Off the Wild Coast of Brittany

by Juliet Blackwell

  “It’s the two sisters, Violette and Doura!” said Natalie. “Thank you so much for framing it.”

  “I thought you might want to hang it up in the parlor. But look what else I noticed when I was looking back through the photo album.” Alex handed Natalie the photograph of the German officers walking along the quay. She pointed at one of them. “Look closely at this German officer’s face. Now look at Doura.”

  Natalie studied one after the other and smiled. “I’ve got to say, Alex, for a woman who’s losing her sight, you’ve got a very good eye.”

  “Am I crazy, or is that the same person?” Alex asked.

  “Looks like we’re going to have to bribe Ambroisine with more cider and cigarettes to get the whole story, but I think you may well be right.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Violette

  1947

  The story of the Gallizenae always begins “Il était une fois,” or “Once upon a time,” as though it were a fable. To me it is truth.

  For as long as anyone can remember, my family has lived on this forbidding strip of granite off the coast of Bretagne, taking into its fold the occasional sailor or castaway, but never abandoning the Île de Feme. The blood of the Gallizenae runs through my veins.

  And I believe their spirits came to help us that night.

  Much later, after our panicked, painful struggle to arrive at the House of Meneï, Henri Thomas told us the whole story. He had been waiting at the top of the tower, as we planned, but a second soldier had shown up, surprising him.

  The soldier demanded to know what the old man was doing. Proper keepers polished their Fresnel lenses during the day, not in the dead of night. Monsieur Thomas spoke more German than he let on, but feigned ignorance, speaking in a torrent of French about foreign ships in the water, hoping to distract the soldier long enough for Rainer to arrive and subdue him.

  When Rainer’s footsteps rang out on the steps, the soldier yelled, “Halt! Wer geht dahin?”

  When he appeared at the top of the stairs, the sight of Rainer’s robe noire and jibilinnen gave the soldier pause.

  Rainer did not hesitate but leapt on the soldier. There was a struggle, and Rainer was able to get the soldier in a choke hold until he blacked out.

  Then Henri Thomas and Rainer used the tower light to send the signal in Morse code several times, praying it would be seen by the crew of the Bag-Noz, the ghost ship working with the resistance, wherever it might be.

  “We’d better go,” said Monsieur Thomas. “If anyone on the island noticed that, there will be a lot of questions. Go with God, Rainer. Vielen dank, mein freund.”

  They turned to leave, then stopped in their tracks.

  The soldier had roused, and was holding his gun but seemed confused.

  “Was ist los?” Demanding to know what was going on, he raised his weapon in their direction.

  Rainer spoke in a high-pitched voice, saying something rapid in German, which Monsieur Thomas did not understand. The soldier, still unsteady on his feet, pointed the gun at the lighthouse keeper.

  Rainer leapt on him. There was a struggle. Rainer managed to knock the man out again by banging his head on the metal stairs.

  But the gun, in between them, went off, its explosive retort ringing through the lighthouse tower.

  * * *

  • • •

  As far as anyone in the German military knew, Rainer Heisinger deserted the army that night and attempted to sail to England. When bits and pieces of the boat were found washed ashore the next day, he was presumed drowned.

  To an islander, destroying a boat is the equivalent of the ancient Romans sacrificing a bull. The women did it without hesitation to save him.

  Before we left that night, I untied the soldier at the bottom of the tower so when he awoke he could only say that one of the witchy women had cast a spell on him, that she came bearing cake and the next thing he knew he had fallen asleep. He could not identify her because “all the women in black look the same.” The poor soldier at the top of the tower suffered a severe blow to the head and thus could remember very little. Even after recuperating all he could recall was that a fat woman appeared, and Monsieur Thomas was waiting for her. But the old lighthouse keeper claimed that the woman was his lover who had arrived for a clandestine assignation, and in his surprise the soldier had fallen backward and banged his head by accident.

  Since nothing was found to be awry with the light or the tower, and the Germans still needed Monsieur Thomas’s expertise to maintain the light and the foghorn, the matter was dropped.

  Noëlle told us the men at the “cabaret” fell asleep, just as we had planned, and she, Irmine, and Marie-Paule were able to carry Marceline to the little cove, where she and her lipstick met the Bag-Noz and sailed across the channel to England.

  Madame Thérèse nursed Rainer back to health in the basement of the House of Meneï where he was hiding, for hers was the only home in which the Germans never set foot. Madame Thérèse claimed it was because of the powers of the Gallizenae, though we thought it also had something to do with the fact that they truly considered Madame Thérèse to be a witch, a Hexe.

  The bullet had passed clear through Rainer’s side, so Madame Thérèse and Ambroisine were able to stitch him up, and for weeks they applied plasters and concocted drafts to avoid infection and treat his fever.

  Once he recovered, Rainer continued to wear his robe noire and jibilinnen. He grew his hair out, and amazingly, the German soldiers appeared not to recognize him. He rarely went out in the daytime, and if he did, all they saw was a blond woman dressed in black, tall and broad. We islanders are a sturdy people; our occupiers did not see past the traditional garb.

  Noëlle made him a convincing set of documents under the name of Doura, which means “water” in the old language. Here on the Île de Feme, water is life.

  But he was not asked for his identification papers, not even once.

  By then the occupiers were feeling rather defeated, anyway. They never did figure out what had happened the night of the spectacle, why they weren’t able to hold their liquor. Embarrassed by being taken in by a group of women, they did not report what had happened to their superiors. But they did blow up the lighthouse when they eventually left the island, leaving passing ships in danger for years afterward. Life is not fair, and war is worse.

  When the Allies finally defeated the Nazis and the war came to an end, a few villagers accused me of having committed collaboration horizontale with Rainer. But they did not shave my head and walk me through the streets; at least I was spared that indignity, unlike many poor women in Paris and elsewhere.

  Most of the island women understood, and without admitting what they had done that night of Circe, they defended my innocence.

  We Fémanes never again spoke of that night. We hid the costumes in the nooks and crannies of our homes; I made room in a trunk packed with my mamm-gozh’s embroidered linens and hid the trunk in a locked closet behind an attic cupboard.

  Madame Thérèse advised me to wrap the keys to the hidden closet in a scrap of black satin, and then to bind it with a cord, knotted many times while I chanted a prayer to the Gallizenae. I was then to bury the keys “underfoot,” so I dug a hole under the step to the front terrace, vowing never to tell anyone the tale of our wartime adventure.

  Rainer returned to Germany after the war to search for Sascha. He shared the agony of so many when he discovered that his amour, his love, his smart, talented Sascha, died of pneumonia in a concentration camp in Sachsenhausen just weeks before the Red Army liberated it.

  Afterward, my heartbroken friend returned to the Île de Feme and donned the mourning costume of robe noire and jibillinen. Rainer kept the name Doura. When our men returned from England they were full of questions, but the women simply said Doura had come to us during the war. No details were given, and there were more
important things to worry about, such as reclaiming our homes, returning to fishing, and rebuilding the lighthouse.

  Doura and I lived together contentedly after that, running the guesthouse, which we renamed the Bag-Noz in honor of the boat that came out of the fog to help us that night as well as the many spirits that roam our seas.

  Visitors sometimes ask me whether I never wanted to leave the island.

  I have traveled. I have visited Paris many times, and I took trips to Nantes and Bordeaux, and even down through Biarritz to Donostia-San Sebastián on the coast of Spain. But I always came back; I have been part of this island since the Gallizenae, and these rocky outcroppings are as much a part of me as my jibilinnen.

  My brother-in-law, Salvator, and I are now friends. Whatever spark we might once have felt died during the war, and was buried by the deaths of Marc and my dear Esprit. I was pleased, for Gladie’s sake, that Salvator returned to the Île de Feme after the war. He brought with him a nice English girl he met in London, and she seems to be fitting in. They have opened a café on the quay that serves what they call fish et chips.

  Madame Thérèse passed away before the war was over, and the young Ambroisine tried her best to fill her shoes, but at her tender young age she finds it hard to get people to trust her. Still, she is hardworking, and I have shared with her the recipes for tinctures and salves from my own mamm-gozh. I believe she will do well.

  Before the war began, I used to doubt myself. I pretended. I denied my unreasonable heart.

  Now that the trials of war are over, I am who I am, for better or for worse. I wear the robe noire and jibilinnen. I remain unmarried. I have become a healer and once pulled off a rather unbelievable bit of sabotage to defy the occupying army. I have traveled my fill and I have taken occasional lovers. But the island always calls to me, bringing me back.

  Just as it does to my sister, Doura.

  These days as we stroll along the quay or pass through the narrow pathways of the village, I sometimes hear children call us witches behind our backs.

  I prefer “latter-day Gallizenae,” but it doesn’t really matter.

  In the late afternoons, when the guests are out and the sheets are washed and the floors are mopped and our teas and tinctures are prepared, Doura and I relax and take apéro together on the porch of the Bag-Noz.

  There we sit, watching the fading light of day, petting our cats and listening to the island sounds: chatting tourists and squawking seagulls and charette wheels rolling along stone walkways.

  Together we sit in joy and mourning and sisterhood.

  Epilogue

  The blind woman makes her way down the pathway, running one hand along the wall to one side, her cane tap-tap-tapping on the worn stones in front of her. A wolflike dog named Korrigan sticks close by her side.

  “Bonjour, Alex,” says a man’s voice. “Et Korrigan.”

  “Bonjour . . . c’est Monsieur Tarik?” Alex responds.

  “Oui, ça va, très bien,” he replies.

  Alex smiles. She knows her neighbors’ voices now, almost all of them.

  Alex had run to the store to pick up a few more baguettes and milk for a pair of unexpected guests who arrived on the afternoon ferry. Severine carefully placed the items in her backpack, and a woman in line behind her helped Alex to slip the pack onto her back.

  Her neighbors, the islanders—even the tourists—are very helpful.

  As she walks, Alex thinks about Violette and Doura, and Operation Circe, the women cajoling the Nazi occupiers into an evening of laughter and song and drunken slumber. She thinks of the men of the island loading onto their fishing boats on that June morning in 1940 and leaving behind their island, their wives and mothers and sisters and children, to risk their lives fighting for la Belle France. She thinks of Agnès and Michou, Christine and Brigitte, Severine and Ismael and even Milo. All these tough, independent islanders who refuse to leave this forbidding rock, despite the sea level rising.

  Alex’s own personal Armageddon has indeed arrived; she can no longer see more than occasional shadows and bright lights.

  The loss is heartbreaking. Wrenching. She misses so many things: that little line of the horizon where the ocean meets the sky, the glow of a candle, the rosy cheeks of happy children, Korrigan’s fierce but loving eyes . . . and the sweet, steady expression on Jean-Luc’s face, which, once upon a time, she had found boring.

  There are many things she can’t do now, but there are still many things that she can. Christine takes her out on her fishing boat—a life preserver strapped securely around her—so she can feel the sea spray on her face, and Alex is able to help pull in the nets full of fish. At home, she counts the stairs as she descends, and they refrain from rearranging the furniture—which is probably covered in the hair of their two recently rescued cats. She hangs laundry on the huge line, and in the evenings, over apéro, she sometimes throws the cochonnet onto their new pétanque court, and Jean-Luc laughs and tells her she’s getting better. She has not yet mastered Braille, but Jean-Luc found a pack of playing cards marked with those distinctive bumps, and she is learning as they play together in the evenings. Alex also has discovered audiobooks, and has been making her way through the writings of James Baldwin and so many others whom she has never read; Nat recently sent her a new study list from Cairo.

  The tourist season won’t start for another month, and Alex yearns for the time to pass quickly so that her little sister, the once annoying little Nat-the-Gnat, will come back to the island, and back to the Bag Noz. Back to them.

  Alex knows the village’s web of passageways by now: first left, second right brings her to La Melisse general store; continuing on to the second left and the third doorway brings her to chez Tante Agnès. She has learned the way to Milo’s, to Le Caredec tourist supply shop, and is working on making it all the way out to the grand phare, the big lighthouse, all by herself.

  And although Korrigan isn’t really much of a guide dog, having her nearby while progressing through the narrow passages makes Alex feel stronger. She is no longer afraid. Alex has learned something her parents never understood: that following the drama and pain and tragedy of The Change, some die, and some survive.

  And some are reborn altogether.

  * * *

  • • •

  Natalie stands on the open deck of the ferry, straining to catch a glimpse of the Île de Feme as it emerges from the ocean. The low gray strip of land seems to wink at her through the salt haze, filling her heart with an unfamiliar emotion: She is coming home.

  In her suitcase are carefully wrapped souvenirs from Egypt and Norway, California and Paris. In her travels, Natalie wandered through vast open-air markets and poked around tiny curiosity shops, and every time she happened upon something special—something tactile, so Alex could feel it—she knew she would bring it back home, to the Bag-Noz. To her sister.

  Alex has no idea she is coming.

  When they finally dock and the passengers surge off the ferry, clutching bright inflatable beach toys and picnic baskets and trailing their rolling suitcases, Natalie lingers and chats with the crew while she waits for the crowd to disperse. Then she disembarks and walks to the guesthouse, pausing outside the iron gates.

  A fat orange cat perches on a windowsill, and Korrigan lazes in the sun. The yard is tidy, flowers overflow their pots, and a carved wooden sign reads: Bag-Noz Guesthouse: No Vacancy. Good thing Natalie called ahead to tell Jean-Luc she was arriving and would need a room.

  Alex is sitting at the little café table on the porch, snapping green beans.

  “Hey, Alex,” says Natalie.

  Her sister stills, holding a bean between her hands. She tilts her head.

  “Wait. Is that . . . Nat?”

  Nat pushes through the gates, rushes up the steps to the porch, and envelops her sister in a bear hug.

  “You weren’t supposed
to be here until next month!” Alex says, returning her sister’s hug.

  “Beats the hell out of me why, but I missed this place,” Natalie says, hiding her face in her sister’s neck, adding in a fierce, muffled whisper: “I missed you.”

  “I honestly can’t believe you’re here,” says Alex.

  “Me neither,” says Natalie, taking a seat at the table. “I finished my manuscript, and my agent loves it. The working title is Butchery: A Tale of the Messy Innards. Too on the nose?”

  Alex chuckles. “Maybe just a tad.”

  “Anyway, I finished up, and I couldn’t think of anywhere else I wanted to be more than here. Lord, do I have some tales to tell! And I want to hear everything about what’s going on with you, and Jean-Luc, and the island.”

  “Well, Tonton Michou found himself a girlfriend.”

  “No!”

  “But the big news is that Brigitte is now serving kebabs.”

  “No!”

  “Seriously! She’s decided to branch out.” Alex smiles, reaches for her sister’s hand, and squeezes. When she speaks, her voice is rough with emotion. “Hey, you know what? Whenever I hear the afternoon ferry pull up to the dock, it means it’s time for apéro.”

  “Looks like I arrived just in time.”

  Author’s Note

  The Île de Feme as portrayed in Off the Wild Coast of Brittany is based on the actual Île de Sein, a small fishing island in the French region of Finistère in Brittany. During World War II all the men of fighting age sailed their fishing boats to England and joined the Free French Forces, leading Charles de Gaulle to proclaim that the majority of his troops seemed to be made up of fishermen from the Île de Sein. Of the 128 island men who left for England to fight, 15 were killed; the Vichy government referred to them as “Anglais,” and their families were denied any military pay or benefits. In January 1946 the Sénans, or people of the island, were honored with the prestigious Croix de la Libération, and in September 1960 a large monument of the Cross of Lorraine was erected on the island and dedicated by none other than Général de Gaulle himself.