Off the Wild Coast of Brittany

by Juliet Blackwell

  “That’s a good idea,” she said in a small voice. “But I—I don’t think I can touch her.”

  “I’ll do it,” Alex said. “You know what? There’s an old wooden box in the shed. How about I make a little bed for her out of those ugly curtains you got for the kitchen?”

  “They really are ugly, aren’t they?” Nat said with a reluctant smile.

  “They really are. But they’re soft. And aren’t hens color-blind, anyway?”

  “Are they?”

  “Remember when Mom taught us about the cones in our eyes, how there were colors we couldn’t even imagine?”

  Nat nodded. “I remember. But I don’t remember what she said about chickens.”

  “Me neither. But I’m pretty sure Bobox won’t mind, no matter how many cones she has. I’ll take care of her, Nat. Don’t worry.”

  “Thank you, Alex.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Natalie

  By the time they were patting down the dirt over Bobox’s grave, the late-afternoon light was dimming. Alex stood, turned too quickly, and bumped into Natalie.

  “Oops, sorry,” she murmured.

  “No worries,” said Natalie. She watched her sister for a moment. “Alex, why are you here?”

  Alex tilted her head. “I’m helping you with Bobox.”

  “I mean what brought you here, to the Île de Feme?”

  Alex paused for a moment, then said lightly, “It’s not enough to want to visit my sister?”

  “Not really, no. I can’t help feeling there’s more to it.”

  Alex gave a humorless laugh. “I need . . . I needed a place to land for a little bit.”

  “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want. But . . . are you all right?”

  Alex looked away.

  “Alex, are you sick?” Natalie asked.

  When her sister still didn’t answer, fear knifed through Natalie. Jean-Luc was right.

  “I notice you’ve been stumbling,” continued Natalie. “You never used to trip over anything. And there have been other things. I mean, I know it’s been a while since we spent a lot of time together, but . . . can’t you tell me?”

  Alex seemed to be fighting back tears. Alex never cried. Natalie was the designated crier in the Morgen family.

  Finally, Alex choked out: “I’m not dying or anything. So there’s that.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  “Not really. In a way it’s worse than that. I mean, it’s not worse. It’s just . . .”

  “Tell me. Please, Alex.”

  Alex hesitated, but then decided it was time. “You know how I got so upset when you were looking in my drawer?”

  Natalie nodded.

  “I didn’t want you to find my book of Braille.”

  “Braille? As in the print for the blind?”

  Alex nodded.

  “Why . . . I mean, how is it you read Braille?”

  “I don’t. I’m trying to learn.”

  “Because . . . ?”

  “Nat, I’m going blind.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Alex

  I don’t . . . I don’t understand,” Nat stammered. “What’s wrong? How bad is it?”

  “I still have some vision, obviously, mostly right in the center. I started losing my night vision first. Then my peripheral vision got bad.”

  Nat opened her mouth, but appeared to be speechless.

  “It comes on slowly,” Alex continued. “It’s sort of like looking through a hole in a fence—part of what I see is light and bright and the rest is blurred out and dark. I call it the ‘creeping blackness,’ and it’s been caving in on me a tiny, terrifying bit at a time.”

  “That sounds awful.”

  Alex found Nat’s blunt words somehow comforting. “It is.”

  “Can’t it be stopped? There must be some sort of treatment.”

  Alex shook her head. “There’s ongoing research but as yet nothing is especially effective, at least in my case.”

  “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “Several.”

  “I’m talking about actual medical professionals,” Nat said. “Not just old women with herbs?”

  Alex let out a chuckle. Getting her eyes checked had been the first time in her life she’d been to an “actual medical professional.” Until the black creeping began, Alex had been healthy to the point of absurdity, evading flus and colds and sidestepping even the most basic complaints.

  “I went to real ophthalmologists with modern equipment and everything,” said Alex. “The best specialists in Albuquerque, and when they couldn’t help, I tried a few in Phoenix and in Salt Lake City. It’s called retinitis pigmentosa. It’s genetic, so it runs in families. We’re lucky it’s only me. I insisted Faith and Hope get their kids tested, but so far everyone’s good. I take it you haven’t had any problems? You would have noticed by now.”

  Natalie shook her head. “What about Charity?”

  “I’ve sent messages, but no reply.”

  “Okay, so what are the next steps? We’ll take you to see a doctor. I’ll find someone in Quimper, or better yet we’ll go to Paris. . . .”

  “You think the French have a miracle cure they’ve been keeping a secret?” Alex scoffed. “Even if they did, I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “National health care, remember?”

  “I’m not French, though. Would I qualify for health care as a nonresident?”

  “Probably not . . . but even if you have to pay for it, I’ll bet it’s cheaper here than back home. I saw a doctor in Paris once and it cost me less than half the dinner bill at Milo’s Café.”

  A long moment passed.

  “So . . . what are your plans?” Nat asked.

  Alex would have assumed she had a plan, too, had it been any other problem. She thought again of Nat as a kid, climbing that stupid rock and halfway up becoming too frightened to move, how Alex had called down to her: The only way to go is up, Nat. Keep climbing. Alex had been so sure of herself then. So strong and healthy, always ready to act. Now, for the first time in her life, she truly understood the urge to freeze, to pretend that nothing was happening, even though she was hanging off the edge of a cliff.

  “I have some time to figure things out. A little time yet. Hey, did you know Louis Braille was French?”

  “He’s the inventor of Braille writing?” Nat asked.

  Alex nodded. “Napoleon needed a way for messages to be deciphered in the dark, so they developed a system called ‘night writing’ based on feeling the words instead of seeing them. Louis Braille developed the Braille alphabet based on that.”

  The day Alex read about Louis Braille and the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris, it had made her think of Nat, and gave her the idea of visiting her sister. In search of what, exactly, Alex wasn’t sure.

  “I didn’t know that,” said Nat. “But, with technology and voice systems today, do people still use Braille?”

  “Apparently, they do.” Alex shrugged. “It’s not easy to learn, though. I was never great at reading or studying, anyway. I must be an idiot to think I could teach myself something like Braille.”

  “Maybe I could help,” Nat offered. “We could learn it together.”

  “Maybe,” Alex said, turning her face up to the sky. The sun was going down, the clouds taking on a moody, pinkish golden streaky nature. Sunshine had always been important to Alex. It energized her, made her happy, and was a big reason why she had moved to the Southwest. What would it be like to lose the last of her vision, to live in perpetual darkness? Panic gripped her, and no amount of telling herself she would find a way, she always found a way, others managed it and she would, too, assuaged that fear.

  She would be in the dark, forever. Alone.

  As if sensing her thoughts, N
at put her arm around Alex’s shoulders, and after a moment, Alex rested her head on her little sister’s sweet-smelling hair. Had they ever stood like this, she wondered, Nat holding her rather than the other way around?

  And then she heard Nat chuckling.

  “What’s funny?” Alex asked.

  “I was just thinking about us—Jean-Luc, me, and you, the three of us hunkered down in this ramshackle old building. A useless bureaucrat, a stressed-out writer, and a blind handywoman, waiting out the storm.”

  They laughed.

  And then they cried.

  * * *

  • • •

  Nat and Alex had planned to go to Ambroisine’s the next evening, after Christine came back from her day at sea and had a chance to “shower off the fish guts,” as she liked to say.

  Jean-Luc had been gone much of the day, touring the island with the climate-change group that Ismael worked with, as well as meeting with the assistant mayor.

  He seemed unaccountably nervous when Alex passed him in the upstairs hall.

  “Alex, I wonder if I could talk with you a moment?” Jean-Luc said.

  “Of course. Everything okay?”

  “Yes, yes, I am okay, or at least I think I am. Alex, I try hard to be a good man. But I am not . . . I know I am not anything special. I have worked hard to raise my children, and I was proud to support them in their studies, in their hobbies. But I do not believe they think of me very often.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  “No, no, it is. I do not mind this. It is the way it should be. We raised them to be independent, and they are off on their own now, with their own lives. In the future, if they have children, perhaps we will spend more time together—I hope we will. I think I would be a good grand-père.”

  “I think you would be, too,” Alex said.

  “But for this moment now, it is just fine. . . . I am on my own.”

  “I’m not sure I’m following you, Jean-Luc. What’s on your mind?”

  “My point is, I have spent most of my life doing my duty. Doing what is required. I do not regret it—to quote Edith Piaf, “Je ne regrette rien”—but now, for the first time, I can do what I choose to do. I am not a young man, but I am healthy and with luck I have a good part of my life in front of me, and a decent pension from the government. I want something different for myself, to explore a different aspect of myself. That is why I came here to the island.” He smiled. “As I mentioned, it was unexpected.”

  “I’ll bet it was.”

  “I think I was as surprised as anyone. I was open to anything when I came here, and I have found something I never knew.”

  “Okay . . . Jean-Luc, I’m still not sure what you’re talking about.”

  “I have given it a lot of thought and this is what I would like to know: Alex, could you see yourself having a future with me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just mean that if you would like to stay here in France, I will help you.”

  “I don’t need any help,” she said, her voice flat.

  “But, Alex, I feel as though the normal rules of society do not apply in this situation. I mean, why should they apply? I care for you, and I want to be sure you have what you need. I believe I can give you that.”

  She shook her head. “I thought you were going to tell me you had found another place to live or something. This is . . . this is crazy.”

  “And is it so wrong to be a little crazy?”

  “That’s not the point. I mean, what are you talking about, a future together? We barely know each other. We haven’t even kissed each other.”

  His voice dropped. “Did you want me to kiss you, Alex?”

  As a matter of fact, she had thought about kissing Jean-Luc, but that was hardly the point. A moment passed, while Alex tried to think of what to say. Shame washed over her, even though she knew she shouldn’t feel such an emotion in response to a medical condition over which she had no control. Still, she felt blindsided. Literally.

  “I did not mean for this to be a big deal . . . ,” he said, hedging.

  “It feels like a big deal to me.”

  “Alex, it’s just that I would be happy to help take care of you.”

  “I don’t need someone to take care of me,” Alex said, her shame morphing to anger. “What I need is my sight back.”

  His eyes widened. “You’re losing your sight?”

  “Didn’t you know?”

  “How would I know? I only wondered if you needed some help.”

  “What I need is for you to find another place to live, Jean-Luc. Sooner rather than later. I will take care of myself.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Violette

  Noëlle was surprisingly amenable to our plan, though Marceline’s deteriorating condition did not leave us much choice. She needed to be rescued, or she would die. Noëlle explained that the boat, which we now referred to as the Bag-Noz, or ghost ship, was expected to pass off the coast of Brest three nights from now. She had a code she could use to make the message unintelligible to others, and to let the crew know it was not an ambush.

  Noëlle was also invaluable in convincing a large group of the island women who no longer trusted me to go along with our plan.

  “I always loved the story of Circe, who changed Odysseus’s men into swine,” I said as we discussed plans for the proposed evening of wine, women, and song.

  “They’re already swine,” said Noëlle. “I like the part about them falling asleep. Too bad it’s not forever.”

  Rainer did his part by suggesting the idea to his fellow Germans: The women of the island needed more supplies to feed their growing children, and wanted to keep their cows to provide milk. The women had proposed an exchange, Rainer explained: For one night, the Abri du Marin would be transformed into a fantastical cabaret, and the soldiers agreed not to slaughter the cows. In addition, every soldier’s entrance fee would be extra ration tickets or nonperishable items from their own canteen.

  Over generous servings of cider, Rainer smiled and asked the men: Didn’t they deserve a night of raucous good fun? Nothing ever happened on the island and there was nothing to do but watch the jibilinnen-clad women scurrying along the passageways, avoiding contact with the soldiers, speaking only with reluctance. What would it be like to enjoy their feminine company for one evening, to get a peek at the women hidden under their voluminous black skirts?

  With so little time to prepare, it was not possible to speak to every woman on the island. So we used our efficient gossip network to spread the news, and Rainer sketched some simple sewing patterns in my mother’s cookbook. In these “recipes,” “rainwater” referred to Rainer, and “Circe” referred to the upcoming event.

  The old book was passed around to every Fémane on the island, from neighbor to neighbor, one after another. Each woman indicated what she was prepared to contribute, whether it was sewing costumes or decorating the Abri du Marin or preparing refreshments. The younger women who were willing to entertain the soldiers added their measurements to the book if they did not feel confident in sewing their own costumes.

  We stayed awake nearly all night for two nights in a row, setting everything up: sewing and decorating, coordinating, and preparing Marceline and her all-important lipstick for the rendezvous with the Bag-Noz.

  It was a huge risk. If we were found out, the punishment would be severe, But it was a risk the women of the island seemed willing, even eager, to take.

  We had gotten special permission for a number of us to gather together to sew. Our one great asset was the disdain in which most of the soldiers held women. In the soldiers’ eyes, women were meant to cook and sing and dance for their amusement. We were good for nothing more.

  “So assign a man to guard them if you are concerned,” Rainer suggested one night at dinner, when the alwa
ys-suspicious Hans objected to our proposed sewing circle. “That way you may be sure the women of this godforsaken island are not plotting to overthrow the Third Reich.”

  He said this last with a smile and a wink, and the other officers at the table laughed. Hans looked annoyed but said nothing further. What harm could a women’s sewing circle cause?

  Using my sailor’s valentine as inspiration, we boiled rabbit hides to make glue, and used the sharp tines of our tiny silver bigorneaux forks to drill in delicate seashells holes just large enough to pass a needle and thread. My mother looted her own death drawer to contribute satin from her wedding gown, and others scavenged through their drawers and trunks for bits of silk and lace, buttons and hooks and eyes, fringe and fabric for the ornate costumes. Even the children did their part, scouring the island and the beaches for feathers and shells, pretty pebbles, and fistfuls of sea glass.

  My heart swelled with fear and pride at the sight of so many black-clad figures gathered in our kitchen and dining room, bent over their sewing projects, silver needles flashing: Marie-Paule, Irmine, Lazarette, Corinne, Angelique. The older women, too, joined us: my mother, and Madame Canté, and even my belle-mère, Gladie, who came out of her mourning seclusion to do what she could to help the cause, weeping softly while she sewed.

  While the rest of us worked on the elaborate costumes, two of the most talented seamstresses concentrated on making Rainer his very own jibilinnen and robe noire.

  Near dawn of the second day, exhausted from sewing all night, we finally ushered the last of our neighbors out of the guesthouse. After they left, I helped Rainer slip his custom robe noire over his head, doing up the dozens of hooks and eyes that closed the gown in the back.

  He ran his hands along the sleeves down to the skirt almost reverently, as though the traditional black dress were a holy artifact.

  “I used to play dress-up as a child,” he confessed. “There was an old trunk filled with boas and skirts, hats and scarves, and my father encouraged me to try things on. He believed in encouraging a child’s imagination and creative expression. It felt so natural. It wasn’t until much, much later that I realized my desire to dress as a woman made me a freak.”