The Breakers

by Claudie Gallay

  Nan was waiting for them. There, like every afternoon, sitting on a stone by the side of the crossroads. Her hair was held back in a heavy plait, tied at the bottom with a black velvet ribbon. You might have said that the stone she was sitting on was a part of her. That it was her base.

  When I arrived, little Stork was next to her, playing a few notes on a cardboard drum. The drum was torn. She played all the same. It was the first time I had seen her do that.

  The donkeys came along a footpath from inland. Some people said they went along the coast after the Pointe du Rozel, that they had been seen going through the village of Sotteville and then seen again a long time afterward, above the high dunes at Biville. They had spent a few days in the marshland, and now they were here.

  Old Nan had sensed their presence. Before she saw them. The smell in the air, their coats, that sweat. She heard the hoofbeats on the earth like a distant rumbling, and the rumbling came closer.

  She got up. She went along the road. A few steps. The Stork abandoned her drum in the grass by the roadside. She set off at a run, all the way to the end of the big pasture.

  The donkeys were there. One in the lead, the others following. Other children showed up, and with them the people from the village. They brought water in buckets. Some meal, and hay.

  There was a horse with the donkeys. He was limping. An injury to his hindleg.

  When he came close, Nan placed her hands in the rough thickness of his mane. The horse was very beautiful. I wondered how he had managed to come all this way without anyone catching him.

  Nan said that sometimes horses felt this need to travel. She looked at me.

  “This horse might belong to the fairies …”

  Had she really committed the theft Old Mother accused her of? And did it really matter?

  Old women’s quarrels, village quarrels. Women who had loved the same man.

  She slipped her fingers into the thick horsehair.

  “The fairies are so small that to ride they cling to the mane and make their stirrups by tying together a few hairs from the mane.”

  She took my hand so I too could touch the horse. “You never see fairies during the day, only at night.”

  “Where are they during the day?” I said.

  She smiled.

  “Who knows …”

  She stroked his chest. She held the horse’s head between her hands and scratched off the crusts of dried tears sticking to the corners of its eyes.

  I had read stories about the fairies in a magazine I found at La Griffue. It was said that the fairies took babies from their cradles, and exchanged them for one of their own.

  I asked Nan if this were true.

  She nodded.

  “No one knows why they do that, but these things do happen.”

  She smiled, an infinitely sweet smile.

  “Fairies’ children are very special, they need a lot of food, but their bodies don’t grow. They’re called pixies.”

  She turned to me again.

  “It’s bad luck to have a pixie grow up in your house, and that’s why people who have them don’t show them.”

  “What do they do with them?”

  “They hide them. I know someone who killed their pixie …”

  She said that gruffly and then she went away. The horse was staring at the sea. I stayed by him. Long shivers ran through his breast. He probably had a fever. Two tears of fatigue wept from his eyes.

  “Those are moon pearls.”

  I felt Lambert’s breath against my neck. I recognized his body without seeing him.

  “Moon pearls … that’s what they call the tears of horses.”

  His smell of leather mingled with that of the animals. I did not turn round.

  Nan saw him.

  Slowly she came over to him.

  She smiled at him. It was an exceptional moment, with all the donkeys round us and the children feeding them, and as far as the eye could see, the moor, the heather, and the sea.

  Nan stood very close to Lambert.

  “Do you remember, when you were little, we came to wait for them.”

  These were terrible words. I saw his face go tense.

  Nan sighed softly.

  “It’s good, that you’ve come back.”

  She said this in the same even tone.

  Lambert shook his head, a slow movement, but he did not go away.

  “I’m not the person you are looking for.”

  That is what he said.

  After a long while, he turned to her.

  “Who is it, who are you looking for?”

  She did not answer. She was humming, a gentle tune without words.

  He looked at me and then he looked at her again. He touched her arm to make her stop her song.

  “Who do you think I am?”

  Nan smiled at him.

  “You are Michel.”

  “But who is Michel?”

  Then her gaze slid over his face. Lost for a moment.

  In the grass by the side of the road was the little drum that the Stork was playing when I arrived. She had left it there, with the two wooden drumsticks. Lambert saw it. He went over, and picked it up.

  It was a little cardboard toy, its colors faded with time. A clown with a blue nose was painted on the stretched skin. The paint had peeled in places. There were slight traces of color.

  Lambert ran his finger over the skin of the drum.

  “This blue clown …”

  He was turning the drum over and over in his hands.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked.

  He turned the drum, thoughtfully, almost cautiously.

  “That toy shop where my mother worked … The arcade in Paris …”

  He was looking for something. He looked underneath the drum and then on the sides, and between the wooden drumsticks that served as a support for the drum. Then he stopped and put a finger between one of the drumstick lozenges. In a space as big as two postage stamps, there was an old label.

  He showed it to me.

  I read, “Pain d’Épice, Toys, passage Jouffroy, Paris.”

  “That is the shop I was telling you about …”

  Suddenly the memory came back. I saw that moment, in his eyes, and I knew he had just found his past.

  “This was Paul’s drum!”

  He held it against his chest. His hand was rubbing the cardboard. He was breathing in the smell. That object, more than any landscape, more, even, than the house, seemed to restore his childhood to him. What images? What memories? He was upset.

  “Are you alright?” I said.

  “I’m alright,” he said.

  He smiled a little, faintly, as if he did not dare.

  Nan stood by the donkeys. She was stroking them. From time to time, she turned around and smiled at Lambert.

  He was looking elsewhere, into the empty space above the sea, that space that was not the sky, but was not the water, either.

  He went on sitting by the side of the road looking at the donkeys, with the drum on his lap.

  Was he wondering how the toy had come to be there?

  I went home.

  I was cold. I needed a coffee. I ran into Morgane in the garden, she was on her way out, with a towel wrapped around her shoulders. She was going for a swim, not just anywhere, but opposite the lighthouse. She did that sometimes. She said it was no more dangerous to bathe there than anywhere else. That it was no colder, either, and besides she did not know where else to go.

  “Just don’t tell Raphaël, O.K.?”

  She laid her towel out in the sun. She was wearing her black swimsuit. She walked up to the waves, then with her feet in the first waves, she scooped water up in her hand and wet her neck. The drops fell down her back, like black streams. She did that several times, then went further in again, and dived in. She swam, powerful strokes in the cold water. She swam quickly, she was a good swimmer. She continued straight ahead, as if she had decided to go somewhere, by sea. I sat on the rocks, nex
t to her towel. I waited for her.

  I drew a drum in the wet sand with my finger. Above it, I traced the shape of the sun. I would have liked to have known whether there were other toys, somewhere, at Nan’s or at the Refuge, toys that had belonged to Paul or to Lambert. I thought again about Lambert, the odd look on his face, when he realized that the drum had been his brother’s.

  I stopped thinking because Max appeared by my side. He was afraid for Morgane’s sake, and the fear made him agitated. He could not sit down, and he paced back and forth, striking the ground with his feet. He was angry with her. In the end he destroyed my drawing in the sand. Yet it was not the first time he had seen Morgane swim out toward the currents.

  Morgane eventually came out of the water. She was bleeding, a scratch on her knee from the rocks, and there was that other blood flowing from her, from inside her thigh. Max stared at the red streak, the winding path on the milky whiteness of her skin.

  Morgane came to sit down by me. The cold had left her breathless, she was gasping.

  “I know the depths here by heart … I could swim blindfold if I had to.”

  Her skin was blue, she was so cold. She showed me her hands.

  “I touch the currents. I can feel the moment where I’m brushing by them. It’s like a great wall of ice across the sea.”

  Her lips, too, were blue. She paid no attention to Max. From up on the breakwater, the fishermen were looking at her. She knew it. She did not care. She knew the sea as well as they did. Better than they did. She knew it from within.

  “What happens if you go through the wall?”

  She did not answer.

  She smiled and lowered her head between her arms. Her body was trembling under the towel. She looked at the sea, her chin in her hands.

  “I lived with a guy for seven years. It was good … I remember one day, he wrote his name on my back, between my shoulder blades. His name, with his tongue.”

  She let her towel slip down as if the trace might still be there.

  She wanted to show me.

  “Touch my back …”

  I touched it.

  “I miss his desire.”

  “Why did you split up?”

  “No particular reason … One day, we looked at each other, and we were no longer in love.”

  She sat up and began to untangle her hair with her fingers.

  “Seven years, that’s already not bad …” she said.

  Her hair was soaked. It was dripping down her back. She turned round.

  “Have you noticed, you find the number seven everywhere! The seven deadly sins, the seven wonders of the world, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs …”

  “The seven hills of Rome.”

  “The seven-year itch.”

  She thought for a moment, staring up at the sky.

  “Seven years of bad luck! Sail the seven seas!”

  “Seven-league boots …”

  “Seven days a week!”

  “Seventh heaven. Sevenoaks.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A town near London.”

  She took some sand in her hand and rubbed the soles of her feet. She said it was good for her skin.

  She showed me the sand.

  “Will you rub my back?”

  She bent over, her head between her hands.

  “What about you, with guys, how long does it usually last?” she asked, laughing.

  “The last one, three years …”

  She thought for a moment.

  “Can’t think of much with the number three.”

  “Three little pigs?” I said.

  “Yeah … three little pigs. Bluebeard’s three wives, too.”

  “Bluebeard had three wives?”

  “I think … I don’t remember. Maybe he had seven …”

  She burst out laughing. I laughed with her. After that we tried to find others, with three, but we could not find any more.

  She turned her head.

  “And why did it end, you and him? You didn’t love each other any more?”

  I looked at the sea.

  Yes, we did still love each other.

  We found the horse in the garden. His wound was open, no one knew how he had got it. Sometimes wild dogs attacked horses. Sometimes, too, the horses got their legs caught in barbed wire and hurt themselves badly trying to break free.

  Morgane walked with him into the sea. She guided him, holding him by the mane. The wound was immersed in water. She went with him from one end of the beach to the other and when she got to the far end she turned round and came back.

  I was waiting for her.

  “The bloke … the one you stayed with for three years, did you leave or did he?” she asked, as if she’d been thinking about it all through her walk.

  “He did.”

  “Want to tell?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  I bent down to look at the wound. Salt had eaten into the edges and the inside of the wound.

  “Do you think when his leg gets better you’ll be able to swim with him?” I asked, so that I would not have to answer her question.

  She stroked the horse’s thigh with the palm of her hand, the wide muscle, that of a young animal who has walked a long way.

  “I don’t know …”

  She turned away. She looked at the sea.

  “Perhaps when he’s better, I won’t be here any more.”

  “Not here? Why, are you thinking of leaving?”

  “Perhaps …”

  “But where would you go? Who with? To do what?”

  She looked at me.

  “Sooner or later I shall have to leave …”

  “And Raphaël, will he go with you?”

  She looked down.

  The following night the horse stayed in the pasture in front of the house. The pasture had no fence. He could have left if he had wanted to.

  He did not.

  When the rain fell, he left the field and went to shelter by the boat. Morgane fed him some meal and hay.

  She dressed his wound with bandages she had made, cutting up old sheets that Lili had given her.

  She said that when his wound was healed he would leave, and that was why she did not want to give him a name.

  Dozens of wild geese had stopped off at the end of the morning on the Pointes Rocheuses. Magnificent geese, with ash-colored plumage.

  I drew them.

  The necks of some of them, close together. Coiled. They knew I was watching them.

  I also drew a few terns and a pair of swifts.

  Lambert came to find me. I saw him coming from a long way off. He hesitated, pointed to the rock next to mine, and asked if he would be bothering me if he sat there, that he felt like watching the geese, too. I told him he would not be bothering me.

  He sat down, looked at the geese, and he wanted to see my drawings.

  “Is it to put with your charts?”

  “No …”

  I told him about the plates.

  “I fill in the drawings with watercolor. Then I show them to Théo, and if they’re good, I send them to Caen. Someone else will take care of the text, and someone else again for the cards … Théo said that the plates I’ve done so far are good quality. They should make a very fine book.”

  He nodded.

  “Théo knows everything.”

  “Théo does know a lot about birds.”

  A smile crossed his lips. He took my notebook and turned the pages. He paused at certain drawings. The weave of the paper was thick, he rubbed it with his thumb.

  “I thought that drawings couldn’t be either good or bad … A teacher told me that.”

  “With this type of drawing, they can. The color of the feathers, the shape of the beaks … There are very precise nuances to respect, shapes. I sometimes overindulge in the pleasure of drawing …”

  “Good thing there’s Théo.”

  His tone was ironic, and I felt myself blushing. Pointlessly. The attack
was not against me.

  “How many of these drawings will you need to make your encyclopedia?”

  “A lot …”

  I pointed to the sky.

  “You cannot imagine how many species of birds there are, between the ones that live here and never leave, and the ones that migrate, that just stop here to reproduce or spend the winter, and the ones that should have left and don’t leave …”

  He nodded.

  “I can’t imagine, no … and you, why did you come here? Are you like them, are you migrating?”

  “You could say so. Above all, I was tired of talking all day long. When I found out that the Centre ornithologique in Caen was looking for someone, I applied, and …”

  He turned other pages, and stopped at the drawing of a pair of young cormorants that I had studied a few days ago, across from the lighthouse. Their plumage was magnificent, and that way they had of never leaving each other. He looked at the drawing. He turned to another. I would have liked to have talked about something else besides birds. To ask him if he had taken the drum with him.

  “Do you always draw both of them, the male and female?”

  “When possible, yes … I draw eggs, too, and nests.”

  “And this, what’s this?”

  At the end of the notebook, he pointed to the drawing of a toad.

  “Are you going to put him in the bird encyclopedia, too?”

  “No, but this toad is very special. He massages the belly of his female to make her lay her eggs, and then he takes the eggs on his back and he’s the one who looks after them. I found him rather nice.”

  “So if you draw the things you find nice, I’m in with a chance, then …”

  He closed the notebook and held it for a moment in his hands.

  He was rubbing the leather binding, looking at the sea.

  Gulls flew overhead on their way to the harbor. We were expecting rain by evening.

  “So, you’re here today, and when you’ve finished your drawings, will you go elsewhere … ? I’ve got my house in Le Morvan, stone walls as wide as this. After I’ve been away, I always go back there. I don’t go away often. I don’t like to.”

  He turned his face to me. He stared at me for a moment.

  “You do sometimes get attached, don’t you?”

  Get attached? It was not something I wanted. Not too soon. I said it softly, between my teeth. “I don’t want to get attached. It’s become a sickness. When I was little, I was already agoraphobic. I liked being that way, because of the name. That’s what I said to my girlfriends, agora. It sounds good, don’t you think? After that I was allergic to cats. Apparently if you keep on loving them, the allergy will disappear. It’s force of habit. Now, it’s a fear of attachment, I don’t know if there’s a name for it.”