The Breakers

by Claudie Gallay

  The noon Angelus is ringing. The same bell, three chimes, repeated three times, then another bell rings twelve times, repeated twice. A dog is barking. It is noon, but the sun is low on the horizon; from behind my back, it casts my shadow on the path.

  When I left, Lambert was still at the table. Bent over the letters.

  I went back to La Griffue. In the afternoon, I had to go to Caen to sign my contract. Raphaël lent me his car.

  Since Morgane had left, Max was sleeping in the boat with the rat. At nightfall, he would come to La Griffue to read a few columns in his dictionary. Raphaël had told him he could go into the kitchen if he liked, but he preferred to keep to his old habits from before.

  The before, when there was Morgane.

  To observe what she had forbidden, too.

  “I am in search of thoughts,” he confessed, in the end.

  He would read in the corridor, his knees tucked up under him. He turned the pages. From time to time he lifted his head, stared at the door, the white handle. The least little thing would make him jump. That little thing might be the Stork, or it might be the wind, branches against the roof. Sometimes, he looked for Morgane. He would forget that she had gone.

  And then he would remember, and his eyes suddenly became very white. There were times when he still went all the way to the end of the breakwater, to hide his sorrow there.

  He would leave on the tide to go fishing. Either in the evening or the morning, and on a few rare occasions I saw him leave at night. He did not go very far.

  He was learning the patience of sailors.

  He fished with a line while he waited for the porbeagle to bite. Whatever he caught, he sold. With the money, he bought fuel, and went back out to sea.

  III

  I signed the contract, a two-year commitment, I would have to come to the Centre once a week. Every Thursday. My expenses would be paid. I also agreed to give a number of lectures at the University of Cherbourg. Starting in the new academic year.

  With the contract, I could keep the flat. I would have to buy a car.

  I spent one night in Caen. In the evening, we went to eat all together in a restaurant in town. We laughed, we talked. They gave me books to help me prepare my classes. I slept, a room that they had reserved for me in a little hotel.

  I came back in the morning.

  I found a paper on my table, Come and see me, as soon as you can.

  It was from Théo.

  I do not know who had dropped the paper off, perhaps it was Max. I left my bag in the entrance and went out. The weather was mild, with a damp wind blowing in from the open sea, bringing the spray with it. I spread my arms, my hands. I was happy to be breathing the wind of La Hague again.

  I found Théo at his table, holding tight to the little white cat. I immediately felt that something had changed. The way he looked at me when he raised his head. And then something else.

  “I was waiting for you.”

  He was wearing his green woolen cardigan, the one he always wore when he had to go out. The cardigan had eight mother-of-pearl buttons. The buttons were each shaped like an anchor. One of them was broken.

  I was not used to seeing him dressed like this so early in the morning.

  “I was in Caen,” I said.

  He nodded.

  His dressing gown was on the bed, folded. The cats were dozing around it. One of them, who had come in with me, jumped up on a chair and began to wash, slow, meticulous. Everything was calm, almost like usual.

  And yet.

  I turned my head and saw the suitcase by the wall. Théo followed my gaze.

  “We still have a bit of time …”

  That is what he said.

  He got up and made some coffee.

  “Where are you going?” I said.

  He slid the palm of his hand along the table.

  “I’m going to go to be with him …”

  He gently stroked the little cat’s head as she slept. He served the coffee.

  His looked at me, calmly.

  “I’m going to live in a cell a few meters square, and from my window I’ll see the mountain.”

  He drank his coffee, standing with his back against the sink.

  “I’ve never seen the mountains … Apparently, snow is something else …”

  He put his bowl down, quietly.

  “Michel is waiting for me. When he came here, we talked about my leaving.”

  Morgane had left, too, but Morgane was young, and Théo was so old.

  I looked at his suitcase again.

  “You’re leaving just like that, so suddenly!”

  “I’ll write to you, and you’ll reply, and then you’ll come to see us too, Grenoble, after all, it’s not that far …”

  Would he have left had Nan not died? And had Nan died so that he could leave, at last? In her confusion, had she understood that he would go to join Michel once she was no longer there? That it was something he needed, the way she had needed to go to her dead?

  Lambert’s presence had awoken the horde of ghosts. Caused them to rise and move forward in a great mass, and Nan had followed them.

  Théo was looking at me as if he understood the meaning of my silence.

  “No doubt in the sea she saw … or thought she saw … She was dazzled in that way, sometimes. I wish I could have loved her more.”

  Always, that regret, that one did not love enough. That one stayed on the edge. Lambert would have liked to weep even more.

  I had missed you, I had known that feeling. Now I no longer did. I wish I could have known it forever. I missed missing you, but what I was missing was no longer you.

  Théo slowly pushed his chair against the table. He did that, and it was the last time.

  The bowls stayed on the table. The coffee, almost not drunk at all.

  “I’ll carry on a bit, and then, there will be my last footsteps.”

  That was what he said, and he leaned against the edge of the table, and looked at the cats, all of them, one after the other, giving time to each of them. An infinitely long gaze.

  With his toe he pushed the rags against the wall and put the little cat down on the bed. He stayed like that for a moment, leaning over, his hands still underneath her belly, then he leaned still further down, and put his lips against the animal’s forehead. The cat curled up in a ball and I heard her purring.

  She closed her eyes.

  Théo removed his hands.

  He opened one of the drawers and took out a brown envelope. He told me it was money to feed the cats. That there was enough for a while.

  “I thought I would ask Max, but now Max has his boat …”

  He put the envelope on the table.

  “I’ll send a transfer every month, you need only ask the postman, he’s been informed.”

  He did up the buttons of his cardigan, one after the other.

  “I’ll feel better like this … One of them might need the vet. And then the heat must be left on during the coldest months, and the window in the corridor has to stay open so that they can go in and out …”

  He readjusted his collar.

  “My pension will be enough, I don’t need anything where I’m going.”

  He removed his slippers and put on his good shoes. I did not say anything, all that time. I could not say a single word.

  “The notaire has been informed. When I die, the house will go to Lili.”

  I heard the clicking of the clock as the hands stuck, when the hour hand, as it went over the number ten, got stuck somewhere in the hidden cogs of the mechanism. We fell silent. In the time it took for the hand to come unstuck, two minutes were lost, out of time.

  A cracking of time that got away from us, from him and from me.

  Théo ran his fingers over the smooth edge of the table, a spot so well-worn by the rubbing of his sleeves that it was as if it had been polished. Here and there a few marks, left by his knife.

  He put his slippers neatly side by side at the entrance.
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  He wound the clock.

  “From time to time, if you remember … just a few turns.”

  He put the clock back in its place.

  “You see, I think I’ll be happy, there, to know that this clock is still marking time. And then my cats are used to hearing the noise. It’s a bit like a heartbeat, isn’t it?”

  He let his gaze wander over at the furniture, the sink, the papers that covered the desk. The knife, the bread. He did not put anything away.

  He said, “It’s better like this, for the cats …”

  He said, “Michel said that in winter the monastery is surrounded by snow and that you can see wolves go by.”

  He put on his heavy jacket.

  “Do you believe in God?” I said.

  “In God, I don’t know, but I believe in the goodness of certain individuals.”

  I looked at him.

  Had he told Lili that he was leaving? There were no words for her on the table. No letter.

  Nothing for Old Mother.

  “I’m going to be fine where I’m going.”

  “But you won’t see the sea any more.”

  “Neither the sea, nor the lighthouse.”

  He turned away from me to look out of the window one more time, at his view outside, and then at this room where he had lived.

  “Lili will be angry with me all her life for having loved a woman who was not her mother … and a son who is not mine.”

  He handed me a piece of paper, the address of the monastery.

  He looked out the window again.

  “I would have liked to be able to leave the way he did, on foot, taking the path, having all that time to remember, but my legs will no longer carry me. I’ve chosen a quicker and more comfortable means of transport.”

  I turned. There was a taxi by the gate. The driver was leaning against the car door, waiting.

  “He’s going to take me there.”

  “If I hadn’t come, you would have gone, and I would have found the door locked.”

  Théo put his hand on my arm, gently.

  “I wouldn’t have left. I would have waited for you.”

  He went to the door.

  “I’ve heard it’s a lovely place for walking, there, especially at this time of year.”

  He looked one last time at his cats.

  “Perhaps there will be one there, where I’m going … They always have cats in monasteries, don’t they?”

  He took my arm, just as he had done a moment earlier.

  “Don’t be sad …”

  There was no sorrow in his voice, no regret, only the serenity of a man who has made his choice and who is leaving.

  He picked up his case. The little white cat was sleeping. Théo looked at her one last time.

  “You must pay special attention to her. I have loved her very much, the other cats know it, they’ll want to take their revenge, they’ll surely try to stop her getting near the food bowl.”

  “I promise …”

  He turned away.

  “I’ll be at the monastery some time tonight.”

  He opened the door and went out.

  I stayed on for a moment, sitting at the table, and then afterward, outside, on the steps because the sun had come out and it was warm.

  At noon, I ate an apple that I found in a crate.

  I made some coffee.

  I talked to the cats.

  In the evening, Max brought back his first porbeagle. A creature that weighed eighty kilos, that he had struck out on the open sea and dragged in behind his boat. I had seen him coming from a long way away, with the seagulls above him, tracking the blood.

  He gutted his shark in the waters of the harbor. He did it with a knife and his hands.

  His seagull was there, perched on the cabin. It never left the boat. Max was afraid for it. That the other seagulls might kill it because it was being fed by a man.

  He tore out the porgy’s teeth. He gave me one. A few millimeters of light-colored ivory, still attached to a bit of bone.

  I found Lambert behind his house. He had lit a bonfire, where he was throwing branches, brambles, everything he had cut and that he had to burn. With a pitchfork he pushed the branches into the flames. Sparks flew out from the fire, drifting lightly up into the night.

  In places, it was as if the shadow of the pasture was burning.

  For a moment I looked at him, before he saw me. And then I went up to him.

  “Théo has gone away,” I said, as if I had to give an excuse for being there.

  “I know.”

  With a gesture of his chin, he pointed to the road.

  “He went past in a taxi, he stopped outside the bistro. He stayed for a moment, sitting in the back.”

  “Lili didn’t come out?”

  “No, but she saw him from behind the curtain, I’m sure she was there.”

  Tongues of fire leapt out, long red and gold flames crackling in the shadow. The fire was damp. The smoke gave off an acrid smell.

  He planted the pitchfork in the earth and lit a cigarette. With his thumb he rubbed the hollow of the deep wrinkle that ran across his face.

  “Do you know where he’s going?”

  “Yes, I know …”

  He looked at me. He had read the letters. He understood. He stayed silent for a moment, staring at the ground between his feet, and then he picked up the pitchfork. He tossed branches on to the flames.

  The fire burned. The hot flames reddened our faces. Our hands.

  With the next rain, the ashes would be absorbed and they would mingle with the earth and water.

  He went round the fire to gather in its center everything that could still burn. The last brambles. A few old boards. The FOR SALE sign that had hung from the fence round the house.

  He left his pitchfork planted in the earth.

  “I have some Bordeaux, a Cantemerle ’95, how about it?”

  I liked drinking with him.

  “Is that yours? That top?” he said, pointing to my shirt.

  “It was Morgane’s …”

  This made him laugh.

  We talked about wine, all the wines that existed, and the happiness one could have drinking them. We emptied our glasses and filled them again. I do not know what we were drinking to, whether it was happiness or despair, no doubt an intimate mixture of the two.

  At one point, he looked at me.

  “And what if it wasn’t true? If we’d been mistaken? If Théo had lied to us?”

  He had known his share of coincidences, foolish mistakes, carelessness. He gave me examples from investigations, leads he had followed with his eyes closed, straight into a brick wall.

  We drank some more. He was silent. Then he spoke again, and finally picked up his glass.

  “But the clothing, hmm … the clothing, that’s proof, after all, isn’t it?”

  He no longer knew.

  The letters were on the table, in the bag. A big yellow bumblebee lay on its back, its legs in the air. It had come to die there, a long time ago, no doubt. I took it in my hand. It was so dry, I hardly touched it and it disintegrated. I closed my fingers one by one. I did not know what to do with the dust that was all that was left.

  “The last time he saw me, he was two years old … you don’t remember, at the age of two. Whereas I remember him well. How long does it take to go there?”

  “Paris, Lyon … and Grenoble. Ten hours?”

  He filled our glasses.

  “Ten hours, that’s all right. I’ll leave tomorrow.”

  We drank and went back over the story, from the beginning, the photographs, the toys. The dinghy his brother had been tied to.

  He took my hand, and opened my fingers.

  “Why are you keeping this?”

  He blew on the dust.

  We had already drunk too much. For him, it was to get used to the idea that he had found his brother.

  As for me …

  I do not know.

  I put my hand in my pocket.
Beneath the bits of string, I felt some shells, and the shark’s tooth. Down at the bottom, the smooth contact of the two bones of truth.

  I pulled them out.

  I showed them to him.

  He held out his hand.

  His palm was wide, deep. I could have buried my face in it.

  I put the bones into his palm.

  He tossed the bones in the air and made a wish, his eyes closed. The bones landed, both of them in the right direction.

  He smiled.

  He got up.

  He came over to me.

  “I’m going away, two, three days.”

  My forehead was against his chest, a few inches away. The wool of his jumper had absorbed the smell of the fire.

  I slept there, in one of the armchairs, by the fireplace.

  When I woke up, he was gone. I found his jumper next to me. I snuggled my head in it.

  I slept some more.

  I woke up a second time, it was dark outside. The bones of truth were on the table, next to his packet of cigarettes. The glasses. The letters.

  I got the fire going again.

  I reread some of the letters.

  In the morning I went to see the cats. I filled their bowls. I made sure the window was still open and I wedged it with a stone so that the wind would not blow it shut.

  The little white cat was not there. I looked for her everywhere, in the courtyard, in the hayloft. I called her.

  I sat down on the steps.

  I thought about you. I was losing you. Or you were fading. Or was it me? Not so long ago, I could put my hand on your shoulder. Your warmth. Closing my eyes, without an effort, I could still snuggle up against you.

  Time was doing its dirty work. Insidiously. Already, I no longer cried.

  I heard the sound of Lili’s steps in the room above. The door of a cupboard groaned. The creaking of the floor.

  Old Mother was back in her place at the table. She was moving a spoon around in a soup made with alphabet noodles. She was staring at the swirl of letters. She was chewing, swallowing indifferently.

  She seemed even older now that Nan had died.

  Lambert had been gone for two days. The windows, the house, the closed shutter, the road sign on the other side of the street.