“Yeah. I admire your courage.” His gaze was lost in the depths of his whisky. “You’re the only one who dared escape from here.”
“Thanks.”
“Did you like going to sea?”
“Yes, for a while. But now I look after Jeanne and Mathilde, and I’m much happier.”
“So much the better.” Jacques took a draw on his cigarette. “Tomorrow we’ll bury Mama, and all the demons of our childhood with her.”
“Indeed we will,” I replied with a heavy heart. “Speaking of which, it’s getting late, we should go to bed.”
We got up and cleared the table of our glasses and the ashtray. There was a scent of nostalgia in the room, as if the past had left its fingerprints on the walls, the furniture, the floor, and the ceiling. My brother’s jerky movements betrayed his inner torment, his regrets and remorse. I felt sorry for him but didn’t know how to comfort him. The water of life had flowed under the bridge of our souls, patiently eroding its foundations yet smoothing the stone until all visible cracks had disappeared.
“See you tomorrow, Jacques.” I headed for the stairs.
“Paul?”
“Yes?” I turned around.
Jacques walked toward me on unsteady legs, slightly breathless. He stopped in front of me, his eyes wet with tears. Was he finally going to say the words for which I’d been waiting so long? The words my father had never uttered, which he had taken to his grave for eternity? Jacques clearly wanted to speak, but his voice seemed to dry up before me, as if the words didn’t want to leave his mouth, as if his vocal cords had seized up.
“Good night,” he finally managed, and he gave me a hug.
“Good night, Jacques.”
I went upstairs with a heavy tread. Jacques watched me from below. A hint of disappointment entered my mind; I managed to dispel it by thinking of the warm bed where Mathilde was waiting for me.
Experience teaches one to keep things in perspective. I was no longer in search of anything. I preferred to focus on my love for my wife and daughter rather than to continue hoping for kind words from my family. And Jacques had made an effort that evening. He had apologized for his behavior. It was a start. I slipped into bed and hugged my wife close.
I slept badly, scared of that moment the next day when I would see my mother’s pale, lifeless corpse prepared for her final resting place. I recalled the image of my father lying in his coffin, the gaping hole in the village cemetery, and his cold body, which my brothers and I had stared at, more fascinated by death than sad at losing him. Now it was my mother’s turn. The huge wheel of chance had stopped at her.
In the early morning, on our way to the funeral home, the colors of the passing landscape seemed muted. I saw places from my youth—the groves of trees, the tiled roofs, the little harbor with boats bobbing on the swell, the tall grasses in which my brothers and I had played, the fields where the ears of wheat stood proud. But in this backdrop so reminiscent of carefree times, there was something missing.
Mathilde’s father was standing in front of the funeral home and I greeted him warmly, as I did my brothers, Guy and Pierre, my various cousins, and family friends. Everyone had come to pay their last respects to my late mother.
We entered the building’s lobby, its walls darkly hued, only faint light coming through the drapes. I thought of the Indonesian funeral rites I’d once witnessed, where death was celebrated like a second birth, a prerequisite for a pleasant reincarnation. Everyone danced and sang. There were colors everywhere, nothing was black. Death was a beautiful thing there. Here it was different. Jeanne, standing stiffly beside me, clutched my hand.
“Are you ready, Papa?” she asked sweetly.
“Yes, I think so.”
“Well, then, let’s go.”
A man showed us to the mortuary chapel where Mama was lying. We walked down a narrow corridor similar to the passageways on my ship where the corpses had piled up as the vessel was battered by the cyclone. There was an odd smell in the air, a smell of life’s end, harsh and rough. The man opened a door and walked through, and our little group, my family and my brothers and their families, did too. As people filed into the room in front of me, my pulse began to race, my hands grew clammy, and my stomach started to knot.
Sometimes we are forced to face tragic circumstances, realities we cannot flee, even in our imagination. I would have liked a giant eagle to swoop down, dig its claws into my back, and carry me away from there, into the sky and clouds, far from that terrible scenario in which I had a starring role. I wanted to flee at all costs, flee the banality of that crushing situation, its lack of tact, its pain. I would have liked to be an astronaut walking on the surface of the moon, my beautiful moon shining in the night sky.
As I felt Jeanne pulling me into the room, I held my breath, like a diver plunging into the ocean’s abyss.
32
Mama’s face looked relaxed, like my father’s when he was laid out. I stroked her pale skin and curled back a stray strand of hair that had fallen over her ear. My mother had been a stylish woman and would have never accepted people being left with a poor image of her.
I have always found death a strange thing to observe, as if the bodies lying before me would soon awake and go about their business like nothing had happened. A prank of sorts. I couldn’t believe that everything ended there, at that moment, that it was all over for good. Maybe this was due to an error in my brain’s logic circuits, or simply the leftover immaturity of a child who never wanted to grow up or stare reality in the face.
I kissed Mama’s forehead and thought I heard her voice in the distance, calling my name, louder and louder: Paul, Paul . . . I listened carefully but couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from. Paul, Paul . . . came my mother’s voice again. Had I gone crazy? Was my imagination playing tricks on me? I was seized by an inexorable desire to run to her and join her for all eternity.
“I’ll be back,” I whispered to Mathilde, who looked at me strangely.
I briskly left the room and then the funeral home, guided by an irresistible force, as my mother’s voice resonated far up in the light. I ran through the wheat fields, then took a muddy track, nearly falling flat on my face. Nothing could halt my progress, not the German officers demanding my papers, not the bombs exploding all around me, not the deafening crash of thunder over my ship. Nothing. I ran toward her, toward my mother, who was still alive somewhere out there.
I ran down the coast road, past the bobbing boats, then onto the tracks lined with thornbushes where she would pick blackberries for her tarts. After a few minutes of this mad dash, I recognized the dirt road of my childhood, the one leading to the washhouse, and I took it. There I found Mama, twirling around in a swirl of bubbles, and I stopped to admire her. She spun, arms outstretched, staring up at the sky, a smile lighting up her young, unlined face. I laughed too, like that child I still was. We always remain our mothers’ children, whatever our ages.
It’s strange how all the different periods of our lives can suddenly come together in our heads, as if time had lost its coherence, its reality.
My mother soon crumpled onto the soft, green grass, which covered the ground like a tablecloth spread for Sunday lunch. She lay there sighing with pleasure and exhaustion. Her bosom heaved as she breathed deeply, recovering from her efforts. Her skin was so soft and smooth. Her legs were folded beneath her. I frantically waved my hands, my palms violently striking together, as I applauded my mother one last time before she put on her outfit of wood and brass. She sat up in front of me, cross-legged, picked a daisy, and stuck it behind her ear. A sweet smile lit up her face.
“Paul, my darling, come sit by me, like when you were a little boy,” she said in a soothing voice, beckoning me over.
I went and sat on the damp grass. The moisture penetrated my clothes, staining my good suit, but I didn’t care. Men wear suits to hide their true identity, to mask their fragility, concealing themselves out of fear of being revealed. I’ve always hated w
earing them.
“So that’s it, Mama? It’s the end this time?” I asked sadly.
“The end?” she replied. “It’s just the beginning . . .”
“The beginning of what?”
“Of a new adventure . . .”
“But you’re going away, you’re leaving me all alone.”
This didn’t seem to trouble her. She simply placed a hand on my knee.
“I’ll never leave you, my angel. Besides, Mathilde and Jeanne are here.”
“Yes, but . . . what about you?” I asked, inconsolable.
“I have to go.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“I must. Everyone goes someday.”
“Not you, Mama.”
“Yes, me too. But don’t be scared, Paul. What binds us is stronger than death. People pass on, but their memories float in the air like clouds in the sky. You only have to be attentive to their presence, their smells, their magic. That’s all.”
“Mama?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too, my darling.”
The image of my mother slowly faded. Last to disappear was her face, illuminated by a new serenity, a wisdom to which only death knows the secret. She was soon no more than a mirage, then her outline dissipated like a sea fog in the rays of the rising sun. I found myself alone in a chaos of emotion.
I peeked over the edge of the low wall at the front of the washhouse and saw my face reflected on the smooth surface of the water. Wrinkles had formed everywhere, at the corners of my lips and eyes, across my forehead. My hairline was receding. The shadows under my eyes attested to long nights with little sleep, initially aboard ship, then in my writer’s study. The skin on my neck was shriveling from the vicissitudes of life, like a chicken’s wattle. The childish face that had smiled back at me from this expanse of water forty years before was now just a distant memory. I had grown old. But I felt less tormented, less affected by the emotions that had overwhelmed me as a kid, calmer now. What’s curious about time is that it eats away at the skin of the fruit while purifying its core. Youth is a beautiful thing, I said to myself, but old age is a well of knowledge, memories, and wisdom. When you’re a kid, you want to grow up fast. When you’re older, you want to be a child again. I tell you, humanity has been built on a paradox since the very start. There’s no logic to it.
I touched the icy water, sending ripples across its smooth surface. My reflection shivered in that liquid mirror. I plunged my hands down into the water, then splashed the walls of the old washhouse, laughing as I did so. I thought of Mama one last time as I paid her this most beautiful of homages.
Then I made my way back up the muddy track, a smile on my lips, to bury my mother in the village cemetery alongside her husband.
A few months after Mama’s funeral, we had to decide what to do with the family farm. A realtor came to appraise the property and told me about a house nearby that was for sale for next to nothing. The owner was a rich Englishman with no children who only came once a year, and he wished to sell it as quickly as possible. The realtor showed us around the house, and when he told us the price, Mathilde and I looked at each other in astonishment. Two hours later, after phoning the bank, we were the happy owners of a vacation home in the Gulf of Morbihan. The Vertune farm, including all the fields, was sold to a farmer, since Jacques was now the village mayor and regional councilor, while my brothers had a joint fishing business, so we no longer had any use for the property. Upon our return to Bordeaux, Mathilde and I got our respective employers to give us some extra vacation time each summer so we could make the most of our second home.
33
In the early 1980s, Jeanne met the love of her life, married him, and soon got pregnant. Nine months later, a baby boy arrived. They named him François. Becoming grandparents was a new milestone for Mathilde and me. Childhood is a carefree time, adolescence is cruel, parenthood is a winding path on which you can easily slip, but grandparenthood is simply a pleasure.
Jeanne, who was now a lawyer in Bordeaux, left little François with us at our vacation home every summer. The little boy was growing up fast. He was tireless, curious, and always eager to learn, to explore different places and new fishing spots. He always had a big smile and asked a constant stream of questions.
“Grandpa, why do glowworms light up at night?”
“Because they capture sunlight all day long.”
“Ah . . . And why do they do that?”
“Because it’s their job to light up the night.”
“Ah . . . Like car headlights?”
“Yes, except it’s more natural and doesn’t hurt your eyes as much.”
François nodded, convinced that my explanations were true. He meditated on this for a while. Then, with the information securely stored away in his head, he resumed his questions with even greater intensity.
“So if we put glowworms in car headlights, maybe they would hurt our eyes less?”
“It’s possible . . . But they wouldn’t provide enough light, and there’d be accidents.”
“Hm . . . Well, then, if we put thousands of them in headlights, maybe that would work, Grandpa?”
“Yes, maybe,” I replied with a smile.
François was a quick learner, and he surprised me more every year. One evening, when we were walking back from the little port of Logéo together, he stopped on the hard-surfaced path that ran along the beach, now covered by high tide.
“Grandpa, who’s Catherine?” he asked, his eyes shining.
I was at a loss for words.
“Uh . . . She’s a friend,” I replied, my voice quavering.
“Mama told me a story about Catherine and María, and said they were in Spain and looking for a little girl in a port.”
“Yes, I told Mama a story like that when she was young.”
“Grandpa?”
“Yes, my darling?”
“Do you think they’ll find the little girl in Spain one day?” he asked sadly.
I felt a pang as I thought of the German officer lying dead on the ground, the picture of Catherine, the old lady in Frankfurt, and Martín’s and my encounter with María in Las Palmas.
“Of course they’ll find her.”
“Mama told me the story ends in the port and that’s it,” he retorted.
“That’s because she’s forgotten it,” I said, without figuring on the kid’s intelligence.
“Do you know the ending, Grandpa?”
No, I didn’t know it. Over the course of these many years, time had gradually erased the memory of the little girl in the photograph, along with María’s features. In my grandson’s eyes I saw all of the mystery surrounding this business, all of the concern at not being able to bring it to a close, to reach a happy ending. Children need to be able to dream the things that adults bury with time. François had revived the old demons in me. Through him, something of my youth had returned.
I didn’t want to invent another chapter. I didn’t want to lie to him. So I didn’t answer. We returned home, each of us lost in thought, deprived of a happy ending that would have delighted the both of us that evening. I went to bed hoping that one day I’d complete the quest I’d undertaken as a young man. But how? The whole business was just a distant memory, a hope abandoned like so many others.
34
Mathilde and I were strolling through the park in Bordeaux, as we did each Sunday. It provided an opportunity to chat about our life. We were recently retired, spending half the year in Bordeaux to be close to our daughter and the other half at our second home in the Gulf of Morbihan. We were happy, she and I. Forty years together, that’s something. The roots of our love were stronger than those of a thousand-year-old baobab tree. Love is one of the most beautiful things on earth, and it’s the only way to attain a deep sense of fulfillment and achieve the wisdom that lies so far beyond the everyday futilities that pollute our existence.
Mathilde suddenly stumbled. I caught
her before she fell.
“Is everything all right, my love?” I asked with concern.
“My head’s spinning. I’d like to go home,” she replied.
We did so, and I helped her into bed. She soon fell asleep, feverish. Probably a chill, I thought.
The next day, her state had not improved, and I decided to call the doctor to our home. Seeing his patient half-conscious, he had her taken to the hospital immediately. We went in an ambulance, sirens wailing, those same sirens you hear as you walk down the street and wince as you think of the poor person stretched out inside. This time, the victim was Mathilde, my wife, my reason for living. I sensed my existence waver on its pedestal, then crumble piece by piece. Once again, the Grim Reaper loomed on the horizon, ready to cut down anything in its way, with no regard for age.
At the hospital, Mathilde was given a whole battery of tests, those real-world things I’ve never been able to wrap my head around. After a few hours of unbearable waiting interspersed with cups of coffee, a man in a white coat appeared and beckoned me to follow him. We entered a white room with only a couple of pieces of basic furniture. On the man’s desk were some photographs of people—his wife and children, no doubt.
“Please sit down, Monsieur Vertune,” he said nervously.
“Thank you,” I replied, taking a seat.
“How are you?”
“A little anxious, I must admit.”
“Yes,” he said, looking into my eyes. “I understand.”
“How’s my wife?”
“She’s resting at the moment.”
“Good. When will she be able to leave?”
“Monsieur Vertune, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“Yes?”
“We gave your wife an extensive series of tests.”
“And?”
The man got up and placed an X-ray image against an illuminated box. I thought I could make out a human skull. He took a little stick in his right hand and pointed at something on the image.
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