The Breakers

by Claudie Gallay

  “Where are you going?” she said. “And the tart? Some coffee? Won’t you have a coffee?”

  “No …”

  He pushed his chair up against the table.

  “Lamps don’t go out when there are accidents!”

  Lili slammed her hand on the table. “It did not go out!”

  The noise made the old woman jump. She began moaning.

  Lili groaned.

  “Even my Saturdays, there’s always someone who manages to spoil them for me.”

  “I’m sorry …”

  “That’s unlikely!”

  He took his jacket from the back of the chair. “I’m going.”

  “That’s it, go right ahead!”

  He turned away from her.

  He went by my table. His hand. The sleeve of his jacket.

  His fingertips brushed the tablecloth.

  “Is it good?” he said, pointing to the strawberry tart.

  I nodded.

  “I’m glad,” he said.

  He didn’t say anything else, and he went out.

  Théo gently pulled the door closed behind him and slipped the key behind the pot of geraniums. He paused, his hand on the railing.

  From the breakwater, I could see him with my binoculars as if I were right next to him. Had he really put out the lamp? I did not believe it. He knew the dangers of the sea, and he loved the boats.

  He crossed the courtyard and walked down the path. He headed in the direction of La Roche.

  He was going to Nan’s. For some time now she had not been well, she walked with her head down, talking to herself. You saw her going along the shore more than usual and not just on storm days. Sometimes I came across her two, three times a day. I greeted her, but she did not answer. She walked quickly, busily, as if she had someone to meet or an important task to carry out. She always ended up at the shore. The hem of her dress in the waves. Was it Lambert’s presence that had troubled her in this way, his face, did she think she saw one of her own in his face? I would have liked to have known who Michel was, that man she was forever calling for.

  Théo was walking, leaning on his cane, stooped. I followed him with my gaze as far as La Roche and then I lost him when he reached the first houses.

  Before, I used to follow poor people in the street, the most destitute ones, the ones on foot. I did not want to know where they were going. I just wanted to follow them. Their steps. Their shadows. They had nothing. They were cold. I took pictures. I did this for over a year. In December, snow fell. I took more pictures, those men, always from behind, their gray coats, their steps in the snow.

  I took their pictures when they were sleeping on their sheets of cardboard, too.

  A man’s back could tell a story as well as his face might.

  Some nights, just the contact of the sheet on my skin would burn me. I had to get out of bed. I would stand there, my bare feet on the floor. If that was not enough, I opened the window. My teeth chattered, my lips turned blue. Only afterward could I lie down again and sleep.

  Flowered curtains hung from my window, a plastic curtain rod. When I came here, one of the windowpanes was broken and the curtains were billowing. There was a big damp spot on the floor. For several days I wedged a piece of cardboard against the window. The cardboard got wet, I changed it and then someone came and replaced the pane.

  The dark spot remained on the floor. Sometimes when the sun beat down harder than usual, it disappeared. It always came back.

  The morning light seemed to rise from the sea. From my window I could see the roofs of the village all the way up the hill. To the right, the yellow lights of the handful of houses at La Roche.

  Was Théo still at Nan’s? Had he spent the night at her side? Old Mother must be waiting for him, her handbag on her lap. With her old woman’s love oozing from her eyes. A body that did not forget. That is why she clung to her bag. What had happened between Nan and Théo? Had they loved one another? How strong was their love? I lay on the floor, my knees pulled up. My back against the radiator. Almost a year. Time passing over you. It too was eroding you. I could not stand my skin any more. My skin without your hands. My body without your weight. I rolled my jumper up against my belly. I made it into a ball. I pushed my back right up against the burning pipes of the radiator. I could feel the marks. Pipes like bars. The bars of your bed, at the end, so you would not fall.

  And that other mark on my cheek, the red swelling that was gradually fading. This void in me that made me sweat and moan.

  And I sweated.

  I moaned, too, scratching my nails against the wall. I licked the salt to come closer to your skin.

  That morning, I would have liked for time to take you further away. For it to lay waste to you. Even your face. I let out a long, silent cry, mingled with tears, my teeth sank into my arm.

  You had made me swear never to speak. Never to write about you, your bed, that place … The smell of the walls, the view from your window.

  The last visit, the absence of sun. Because the light hurt you too much.

  So, the curtain hardly open, a simple patch of gray sky in the upper pane.

  Lili pointed to the bag.

  “Could you take that to him on your way, would you mind?”

  She did not say Théo. She did not say my father. She said him.

  There was a silence after her words. She slipped a small bag from the pharmacy into the bag. It was from Beaumont. The prescription was inside.

  “Tell him the doctor will come Monday at the end of the morning. That he’d better clean himself up.”

  She gave me a frank look.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing …”

  “I know you. That look doesn’t mean nothing.”

  I shook my head.

  “I can’t tell him that … To clean himself up.”

  She shrugged, frowning, and closed the bag.

  “Tell him what you like.”

  She put the bag on the bar.

  “I like your father …”

  It came out, in a breath.

  She froze.

  “You like him?”

  “Yes.”

  I saw her twitch. She looked at me. She seemed about to laugh.

  “You like him …” she said again. “You want him?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “If you like, I’ll give him to you. Let’s say that, right, from now on, we’ll say he’s yours!”

  She shoved the bag into my arms, the way she had shoved the bouquet of buttercups into Lambert’s jumper. The same gesture. The same strength.

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  “Then you don’t say it. You don’t say anything. You pick up the bag and take it to him.”

  I went out.

  Lambert was in the garden. He had rolled up his shirtsleeves to the elbow and he was pulling out the brambles against the wall. The windows were open. The FOR SALE sign was still hanging from the fence.

  I took the path that went up to La Roche. There, the wind carried strong scents of the open sea. Spindrift that clung to my mouth. My lips now wet, now burning. Desires, here, are laid bare by the wind. It is a matter of skin, La Hague. A matter of the senses.

  I stopped.

  Could I love you and no longer touch you? The thought came to me, shockingly.

  Could I still love you?

  I was caught mid-flight.

  With you, I touched the abyss. And now … Pain, as it receded, was digging itself inside out.

  I picked up my bag.

  I got to Théo’s place, the cats were there, all gathered in the yard. How many were there? When I asked him, he would say, Twenty, thirty, between the ones that are born, the others that die …

  He had a sick dog too, as old as he was, its age multiplied by seven would make the same age. But Théo no longer knew how old he was. In the village, that is what they called him, the old man. He knew they taught the children to beware of him. To be afraid of him. When he
went back to the village the pebbles bounced off his back. Before, he would turn around and brandish his cane. Now, he did not care, he said the pebbles did not reach him.

  I tapped on the window. I tried to see inside, but it was so dark. The gray cat was stretched its full length along the inner sill of the window. One fang slightly longer than the others emerged from its closed mouth and gave it the air of a young wildcat.

  There were two other cats on the table. A bowl. Some bread.

  I tapped again.

  “Are you there?”

  I went in.

  Théo was sleeping in his armchair, his cap pulled down on his head. One hand still resting on the knotty wood of his cane, as if sleep had surprised him there, in front of the lit screen.

  The little white cat was lying on his lap. Her paws gently folded back, her head heavy, she was sleeping.

  The way he was sitting like that in the half-light, the room resembled Rembrandt’s “Philosopher in Meditation”; for a long time I had had the reproduction pinned to the wall of my student room.

  Against the wall, a stone sink, its earthenware tiles dulled by scale. A saucepan lid rested in a plastic dish rack. A plate in the basin. I put the bag on the table.

  “I’ve brought the bread,” I said.

  Théo opened his eyes. He grunted. I showed him the food, the medication.

  He glanced at it. His little eyes behind his glasses, the same eyes as Lili.

  “The doctor will come on Monday …”

  He shrugged. He sat up.

  “And what can doctors do against old age?”

  In La Hague, old people and trees look alike, equally battered and silent. Shaped by the winds. Sometimes, when you see something in the distance, it is impossible to know if it is a man or something else.

  He ran his hand over the little cat’s head. He said that this one was more fragile than the others, and he had to give her more love.

  Was it for the same reason that he had loved Nan? Because he had felt she was more fragile?

  He looked at me as if he had read my thoughts and he placed his glasses on the table. The lenses were dirty, fingerprints; they looked greasy in the light.

  “I counted twelve pairs of plovers at the place you told me about.”

  He looked up.

  “It’s not enough to count them.”

  I let my gaze wander over the table, at everything that cluttered it, plates, newspapers, medication … everything he must surely push aside, at meal time, to make a bit of room.

  He placed his hands together.

  “The plover is a very intelligent bird, you have to observe it for a long time to understand it. When you threaten its nest, it flies away, its wings low, as if it were injured, and it lets itself fall on to the beach. It drags itself along, clumsy little hops, and it does that to become the target.”

  His hands were ravaged, hewn by cold, salt water, rope burns.

  “It’s all an act … It’s rare and very admirable behavior for a bird.”

  A furtive emotion passed over his face.

  I looked out of the window.

  Outside, the clouds were parting, letting a few rays of sunlight filter through. Out at sea, the sky had taken on the same gray color as the water, as if one had poured into the other to mix this dark hue.

  “Counting birds in this wind, that can’t be your whole life.”

  “Well you did it, didn’t you?”

  He smiled as if to say it was not the same. He was still stroking the little white cat.

  “This one never drinks with the others. When she’s thirsty, she miaows and I have to turn on the tap.”

  The cat opened her eyes.

  “She was stolen from her mother by a dog that had no puppies. The dog brought her home in its mouth. It looked after her …”

  He caressed the cat, with the palm of his hand. “I thought of giving the kitten back to her mother, but she had seven more … And the dog didn’t have any.”

  I asked him whether he thought that made it any more fair.

  I saw that it bothered him. The skin on his cheeks slightly pink.

  He did not answer. It was the first time that such a particular silence had fallen between us. He put his hands back in his lap, one next to the other.

  “That lad who’s hanging about, he’s the Perack son?” He looked up at me. “What’s he doing here?”

  “I don’t know. He wants to sell his house.”

  “What else do you know about him?”

  “Nothing … I don’t know him.”

  He picked up his glasses, adjusted them on his nose. A smile slid over his face.

  “You went to the auberge with him, it wasn’t even eleven o’clock, the other morning. You stayed almost an hour together, and when you came back out, you walked along the shore.”

  He pointed to the pair of binoculars on the chair by the window.

  “And don’t tell me it’s not right to do that, because you do it too.”

  Now it was my turn to blush. Violently.

  “Which reminds me, some day I’ll have to show you the splendid view we have from the skylight.”

  He took the little cat’s head between his hands, gently caressed it. “What did he tell you?”

  I looked outside, toward the tree in the courtyard; Théo said it was so old that its roots reached down to hell. Théo said when you cut a branch off that tree, a red sap ran out that looked like blood.

  He repeated his question.

  I looked at him.

  “Lambert thinks that it was you who was keeping the lighthouse the night his parents died.”

  That was not everything. He knew it. He nodded.

  “You call him Lambert?”

  “Lambert Perack, that’s his name.” He smiled.

  I felt like asking him more questions.

  “Can a lighthouse lamp go out at night without the keeper realizing?”

  He looked up at me. “Is it you or him asking?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Well, if it’s you … No, it’s not possible.”

  “And if it had been him, what would you have answered?”

  “If it had been him, I would not have answered.” He looked away. “Don’t listen to what that man says. His judgment isn’t sound, he’s suffering.”

  “You don’t suffer any more, so long after.”

  “What would you know about it?”

  I had an intuition that he was lying to me.

  “Are there ever reasons that might cause a lighthouse keeper to put out his lamp?”

  He chuckled.

  “No reasons. It’s the might of the sea that gives orders to lighthouse keepers. For the rest, nothing, no one can oblige a keeper to turn his back on what he has to do.” He said it bluntly. He was tapping his fingertips on the tabletop. “You know, when you’re in the lighthouse, the only thing that matters is to illuminate the sea. So you do it. You don’t think about anything else.”

  I was beginning to doubt. I felt the instant of it. The shadow between us.

  “Lambert has lived past the age his father was when he died. He said it was for that, too, that he came back.”

  “He’s been confiding in you …”

  “It wasn’t to me, it was to Lili. I was there, I overheard them.”

  “He was talking to Lili?” Théo gave a strange smile.

  I saw myself, suddenly, the way a passer-by might see me through the window, at the table, beneath the lamp, gossiping with an old man.

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t want to talk about it any more,” I said.

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  I was lying. I was afraid of what I was becoming. A woman without love. I wanted to know about him and Nan. I wanted to know how far they had loved, how much they had dared, and why they had not dared more.

  “Tell me about her,” I said abruptly.

  He stiffened.

  I had sai
d Her.

  I hadn’t said Nan, and yet he had understood.

  “What you’re asking …”

  He stayed for a moment, without saying anything. I had no father: could Théo have been my father? If he had been, I think I would have loved him unconditionally. He put the little cat down on the armchair next to him. He pressed his hand on the table and got up. He disappeared into the next room. I waited for him to come back, but he did not come back.

  Evening fell. Behind the windows, lights came on, filtering yellow through the lace curtains.

  After five o’clock, kitchen tables become places for shared secrets. Hands around cups. Heads bent, close together. Glasses left lying about, tea towels hanging from stoves.

  It was the end of the day. Not yet night. But that terrible hour when shadows return. The dogs began to howl.

  A first ray of light slid from the lighthouse over the surface of the water, lighting the harbor, the boats’ anchorage. The beam also lit La Griffue, and then everything was once again plunged into darkness.

  I walked by silhouettes, people who had become shadows, sometimes so alone that they would knock at any door to be near a gaze or a fire. The ones who had no callers would drag themselves to the bistro. Conversations were long, drawn-out. The curtain slightly closed. Even when there was no one left to see, all it took was one shadow. And when they no longer wanted to talk about themselves, they could still talk about others. About the living, the dead.

  Morgane had found work making crowns for a shop in Cherbourg. She threaded pearls on to a wire frame, and if she did not mess up, it turned into a tiara for a bride to wear. She wasn’t paid much, but she said it was enough, with what she earned at the auberge.

  She worked at the kitchen table. When I arrived, Max was looking at her. He was not allowed to touch the pearls. Or to drool, or scratch, or make noise with his teeth, he was not allowed that either. If he did any of those things, Morgane would kick him out. Without a word. A glance sufficed. It had already happened. He knew it could happen again, so he sat frozen in the chair, his hands between his thighs.

  Even if he did not move, if she was fed up, she would say so, “Enough, Creature,” and Max went away.

  “Isn’t it time for the sow?” I said when I found him there.

  He shook his head. It was time for nothing. I sat down with them.