The Breakers

by Claudie Gallay

  I went out.

  There was no one on the path. Just a longclaw observing the moor.

  I sat there until the space swallowed me. Made me into a mineral being contemplating the world.

  The journalist who wanted to write an article about Raphaël came the next day, at ten o’clock. He brought several issues of Beaux-Arts to show him.

  Raphaël prepared some coffee. He put biscuits on the table. He wanted me to stay there, with Morgane. We leafed through the magazines. The rat was in its box. The journalist asked Raphaël if it was important for him to work in a place like La Hague. Raphaël said that he did not know, that no doubt he could work elsewhere, but he liked being here.

  He poured the coffee. He gave some biscuit crumbs to the rat. He said that if he did not sculpt, he would be terribly bored, and he would undoubtedly have to do something else. Gardening, or fishing. Or he would do like Morgane, make crowns for the dead.

  The journalist nodded. He asked other questions and Raphaël answered. When he did not know, he said, I don’t know.

  The journalist did not press him. He drank his coffee. We had time, with Morgane, to leaf through all the magazines.

  Afterward, the journalist glanced at his watch. He wanted to visit the studio, and take a few photographs. Raphaël slumped in his chair. This was a difficult moment for him, the moment where he had to show his work.

  “Let’s get going,” he said in a lifeless voice.

  He drank some more coffee.

  Then he stood up.

  He went out into the hallway. The stone was outside the door. He did not explain why it was there.

  He opened the door and stood to one side. The journalist stood still.

  It was always like that, people who came into the studio stood there speechless.

  I was like that myself, the first time. Motionless, with a desire to flee.

  Raphaël waved his hand, it was all there, the essence of what he could say.

  The journalist walked in among the sculptures. The light falling through the windows enhanced the red patina. The sculptures seemed to vibrate. The man walked close to the wombs, not daring to touch them. The broken limbs that lay about in boxes, the heads with mouths like cries.

  Raphaël let him walk where he liked. He went to sit down at his table.

  The bronzes captured the light, absorbed it. And this captured light became another light. A very long time went by. Eventually, the man pulled out his camera and took a few photographs of the bronzes, “Silence” and “The Pleading Women,” “The Seated Women,” a few sculptures without titles.

  He took a photograph of the signature on the base.

  He came back over to Raphaël.

  “I would like to take a picture of your hands.”

  A close-up, with a little bit of the wire mesh that Raphaël was fiddling with in his fingers.

  He also made two portraits of him.

  “I’m going to get you a two-page spread.”

  Raphaël did not reply.

  Before going out, the journalist turned round.

  “That would be good, you know, a two-page spread in Beaux-Arts.”

  The sick ewe died. When I went past, she was still there, but she was no longer attached by a collar. Her head had rolled to one side. Her belly was open, and three famished cats were tearing up her guts. Her eyes were wide open, and she still seemed to be looking over toward the sheep-pens.

  A first shiver of the coming storm over the slack sea, and then it rained. The Stork came back up the path with her dog and the entire herd. In near darkness, along the road. The weak beam of her torch pierced a hole in the rain. It was like the light of a firefly.

  The sow was waiting for the herd in the shelter of the big chestnut tree, in the courtyard.

  Lili said there were men who had hanged themselves from the branches of that tree. The women did not go near it. On days of wind, you could hear a low wailing, but nobody could say whether it came from the tree or elsewhere.

  I stopped off at Théo’s. I had to knock several times before he answered.

  He scarcely looked at me.

  “Is it your leg? Is it hurting?”

  He gestured no with his hand.

  I spoke to him about the birds, I told him that I had seen a kestrel and a meadow pipit. I showed him the drawings I had made in my notebook. I described the place to him.

  “The druids put up their menhirs at that place you’re talking about. They also sacrificed children.”

  He said it in a dull voice.

  He sat up. The little white cat was on the bed. She stretched.

  “Am I tiring you?” I said, because I could see that he was not his usual self.

  He nodded. He said, “I think I’ve been tired for a very long time.”

  The following night, I dreamt of chains, of doors. I heard the sound of keys. It was the wind, outside, and the boats’ moorings, creaking.

  I woke up in a sweat.

  The envelope arrived the following week. A large brown envelope that the postman left on the table. Raphaël called us over.

  It was a heavy envelope, with three canceled stamps, a tribute to Vauban. The magazine was inside, with its glossy cover, a photograph of the Fondation Maeght.

  Morgane was stamping her feet with impatience.

  “Well, are you going to open it or not?”

  He leafed through the magazine, backward, then went back to the beginning.

  Morgane was furious.

  “Why did he send you the magazine if you’re not in it?”

  She grabbed it out of his hands.

  “He said a two-page spread! You should see it, a two-page spread!”

  She also started at the back. She leafed through it, but more slowly. The rat had come out of its box and it stood before her on its hind paws.

  Morgane went through everything, even the tiniest articles at the bottom of the page.

  “What the fuck has he done to us!”

  She was about to start over from the beginning when suddenly she stopped, her mouth open. It was there, a large title, “A Sculptor at the Gates of Hell.” There was the article, the photographs, and it continued on to the following page.

  We looked at each other. Not one, but two two-page spreads. It was incredible! We stood close together, shoulder to shoulder, with the magazine wide open between us. First the photographs, then we read the article.

  The first words, on Raphaël’s work, The obsessive torment of a man forging his path with strength and talent.

  Morgane slammed her hands on the table. She pulled her brother close to her, she kissed him.

  She was trembling.

  She went on reading, out loud.

  “… Everywhere, the same message, an authentic testimony.”

  She repeated it, an authentic testimony.

  Raphaël raised his head slightly.

  Morgane was laughing.

  “How many copies does a magazine like this sell?”

  They did not know.

  She went on reading.

  There were a few comments at the end, on “The Seamstress of the Dead,” the apotheosis, in this old face, summing up all on its own the artist’s infinite compassion for the misery of his fellow creatures.

  “That’s really good, Raphaël, isn’t it, don’t you think?”

  Raphaël nodded his head. He gave a faint smile.

  “You’re going to have to install a telephone now!” I said, laughing.

  I was happy for his sake.

  We reread the article. The rat ran in and out among our glasses. We were laughing when Lambert came through the door. He looked at us.

  “I saw the light …” he said.

  Morgane waved the magazine at him, “Come and have a look!”

  We made room for him. We let him read. His eyes skimmed over the paper. He read everything, attentively. He took his time. When he had finished, he closed the magazine, and looked up at Raphaël.

  “You’re goin
g to have to put in a telephone, now.”

  We all burst out laughing, and Morgane explained why.

  Nan died the next day. Her body was found, in the morning, on the beach. A shell-seeker. He said he saw a shadow curled on the beach. He went closer. He thought it was a seal that had beached there, it was not rare to see them at this time of year, creatures that had come down from Scotland or the coasts of Ireland.

  It was not a seal. It was a woman. The gendarmes said that Nan had taken a boat as far as the Île de Bas. She must have rowed herself, the way she had done so often. The way from the shore to the island. Poor madwoman … Once too often. She sometimes went there, it was on the shore of that island that her family had died. She needed to row, to row above the waters.

  What had possessed her? Before, she was young, she was up to it! At Lili’s café, everywhere, in the street, behind the curtains, that was all anyone was talking about. A death in a village with so few souls.

  Sitting at her table, Old Mother listened. She had not understood yet. No one had explained to her.

  She just sensed something.

  “Who is it that’s died?” she said, her hand on the table top.

  Not loud enough for anyone to hear.

  “What’s going on?” she said, because she knew perfectly well that something had happened.

  Something that was out of the ordinary.

  The veins on her temples were covered with a purplish skin. Her heart pounding underneath. Was it hatred that gave such a color, almost livid, to her blood? Or the pleasure of learning that it was the other woman, the one everyone was talking about, who was the dead woman.

  “She finally died,” blurted Lili.

  Old Mother grabbed her dress. She wanted her to say it again. I heard her nails scraping against the cloth, the cheap nylon.

  Lili stepped back, to get away from her hand.

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “Who died?”

  Old Mother groaned when she asked. There was terror in her eyes.

  “The old woman! You should be happy!”

  Old Mother went from moaning to tears.

  “The old man …” she mumbled.

  “What d’you mean, the old man? He’s not the one who died! It’s the old woman, I tell you!”

  It mattered little who had died, it made you shudder, death striking.

  Old Mother was weeping her fear.

  “You’d better make up your mind what you want!” said Lili.

  She brought her a glass of water with some tablets. She put it all down on the table. She waited next to her, her arms folded. Old Mother reached out her hand, it was trembling, her fingers were unsure, but she managed all the same to put the tablets into her palm, and she swallowed them.

  Théo knew the breathing of the sea. He said, “I woke up and I knew that the sea had just taken someone.”

  That it was Florelle.

  He said he knew long before the cars came along the shore—the doctor’s, the gendarmes’, and then other cars, and the neighbors’.

  They found the boat a few hours later, brought back in by the waves, too. As if the sea had decided it had had enough of the whole business.

  The gendarmes calculated the moment when the body must have drowned. They said the body, not old Nan, or Florelle.

  They said, “It must have been midnight, perhaps shortly after.” Théo said, “It was just before ten o’clock.” He did not say anything else.

  He turned away.

  I heard a bird shrieking in a tree behind me. The presence of donkeys in the distance. I walked in their tracks. My soles in the mud.

  The mark of their hooves.

  And more smells, elusive.

  Women from the village had gathered on the bench outside Nan’s house. The bench where she had tasted the croissants. I went over to them. The women did not say anything to me, hardly nodded their heads, I walked past them.

  I went through the door.

  That is what you do, here, you say farewell to the dead. You go into their houses, the door is open. They are there. On the table there is sugar, there are cups. They are waiting for us, for a last conversation.

  At Nan’s there was the stuffy smell of houses that have not been aired in a long time, for fear of the cold or an evil passer-by or some other obscure reason. Nan was laid out on her bed, dressed in black.

  The women had taken care of her body. The intimate preparation, they had washed her and combed her, and dressed her in her final dress.

  They had made coffee, too, which they had kept hot in a coffee pot, for visits. Reheated, you could not really say when. Cups next to the pot, upside down, on a checkered tea towel.

  I looked at Nan. Her face already betrayed. What need did she have to row all that way?

  My fingertips brushed the cloth of her dress. A story told and written in tight little stitches. The black of the thread only slightly shinier than the black of the cloth. Indecipherable embroidery. An old woman sewing, that was what I often thought when I saw her bent over behind her window. An old woman darning. A madwoman.

  At her waist, wedged in her folded hands, was the wooden crucifix. I had often seen her with it, exhorting the sea to bring back her dead.

  The sea had brought nothing back to her, on the contrary, it had taken her too, now.

  Her hair had been carefully brushed, and it seemed even whiter, as if the sea had taken it too, the brilliant light of her hair. It is said that hair continues to grow long after death.

  The shroud was on the chair. On the windowsill everything was just as Nan had left it: the sewing box, her shawl over the back of the chair, a large pair of scissors. Her slippers by the entrance. Her brush on the table. An old umbrella. The photographs, on the shelf above the fireplace. The bread, a tea towel hanging from a nail, a plate in the sink. A knife, a glass. Everything seemed frozen. Would someone be told to open the cupboards, the closets, and make everything that was piled up in there disappear? Which one of those women?

  Unless everything was left just as it was, to be mummified by time, buried beneath the dust.

  Her dead woman’s head resting on the white pillow. The hollow imprint when Nan would no longer be there. How long would it take for the imprint to disappear? How many days?

  Objects outlive us. They wait for a hand to take them away, to be given new life.

  Ursula arrived, I was still in the house. She exchanged a few words, outside, with the old women.

  She was not surprised to find me there.

  “You shouldn’t stand here rotting so long all alone with a dead woman,” was all she said, coming over to the bed. “No, you shouldn’t.”

  “I’m not rotting …”

  It made her laugh.

  Laughter at the bedside of a dead woman.

  “Your eyes, I can tell you’ve been chewing over too much trouble, that’s not good.”

  She pulled me by the arm and led me into the kitchen.

  “The old women said you’ve been here for nearly an hour.”

  She set two cups down on the table.

  “We’ll have some coffee, and then after that, you’ll go.”

  She filled the cups.

  A little coffee spilled on to the tablecloth.

  I drank. With the second sip, the coffee turned my stomach. The smell, too, sickening, indistinct, the smell of coffee and another smell, the one coming from the dead woman’s body. The smell you had to breathe.

  Ursula took my hand.

  “Are you alright?”

  I nodded.

  On the table was a basket with some apples. An open newspaper.

  Ursula looked round.

  “I haven’t been here for a very long time.”

  She walked over to Nan.

  “You don’t go out rowing at your age. Sooner or later, that had to end, too.”

  She turned away. She had tears in her eyes. Her gaze glanced over me, over the room.

  She pointed to the photographs.


  “We should try to find all these kids. Tell them …”

  With her finger, she touched a few of the faces.

  “A lot of them wouldn’t make it, but I’m sure some of them would come all this way.”

  She chose a few photographs at random, trying to remember their names.

  “As soon as they got here, she made them stand over there, outside, by the door, and she took their portrait. She said that the light gave them beautiful faces. She pinned the photographs up next to their beds. The little ones liked that, the photograph by the bed. They were all orphans, motherless children, so a face, even their own, made them feel less alone.”

  A minute or two went by, a time when she said nothing.

  “When they left, she kept the photographs.”

  She looked at other pictures, going from one to the next.

  “This was him, little Michel …”

  She handed me the photograph. It was the one that Nan had pressed against her chest so tightly the day I came to tell her that Théo was waiting for her. I recognized the little lace-up boots, and the train at the end of the string.

  The child with blond curls. His clear gaze. An acid taste of coffee suddenly rose in my throat. I felt that I was going to be sick.

  I went over to the window. My hand on my throat. I opened the window. I took a breath, close to vomiting. Just breathing.

  Ursula was concerned.

  “Is something wrong?”

  I said that everything was fine. I leaned on both hands. I was having cold sweats. I closed my eyes and waited for it to pass.

  I still had the photograph in my hand.

  The child: it was the same face, the same curls, the same look and the same polo shirt with three little boats. I turned the photo over, there was a date written at the back, November ’67.

  Lambert’s parents had died in October that same year.

  I went to lean against the wall. The child was Paul, Lambert’s little brother. I looked at Ursula. She was standing next to the dead woman. Leaning over her. She had taken her hand, she seem to be talking to her.

  I waited.

  When she looked up, I showed her the photograph.

  “Are you sure this child is Michel?”