t sad, I was simply beginning to understand that Lambert’s brother had not disappeared at sea.

  Was Théo in on the secret?

  Monsieur Anselme turned round, and managed at last to catch Lili’s eye.

  He asked for a small glass of white wine, well chilled.

  Lili tossed the floor cloth near the table. The wet fabric snapped like a slap. M. Anselme leaned toward me, in a low voice, over the table, “Is it just my impression, or is the mood a bit tense here?”

  We spoke some more about Nan.

  I did not share with him what I thought I had understood. And besides, had I really understood?

  Monsieur Anselme was still waiting for his glass when Théo came through the door.

  To see him there: an unusual silence fell upon the place. Lili made him a coffee, as usual. She did not ask him anything. Not a word about Nan.

  He seemed tired. Aged.

  Lili put the cup in the saucer, and the saucer on the counter.

  Old Mother could sense the old man was there. She raised her head. When she understood he really was there, she grabbed hold of her bag. Théo paid no attention to her. He drank his coffee. The time it took for her to get up, walk all the way round the table to reach him, he had already put his cup back down.

  As a rule, he would drink his coffee, pick up his bag, and leave.

  He drank his coffee, but he did not look at the bag. He did not leave, either. His hand was on the bar. M. Anselme and I looked at each other. I saw his hand. Lili saw it, too. Old Mother moved forward with her walker, her bag squeezed against her waist, she had almost reached him. He did not turn his head. He did not say anything to her.

  He just asked Lili for a phone card
. That was what he said.

  Lili did not move, as if she had not understood, so he said it again, the same few words, the same request, articulating carefully. Lili finally opened the drawer, pulled out a card, and shoved it over to her father the same way she had shoved the cup of coffee.

  Théo laid a note down next to the cup. He took the card and put it in his pocket.

  He turned round. Old Mother was there, her hand outstretched; it was an entreaty, those old woman’s eyes trembling, her open bag slowly spilling because she was not holding it properly.

  Théo stopped. He looked at her. I did not see his expression just then, but I could read it on Old Mother’s face. Her outstretched hand fell back down. The photograph slipped from her bag, the one where you could see both of them standing side by side on the threshold, you might have thought they were happy if you did not know the story.

  Théo looked at the photo.

  Old Mother stood there without moving, her feet frozen.

  Max dug Nan’s grave the way he had for all the other dead. There were not many of the living in the village, so he did not have a lot of dead. A few in the course of a year, all the same. In the months of bitter cold, there might be several.

  Max could also go months without digging. When it rained, the earth turned to mud, it was filthy work.

  The day he dug for Nan, it was sunny. A plot of earth facing south, sheltered from the wind. He took off his jacket. The earth he dug up was dark. Almost brown.

  “The digging must be masterly, and as close as possible to her loved ones.”

  That is what he said, showing me the grave. The church bell began to toll. It would toll several times during the day, and the following day.

  I walked among the graves. I went past the Peracks’.

  Lambert had put his brother’s photograph back, in a new frame, the frame on the slab. Another bouquet of flowers. I took the photograph out of my pocket. The smile, the eyes. The two faces were identical. It was the same child.

  I watched for the return of the Alderney boat, but Lambert was not on board. It was his second night on the island.

  In my room, I went over to the sink. I looked at my face. I ran some water. There was some soap in a dish. It was a little white soap, rectangular, Ph neutral. It was not a proper soap dish, some water was stagnating at the bottom. The soap had sat in it. It was soft. When I picked it up, I kept it in my hand. Impossible to put it back.

  Morgane found me like that.

  “Is something wrong?” she said.

  I showed her the soap.

  “It looks like a drowned bird.”

  “A drowned bird?”

  She looked at my eyes, into them, the way you look through a window when it is too dark out.

  “You’ll be alright …” she said.

  She took the soap and threw it into the sink. She wiped the inside of my hand with the towel. She rummaged in my clothes.

  She finally collapsed on the bed.

  “Who is that?” she said, when she saw the photograph.

  “Just a photograph … I found it at Nan’s.”

  “You steal from the dead, do you?”

  “I didn’t steal it … It’s just that I wanted a memory of her.”

  She examined the photograph more closely.

  “Who is this kid? One of the ones she took in?”

  “One of them, yes.”

  “I don’t like kids much. There are some good ones, you’ll tell me … but it’s more in general that I don’t like them. Why did you want a memory of her?”

  “I don’t know …”

  She put the photograph back down on the bed.

  “Wasn’t there anything more … personal?”

  “Nothing, no.”

  She looked at me.

  “What’s going on with you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Nothing …”

  The first sounds of the bell began to toll, slowly and sadly, muffled in the mist.

  There were already a few people on the side of the road. When the procession went by, I followed. A procession without family. There were not many of us.

  Without too much sadness. From the house to the cemetery, only the hill to climb. We left La Roche behind. Someone near me said, I was afraid it would rain.

  The hearse took the road that went in front of Théo’s house. It was driving slowly. They could have taken a different route, through the harbor or behind La Roche, but they had chosen that route, no doubt because Nan often went that way, and also because that was the route that went by Théo’s house.

  Outside the gate, the hearse slowed. It did not stop, but at one point it was moving so slowly that you might have thought it had stopped. I saw Théo’s shadow behind the window. Immobile. A shadow like a stone.

  The hearse waited, one minute, perhaps two. He did not come out. Old Nan was leaving. She was leaving him. His Florelle.

  The hearse went on its way.

  The priest was waiting outside the church, in his cassock. He did not like the idea of that death in a rowing boat. Disapproval was written all over his face. Impatience in his gaze.

  We gathered by the gate. People came out of their houses and moved closer in mute little groups.

  Those who did speak kept their voices low. When the coffin arrived, even the most talkative people fell silent. Death, asserting itself.

  A taxi pulled up once we were all there. A man got out. People looked round. Afterward, there were other cars. Ursula arrived in turn. When she saw me, she motioned to me. She crossed the road.

  “All the people who didn’t give a damn about her when she was alive, you’d think men have no recollection and women even less!”

  She pointed with her chin toward a group of women.

  The men carried the coffin to the entrance and the priest stepped aside. He said his mass, rapid prayers. He spoke about the dead that Nan would be joining, the dead who would die for a second time because there was no one left to remember them the way she had remembered them. He spoke about sin, about the evil that is within each of us. He spoke about forgiveness, too. His voice echoed. Everyone listened, heads bowed.

  I looked round for Lili. She was not there.

  Max stayed outside during the mass, off to one side, with his shovel. His boots were too dirty.

  When we were coming back out of the church, everyone looked over toward the bistro. Tongues began to wag. Lili had been there to bury all the others, was what people were saying. Here we bury even the people we do not like.

  Death, like a truce.

  The priest moved ahead, he looked at the condition of the grave. The man who had got out of the taxi passed in front of me. I noticed him because he was different from the others, taller, more handsome too, perhaps. He was wearing a long coat.

  He went to stand slightly to one side. He spoke to no one.

  The men lowered the coffin into the pit. I heard the sound of the wood scraping against the earth. The sound of the ropes.

  They gathered up the ropes.

  Nan stayed all alone at the bottom.

  Alone in the earth, with her secret.

  People waited patiently in a line. The priest looked at his watch and hurried things along. Bending down, he picked up a handful of earth and tossed it in the hole. That was the example to follow. The line followed suit. Gazes lingered. There were a few flowers, a bouquet of lilacs, some irises in a pot. Not much. The man with the long coat threw a bit of earth, too, and went to join the others. Suddenly, a murmur ran through the crowd. A whispering, like the rustling of wings.

  And then all of a sudden, there was nothing more, silence fell. I looked round.

  Old Mother was there, by the fence, still far away, she was moving forward, heaving herself painfully, her entire body leaning on her walker. The metal feet sank into the gravel. She was dragging herself more than she was walking. Everyone was looking at her. No one did anything to help her. She eventually stopped by a cross, slightly to one side
. She looked at the hole from a distance, the dark gaping of it, the coffin you knew was at the bottom, already in the dark, in the cold, and it was for the pleasure of seeing it that she had gone to all this trouble.

  Her chest was heaving uncontrollably. You could hear her lungs wheezing.

  Someone said, She’s going to snuff it.

  Everyone waited. For her to die or to leave. The priest tucked his hands back inside his sleeves.

  Old Mother gathered her strength like an animal that has to go right to the end, her hands gripping the frame, her forehead low, she staggered forward. Everyone moved aside to let her go by. She was smiling. Not really mad, Old Mother, just full of hatred, she moved on to the edge of the hole.

  There was a murmuring when she leaned forward. An old woman in black, sweating. One female who had come to bury the other, the rival.

  Not the oldest one, but the one who was already dead.

  Old Mother leaned still further, we thought she was going to pitch forward, a woman cried, Watch out!

  Old Mother did not step back.

  The wind blew her dress against her thighs. She was standing before the grave, with that smile on her lips, a smile that showed her teeth, and suddenly she stood up straight, both hands gripping tight on her frame, trembling slightly, and she spat.

  Someone said, She spat!

  There came a murmuring, that old woman spitting on the grave of a dead woman.

  The bells rang. First the ones in Auderville, a few notes, and then immediately afterward the ones in Saint-Germain. The ones in Auderville were deeper and slower than the ones in Saint-Germain.

  I went through the door.

  Théo was not asleep. He was staring at the wall.

  The cats were dozing as if it were night. Or as if they were keeping watch over him.

  He was slumped in his chair, one arm folded on the table.

  “You need some light,” I said.

  On his head was his wool cap, rammed down to his eyes. His cheeks were hollow. Nan’s death had withered him.

  He had let the fire die. Perhaps he wanted to let himself die, too. I tossed a log into the stove. Newspaper in a ball. I hunted for matches. It took me a long time to do each of these things. The little white cat was sleeping, curled up in a hollow in the sheets. When she heard the fire crackling again, she opened her eyes.