The Breakers

by Claudie Gallay

“You go to Cherbourg?” I said.

  “Cherbourg?”

  “Your hands …”

  “Yes … No … Well, there’s someone who comes to the house. A young woman from Beaumont, charming. Every Tuesday. It’s very convenient having someone come to your house, you know … She used to be pretty …”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Janine, Prévert’s wife. Of course, toward the end, she became dark, difficult, what she was going through was very painful, no doubt … Did I already tell you that Minette was anorexic? Janine had to run after her with a plate to make her eat. But that wasn’t here, that was in Saint-Paul … Saint-Paul-de-Vence … Are you listening?” He smiled a little. “Obviously not, you’re not listening.”

  He gathered his cup and the teapot together in the middle of the table. The spoon in the cup. He turned to me.

  “Are you interested in that young man?”

  I did not answer. I closed the curtain.

  “That house, do you think it belongs to him?”

  “If he’s the Perack boy, most definitely … I recall that the mother was very beautiful. The father was very ordinary, but she …”

  “What happened?”

  “An accident, they were on their way back from Alderney, it was nighttime, their sailing boat capsized. They had a young child on board. A terribly sad story.”

  “And what about him, he wasn’t on the sailing boat?”

  “No. What do you find interesting in that young man? He’s pretty ordinary, isn’t he?”

  This made me laugh.

  He told me that the house was haunted.

  Lili went over to the door, her tea towel over her shoulder.

  “There are more rats than ghosts in that place!” she barked, peering through one of the panes.

  M. Anselme raised his eyebrows.

  “Haunted by what?” I said.

  “By whom, you mean. A handsome young ship’s captain, one Sir John Kepper, his boat sank off Le Blanchard. Everything on board washed up on the shore and some of the things ended up in that house.”

  He took me by the arm to pull me closer.

  “On stormy nights, some people have seen a light shining in the window, a light like a flame. Sometimes the flame is upstairs. Other times in the skylight. People who don’t believe it say that it’s the reflection of the moon against the window, but on stormy nights, there is no moon …”

  “And have you yourself ever seen the light?” Lili said.

  “No, but I’ve heard people say they’d seen it.”

  “I’ve been living here across the street for over twenty years and I’ve never seen a thing!”

  M. Anselme turned to me.

  “They say the roof beams came from the ship. They also say there’s a dresser inside with all of Sir John Kepper’s dishes.”

  “All his dishes, that’s a good one!” Lili said. “Who’s ever seen a ship’s captain haunt a house just for a stack of old plates!”

  Old Mother was listening to us, nestled into her armchair. Her head was gently nodding. She put a hand on the table for support.

  “I’ve seen it, that light …” She tried to sit up. “Several times, at night… A long time ago … The haunting was always stronger on stormy nights.”

  Her voice grated. Like blades. “I saw the shadow behind it, the hand holding the light.” Old Mother moaned those words about the light and then fell back. M. Anselme and I looked at each other.

  He ventured a smile.

  “Village tales,” he said.

  Lili went back behind her bar and folded the tea towels. She made an irregular heap that she smoothed with the palm of her hand and then she slid them into a cupboard under the till. It was said she kept a gun there, a double-barreled rifle. No one had ever actually seen it, but Max said she had used it to scare off a wild boar that had strayed a bit too close, in the garden.

  “By the way, Mme. Lili, the Perack accident, you must remember it, don’t you?”

  She looked up.

  “Long time ago …”

  “Still, such an accident … That young man over there, in the house across the way, could that be the elder son?”

  “Could be, yes.”

  “They had two children. One died, but the other one …”

  “It was forty years ago, and even if it is him, how do you expect me to recognize him?”

  M. Anselme nodded. “It was in 1967 …”

  “I was young in 1967.”

  That’s what she said: I was young, I don’t remember.

  M. Anselme turned to me.

  “In those days, people said there was a problem with the lamp in the lighthouse … That her father …”

  He lowered his voice, scarcely audible.

  Théo came in. The old fellows said, “Salut, Théo!”

  He did not reply. He never replied. The old fellows greeted him all the same.

  When she saw him, Old Mother grabbed her bag. “The old man …” she muttered between her teeth, her belly pressed against the table. She had to repeat it ten times over for him to turn round.

  “Hello there, old lady …”

  It cost him, Théo, to say that in a hoarse voice, and the old woman said nothing more.

  Lili served him the way she served everyone else. His cup on the bar. His coffee in the cup.

  Mute, father and daughter.

  She prepared his bag, a plastic box she had filled with rice and meat. She had pressed it down with the spoon. It had to last him two days, and no one had better find fault if, on the way, he happened to show someone what she had given him.

  She wrapped it all up, her gestures abrupt, the way you might give a dog his food when you do not care for him any more.

  I stole glances at them, and I could not understand how anyone could reach such a degree of hatred. Between them even silence became an insult.

  Théo put his cup down. Left a note next to it. He took his bag and left.

  M. Anselme followed him with his gaze.

  “You wonder why he goes on coming here …” I said.

  M. Anselme said that unless you were born here, it was impossible to understand the mystery of such silence.

  From the depths of her armchair, Old Mother continued to whimper beseechingly.

  Théo’s house was up against the hill, a large stone building, outside the village. A giant hydrangea bloomed next to the road. Théo did nothing to care for it, and it grew wild with clusters of superb flowers.

  The gate was always open. There were cats in the courtyard, around their bowls. Cats under the shed, too. Those ones would growl at you, impossible to get close to them.

  At the very top, an open dormer window in the roof overlooked the sea.

  One of the roof gutters had a leak. The water seeped out with a cascade of fine green moss that ran all the way to the ground. In the village, people said that houses like old Théo’s were home to goublins. They were not evil creatures, but they did have strange powers. Some of them took the form of cats, rabbits, or even hedgehogs. It was said that wherever there was a goublin, there was a treasure. No one knew that the treasure was there. Only the goublin.

  The first time I met Théo, he was outside on the porch with his cats. I stopped. I told him that I lived in the harbor, at La Griffue, that I was the one who had come to count the birds in his place. He knew who I was, and he invited me into the house. Gray curtains hung from the windows. I slipped my hands beneath the worn net curtains. The hems were hand-stitched. There were moth-holes between the rows of stitches.

  We talked about the cats and only the cats that day, the ones that lived outdoors and the ones that were in the house. When I left, he shook my hand. “You’ll have to come again and we’ll talk about birds.”

  I came again.

  Théo knew my habits. He had learned them. When it was my hour up at the cliffs, he would wait for me by the door. As soon as he saw me, he grabbed his cane and leaned against it. He could not stand for long,
because of the cartilage that was worn away in his hips. He should have had an operation. He did not want one.

  “Who’s going to look after my cats if I go to Cherbourg?”

  He said that all the old people who went to hospital came back between four boards.

  He walked by my side. He went with me as far as La Roche. We talked about La Hague, the moor, this harsh, strong land. Man could only incline his head before such a land.

  He used to work for the Centre at Caen. Everything I was doing, he had done—the reports, the egg-counting, observing the birds. Everything I saw, he had seen.

  He had walked along these cliffs for more than ten years, alone.

  The low stone walls that ran alongside the path were covered in moss. Sprouting here and there, in a tiny patch of soil, were little clusters of ferns.

  Théo and I headed to the right, between the houses. We went in front of Nan’s place. We always came this way to get to the path. It was not the quickest way, but Théo enjoyed taking this detour.

  When we came to Nan’s house, he looked at the door. He lingered a moment, his hand on the wall.

  Sheets were hanging beneath the awning, beating the air like phantom sheets. The door was open, the sun shone inside. Behind one of the windowpanes, we saw the black reflection of a passing shadow, and then the shadow was framed in the sunlight of the door.

  Théo gave a little wave. “You’re here, she won’t come.”

  Nan’s real name was Florelle. He told me that day. Like a confession.

  “After her family died, she didn’t want to be called that any more.”

  He still called her that. I pointed it out to him and he smiled.

  A strange smile, like another confession. And then he turned away.

  Le Blanchard was calm, there were almost no waves. A lull, before other storms.

  “There are still bodies out there, bodies the sea has not returned to her.”

  He said this and I remembered Nan’s gaze, full of pain, when she peered at Lambert’s face.

  “On the day of the storm, she thought she recognized someone.”

  He took my arm. “That happens sometimes … She believes that the dead return.”

  He lowered his gaze.

  “But the dead don’t return.”

  We took a few steps along the path, between the houses.

  “She touched his face, she called him Michel.”

  He remained silent.

  We went through the little hamlet to the last house.

  He talked about her some more, about Florelle. I would have liked to talk to him about you, the way he talked about her.

  After the last house, Théo stopped. There was a wide stone there, where he always sat when he came with me.

  “The fields of heather, you’ll see, with this southerly wind, they’ll be black today.”

  He stared at the path I was about to take, and that he had so often taken.

  “You might find some wild strawberries … There are a few patches after the second workman’s hut, they’re within reach.”

  He knew the rest of the path by heart. The location of every tree, every stone. The time it took to go from one rock to the next, from here to the cove at Les Moulinets, and further still, the caves and the old smugglers’ hideaways.

  I left him.

  I continued along the path. I do not know how long he stayed there. He said he was coming along with me, that he could walk the entire path just by sitting there on the stone.

  The path was narrow, winding between the sea and the moor. Beneath my feet was a mixture of slippery earth and rocks breaking the surface. I had to go as far as the Nez des Voidries. That is where the cormorants were. We were studying their ability to help each other. Their cohesion when hunting. Were they capable of driving schools of fish together? How did they cohabit when they were hunting?

  It was long work. Hours of observing in the wind.

  To the right, the sea was blinding with sunlight, a luminosity so fierce that I had to look away.

  At the end, the light hurt you, too. We had to close the shutters. Pull the curtains. Your colossus of a body had become a little thing lost deep in a bed. Even caresses, my hands upon you, you no longer wanted them.

  A rabbit sped by. It stopped for a moment, sitting up on its haunches, then disappeared between the patches of heather. Further along, in a meadow, I saw two horses, motionless. I kept on walking.

  I found the patches of wild strawberries Théo had mentioned, their leaves so green that they seemed blue. The red fruit was gorged with sugar. I crushed them under my tongue, an explosion of taste. My palate saturated, I kept a handful for Théo. I went on my way.

  After a while the path branched off and I was overlooking the cove at Écalgrain. Théo said that here, on summer evenings, the moor was ablaze.

  There were men sitting all the way down on the beach. A dozen or so. I looked at their faces through my binoculars. Unshaven. Mostly young. Their gazes tired. They were smoking, with their knees up. They had no baggage, did not seem to have any food. Nothing that might contain water, either. Some of the men were looking at the sea. Others were not looking at anything. Or between their feet. One of them was lying on his side. They were waiting for a boat, to get over to England.

  How long had they been there? There was one girl with them, sitting off to the side. She too was looking at the sea. I observed them for a long time. I wondered what would happen to them if the boat they hoped for did not come.

  After the cove, the cliffs were steeper. The heather was black. That is where the moorland goats came to graze. There were a dozen or so, living with neither tethers nor fences. Animals with long black wool. When it rained, they would huddle against the rocks or shelter by the caves.

  Le Nez des Voidries was a nesting place for the peregrine falcons. I had caught sight of ravens there on occasion. It was a difficult place to get to.

  I had brought a ham sandwich with me, and ate it, famished. The cormorants were fishing. I spent the day observing them. I noted down everything.

  A solitary warbler kept watch by me, tucked on her nest.

  Before leaving, I lay down, my belly against the earth. Short cropped moss clung to the rocks. There was a strong smell of humus, an indefinable odor that was a mixture of salt, rotting seaweed and dead fish.

  I recalled how I used to lie on your body. And your body on mine. Your weight, so heavy. I loved it, your weight on me. Would I have the strength? The last day, you passed your hand over my cheek, that hand of yours so wide that it could hold all of me. You wanted to speak. You could not.

  I went home at high tide. Tired, reeling. My eyes burning like those of certain old cats.

  I stopped at Théo’s, and on the table I left the handful of wild strawberries that I had brought back for him. He did not eat them. He said, “Later, tonight …”

  We talked.

  It began to rain, a fine rain, falling obliquely.

  I headed home at a run. By the time I got there I was soaked. Cold all down my back. Animal shivers along my skin.

  Max’s bike was leaning against the wall at La Griffue. It was an old bike, rusted. It dated from the war. I do not know which war was meant. Max never rode it. He used it as if it were a luggage-rack, the saddlebags like two huge baskets, and he would hang bags full of fish from the handlebars.

  The following night was clear, drenched with the moonlight that sometimes shone over the moorland, a pitiless light that drove out any beasts in hiding, and caused the dying ones to whimper.

  II

  It was the end of the month, I had my charts to fill out for the Centre ornithologique. I was late. I sat down at my table by the window and I worked. Lili was at the bar. She was leafing through a catalog, she wanted to buy a cage with some budgerigars. To keep her company, she said. She had already had two, and they had died within one week of each other.

  “Life was better, before,” she said, closing her catalog.

  She was
talking to the postman.

  “It was cheaper, too. When I retire, I’ll go to live in the south.”

  Old Mother raised her head.

  “I won’t go!” she shouted.

  “Not too far from the coast,” Lili said, paying no heed to the old woman’s grumbles.

  She did not know when that would be, her retirement. Five years, ten years … She had to get a nest-egg together, the south was more expensive.

  When she heard that, Old Mother started sniffling, her nose level with the edge of the table. It caused her glasses to steam up, a thick fog before her eyes. Lili went on talking about the south. Eventually the postman left.

  I was just finishing my charts when the door struck the bamboo tubes of the fly curtain. The door opened. I felt a draft of air. I knew it was Lambert, because of Lili’s expression, and also because the old men paused in their game.

  The door was still open. Lambert closed it behind him and walked up to the bar. He was wearing dark cotton trousers, a charcoal-gray jumper, and a leather jacket. He wore little boots, with a buckle on the side.

  He and Lili looked at each other.

  She hesitated, her gaze unsteady, then she came out from behind the bar. “Well, here you are!” she said. They kissed on the cheek, awkwardly, without touching, their arms at their sides. It was strange, this way of saying hello.

  He turned and looked round. He saw me and greeted me with his eyes.

  “It was like this before,” he said.

  “Bland yellow, I should redo it, I haven’t got time. Can I offer you something to drink?”

  “Please.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know, whatever you like.”

  She took out two saucers and placed them on the bar.

  She filled up the coffee measure.

  “I knew you were here. A bloke hanging about, everyone talking about him, when I saw you in the garden and then at the grave, I knew it was you. The night of the storm, too …”

  The tea towel was rolled up in a ball next to the buttercups.

  “It was crowded, we didn’t talk.”

  “What would we have said?”

  The fact that they said tu to each other surprised me. A curt, abrupt informality.