No, nothing. He looked around. The man who had led him there was talking to the two women outside. They were outlined against a dazzling sunlit rectangle. Another person was slowly climbing up the path, between the Barbary figs and cactuses. He wore a wide-brimmed gardener’s hat, and the blue of his overall was more sumptuous than the blue of the sky.
‘Look, here comes the mayor now, I sent after him.’
They weren’t in a proper bedroom. It was like nothing he’d ever seen. There were four walls that had once been whitewashed. No window, just the open door. Alongside the mattress of the dead woman were others, covered with rags and old clothes serving as blankets.
Perhaps it was indeed the smell of sweat that lingered in the air, but mixed with other vague and bitter odours, a child’s urine, sour milk, garlic and fish, as well as the fragrance of the pines and arbutus which was the background scent of the island.
‘She’s just died, just now; doctor’s with her.’
The two women outside were reporting the death to the mayor, who now loomed up in the doorway, accustoming his eyes to the semi-darkness, then came forward and automatically took off his straw hat. But in order not to give too much importance to this gesture, he scratched his head, his dark hair standing up in spikes.
‘Frans isn’t on the island, then?’ he asked.
He was the grocer from the shop on the village square, the doctor recognized him, since that very morning he had bought some sweets from him for his daughter.
‘And you’re sure she’s dead?’
In reply, the doctor simply closed the dead woman’s eyes, with a troubled glance at the red dress which had still not moved.
‘Oh, it’s a nuisance,’ the mayor sighed, scratching his head again.
And turning to the women:
‘How long has he been away?’
‘Since day before yesterday.’
‘So he might not be back for three or four days, say? Come here, my dear, when did your papa go away?’
The girl repeated:
‘Day before yesterday.’
But she didn’t move from the spot, still crouching against the wall.
‘And you don’t know how much money he had?’
‘No.’
‘Did he leave some for your mama?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Where’s her purse?’
He looked around. It was the girl who pointed out to him a hole in the wall, at head height, and where there was indeed a battered purse. The grocer knew it well, because it was from that purse that the woman took her cash when she came to the shop.
‘Just six francs left,’ he announced.
Flies were starting to buzz at the back of the room where the corpse lay.
The doctor had been feeling disoriented for a while now. He didn’t try to react or understand. And yet the words burned themselves into his memory so forcefully, without his realizing it, that he was able later on to recall them with as much accuracy as the nursery rhymes learned in childhood. It was the same with the images, especially the red dress, the simple red cotton dress that the skinny young girl was wearing as her sole clothing. Her hair was pale blonde, her eyes blue. The dead woman too had fair hair, the colour of flax.
‘We’ll need to send Polyte off to get Frans. He’ll find him if anyone can … It stinks in here. You coming outside, doctor?’
And the neighbour who had been there with the dying woman asked him, pointing to the corpse:
‘What’ll I do with her?’
Outside, through the greenery, could be seen the pink roofs of the village, the yellow church, the square where tiny figures were still playing boules; then the harbour with its sailing boats and sightseers, the jetty, the blue mountains of the mainland, and beyond, in the strip of sunlit sea, a warship steaming past at full speed: a torpedo boat with slim lines.
‘You’ll maybe come down to the town hall with me, got to get the burial permit?’
Then the mayor scratched his shoulder and complained:
‘We’re sure to have caught some fleas. It was crawling with ’em back there. Lucky for us you were there, I’d have had to get a doctor over from Hyères for the formalities.’
The doctor allowed himself to be led down, turning back from time to time, and the low row of army huts, with only one occupied, the grey-green cactuses and thornbushes, the tall umbrella pines with their sloping trunks, imprinted themselves on his mind, along with the women who had now moved towards the buildings, leaving the two half-naked children to themselves.
‘They’re the only people like that we’ve got on the island,’ the mayor explained, as they went down the steep path. ‘They came over under the old mayor, six years ago, or I’d never have let them settle here. They didn’t ask permission from anyone. They just appeared one fine day, off the Cormoran, with nothing but an old colonial tin trunk. They only had the two children then. The woman was pregnant. They didn’t ask anyone for anything. I don’t even know where they slept the first night, probably on the beach, although I think it was February or March, and the Mistral could’ve been blowing.’
They crossed the baking hot square surrounded by the eucalyptus trees shading both the façades of houses painted in glaring colours, red, blue and green, and the café terraces, empty at this hour.
‘Nobody said they could go and live in those buildings, they’re the property of the Army Engineers. People didn’t realize at first that’s where they were. My wife, one day, she saw the man come into our shop. He bought a candle, sugar, margarine, and paid for them. Then a few days later, he turned up at the town hall. It was closed as usual, so he went to find the mayor in his house. And he had to wait till he came back from fishing, because our old mayor, that’s all he did, go fishing. He took out some papers from his pocket, and said he wanted to declare a birth. The woman, she’d had her baby all on her own, up there where you saw her! On the papers, the man’s name was Frans Klamm. It might not be his real name. He was fifteen years in the Foreign Legion. You’ll see him, if Polyte manages to get hold of him. Wait, we’d better go and find Polyte in the harbour. Hey –’ turning to a child – ‘you haven’t seen your dad, have you, my dear?’
‘He’s just gone into Maurice’s café.’
‘Polyte! Hey, Polyte!’
A man wearing blue canvas trousers, a rumpled shirt and a seaman’s cap.
‘Ah, now Polyte, we need you. Can you get hold of Frans somehow? His wife has died.’
‘When did he go off?’
‘Day before yesterday.’
‘Who’s going to pay me?’
‘Don’t know. Well, town hall, I dare say, I’ll see to it. Know where you might find him?’
‘Might do.’
Other men were listening in the darkness of the café, where the zinc counter glinted.
‘Can I take Gène with me?’
‘He’s out fishing.’
‘No, he’s on his way back. Five minutes and he’ll be coming round the jetty.’
‘As you like. Doctor, you coming? Just wait while I get the town hall keys.’
And the grocer went inside the fragrant-smelling shop and took a bundle of keys out of the cash register. The town hall was nearby, only ten metres away, a white single-storey building: just the one room, with a little garden in front.
‘After you. At first we hoped the army would chuck them out. But they didn’t even bother about them. Sit down, I’ll just look for the forms, wait a bit.’
He opened the window to let the light in and fumbled in some pigeonholes full of papers. The room was small. There were paper chains on the walls and a tricolour flag behind the white plaster bust of a woman representing the Republic.
‘If they’d been beggars, we’d have had something to pin on them. Bu
t they were crafty enough never to ask for anything. You understand? Not even free medical care. And yet, God knows, she could have done with it.’
‘The husband works?’ asked the doctor, surprising himself by the sound of his own voice.
‘When he feels like it. You’ll see him. He’s quite good with his hands. He helps the fishermen mend their nets, or stands in for someone on a fishing boat. He does this and that, helps haul up a boat or clean the hull. An odd job here, an odd job there. They live on practically nothing. Then all at once, when he has a bit of extra cash, and he gets the urge, he pushes off. He never gets drunk on the island. He takes the Cormoran. And people know what that means. He’s been seen in Toulon. He goes straight there. And he goes on a blinder, know what I mean? Four or five days, no more, as a rule. Polyte knows some of the bars where he could be. The man doesn’t recognize anyone. He’s always alone. I never go to that kind of place, but the others tell me … I knew I had these papers somewhere. Here we are. Got a pen on you? No? I don’t know if this one works.’
‘What was the name again?’ asked the doctor with the pen in his hand.
And he had to mop his brow and cheeks because of the sweat rolling down his face.
‘Frans Klamm. Let me check her name in the register … A foreign name too. But she’s French. They are married, mind. I’ve seen their papers. Here we are. Frans Klamm. My word, he’s only fifty-two. If you were to see him, you’d be hard put to guess his age. The wife … Anna Kayaerts. Born in Hondschoote. Apparently it’s on the Belgian border, near Dunkerque. She was only thirty-six last November. If you want to copy her name …’
He wrote out the death certificate and burial permit, with a sputtering pen. The mayor scratched his head.
‘And now it’ll be a right business to get her buried. Thing is, there’s practically no room left in the cemetery, outside the family concessions. You’ll see. It’s very small. We’ve got two already in a temporary vault, waiting for a space. And she isn’t even from around here. In theory she’s got no right.’
He had obviously just raised a question that was of major importance to him, for he thought it over, muttering to himself, before finally coming to a decision:
‘I’ll have to call a council meeting. And what if Polyte doesn’t find him right away? … With this heat, there’ll be an infection in two days. And it’s crawling with vermin up there, like I told you. My advice, by the way, is to change your clothes and have a bath when you get back.’
‘But where will you put her for now?’
‘Do you think I should …?’
‘Or get the children away from there. Those two little kids playing outside, they’re hers, aren’t they? They can’t stay all night in the room where their mother …’
‘No, of course not. But what can I do? Nobody’s going to take care of them, especially with the father away, because you never know how he’d take it. And as for her … Unless we put her in the cells.’
He explained:
‘Behind the church, the council has a sort of lock-up, we sometimes use it as a police cell. It’s full of stuff. It’s where we keep the fire-fighting equipment, the benches and banners for the Fourteenth of July and St Anne’s Day. I’ll take a look. There’s a coffin in there. We always have one in reserve, for the few times we find someone drowned. Thank you, doctor. You’re at the Pension Saint-Charles, aren’t you? In case I need you again.’
He found himself back in the square and not sure what to do. No doubt his wife, Mariette and the children would be walking back slowly from the beach. The sun was starting to go down. The mayor had joined a group of boules players who had interrupted their game. They were standing around now, talking, looking both important and awkward.
The doctor had sat down on the terrace of the Arche de Noé Hotel and ordered an aperitif, since he still had a strange feeling in his chest.
Never had he felt so far away from home, or so far away from himself. The smell on his hands, which had been touching the hermit crabs and then the corpse, made him feel sick. He went to wash them at an enamel hand basin inside the café.
‘What did the mayor decide?’ asked the hotel owner, standing there in his white apron.
‘I don’t know … I think maybe they’re going to take her to the lock-up.’
The group of men was heading for a lane at the side of the church. The doctor set off slowly to meet his family, and his route took him not far from the army huts, where now there were four or five women standing round the threshold, and a dozen children playing on the ground in front.
He couldn’t see the girl’s red dress, but went on past, and finally after a turning in the shade of the umbrella pines, caught sight of his wife walking along holding their younger child by the hand, while Mariette, carrying the picnic bag which now contained their sewing things, was further back, arguing with the older child, who was dawdling.
He approached them and could see his wife’s lips moving already. She waited until they were nearer to speak.
‘They came to call you out, did they?’ she asked. ‘For someone who was sick?’
As a doctor’s wife, she was used to it.
‘And what about the fishing? Did you catch anything? But what’s the matter. You look red in the face.’
‘Just a rush of blood to the head.’
‘I’ll bet you’ve got a touch of the sun again. Come on, Jeanne! Do what Mariette tells you!’
They were tired. It had been very hot. Everyone had damp skin and a sour taste in the mouth. Michel allowed himself to be pulled along. His father picked him up and carried him on his shoulders.
‘Was it something serious?’
‘It was all over by the time I got there.’
They would soon be back at the Pension Saint-Charles, with its white walls and blue shutters, its rooms painted a dazzling white, its guests now coming back, as they were themselves, from one of the beaches or from a boat trip, its waitresses laying the tables, and the smell of Mediterranean food.
They passed the army huts again on their way back. Some men were coming up the hill pushing a handcart on which the coffin had been placed, a simple box of plain deal, not even body-shaped, being both too wide and too long for the corpse it would hold.
The priest came out of the hut and walked away slowly, opening his breviary.
‘Was it there?’ the doctor’s wife asked.
The local children, now emboldened, had started a noisy game around the buildings. The group of women was larger now, and talking more volubly, one of the dead woman’s small children was eating a piece of bread and jam some kind soul had given him, and the girl in the red dress must have stayed in her corner inside, since the doctor couldn’t see her.
‘Leave your father’s hat alone, Michel!’ said Madame Mahé to her son, who was drumming on the straw helmet.
And she turned round to look at her daughter, still dragging her feet in the dust of the path, with the bad grace of tired children.
2. The Legionnaire’s Return
He fished all night long. It was a matter of life and death. Was that really what the mayor had said, a matter of life and death? It was curious to have lived so long – because he was thirty-two after all, you’re supposed to be a grown-up – and never known that the real attributes of a mayor are a grocer’s blue overall and a straw hat! Why had people always hidden that from him? Because they were afraid he’d find these accoutrements ridiculous? But they weren’t, not at all.
Why was it that he absolutely had to catch a péquois? There was some pressing reason. Something serious and essential. Never mind, since he knew it was serious, that was all that mattered.
He just had to. A péquois, not any other kind of fish, not a diable, obviously, like the ones that had attached themselves to his line to make him look stupid, not on
e of those pink sérans that always free themselves from the hook before they reach the surface, and not one of those flat silvery fish with black stripes all over like a zebra.
Was Gène hoping he’d get the wrong fish? Was that why he was watching him with that ferocious irony, all the while giving little tugs on his line? There was a trick, there had to be, a trick that Gène didn’t want to pass on to him. The islanders were all in it together. You don’t reveal the trick to outsiders. It’s up to them to discover it, and if not …
Well, he would discover it! It wasn’t for nothing that he had the best-trained dogs in Saint-Hilaire, and that one Sunday, between six a.m. and midday, he had caught three pike and five or six perch on the Sèvre.
They were doing it on purpose, to make him get worked up and lose his composure. Gène was tugging faster and faster on his boulantin. To make him think that was the way to catch péquois – surely that had to be it?
Tomorrow, he’d buy some blue canvas trousers like everyone else, the bright blue that made such a sumptuous patch of colour in the sunlight. They were sold in the grocery store, by the man with the short thick hair. He must have shaved his head at some point, perhaps because of vermin? Hadn’t he mentioned vermin? And now the hair was growing back, thick and tough, so black and so short that it looked as if it had been painted on to his skull with oil paint.
What was so important? It was stupid to have forgotten it. And now Gène had turned the boat again. That too was a trick. To unsettle the doctor, since the other man knew he wasn’t used to the sea. The doctor looked up, and right enough, there was that grey rock in front of him, with the mass of viscous water rising and falling. He looked down into the depths to see if he could recognize a péquois among all the fish swimming there. He looked up again: now there was no rock, but a beach with tiny people: his wife, Mariette and the children reduced to the size of insects. He pulled up his line. He thought there was nothing on it. But no, there was a diable. He throttled it before throwing it back in the sea, so that he wouldn’t catch it again. He looked up; this time there was no rock, no beach, not even the island, just water as far as the eye could see, and so dazzling that he had to shut his eyes.
The Mahé Circle Page 2