by Liza Wieland
Bonsoir, madame, Elizabeth says. She moves farther into the row and pats the bench beside her, watching herself from a tipsy distance and wondering at the same time if the gesture is too informal.
Madame seems not to think so. She half collapses onto the bench, takes up Elizabeth’s hand, and gives it a squeeze. Though her white lace coiffe is firmly in place, a few gray tendrils escape around her forehead and at the back of her neck. Her skin is lined but supple, creamy white, unblemished, not a single freckle. Elizabeth has the urge to rest her head on Madame’s shoulder, and she feels the impulse becoming a kind of magnetism, a force. The cider, she thinks, wishing she had more, a bottle of it cold in her hand.
The circus master announces something through a megaphone, and the tent lights go down for a moment, then blaze up. The crowd is on its feet around her, seeing that the aerialists have climbed in the dark to their perches at either end of the tent, and the spotlights are on them, two men and a woman who swing past one another, then let go and somersault and join in a last-minute clutch. What Elizabeth is struck by is the lack of frenzy, the almost dreamlike precision. And the silence—even the crowd seems scarcely to breathe—broken only by a faint creak from the trapeze and the exhalation of these three bodies moving through the air, apart and together. What must be tiny sequins on their costumes glitter like stars or icicles in the trees at dusk. If there’s a net below them, Elizabeth can’t see it—another one of the invisible nets of Douarnenez.
Finally, all three aerialists arrive on the same perch, wave to the crowd, and are lost in darkness as the spotlight shifts to the circus master. Elizabeth is still trying to follow the descending aerialists—a spray of tiny lights moves through the darkness toward the floor—when Madame touches her hand again and whispers, Voilà, votre amie.
Greta Angel stands in the center of the floor in the ruby blouse, jodhpurs, and black boots, carrying a riding crop painted or dyed the same shade of red. Why? Elizabeth wonders. What is that meant to signify? Or is it meant to terrify?
Greta Angel shouts the one word—Pferde!—and the ponies gallop into the ring, six of them, nose to tail, moving as if connected by a wire, or as if frozen in motion and it’s the floor that’s revolving. Occasionally, Greta Angel makes a slight correction with the tip of the riding crop, to a misstep only she can see. After a minute, six shirtless boys in red trousers run into the ring and leap onto the horses, stand, and balance. Six girls follow, in red skirts and shimmering ruby bodices, and the boys pull them onto the horses’ backs and quickly onto their own shoulders. The horses move in formation, around and around the ring, while the humans seem to remain perfectly still. Greta Angel lowers the riding crop to her side. She bows her head and stands still, too, and she becomes the cog in the whole production, the spindle. Elizabeth wonders if everyone around her sees what she does—a blur of red. She feels slightly seasick. She wishes it were another color.
Greta Angel lifts her head and shouts Genug! and then Assez! It is indeed enough. The boys lift the girls off their shoulders and set them on the ground, then leap from the ponies’ backs. Greta Angel touches the ponies one by one, and they slow to a canter and leave the floor. The humans take a bow.
Elizabeth leans close to Madame and tries to think how to say, But the ponies have done all the work, but in the end, she changes her mind and tells Madame that this is the best circus she has ever seen. The people of Douarnenez are on their feet again, stomping and applauding and calling the troupe back for an encore. The floor remains dark for some minutes, until a single spotlight opens on Greta Angel, who carries a large hoop, which she sets in a stand about three feet off the ground. One of the boys appears carrying a lighted torch and touches it to the hoop, which takes fire. Greta Angel gives a long, shrieking whistle, and a white pony canters into the ring, clearly younger and smaller than the others, looking like a ghost or a leggy cloud. With the red crop, she directs the pony around the ring, faster and faster, and then, with a tap to the pony’s withers, she sends it through the hoop of fire, but only once. The pony seems to change course on the other side of the hoop, runs closer to the stands and more slowly. Madame shakes her head and makes a clucking sound, and in a moment, Elizabeth catches the scent of burnt flesh. The horse stops abruptly, its cries like a child’s. A boy runs in, and the tent goes dark. The crowd is silent. Madame grips Elizabeth’s hand. She whispers in English that Elizabeth should not put this in her letters because it is too terrible.
Louise arrives at the hotel, exhausted from her trip across the Atlantic and oddly pale. She gives Elizabeth a kiss and sniffs a bit at her hair.
Hmmm, she says. The sea air. Let me go wash up. Then we’ll talk.
But she turns at the foot of the stairs, exhales loudly, rummaging in the pocket of her coat. She produces a telegram.
It’s for you.
Elizabeth can scarcely make sense of the words. They seem lost in a haze, as if the writing itself were an apparition. The message says that Robert Seaver has died from a gunshot wound. Accidental, his mother has written or dictated. Crutches, hunting rifle. He had too much to carry.
Oh God, Elizabeth says. She drops the telegram, reaches for the banister to steady herself, but it is too far away. Her open palm pushes down, down, as if trying to keep the empty air from swallowing her whole.
Barbara told me it wasn’t an accident, Louise says.
Because I turned him down.
Madame stands behind them in the hallway, wringing her hands over this most irregular arrival, a guest who will not go to her room when the baggage is already there, waiting. Another guest who is distraught.
Maybe not just you, Louise says.
Did someone else turn him down?
No. I mean all of it, all his life wanting to run and dance and always being such a very good sport about everything he couldn’t do. As if conversation and wit were a substitute.
Which they’re not.
Madame can contain herself no longer. She grasps Elizabeth’s arm. Qu’est-ce qui se passe? she says.
That’s a good question, Elizabeth says quietly. What is happening?
You should write to his mother.
I know. I will. Madame thinks I am the most amazing correspondent on earth.
She covers Madame’s hand with her own. Un copain, she says, est mort.
Oh! Madame says. Désolée. Mes condoléances.
She asks a quick flight of odd, embarrassed questions, half-stifled chirps. Do they need a doctor? Will they need a telephone? To send a telegram? Will they return to America?
No, no, Elizabeth says. None of that.
Now I will go up and unpack, Louise says.
I’ll be in the bar, Elizabeth tells her.
* * *
The circus has gone, as Greta Angel said it would, inland, through the forest to Rennes. Elizabeth can chart their path on the great map behind the bar, the vast forêt de Quénécan, its emptiness illustrated by a horse, a deer, and a wild boar, all three the same shade of rust brown and quite still, facing east as if waiting for some important piece of news. The bartender brings a glass of water, and the two of them stare at it. Then he says, No? He turns to take hold of a bottle from the shelf in front of the map. The empty space reveals the brightness of the boar’s jagged silvery tusk—or is it a tooth, or a fang?—and this revelation causes Elizabeth to notice the wild eye of the horse and the way the deer’s antlers resemble branches of coral. She imagines the circus ponies breaking out of the caravan in a great hullabaloo, their wild stampede away from Greta and her red crop, and into the trees, their great, whinnying relief.
The new liquid in her glass is the color of root beer. It’s sweet and perfumey, like gin. Rum, the bartender says, but she’s not sure that’s right. It carves a path down through her chest, a sluice of heat and a contrapuntal rise of sadness, then vague goodwill. If only Robert had known this sensation. Her head feels lifted off her shoulders, flying on its own in a cloud of fiery pale chemicals, high above that mapped f
orest. She will get to Rennes ahead of the circus, before any of the animals.
Louise slides into the seat beside her. She signals to the bartender and points to Elizabeth’s glass.
You won’t like it, Elizabeth says,
I might.
Should I go home?
His mother didn’t ask you to.
She still could.
That’s true. So you should be prepared for it.
But I don’t want to leave. We just got here. Hallie is waiting for us in Paris. God, I sound so selfish.
You do. Like a spoiled child. Have you been writing to him?
No. Though he’s been writing to me. I thought it best to let go myself.
You’re right. Now, take one last gulp of that awful stuff and show me the village.
Elizabeth shakes her head. I can’t.
You have to. You promised this was a gorgeous place. You said it was just like home, right down to the smells.
Elizabeth wants ice cream, and then she wants to sit in the sun and drink a bottle of cider. After that, whiskey. Louise, of course, says no, takes Elizabeth’s arm, and steers her toward the water. There is a marina at the south end of Douarnenez harbor and above it, the yacht club.
Let’s rent a boat, Louise says.
Robert loved to sail, Elizabeth says.
So do you.
It’s too still.
At the marina, there is a clutch of people and commotion and what appear to be twenty or so small craft moving back to the docks. Elizabeth comes to understand that this is the return of boats from a canceled race. The sailors call up to those watching: No wind! Some of the boats have to be towed, and these sailors seem the most cheerful. All are men, except for one crew of three women. Louise and Elizabeth watch this boat, the Isolde, ease into the dock. The women throw out fenders, secure the lines, and climb ashore. They stand for a moment, scanning the crowd.
I wonder if they’re allowed inside, Louise says.
As if answering her question, one of the women looks directly at Louise and Elizabeth and smiles. They disappear into the yacht club, emerging in a few minutes on the upstairs terrace. They stand along the railing, gazing down at the other boats docking, furling sails, stowing gear. They don’t talk much among themselves. Elizabeth thinks their silence seems comfortable, their lean bodies loose, waiting calmly for whatever will happen next. She longs to be with them. The desire takes her quite by surprise. She touches Louise’s elbow, nods her head in their direction.
Who do you think they are? Louise says.
Maybe they would take us out in their boat.
We don’t even know them.
You could go ask, Elizabeth says. They might say yes to you. Everyone does.
And I suppose you’ll just wait here, and then I’ll wave you over?
Something like that.
Why I do these things for you, I have no idea.
Because your mother told you to try to make me happy.
Elizabeth watches Louise with a mixture of awe and envy: her particular confident walk, part swagger, part glide, as if she is always moving in the direction of what she wants. At the end of the jetty, Louise comes to a gate, waist high, latched from inside, clearly meant to keep tourists and strays off the yacht club terrace. She turns her head to look at Elizabeth, but she’s too far away to read the expression. Then she simply reaches over the gate, opens it from inside, steps through, and drops the latch as if she’s been entering parties this way all her life. Which, of course, she has.
She walks straight to the crew of the Isolde, and though Elizabeth cannot hear the words, she knows that Louise is complimenting the boat, asking if the race will continue, what plans they have for the afternoon. In the pantomime, Elizabeth can see that Louise is offered a drink but declines. The conversation seems to be proceeding quite slowly, but with much smiling. At times Louise lifts both hands into the air, as if conducting an orchestra.
The sky brightens. A puff of breeze cools Elizabeth’s neck. She deliberately turns her head away from Louise and the sailing women, toward the sea, flat gray glass, a barely perceptible undulation, a sound sleeper breathing beneath a blanket.
The last time she was in a boat on water like this was with Robert, off Nantucket. She wonders whether she wants to revive that memory fully, or erase it: the moment she knew she should have turned the boat back toward land but didn’t because the wind was rushing them along so swiftly. And then it was too late. Robert said they made a good pair, and then he completely lost his head and proposed marriage. She hears herself refusing, the sound of her voice echoing over the water, percussive. And then Robert shot himself. She closes her eyes.
So when Elizabeth hears her name carried on the wind, she isn’t sure if the sound is fact or dream, Robert or Louise, and then she’s not sure which she prefers, Robert alive again or the prospect of sailing with these women. She can never make this choice, so does this mean she’s glad Robert is dead? What kind of monster would she be then? Maybe suicide doesn’t really exist. Maybe it’s just a different kind of murder. Elizabeth wonders if she will never not be lonely. What was it Miss Moore wrote about that? The cure for loneliness is solitude.
Then it’s clearly Louise’s voice, calling her to come. Elizabeth rises from the bench, turns toward the yacht club. It feels like leaving Robert behind.
The women are German, from Berlin, taller and older up close—probably in their thirties—than they appeared from a distance. Louise introduces Elizabeth in a jumble of languages: amie, Begleiter, classmate. The women are Marie, Ann, and Sigrid. Again, they offer drinks, and before Louise can speak, Elizabeth accepts. The sun shines silvery through the clouds and the wind pipes up, but the race has been postponed indefinitely.
Sigrid, who is a bit younger and speaks more English, offers to go to the bar. Ann and Marie watch her leave as if she might not come back. Elizabeth senses a pause, a sort of deflation, as if now, without Sigrid, they will not know how to make themselves understood. Louise steers them toward a table set for a meal. The breeze frets the edges of the blue paper place mats. In a mix of French and English, Ann explains that they have come to Douarnenez from Paris, where they live in Saint-Denis. They left Berlin in January, she adds, but does not explain. Louise gives the comtesse de Chambrun’s address and the date of their arrival. Sigrid returns, balancing a tray of pints. The beer is the color of honey. Sunlight travels through the glasses and across the table, over the pairs of hands.
What about your parents? Louise says.
Ann, Sigrid, and Marie look at one another, but their expressions betray nothing.
We miss them, Sigrid says. My mother can visit. Not my father. Yours?
Never, Elizabeth says.
Morts, Louise says. Tot.
* * *
In Saint-Denis, Ann and Marie teach at the university. Sigrid works at the German embassy in Paris. The way she says this, her voice halting machinelike, her gaze unmoving, makes Elizabeth pay attention. Sigrid’s eyes are the same shade of blue as a Siamese cat’s. Miss Moore would have noticed this immediately, Elizabeth chides herself. This blue is a bottomless shade: a person could see for miles through these eyes, far into Sigrid’s mind, out through the back of her skull, into the past, the history of Germany, the origins of the universe. She has the look of someone imprisoned. Elizabeth begins to notice that Ann and Marie treat Sigrid as if she is a kind of talisman, a touchstone, a divine creature moving among mortals.
The men at the next table have sent them a round of beers. They are English. They give out their names, calling across the space between tables: Colin, Andrew, Michael, Ian, Robert. Robert.
We would be a matched set, Louise murmurs.
Englishmen always shout, Sigrid says.
They look into their glasses and nod, except Sigrid. She stares directly at the men, as if appraising pieces of furniture or birds in cages. Elizabeth is relieved to discover this English Robert looks nothing like the dead American Robert. The name could so
mehow be renewed. Robert might exist without grief being attached to it.
I’m Elizabeth, she shouts back.
Louise, Ann, and Marie try to quiet her, all three at once. Sigrid throws back her head and laughs.
Elizabeth looks down and sees Sigrid has fashioned an origami sailboat from the place mat.
When the beers are finished, Sigrid says, Ist ja gut! and leads them out of the terrace and down the steps to the docks. The Isolde is a Colin Archer 25, brass and teak, clean and trim. Louise and Elizabeth wait while the others step into the cockpit, move lines, gather cushions from the lazarettes. Then Sigrid helps them aboard. Her hand is warm, the palm soft. Ann and Marie speak German to each other, instructions about the sails, the dock lines, the fenders. Sigrid takes the tiller.
Five may be too many for this boat, Louise says.
Sigrid shrugs. A crowd is always safer, she says.
Louise begins to explain but seems to think better of it.
Sigrid steers a tight turn away from the dock and into the wind. Marie hoists the sail, jibes the boom, and the Isolde moves lazily toward the mouth of the harbor and then out into the sea.
The famous herons, Sigrid says, pointing south. They have their own island. Also an orchard and a tropical garden.
The wind remains brisk and steady on the prow, their travel both breathless and slow. This must be how the dead go. Elizabeth imagines her mother’s body and Robert’s are the cargo, ballast for Isolde. The île Tristan is heaven, Ann and Marie the Valkyries, and Sigrid is Charon. Elizabeth glances at Louise. Who is she then? The coast to starboard is emerald green and almost too bright. The gray-blue sea heaves, massively going somewhere. If this trip could take forever . . . She refuses to complete the sentence.
These cushions will probably float, Louise whispers, though the boat barely heels.
Sigrid tacks away from the coast. Isolde searches for wind like an animal trailing a scent (a boat has a nose, after all). Those were the best days at the sailing camp in Wellfleet, when the boat was flesh and blood. The wind was blowing at six knots, and the hand on the tiller and the rudder in the water and the sail filling were all the same thing. One could almost disappear, like the following wake, a mild disturbance and then water folding back in on itself.
