by Lewis Desoto
“Thanks. I’m going to be at the chapel most days.”
At the end of the path, where it curved into the trees, I glanced back. She was standing in her doorway, staring after me, but I was too far away to read her expression.
CHAPTER 14
“HIS NAME IS TOBIAS.”
“Who? You mean him?” I pointed with my brush at the painting.
Père Caron and I were standing in front of “Love and the Pilgrim” examining the newly cleaned section. I had concentrated my efforts so far on the two faces and the two hands reaching for each other.
He shook his head. “The name of the boy is Tobias. The one you have been searching for.”
“You know who he is?”
“I have known him all his life. Tobias is an island boy, who has lived here since he was born.”
Tobias. It was an unusual name. I only knew it from that exquisite little painting by Elsheimer, Tobias and the Angel. I didn’t know the subject, just that it was from the Bible. Something about an angel restoring someone’s sight.
Père Caron’s expression became stern. “He is not your son. Not reincarnated or related or anything else.”
I wondered how he knew so much about my quest to find the boy. “How did you know?”
“The woman who is living in the cottage, La Maison du Paradis, came to see me the other day. Lorca Daubigny. She told me your story.” His voice softened. “I know of your loss.”
I put down the brush I was holding. “You’ve been discussing me?” I wasn’t sure I liked that.
“Leo, I had a feeling that first day about why you were on the cliff. I didn’t know anything about you, but now it makes sense. You must not blame yourself for what happened. God forgives us. I’m sure your wife and son would too. They would have wanted you to go on with your life.” He smiled kindly. “Perhaps God will show you the way.”
Not God, I thought. The only God I had ever known was the crucified figure that hung behind the altar in the chapel at the Guild. The Brothers had taught us the prayers and the hymns and told us the stories of signs and wonders. Sunday after Sunday I had stared up at the face, wanting that dead man to come alive, to prove his power. But he had been powerless, to help himself or to help me. I don’t remember exactly when I had stopped praying. Perhaps when I realized that prayers in the chapel did as much good as the tears that the other boys shed in the dormitory at night.
Maybe the priest found solace in his own prayers, but the only hope I held was for moments of mercy. Never absolution.
“Would you like to meet him?”
“The boy?”
“Yes. Tobias. I think you should meet him. You obviously want to.”
I hesitated. I had been obsessed with finding him, but now, did I really want to see what lay behind the mists? Did I want mundane reality to replace the illusion I had created?
As if divining my thoughts, Père Caron said, “Best to clear up any misconceptions, n’est-ce pas?”
“Of course. Yes, I would like to meet him.”
“I could have told you earlier, I suppose, but I sensed something unresolved in your questions. Your confusion caused me some concern.”
“He reminded me so much of my own son. But you needn’t worry, I’m not under any sort of delusion.”
“In that case, we can go now.”
“Now?”
“Unless you prefer to carry on working. We can make it another time.”
“No, no. Now is fine. Just let me tidy up.”
While I wiped my brushes clean and capped the jars of turpentine and vinegar, Père Caron waited at the door, rolling himself a cigarette. He was wearing his habitual suit of dark blue linen and the ubiquitous beret. Glancing over at his stocky form, I thought that in any another situation he would be taken for a workman. In fact, there was little to distinguish him from the fishermen of the island. A man of the earth, I thought with a measure of envy, a man of the people. And he has his God to comfort him. He belongs. He has a place.
We headed inland, following a path that was marked LES HAUTS-VENTS, which I translated as the “windy heights.” There was no wind though, sheltered as we were by the thick pines. I had brought a jacket, but I carried it slung over my shoulder in the warmth. Today I was wearing a white shirt, much wrinkled after being washed in a bucket of well water then hung to dry in the garden of La Minerve.
As the path ascended through the trees, I could hear a faint chugging sound, like one of the outboard motors the fishermen attached to their dories, but it was growing louder by the minute. At the same time I was aware of a strong smoky apple scent in the air. In a minute the path led us to a clearing, where the origin of the sound became evident in the shape of a strange and noisy apparatus that looked like a combination of antique tractor and ancient steam engine. There were pulleys, pipes, tubes and chimneys, two boiler-like tanks, all of it emitting puffs of steam and smoke, the whole machine rumbling and vibrating and appearing to be on the verge of either exploding or collapsing into a heap of sooty metal. At the far end of the apparatus, a tube of copper pipe dripped clear liquid into a cask.
The priest paused and put his hand on my arm. “Tobias is not like other children. If you want to meet him, let him come to you. He is shy of strangers, although not unfriendly. But one thing, Leo, be careful with him. He is happy in his own way. Respect that.”
While I was pondering this rather cryptic advice, Père Caron led the way into the clearing. “Bonjour!” he called out.
I noticed a stone hut, something like a grain shed or cow byre. I had expected the boy, but a bent-over figure emerged from the doorway. Leprechaun was the first description that came to my mind. The man was small, hunched with age, his pants held up with wide suspenders, a floppy beret sitting on top of his white frizz of hair. A pair of sparkling blue eyes looked up at me from a much-wrinkled face.
“May I introduce Étienne Leroux,” the priest said.
“Ça va?” the man greeted me as I shook his rough callused hand.
“Ça va bien,” I answered. It goes well. “And with you?”
“Pas mal, pas mal.” Not bad.
“Étienne is distilling Calvados,” Père Caron explained, nodding at the machine.
“Goutez!” the old man said. Taste it. He handed me a metal cup that was attached to the rumbling contraption with a section of thin chain.
I held the cup under the trickle dripping from the copper tube until there was enough for a mouthful. It was warm and powerfully aromatic. “Phew!” I waved a hand in front of my lips as the fiery liquor surged down my throat. “That must be hundred proof.” I blinked rapidly and exhaled again.
The old man rocked back on his heels, chuckling. “Très fort!” Very strong. He held up a clenched fist and tapped his chest.
“Étienne supplies the island. The apples mostly come from Ester Chauvin’s farm. She has the best varieties of fruit. But we use a few from my own orchard. All this is completely illegal of course. But are we supposed to order from the mainland, from strangers, liquor made from apples we have never tasted?” He shook his head emphatically. “Non.”
I wasn’t sure what any of this had to do with the boy, Tobias, but decided to be patient.
Étienne was explaining the workings of the still.
“Of course, you have to begin with the best cider and make sure that it ferments properly. The apples are the key. A mixture of sweet, tart and bitter. I use a minimum of five varieties, Bisquet, Marin Onfroy, Binet Rouge, Clos Renaux, Doux Eveque. I won’t tell you the recipe, because that is my secret.”
“Don’t worry, my lips are sealed.”
I took another careful sip from the tin cup.
“It has to be aged in oak casks,” the old man explained. “Two years at least. But the longer the better.”
“Which I can attest to,” Père Caron said. “I have a bottle of fourteen-year-old Calva at home. For special occasions.” He smacked his lips. “Pure nectar.”
“If you are
here in the autumn you can come and pick the apples and see how we make cider, in the old ways,” Étienne said to me.
“Étienne is Tobias’s grandfather,” Père Caron said.
“I see. I was wondering why you’d brought me up here. Not that this isn’t very interesting. But the boy, isn’t he here?”
“Le petit?” Père Caron said to the old man. “Il est où?” Where is he?
Putting two fingers to his mouth, Étienne emitted a loud whistle. In a minute or so a large ram ambled into the clearing. I recognized it, remembering well my previous encounter with the animal. Just behind it the rest of the goats were visible, but no boy. Étienne held his hands up, palm out, suggesting that he had done what he could and had no idea of his grandson’s whereabouts.
On a sudden impulse, I reached into my pocket and brought out Piero’s silver whistle. I blew three blasts, modulating the tone to give the impression of three syllables. To-bi-as.
This had little effect other than to draw startled looks from Étienne and Père Caron and make the goats scatter. I shrugged and dropped the whistle into my shirt pocket. As I turned back to the two men I heard a soft breathy whistling sound, mimicking the syllables I had just blown. The boy was standing on the edge of the clearing, holding to his lips what looked like a simple reed flute. He blew again, a sound more like the wind than music.
He lowered his flute and smiled at me. I reached quickly into my pocket and brought out the silver whistle again. “I wanted you to have this.”
The boy stopped smiling and studied me with a serious look, older than his years. Last time we met, I had tried the same tactic and no doubt scared him badly. I wanted him to forgive me for that.
“It’s for you.” I held out my offering.
He came forward deliberately and simply lifted the whistle from my hand. I stared at his face, those familiar features. But the eyes that glanced up quickly to mine were those of a stranger. I noticed again that thin necklace of scar tissue around his throat. He tapped my palm once with his forefinger, stepped back towards the trees and, just before he disappeared from sight, smiled again.
SOMEWHERE IN ONE OF THE DRAWERS in the apartment on rue du Figuier there was a photograph taken in Luxembourg Gardens.
There had been snow that morning in Paris, just a dusting like icing sugar on the statues in the Jardin. Piero was in a stroller, only his luminous eyes and the tip of his nose showing beneath the scarf that was bundled around him. At the little kiosk near the entrance, Claudine bought cups of chocolat chaud and let Piero taste the thick residue from the bottom of her cup, dipping her finger into the sweet chocolate and placing it in his mouth. When I lifted him out of the stroller and kissed him, his breath was sweet, and when I kissed Claudine she tasted of chocolate too.
I was so in love with her. Every night I wanted to feel her close and warm against me as we fell asleep, and I wanted her face to be the first thing I saw in the morning, like sunlight. When I looked at her across the room, or now in the park, it was with awe, and a kind of reverence at the fact that our beautiful son had come forth from her body. With the birth of Piero I felt for the first time that I belonged to something. My wife and son brought an unexpected grace to my life, like a blessing bestowed on me.
I preferred their company to that of anybody else, or anything else. Even art, I thought. All the treasures of all the museums in Paris were puny compared to the wonders of my wife and son. My own attempts at creation paled next to the radiance of the child. I didn’t even draw him in the beginning, I could only stare with wonder.
In the photograph, I am holding Piero up so that he can touch the statue of the little Pan at the east end of the gardens. Piero is smiling and his smile is just like that on the face of that timeless boy of bronze. Art historians call it the “archaic smile,” after a style of ancient sculpture. I had first encountered that smile years ago when I moved to New York and discovered the Cloisters, a place constructed to resemble the gardens and buildings of a medieval monastery. I often used to sketch there, and one day I had come upon a small stone head of a smiling boy, his expression both innocent and wise. The eternal smile.
I had seen that smile in the arcades of the Cloisters, on the faces of Etruscan figures in the Louvre, on a statue in Jardin du Luxembourg and on the face of my own son. It is a smile of those who are blessed by the gods, a smile that takes joy as the natural order of things.
And now here it was again, on the face of a living boy beckoning from the woods.
“Tobias!” I called as he slipped away. “My name is Leo.”
In reply, two silvery notes from the whistle.
Père Caron said, “That is the only way he will ever be able to answer you.”
“What do you mean? Why?”
“He cannot speak. He is mute.”
“Mute!”
I realized now that Tobias had not uttered a single word on any of the occasions I had encountered him. During the terrible incident with the dog there had been snarling and barking and my own shouts, but the boy had said nothing. And when he was playing the clarinet in the forest, there were musical sounds but never a voice, never a word. Not even when I grabbed his wrist. Now I understood that strange otherworldliness about the boy. He was surrounded by a profound silence.
“Has he always been like that?” I asked Étienne. “Was he born that way?”
“No, not always. Not in the beginning.” Étienne turned to the priest. “You must explain to our friend, Père. It is your story as much as anyone’s.”
“Pauvre petit,” Caron said, shaking his head. Poor child.
Étienne brought out an earthenware jug with a cork stopper and three small clay cups. Père Caron sat down on a rough wooden bench beside the hut and waited for the liquor to be poured. He drank, and then reached for his tobacco. He took his time to roll the cigarette and light it with a wooden match.
“About seven years ago, I was over in LeBec one afternoon. I forget why. An errand. I was passing near the harbour when I heard shouting, an argument between a couple who lived in one of the cottages. Stéphanie and Paul Leroux, Tobias’s parents.”
“Paul was my son,” Étienne explained.
“I knew them very well of course, this couple,” the priest continued. “They were hard-working when sober, but they both liked to drink. I couldn’t hear what they were arguing about as I approached. A stiff wind was blowing across the quay, the sea was quite rough, even within the protected harbour. Paul was standing in his dory, the boat was rocking up and down, his head coming level with the pier on each surge of the waves, then dropping out of sight. Stéphanie was on the quay, shouting down at him. I think they were both drunk. Paul certainly was. As I reached them, I understood the cause of the argument. It was Tobias. He was sitting in the stern, clutching the tiller. He couldn’t have been more than three years old at the time. Stéphanie was shouting at Paul that it was too rough to have the boy in the boat. Paul was shouting back that it was never too soon for the son of a fisherman to learn the ways of the sea. I tried to intercede. It wasn’t the first time that I’d attempted to settle a quarrel between those two.
“As soon as Paul saw me he pushed off from the pier. Almost immediately, Stéphanie leapt from the quay and landed in the boat. The two of them struggled like maniacs. A wave surged up and the boat tipped on its side. All three of them tumbled into the water.”
He cleared his throat and sipped from his cup. “I didn’t know what to do. I cannot swim, you see. Isn’t that ironic? A man living on an island, surrounded on all sides by water, and he cannot swim. I still can’t.” He paused and studied the cigarette between his fingers, watching the smoke rise upwards in a thin transparent curl.
“When the boat righted itself, the boy was dangling over the side, caught in a coil of rope. Paul and Stéphanie hadn’t come up again. In the meantime the boat was drifting towards the harbour mouth and the child was hanging with his feet in the water and his body trapped in the tangle of rope. I ran
to the end of the quay shouting for help. Thank God somebody heard me. A woman name Maria Lundin, who lived in the nearest cottage. She dived in and managed to get to the boat and bring Tobias to safety. I suppose if that rope hadn’t been twisted around the boy’s neck he would have drowned.”
“That explains the scar tissue on his throat,” I said.
He nodded. “There were welts around his neck, like red rope, for weeks. They healed eventually. He didn’t speak during that time, but we thought it was because of the accident. But when days later he still wouldn’t speak, Étienne and I eventually took him over to the mainland. The doctor who examined him said the vocal cords were badly torn. Irreparably so, it turned out.”
Étienne Leroux shook his head. “A sad business. My son and his wife were never found.”
Père Caron stood up and tilted his head back to look at the sky. His eyes were moist. “There you have it, one of life’s tragedies.” He dropped the remains of the cigarette at his feet and carefully ground it out with the heel of his boot.
“Poor kid,” I said. “I would never have let anything like that happen.” I heard my own words, the outrage in them, and I fell silent. Was I any better than Paul and Stéphanie in the end? When I looked over at the priest, I saw the suffering, and the guilt, in his face.
“It was a severe punishment upon them,” he continued. “But at least they would never know that their carelessness had deprived their child of his voice for the rest of his life. And that is God’s will, I suppose. Which is sometimes hard to comprehend, much less accept.” He kicked at the ground with the tip of his boot. “I don’t know what Tobias remembers of that day, or of his parents. Maybe nothing. The mind has the ability to erase pain, or at least bury it deep inside. But he has not spoken a word since that day.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. Believe me, I would know. And I have tried.”
“We took him in, of course,” Étienne Leroux said, “my wife Thérèse and I. But she passed on herself some years ago. I try to care for him as best as I can, but he goes his own way and I don’t have the heart to prevent him. He has a room in my cottage, I feed him, but he roams where he will. The whole island is his house.”