Off the Wild Coast of Brittany

by Juliet Blackwell

  There were lace curtains in the cottage windows, the vegetable garden was well tended, and Natalie had occasionally spied smoke rising from the chimney, but she had only once seen a soul come in or out. That was the time, not long after arriving on the island, that she snapped the old woman’s photograph as she and François-Xavier had been returning from their visit to the lighthouse. Natalie remembered the scene vividly: The afternoon sun had cast a golden glow over the old woman, who stood beside her cottage, a black cat in her arms, looking out to sea as if waiting for a loved one to return to her. Or so Natalie had imagined.

  When Ambroisine spotted her holding up her phone to take her picture, the old woman had let loose with a long, profanity-laden stream of rapid French, only part of which had Natalie understood. François-Xavier had taken Natalie’s arm and hurried her past the cottage, shouting apologies over his shoulder.

  Natalie’s stomach fluttered as Christine lifted the little fish-shaped knocker to rap on the front door.

  “Ambroisine, c’est moi, Christine!” She called out, then pushed the door in, explaining loudly that they were in possession of cider and cigarettes and that her American friend was profoundly sorry for having taken her photograph.

  Korrigan slipped by them and curled up on a small rug in front of the fire.

  Christine introduced Natalie and Alex to Ambroisine, who simply nodded, her sharp eyes appearing to size them up. Christine and Natalie joined the old woman at her kitchen table but Alex’s lack of French made her hold back, and she lingered by the fire.

  “It is so lovely to officially meet you!” Natalie felt herself overcompensating, becoming overly friendly with this woman, but could not seem to stop. “I’ve walked by this darling cottage so many times, and always wondered what it was like inside. Thank you for inviting us in.”

  Christine poured cidre bouché into earthenware cups and handed them out. Lighting up one of Natalie’s cigarettes, Ambroisine sat back and gazed at Natalie.

  “I hear you know how to butcher,” said Ambroisine.

  “Excuse me?” Natalie responded.

  “I’ve got a rabbit. Trapped it myself. It was after my cabbage.”

  “I was noticing how lush your garden is,” Natalie said. “But I never see you working in it.”

  “I garden at night, in the moonlight, as it should be done. The rabbit’s in the cooler.”

  “I . . . I really don’t do that anymore,” said Natalie. “I haven’t butchered an animal since I was young.”

  Ambroisine glanced at Alex, who shrugged and said, “She’s a good butcher. At least, she used to be.”

  “Ha!” The old woman gave a gap-toothed smile and pointed at Alex. “You see? I like this one.”

  Natalie glared at her sister.

  “That’s the deal,” continued Ambroisine. “You butcher for me, and I’ll answer your questions.” She tapped herself on the chest. “I am the one who knows things no one else knows.”

  “Fair’s fair,” Christine said.

  “All right,” Natalie replied, defeated by this logic. “You have a deal.”

  She set the cookbook on the table and showed Ambroisine the photograph of the Nazi soldiers and the women in masks and feathered costumes.

  “This is from the last war, World War Two,” Ambroisine said with a nod. “I was there. I was . . . twelve or thirteen, at most.”

  “Vraiment? There was actually a cabaret on the Île de Feme?” asked Christine.

  “For one night, one night only,” said Ambroisine said, speaking slowly. “For one night the Abri du Marin was transformed into an underwater fantasy, and the island women were transformed into beautiful winged creatures, sirens, sent to bewitch the German soldiers.”

  “Why have I never heard of this?” asked Christine.

  “It was a great secret.”

  “Nothing’s a secret on this island.”

  Ambroisine chuckled, stubbed out her cigarette, and lit another. “Oh, but there are secrets, ma chérie. Many secrets, though not so many who still know them. Your mémé was there that night, in costume. She was very beautiful.”

  Christine made a snorting sound. “My mémé wore the jibilinnen every day of her life.”

  “Not on that night, she didn’t.”

  Christine appeared thunderstruck at the idea of her grandmother dressed in feathers and entertaining German soldiers. She poured more cider into Ambroisine’s cup, refilled her own, and said, “Now this, I have to hear.”

  “It’s a long story, far too long to tell you this late at night,” said Ambroisine, fixing Natalie with a look. “You come back with that rabbit, properly butchered, and perhaps I’ll tell you more.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Non. Tomorrow, I am busy. You come the next day and you bring more cider. Also, bring this one with you,” she said, gesturing to Alex, who was now petting Korrigan. “I like this one.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The trio walked in silence back toward the village, each with their flashlight, Alex holding the burlap-wrapped rose root ball, and Natalie carrying Ambroisine’s rabbit by the hind legs.

  “That was . . . unexpected,” said Christine after a long silence.

  Alex chuckled.

  “I wished she’d told us more,” said Natalie. “What’s with the secrecy?”

  “I’m surprised she was that forthcoming, frankly,” said Christine. “Ambroisine is not one to gossip. She must feel the story is ready to be told, after all these years.”

  “Then why not just tell us?” Natalie said.

  “A flare for the dramatic, perhaps?” Alex suggested. “Or maybe she just wants to be sure you butcher her rabbit properly.”

  They reached the village and started down the narrow stone pathway.

  “Take a left here,” Christine told Alex as they reached a T.

  “It’s a bit of a maze, isn’t it?” said Alex.

  “It is, but one learns,” said Christine. “And if you’re ever lost, just keep walking. You’ll come out to the ocean eventually, or at worst you’ll exit on the other side and see the hotel.”

  Just then a couple of women approached, speaking American English.

  “It is her! I think that’s her!” said one.

  Christine raised her eyebrows and smiled, staring at Natalie.

  “Excuse us,” said the other woman as they neared. “But are you Natalie Morgen, author of Pourquoi Pas?”

  “She is,” said Alex.

  The women looked a little nonplussed at the poor dead rabbit in Natalie’s hand, but chatted excitedly nonetheless, asking about her life on the island and the gorgeous François-Xavier.

  Natalie handed the rabbit to Alex, pasted on a smile, murmured a few pleasantries, and signed their books. Then she posed for a round of selfies.

  After thanking her and walking away, one of the women said to the other: “Remember that part in the book about butchering the poor rabbit . . . ?”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Violette

  Rainer stopped me in the hall and held out an envelope.

  “Another letter?” I asked.

  He hesitated. “I’m so sorry, Violette. But . . . I think you should sit down. It looks like an official notice.”

  I froze, seemingly forgetting how to breathe. After a long moment I took a gasp of air and accepted the envelope, holding it in shaking hands.

  “Can I help?” Rainer asked.

  “I need . . . I need my mother.”

  “Of course,” he said to my back as I made my way to the kitchen, where my mother was washing dishes.

  I collapsed into a chair at the small breakfast table.

  “Maman . . .”

  “What is it, Violette?”

  Rainer was right. It was an official notice. My husband, Marc Jean Guilcher,
age twenty-two, had been killed in an accident off the coast of Cornwall.

  * * *

  • • •

  I was not in love with Marc, but his loss hit me as a sick shock. He was a sweet island boy whom I had known all my life. We were supposed to be parents together. As bad as it was to read the notice, it was infinitely worse to have to inform Marc’s mother and sister. As if someone had cut her puppet strings, Gladie collapsed onto the kitchen floor, sobbing inconsolably. Noëlle leaned down, hugged her, and looked up at me with empty eyes.

  “Leave us. Just leave us, Violette.”

  I did not want to abandon Gladie but could not think what else to do, so I went out to the rocks and looked up at the lighthouse. Trying to comprehend. To understand.

  How could this war—and the things Rainer told me about the Nazis—be condoned by God? Had I done something to offend Him? Had we Bretons, we French, done something to bring this cataclysm down upon our heads?

  Tears stung my eyes, but I did not wish to cry any more. Earlier I had sobbed so much in my mother’s arms that I had to fight to breathe. My face was so red and puffy that when I arrived at my mother-in-law’s house, I had no need to show her the official notice.

  She knew before I said a word. Knew her world had come apart.

  I kept envisioning Marc’s guileless blue eyes. I wondered if they were shadowed in pain at the time of his death, if he had suffered or was among the lucky few granted a blessedly rapid exit from this life. I couldn’t stand to think of the anguish in Gladie’s eyes, the way she had moaned like a mortally wounded animal. Why should a good woman such as she be condemned to experience the deaths of so many loved ones?

  I tried to concentrate on the glimmer of lights prancing upon the waves. A pair of dolphins jumped out of the water in graceful arcs just offshore. Sometimes they followed the fishing boats, frolicking about, apparently without a care in the world.

  And then I felt a cramp in my belly so strong and deep that it took my breath away. It went away after a moment.

  It is too early. Far too early. I remained perched on the rocks, petrified, my hands cupping my belly protectively, trying to regulate my breathing, my eyes searching for the dolphins, believing if I saw them, somehow, everything would be all right.

  I felt another stabbing pain, and something wet between my legs. When I stood, narrow ribbons of blood streamed down my legs, staining my ankles.

  I have to get to the House of Meneï. It wasn’t far. I started to climb down from the rocks but it was slow going, as I had to stop frequently to breathe through the pains.

  And then, just as I wondered whether I would be able to make it, I spied Rainer on the path. He had spotted me and started walking toward me, and then began to run.

  “Violette! Is something wrong?”

  “I have to get to Madame Thérèse!” I cried.

  He sprang onto the rocks and picked me up in his arms, cradling me like a child. Picking his way back to the path, steady despite his bad knee, he hurried toward the little stone bungalow.

  I don’t remember much of the rest. How Rainer brought me into Madame Thérèse’s house, banging on the door, and setting me gently on the cot. How the cunning woman forced me to drink a tonic, and did the best she could. How my baby was born.

  Far too soon. Far too small. Far too blue.

  “A little boy,” said Madame Thérèse quietly, her tone somber.

  Her young helper, Ambroisine, tried to take him away, but Madame stopped her.

  “Arrête, Ambroisine. Let her hold him. She needs to hold him.”

  I cradled him to my chest, murmuring to my lifeless son, until the warmth seeped from his tiny perfect body.

  I named him Esprit Fouquet Guilcher. We buried him the next day in the village cemetery, alongside too many others.

  * * *

  • • •

  I stumbled through the hours of every day in a daze, resenting the sunshine on my face. Not wanting to eat. Angry even at the need to relieve myself. It all seemed so banal, so tied to this earthly world that my young husband, and now our desperately young child, had departed.

  My mother tried to observe Christmas in some small ways: She hung a few streamers of shells and greenery about the front hall, and Rainer built a cozy fire in the parlor every evening. Sometimes he would read to me as I sat in a rocking chair, wrapped in a quilt, watching the embers glow. We dropped any pretense of not being fond of each other; how could I care about consequences now?

  But even the home I had always known, with its precious window seats and bookshelves, its ocean views and cheery kitchen and cozy parlor, had become a place of sadness, like everyplace else the war had touched. My mother and Rainer tried to care for me, to offer me their love and support, but I could not love myself.

  Nothing mattered. Nothing.

  One day I opened the bedroom closet and spied my grandmother’s robe noire, the dark linen hanging like a specter. Her jibilinnen sat on a nearby shelf. Clothes I had sworn I would never wear.

  The traditional black outfit had always seemed to me a symbol of the past, of a constant mourning that I wanted no part of. I had yearned for music and laughter, not the daily struggle to survive that was life on the Île de Feme.

  And now, though it had been only, what—six months? Six months since our men left, yet I had aged a decade, maybe two.

  I am a widow. And a . . . Why was there no word for a woman who has lost her child? No word to describe what I was now, no phrase that could possibly convey this chasm of loss and anguish. I hadn’t kept my baby safe. My precious Esprit was gone without a single cry, and he had taken my spirit with him, into the ether.

  Nothing mattered anymore. I had little food but didn’t want to eat. I had no bed or home of my own but didn’t sleep, didn’t need a home.

  I sat on the closet floor and stared at the robe noire and jibilinnen. Hours passed. And finally I realized: This was my place. These were my clothes.

  Awkwardly, I slipped the black dress over my head, contorting myself to latch all the hooks and eyes in back. Standing back, I pulled the winged headdress over my light brown hair and gazed at my reflection in the full-length mirror.

  The mourning witch within my soul stared back at me and I understood: This was the last outfit I would ever wear.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Alex

  Back at the guesthouse, Alex noticed the light under Jean-Luc’s bedroom door and wondered whether he was up late, reading. She felt an absurd impulse to knock on the door, to wish him a good night.

  Why did it feel so easy to be around him? It was a novel sensation; Alex had had a few women friends in her life, but never a man. Yet sometimes . . . sometimes Jean-Luc looked at her as if he wanted to be more than friends. It made her heart speed up when she found his eyes on her, but it also stirred something else: anger. Even fear.

  Alex was an island. She didn’t need anyone. She didn’t want to need anyone.

  So she stifled the impulse to knock, instead entering her own room and closing the door. The night-light cast its reassuring glow. She snapped on the bedside lamp and went to the window to look out over the dark ocean, thinking about Ambroisine in her little stone cottage, and Korrigan, and the evening with Tante Agnès and Michou and Severine and Ismael and Christine. She liked them all, each a character in his or her own way.

  Their dinner conversation came back to her: Sea-level rise put the island in peril. The Île de Feme couldn’t simply build walls to keep the waters out.

  Alex pictured the inundation, the salty waters flooding these rooms, turning these historic homes into ghostly underwater relics. She imagined swimming through the halls, diving down the murky steps. A part of her felt ready for the sensation of luminous waters closing over her head, leaving her to haunt the submerged stone pathways.

  She thought of “The Little Mermaid,”
and pondered Dahut making it all the way to the Île de Feme’s rocky shores to join the Gallizenae who had once inhabited and protected this island.

  Alex crawled into bed, read a few more passages of To the Lighthouse, and drifted off.

  She dreamed that she was drifting, far underwater, looking up toward the surface, searching for light, straining to see, as the darkness of the ocean depths closed in on her.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Natalie

  Jean-Luc was very excited to find the dead rabbit in the kitchen and volunteered to help.

  “You want to butcher an animal?” Natalie asked.

  “I would love to assist, if I may,” said Jean-Luc.

  “You are full of surprises, monsieur. You know that? Okay, let’s set up a table outside. It’s easier.”

  Out near the shed, they placed three wood planks across two sawhorses, covered the surface in newspapers, and laid the rabbit out.

  It was surprisingly easy to take the animal apart, even after all these years. It was so awful, so brutal, and yet it had always seemed to Natalie the highest hypocrisy to cry over an animal being butchered but then to eat it with pleasure. What did it mean to skip the all-important step, the hard part before one was allowed to consume?

  It was ugly, yes. It certainly didn’t smell like lavender. And yet it put dinner on the table. The Commander used to say that if we asked an animal to give up its life for our benefit, the very least we could do was bear witness to its sacrifice, face-to-face. He had gotten that part right, at least.

  “Reminds me of when we were kids,” said Alex, joining them, a cup of coffee in her hand.

  Natalie continued methodically dissecting the rabbit, keeping the bony parts with little meat to use to make a rich stock.

  “And what do you do with . . . les abats? I don’t know the term in English,” Jean-Luc asked as he watched every turn of Natalie’s wrist.