“We take her on board. She’ll come back with us,” I told him in French, which Martín then translated.
María stared at me wide-eyed with a mixture of fear and excitement. Then she threw herself into my arms and burst into tears. Her warm body, defiled by so many men, slumped against mine, her raspy breath on my neck. She whispered a “Muchas gracias” that warmed my heart. Gratitude is a delicious thing, and my soul craved it to soothe the gaping wounds of my childhood.
Now I just had to get her aboard ship, or all our efforts would be in vain and María would be left to face an uncertain future. The second stage of our improvised plan began. We approached the Volcan de Timanfaya. Crewmembers climbed aboard in silence one after another, in a hurry to set sail and see their families again. I glimpsed the captain at the top of the gangway, a pipe in his mouth, counting his troops with military precision. He too was in a hurry to return to the open sea. There was no way to get on board without passing in front of him. My sketchy, utopian plan came to a halt before this harsh reality. We waited a little bit in the shadow of the hull, out of the captain’s line of vision. I racked my brains for a solution. The captain was waiting patiently for the entire crew to come aboard before he could weigh anchor.
“We’ve had it,” declared Martín. “There’s no solution, we’ll have to leave her here.”
“I’ll go speak with the captain,” I declared, sure of myself.
“You’ll lose your job, Paul. Becoming a sailor was your dream, wasn’t it?”
“If I don’t bring her back, I’ll stay here with her,” I replied, ignoring him.
“And Mathilde?” asked Martín.
“She’ll understand. I’ll manage. Wait for me here.”
“Hurry up. The ship will be leaving soon!”
I walked to the bottom of the gangway, stopped, and looked up. The captain watched me, drawing on his pipe and expelling great clouds of smoke that wafted away on the breeze. I gestured at him to come down. He didn’t understand, so I repeated the gesture. He descended the gangway.
“What’s up, Vertune?” he asked, removing the pipe from his mouth.
“Captain, you’re going to kill me.”
He scowled. “Why?”
“Do you recall how you told me that life isn’t always easy, that we can’t always do what we want?”
“Yes.”
“I got the message.”
“Meaning?”
“That woman you see over there beside Martín helped me pick up the trail of the family of a soldier who spared my life during the war. When he died, I found a picture of his daughter on him, and I swore I’d find her.”
“And did you?” he asked, intrigued by my story.
“No. The trail went cold.”
“What’s the connection with her?” He nodded in María’s direction.
“She met the woman while working the streets of Las Palmas.”
“You mean she’s a prostitute?”
“Yes, Captain. She was forced into it. She hasn’t seen her little boy for three years. He’s back in Spain.”
“And what’s that to do with me?”
“I want to take her with us, Captain.”
“Have you lost your mind, Vertune? We’ll be taking no passengers on this ship! Leave her here on the quay and get on board, we weigh anchor in ten minutes,” he said coldly, turning to ascend the gangway.
“Captain, I beg you. If she doesn’t come with us, I’m staying here.”
He stopped dead in his tracks, took a long draw on his pipe, then turned to face me.
“Are you threatening me, Vertune?” he asked sternly.
“No, Captain. But I’m begging you to help her.”
He drew on his pipe again, exhaled another stream of smoke, looked at Martín and María for a few moments, then stared hard at me.
“You have faith in humanity, don’t you, Vertune?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“You’re young and idealistic.” He sniggered and contemplated the glowing embers of his pipe. “I used to be like you, full of hope and illusions regarding human nature.” He sniggered again.
Suddenly he scowled.
“Then I lowered my guard one day. Three guys attacked me and beat me until I could no longer stand. I nearly died on the quayside. All for a fistful of cash.”
He stroked the stem of his pipe, took another draw, and looked me straight in the eye.
“Man is cruel, Vertune, and life’s a bitch who eats her young when she’s starving. She never does us any favors, she’s not generous. The sooner you understand that the better, or you’ll end up like me. I don’t like life, Vertune, and life doesn’t like me.”
“Exactly, Captain, I’m giving you the opportunity to make your peace with it!” I exclaimed.
He removed his pipe from his mouth and frowned. “Make my peace with it?”
“Yes, Captain, make your peace with life by reawakening the young man inside of you.”
The man froze and his expression darkened. For a moment I regretted my hastily uttered words. He seemed to be staring straight through me, lost in some distant childhood memory. His pipe had gone out, and a delicate odor of damp tobacco floated in the air.
“Become a young man again, you say?”
“Yes, Captain. Because a young man believes in humanity. He has yet to endure tragedy, the hard blows of fate, mankind’s cruelty. This prostitute’s little boy is somewhere in Andalusia, alone, crying every day for his mother. If you help María get out of here, Captain, you’ll be doing all humanity a service, believe me, and that feeling is worth more than all the mistresses in the world.”
He stared at me, obviously dumbfounded by the sincerity of my words and my soul’s strength of character. A moment passed. Then he struck a match, relit the embers of his pipe, and took a long draw.
“You’re completely crazy, Vertune. But I like that. It’s as if I’m looking at myself thirty years ago. Bring her up and put her in cabin 308. It’s empty. I don’t want her to leave it for a single second during the whole crossing, do you understand me?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Very good, we’ll weigh anchor.”
“Captain?”
“What now, Vertune?”
“Thank you.”
23
We berthed in Bordeaux two weeks later in the midst of a light drizzle. The contrast with the Canary Islands was striking. No sun here, no ocean, no bright-blue sky. In just a few days we had sailed between two parallel worlds, two geographical locations so close and yet so different. That’s the magic of the sea, I thought, and of the sailor’s profession too.
The crossing had not presented any difficulties. The ocean waves had let us off lightly this time. María remained shut up in her cabin, meditative, in a hurry to reach terra firma and see her little Manuel again. I visited her cabin once a day and brought meals, which she wolfed down, taking advantage of my presence to speak to me a little. I didn’t understand much at first, but over the course of the voyage I learned enough Spanish to grasp the gist of her words. A spark of gratitude shone in her eyes. “Muchas gracias, Paul, usted es un santo,” she said every time I opened the door to her cabin, making sure nobody had seen me. I was thus a “saint,” canonized by the beautiful María, who, for the first time in a long while, didn’t have to fear being raped. In the close quarters of her ocean prison, María had regained her taste for life.
A few sailors had seen María come aboard ship the day of our departure. The rumor of a woman on board had fueled the conversations and fantasies of these men deprived of female company. But they quieted down the day the captain raised his voice and explained that María was just a charwoman whom he had brought on board to clean his cabin. One more lie wouldn’t kill the old man, and marital infidelities were so common in this itinerant business that they interested no one. To my great relief, the crew returned to their (more professional) occupations. As for Martín, he asked me for news of our mutual friend from time
to time, proud to have played a part in freeing her, despite his initial reticence. His flash of inspiration at the short-stay hotel had bought us time without having to resort to violence. I had congratulated him, but he’d simply shrugged as if it was an obvious thing to do, with such false modesty it had made me smile. In truth, he was overjoyed at being complimented for his actions.
On the quayside in Bordeaux stood a group of women eager to see their husbands again. They waved their arms in the air to greet us, their heroes of the sea. I tried to make out the figure of my wife in the crowd, without success. Mathilde had no doubt been kept back by Madame de Saint-Maixent. The sailors disembarked one after another, impatient to see their families again. Martín and I waited until there was no one left on board before rushing down the passageways to María’s cabin. I opened the door and we found her curled up on the floor, tears running down her cheeks. Martín crouched beside her and gave her a sad smile.
“María, it’s time to leave,” he said softly.
“I don’t know where to go. I’m scared.”
“You’ll come to my place, and tomorrow we’ll put you on a train to Málaga so you can see Manuel.”
“What if he doesn’t recognize me? What if he doesn’t know who I am? I want to go back to Las Palmas. Leave me on board, I don’t want to get off.”
Martín stood up without a word and stroked his stubbly beard, barely stiffer than a teenager’s fluff. He didn’t know how to reply. María seemed overwhelmed, beset by her imagination, which had sown seeds of doubt regarding this adventure. She hugged her knees to her chest and gently rocked to and fro on the cold floor. Poor María, cast out on the street, had never lost hope of seeing her child again one day. She yearned for him with all her being, with every fiber of her body, willing to die just to hold him again. But now that the goal was in sight, she couldn’t, just couldn’t keep going. What strange mechanism had filled this woman with the sudden fear of not being worthy of her son?
“María, get up,” I said softly. “Don’t worry about your little one, he’ll recognize you. A child never forgets their mother’s scent, believe me.”
María stopped her rocking and looked at me.
“Are you sure?” she whispered.
“Quite sure,” I replied.
“I believe you, Paul. You’re a good man, you know.”
“Thank you María. Get up now, we have to go.”
I helped her to her feet. We made our way through the maze of passageways, which I now knew by heart. When we reached the open air, María took a deep breath, closing her eyes as she did so. “¡Qué bueno!” she murmured. The three of us descended the gangway and stepped onto dry land. I scanned the quayside for Mathilde, but there was no one around. Maybe she had forgotten the precise time of our arrival. I wasn’t worried, though I couldn’t wait to see her and kiss her. But first I had to say goodbye to María.
“This is where we go our separate ways,” I said.
“Muchas gracias, Paul. I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me. One day I’ll return the favor.”
She kissed my cheek. The touch of her soft, warm lips made me shiver.
“Take care of yourself, María, and give your son a kiss from me. Here is my address, please send me some pictures of him.” I handed her an envelope, which she put in her pocket.
“I certainly will. God bless you, Paul Vertune.”
Her face shone with the gratitude of a woman saved from a life of sexual violence. She turned to Martín and they walked toward his house, located not far from the port. At the corner, María turned to wave and mouth a final “Gracias” before they disappeared from view.
The heavy weight of responsibility slipped from me and shattered on the cobblestones of the quayside. I felt at peace, in harmony with myself. What a lovely sensation it was. No more worrying, no more fears, just the feeling of having accomplished what I said I’d do, the satisfaction of having helped María.
But there was something else.
The previous evening, as I slipped my address into the envelope for María, I’d had a sudden urge to be done with this Catherine Schäfer business. I had taken senseless risks to find her, putting my life in peril in Germany and Spain without considering the consequences, all for this enigmatic quest that had obsessed me for years. I wanted to forget about this whole business and focus on Mathilde. I missed my wife enormously. We had plenty of living to do as a couple. So when I prepared the envelope for María, I also put the picture of Catherine Schäfer in it, a kind of souvenir of our meeting. I had to hold back my tears as the little girl’s image disappeared into the envelope. A chapter of my story had drawn to a close. It was time to return home. End of my first voyage, I thought, hoping that not all my future ones would be quite so dramatic.
I had turned to look back at the ship when I saw her, standing in the rain, her wet hair plastered to her face. Her clothes were soaked through, the drizzle having been followed by a sudden rainstorm. She looked stunning, my Mathilde, even in her sodden outfit, a mix of the sun and the moon and the stars. Her long dress hugged her slender figure perfectly. I walked over and took her in my arms. She was freezing.
“I love you, Mathilde.”
“I love you too, Paul.”
“You’re frozen, let’s get home quick.”
“Wait. I’ve got something to tell you.”
“What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
Day and night were as one, earth and ocean entangled in absolute silence. And then it was all a blur. This announcement of fatherhood plucked me from my surroundings like one plucks summer daisies to make a crown. I instinctively thought of my father with the ever-present stalk of wheat in his mouth. Now I would come to know the great thrill of birth and a child’s love for their parents. Life is a piece of theater that every generation makes its own by playing the characters differently, giving them fresh depth and improving the rhythm of the performance. Sometimes the audience rises to its feet and applauds, won over by the changes made. Sometimes it stays seated, bored, preferring the original to the new version. I was already imagining a splendid theater piece in which the character to be born would play a major role. Was I prepared for fatherhood? I hugged my wife tightly, imagining the fruit of our love in her belly. Now we were three.
24
“Push it out, quick!” exclaimed the nervous midwife.
“Aaaaah!” Mathilde screamed in pain.
“It’s nearly over, just one more push, come on, harder!”
“Aaaaah!”
When the head of my child emerged from between my wife’s thighs, I initially thought I would pass out. With a mixture of admiration and disgust before nature at work, I understood why my father had claimed he had an urgent task the day of my birth. Blood gushed from my wife’s vagina, covering the face of the child whose gender I could not yet discern. The midwife grabbed the newborn, cut the umbilical cord, and wrapped the baby in a white towel that immediately began to stain red.
“It’s a girl,” she declared, smiling. “Congratulations!”
“Thank you,” I replied, unsettled by the announcement.
“What’s her name?”
“I . . . I . . .” I stammered, spooked by the blood and the baby’s cries.
“Jeanne!” cried Mathilde. “Her name is Jeanne.”
I felt strange, very strange. Mathilde’s pregnancy had passed without complications. Her belly had swelled as I went back and forth to sea. I was assailed by guilt as Mathilde confronted the trial that is pregnancy, that storm of hormones. But I had no choice; we had to eat. Mathilde stopped working for the last two months, disrupting the routine of Madame de Saint-Maixent, who stopped paying her salary, upset at being abandoned. The benevolence of the bourgeoisie had its limits—in this case, those of Madame’s unhealthy self-centeredness and her inability to conceive of happiness in any other household. Misery is the surest fuel of jealousy.
The midwife wiped Jeanne’s frail little body, removing the blood f
rom her limbs and face. Then she placed the crying baby on a set of scales, examined her with a stethoscope, and inflicted the full battery of traditional tests to check that she was in good health. When she had completed her barbaric but necessary ritual, she swaddled Jeanne in a fresh towel and handed the infant to her mother. Mathilde tenderly cradled her and she slowly quieted down. The midwife helped her pull a breast free for the newborn to suckle. Silence filled the room once more. I leaned in and contemplated my daughter’s face. Everything about her was tiny and delicate: her hands, her feet, her skin, her nose, her mouth stuck to Mathilde’s nipple. And still so untouched by life’s vicissitudes. This was the start of the race to death, the inexorable countdown to the end that nobody can escape but everyone attempts to forget in their own way. My daughter would not escape either. Until that moment, the notion that she might suffer in this world had not even crossed my mind.
“She’s beautiful,” I murmured to Mathilde, caressing the infant’s cheek.
“Yes.”
“She’s the spitting image of you. She has your eyes.”
Mathilde smiled shyly. We took our daughter home the next day and settled her in the crib that a generous neighbor had given us. It was far from the opulence of Madame de Saint-Maixent’s house, but our living conditions were a distinct improvement over those I had known as a child. My daughter had the privacy of her own room. Not that I was jealous, quite the opposite; to each their own era and set of troubles—but as few as possible for Jeanne, I hoped with all my heart.
Unlike her rural parents, Jeanne grew up in a buzzing, booming city, its busy port a confluence of distant civilizations. Mathilde went back to work for Madame de Saint-Maixent, who rehired her the day our daughter was old enough to attend nursery school. As for me, I was promoted to a ship plying the Europe–Asia route. This took me to sea for long periods, often more than four months at a time. Whenever I embarked, the two women in my life waved me goodbye from the quayside. They cried their eyes out. They were inconsolable. It filled me with sorrow, but it was the price I had to pay to keep my dream alive. When the ship docked back in Bordeaux several months later, I was sad to see how much Jeanne had grown in my absence.
Seasons of the Moon Page 13