The Breakers

by Claudie Gallay

  We had to walk some more.

  Something mysterious emanated from the place, a particular aura, I felt it very strongly before I even saw the first roof.

  The monastery came into view, almost abruptly, a vast surrounding wall standing firm in the earth, with cow pastures all around, and trees, and the blue expanse of mountains, and fir trees. We stopped. The place was isolated from everything in the same way that La Hague could be isolated. But this place was sacred. Even the trees seemed to be praying. The stones by the side of the path.

  I ran my fingertips over the thick bark of a tree. The Hopi Indians say that it is enough to touch one stone on a river bed for the entire life of the river to be changed.

  An encounter may suffice.

  Lambert took my hand. Simply. He squeezed it and we went on. One step and then another. Without speaking. These mountains were carried by silence, impregnated with it, the slightest noise, the briefest word would have been an insult.

  I looked at the walls. The roofs you could glimpse through the trees. The men who lived here had withdrawn from the world, they had renounced the sight of other humans. Renounced a life with them.

  A life outside of time.

  For a God.

  We went up to the front door. A chain was hanging there, a heavy bell at the end. It was still too early to announce our presence.

  We carried on, climbing the path that went around the monastery. The air was cold, the sun was shining and the earth smelled good.

  The slate roofs shone in the sunlight. Gray walls. A figure in the distance, in what seemed to be a garden. A man bent over, carrying a spade.

  Furtive shadows. Mute men. I could sense their invisible presence. I could have been like them. After you, I could have done the same, locked myself in behind walls and never left again.

  At two o’clock we came back to the main door. It was Michel who opened to us. He was wearing a long habit, the cowl down his back. I looked at him, at his face. The men who live here cannot look like other men. They are inhabited by light. Michel seemed timeless.

  He took my hands between his own, and then Lambert’s. He told us he had two hours until Vespers. We exchanged a few words about the long road we had had to take to come this far. He explained that the longest roads were often the most necessary. To walk, to meditate. He had taken many long months to arrive here. And years after that to understand what real life was. He had touched wisdom. He had learned contemplation.

  He said, “Some day, I shall carry on as far as Compostela.”

  From above, the sun illuminated the pastures.

  Was time divided up here as it was elsewhere, into months and years? Did one year count as much for him as it did for me?

  He had no watch.

  What did two years, ten years represent for men who lived so withdrawn? Bells gave rhythm to the hours, the way tides marked time in La Hague.

  He spoke about nature, so beautiful and strong. He smiled again. A light from within lit up his face. He seemed to have no anxieties. Yet the sea that had killed his parents lived on in him. He carried it, buried, in mute recesses. Even forgotten. The sea. A trace of it. The memory of the cold, perhaps.

  Did he remember the shouts?

  The currents?

  He must carry the intense light of the lighthouse within him.

  The two brothers set off together along the path into the forest. I watched them go, small figures, one dark and the other light. They were walking side by side and talking.

  I went back to the main door. I waited for a few minutes and it opened again. Théo’s face greeted me. Behind him, the thicker shadow of a passage. That was all I was able to see of the interior of the monastery.

  The door closed again. A deep thud. The scraping of shoes over gravel.

  Théo was wearing the same clothes as on the day he had left, the same cardigan and his little old corduroy trousers, frayed by his cats’ claws.

  We moved off into the trees. Little spots of light danced at our feet. There was water running, no doubt a spring, or the overflow from a recent rainfall. A few puddles.

  Théo walked slowly, one hand curled around his cane. I gave him news of his cats. I told him about them, and then about La Hague, the cold weather that was settling in. I talked to him about his house, and some more about the cats.

  I did not tell him that the little white cat had disappeared.

  We walked as far as a wooden shed. Long tree trunks had been dragged there, waiting to be sawed into pieces, they were all marked with two lines of white paint. There were some deep tracks in the mud.

  Théo had been there almost three months. He seemed to be fine. He helped with the chores in the kitchen. He peeled the vegetables and cooked them. Always in water. With a bit of salt. Insipid-tasting, nothing inventive.

  He told me that sometimes he missed Lili’s cooking. He smiled, I could not have said whether the smile was sad, he turned his head in the direction of the mountain where the two men had disappeared.

  He was silent for a long time, his gaze slightly veiled.

  “Michel is the most solitary man in the entire monastery, but when he goes out, he is also the most talkative.”

  Théo stooped slightly, his neck heavy. His legs no longer carried him very well.

  We went to sit on a bench in the sun. Next to each other.

  “Don’t you miss the sea?”

  “Not any more … but I often think of it.”

  “You don’t get bored?”

  “Get bored? There are so many things to do here … Just looking at the sky, you never tire of it. And I have a friend, a very old blind monk. He lives behind one of those windows. We spend many hours talking together.”

  “I thought the monks were not supposed to talk?”

  He smiled.

  “Of course, they’re not supposed to, but we do anyway. Who can hear us?”

  “God?”

  “God … How much more could he punish us, he has already made us so old …”

  “He might send you to hell!”

  “Then let him.”

  There was amusement in his voice.

  He spoke again about Michel and about the deep silence that reigned within the walls.

  “Michel reads a great deal, and he writes. He receives a lot of letters you know … he’s very surprised by the way people live. He said that some day, because of the atom, the world will explode and mankind will go back to using the flint.”

  Théo raised his head. He looked at the mountains for a long time, an entire area caught in shadow, almost black, whereas the other slope, facing south, was still bathed in sunlight.

  “He is the one who sews the shrouds the monks are buried in. He does it, just like Florelle did.”

  He said her name, Florelle, a delicate memory, his eyes moist.

  Tears that took him back to La Hague, to the breakers.

  I let long moments go by. Did Michel feel resentful toward Théo? Had they talked about that?

  When I put the question to him, Théo shook his head.

  “Michel does not know how to reproach. It’s not how he looks at things. It’s not his way.”

  He spoke again at length about his life, from now on, between those walls, the walls of the monastery and those of the mountain.

  The walls that they call the cloister.

  “Do you know that there are very specific laws governing the life of this mountain?”

  He talked about the animals that lived there in the shelter of the trees, countless animals, roe deer, lynxes, a few wolves.

  He talked about the men, solitary souls in quest of the absolute, who offered up their own silence to the silence of the mountain.

  Théo told me that he missed the sunsets, that here, because of the mountains, there were no sunsets.

  I gave him news of Lili.

  I told him that Old Mother was well.

  He listened to me.

  And then he was overcome by fatigue. The chill, too. The b
ench was in the shade now. A shiver. He wanted to go back. The infinite slowness of his steps. I went with him up to the door.

  I looked at him.

  He was one of those men who die without leaving a trace.

  I promised him I would come back, and he said, “I know you will come back.”

  A moment later the bells of the monastery began to ring, one after the other, and then all together. Time was measured here in masses and prayers. The whole week looked ahead to Sunday. And all the weeks in turn looked ahead to a few precise dates, depending on the season; it could be Easter, or Christmas.

  And their very lives looked ahead to death, the last appointment.

  I thought of you.

  The bells stopped, but they continued to echo for a long time, an echo held prisoner between the walls of the mountain.

  The sky, laid bare.

  Silence.

  The two brothers came back. They had walked for a long time. I watched as they drew closer, one beside the other. Michel slightly taller. His habit dragging in the grass.

  It had just gone four in the afternoon, time for Vespers. Michel opened the door. Two monks were hurrying along a lane, the sound of their sandals on the gravel. I could see a shadow behind one of the windows.

  Michel did not ask us if we would be coming back. No doubt, he already knew that we would.

  A moment later, we heard a key turning on the other side of the door, a rustling of cloth, and then nothing more.

  Silence once again fell over Le Désert, engulfing it in its secrets, engulfing the solitude of the men who lived there.

  Lambert took my hand. He had a big, warm, trusting hand. He murmured something infinitely tender into my ear, and together we went back into the world.