by Jean Teulé
‘She is, Uncle, she’s my godmother. Waaaa.’ The child began to cry, while her mother ran towards the cook, wanting to know what had made her child – who was wearing a white pearl-embroidered dress with a lace collar – cry.
‘Give her to me,’ she ordered her brother.
Stanislas-Charles Dupuy de Lôme got hold of his niece, who was hiding in Thunderflower’s skirts, and handed her, arms waving, to his sister, while the cook muttered, ‘A woman should never let anyone pass her child to her over a table.’
‘Why is that, Hélène?’ asked the mother.
‘It’s a sign that the child won’t last the week.’
The prediction cast a chill, which the grandfather with the fleecy chin tried to dispel. ‘Get along with you, Hélène. You moan but I’m sure that any minute now you’ll be off to get one of those plump hens you do so well, either in a fricassee or succulently spit-roasted with potatoes.’
‘If it’s not too heavy,’ the servant cautioned. ‘Otherwise I’ll get six artichokes between us and serve them with a herb vinaigrette, and that will do very nicely.’
‘Personally, I’d have liked trout,’ chimed in a bird-like grandmother, joining the others around the table. ‘Admittedly to find a fresh water one you have to go much further than Ploemeur, but—’
‘As for you, Hortense-Héloïse, don’t make things worse,’ interrupted her husband, knitting his bushy eyebrows.
‘But, Father, why shouldn’t Mother be allowed trout?’ said Stanislas-Charles angrily. ‘It’s unbelievable. Are we going to have to take orders from the cook, no longer the masters in our own home? Hélène, you will listen to me and there’s an end to it.’
‘As you wish,’ murmured the servant, only half liking her employer’s tone. ‘Fine, fine, I’ll do whatever I have to.’
‘That’s it, do whatever you have to. It will make a nice change. You can start by giving my niece her breakfast, and then off you go, shopping, double quick.’
‘Be careful, Monsieur Dupuy de Lôme. Go on playing against yourself and you’ll end up winning.’
‘And no threats either, thank you.’
Everyone left the kitchen, except for Marie, who went back to clutching Thunderflower’s skirt. ‘Will you tell me a story, Godmother?’
‘Of course, dear.’
Wearing a ruched cap, and an air of niceness for the child’s benefit, the cook had her back to her, stirring a little milk heating in a saucepan. ‘It’s the story of a king, the uncle of a princess,’ she told her. ‘He takes a handful of dust and throws it into the air; his castle falls down, with the princess in it.’
The servant left the manor house, built in the classical style, with her empty basket in her hand and curses on her lips. The early morning insects with diaphanous wings, fluttering butterflies and clear sky brought infinite variety to the delights of the landscape. The sunny day was the finest in a decade.
‘In the shentury, no doubt,’ gasped the shorter wigmaker, punching the air with his twisted arm, as they stood beside their cart stopped at the roadside.
‘Maybe we should unfasten the horses somewhere and let them dry off,’ suggested the taller, bald one. They had both aged considerably.
Mist was rising from the fields and the road leading to Ploemeur. The streams were in shade. Further on, Thunderflower passed a farmer busy undervaluing a girl who was being offered to him in marriage, in order to get a more considerable dowry: ‘She’s really ugly.’ The parents handed their eldest daughter a spade and she demonstrated her strength by digging out huge clods of earth. The peasant hesitated.
On her way back to the château de Soye, basket of artichokes on her arm, the servant spotted a small cart being pulled by some men. It was carrying a husband who had let himself be beaten by his wife. She passed a bank with plumes of yellow broom and topped with blackberries, and as soon as she entered the drawing room of the manor house, Thunderflower saw people bending over a little body lying on the floor and rushed forward, shouting in Breton, ‘Quit a ha lessé divan va anaou!’ (‘Get off the corpse – she’s mine!’)
While the naval engineer was still asking, ‘What’s that mumbo jumbo she’s saying?’ the servant dropped her basket and knelt down beside Marie, lifting her into an embrace and whispering in her ear in Celtic. ‘A bad angel made our paths cross. Tell me, at least, I’ll have lived in your heart.’ The infant put her weak arms round the cook’s neck, replying in words no one could make out. It was like the soft sighing of the waving grass, and Stanislas-Charles, uncomprehending, said in astonishment, ‘Is Marie speaking Breton?’
Thunderflower’s hands closed the eyes of the child in the pearl-embroidered dress. Her mother was prostrate on a chair.
‘To what irresistible force has she succumbed?’ lamented the grandfather. ‘When my son-in-law hears the news he’ll be in utter despair over his daughter’s death.’
The grandmother could hardly breathe. The uncle looked inside the basket, then at the cook, who was already making for the door. He caught hold of her by the sleeve. ‘You should have brought six artichokes, one for each of us, and yet you got only five. Why? You don’t like artichokes, is that it?’
‘Yes I do, but I don’t like weighing myself down unnecessarily.’
Stanislas-Charles looked her straight in the eye. ‘Hélène. What did little Marie Bréger die of today, 30 May 1841, at the age of two-and-a-half?’
‘You’re asking me that, when I was away on an errand when my godchild collapsed?’
‘She was not your godchild. She was my good niece, when she was alive.’
‘That’s one person fewer. Blame can go to the saucepans, which have just been recoated with tin, or the poor quality of the water here at château de Soye. Monsieur Dupuy de Lôme, your suspicions will not make me lower my eyes in shame. I won’t blush either, do you hear?’
Half demented, the child’s mother got to her feet and began to sing. She was filled with the joy of the Church and lit household candles as if they were the tall candles of an altar.
‘I warned you we needed to go back to Lorient,’ Thunderflower reminded them. ‘The weakest has already died, and it will be the others’ turns next. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were an epidemic soon. The manor house will be left empty, just as has happened elsewhere. The cemetery at Ploemeur will be too small.’
The servant who could predict the future was standing proudly in front of a chestnut cupboard with ornately carved foliage, while all those around her were agog, hanging on her every word.
‘Mark my words. I’m warning you, if we stay here you’re all going to die.’
Stanislas-Charles gave in. ‘We’re going back.’
‘Finally …’ breathed Thunderflower. ‘The lengths you have to go to in order to be heard!’
Port-Louis
‘Sardines, get your sardines! A mackerel too, rays, a tuna, oh, beautiful lumpfish!’
Beneath a rampart decked with pennants, a fishwife climbed back out of the hold of a small boat, barefoot, streaming with seawater, and yelling, ‘The catch is in at Port-Louis!’
On the quayside, fishermen in canvas waistcoats and long sailor-style breeches were gathering up the leaping sardines that had escaped from their baskets beside the mooring bollards. Ancient seadogs with weather-beaten faces were chatting and smoking their pipes, never tiring of watching the fishing boats come and go, and the warships in the basin.
Once past the large port ropeworks, Thunderflower turned down an alleyway and emerged inside the walled town where large numbers of sea birds were flying overhead. In the corners of the fortifications, there were still women selling wild flowers. It was late in the season and they had lost their bloom but retained a rare and lingering scent.
‘Next to virgins, the rarest things in this town are stars in the daytime and roses in winter.’
A man was standing in the porch of a house with a criss-crossed gable covered in whitewash mixed with shells, a low door and a single window near
to a flaking sign with a mermaid painted on it. He was shouting at a half-naked and decrepit pauper woman. ‘I can replace you easily enough! Look at what you’ve turned into. We could call you Catel-gollet (Catherine the ruined), what with your messy hair, breasts hanging halfway down your stomach and a face that would frighten small children. You no longer have a single customer, and what you bring in doesn’t cover what you eat. Your cooking’s disgusting, and when you do have a couple of sous you drink them!’
Thunderflower looked at the shouting man. He had an unusual face and a very big nose. She had seen him before, she thought.
‘Who’s the master here, you slut?’ he repeated to the pauper. ‘What’s his name?’
‘You, François.’
‘François what?’
‘François Aupy.’
‘So who is sensible and knows how you ought to have behaved under my roof?’
‘Maybe—’
‘No maybes! Me, François Aupy. I have absolute authority at La Sirène,’ he concluded, slapping the wall of his wretched establishment with his palm. The weathervane on the roof fell down. Part of the porch collapsed. The man was wearing a cassock patched up with a hundred scraps in different shades and, at his wrists, lace cuffs. He had a straw hat with a yellow velvet band round it.
Thunderflower remembered. ‘That’s it, it’s coming back to me now! You’re the son of Madame Aupy at Hennebont.’
‘Have we met?’ asked the man, turning towards the beauty with the bag over her shoulder.
‘I saw you in a drawing at your poor mother’s, while she was eating her last carrot soup. You’re no longer in Orléans?’
‘Well, no. I’m a defrocked priest and here I am, a brothelkeeper. Has my mother died?’
‘I was her cook. I’m looking for work. I’ve been given to believe I could turn up pretty well anywhere in Port-Louis and be taken on.’
‘Would you like to work at my place? You do grasp that at La Sirène it wouldn’t just be a case of scrubbing saucepans?’
‘What would you like me to grasp, dear Monsieur?’
‘In a military brothel-tavern there’s a bit of love on the menu as well. Would you be amenable to that?’
‘I’m not opposed to a little bit of courting.’
‘I hope you haven’t got a sweetheart who’ll turn up here one day and make a fuss.’
‘Where love’s concerned, no one’s holding on tight to my dreams any more.’
‘François,’ said the diseased wretch, who was still there beside them. ‘If you replace me and send me away, I’ll drown myself in the harbour.’
‘That’ll be food for the crabs and lobsters then. Piss off, Catel-gollet!’
The poor woman with the ravaged body went off, shunned by the merry soldiers she passed. There were so many soldiers in the narrow streets of the fortified town! Uniforms sporting shiny metal buttons, stout black shoes, polished boots. Through a crowd of stalls laden with spices, fabrics from the Compagnie des Indes, tobacco from America, Chinese porcelain, a troop was passing …
‘May I introduce your future lovers?’ said François Aupy, gesturing towards them. ‘They use the old convent as barracks when they’re home from fighting or from the colonies. You can imagine that after three months at sea they’re particularly ardent.’
‘My cakes will calm the troops as well.’
‘Strange woman with your green eyes and white teeth, who are you?’ Intrigued, the pimp was suddenly familiar.
‘What do you want me to tell you?’ came the rejoinder. ‘My past? That would bore you, and with good reason. My present? What’s the point, since I’m in it. And my future? Let’s leave that be. My existence is neither happiness nor misfortune. You just have to get used to it, it’s a life. Why are you no longer a priest?’
‘While I was at Orléans, I was talking about Breton legends to the Bishop. He said, “You who believed what too many people in Brittany are in the habit of believing – namely that there really are female creatures called fairies, who people claim are made of flesh and appear to their lovers at will, taking their pleasure with them and then disappearing when they so choose – do ten days of penance with only water.” I got fed up with that so I came here to Port-Louis and opened La Sirène. Do you want to sign up then?’
‘If your terms are to my liking.’
‘By God, you’ll have your share of the catch.’
‘How do you divide up the takings?’
‘In four parts. The boat gets one,’ he said, placing his hand on the wall of the brothel. ‘I take two since I’m the captain.’
‘So I’d get a quarter of the fish.’
‘You get the picture. If that suits you, it’s agreed.’
‘It suits me.’
He held out his two hands to her, saying simply, ‘It’s a deal.’
Thunderflower crossed the threshold. It was an instinctive movement for her. A fatal force, as involuntary as the giddiness that draws one towards an abyss, made her regard this precipice with curiosity. ‘I’m getting old, but here I shall still be beautiful.’
A cook first and foremost, she noticed verdigris in the saucepans, and a pan full of revolting, mouldering stew, and only then the canopied bed opposite the window in this cave of hell. François Aupy went off to find a sergeant in the street.
‘Come and see my lodger.’
‘That awful Catel-gollet? You must be joking … My men haven’t wanted her or her rotten stews for a long time.’
‘I’ve taken on a new girl. She’s not exactly sixteen either, but still easy on the eye and she’s come at a good moment. Come with me.’
The officer allowed himself to be led by his striped sleeve to La Sirène, where Thunderflower was bending down in front of a table to pick up bellows and some logs from the earthen floor. The defrocked priest casually lifted up the Plouhinec woman’s dress to above the hips. She had no undergarments on. The garrison sergeant’s jaw dropped at what he saw.
At nearly forty-three, Thunderflower still had an adolescent body; petite, her buttocks now parted as if in invitation. Slender thighs tapering to the back of small knees. Further down, the barely defined attractive calves descended to slim ankles. The vertical bar of a chestnut-brown bush was topped by a little black sun.
‘Well, Sergeant?’ asked Aupy.
‘Striking, Monsieur, striking. What a target!’
The military brothel filled with the din of the men as Thunderflower let herself be tossed from one to the other as if by the sea. The way she made herself available might be thought reprehensible but she knew exactly what she was about.
‘What are you doing in that part of my person, my handsome warrior?’
‘A finger guided me there.’
Of an ancient race, she looked at them, unseeing, with her eyes of stone. Her beauty was on the wane but these men admired her, with their eyes round like those of the Huns! The obliging hostess went along with the games each of those sensual, coarse soldiers liked to play.
In his brothel, François Aupy jingled the coins he had received in his hand, making it clear who was boss. Next to him an army doctor was seated at table, tasting the contents of a dainty little bowl made of Asiatic porcelain.
‘That’s delicious! What’s in it?’
‘A carrot purée to make the soldiers wait patiently.’
‘But the hint of bitterness I can taste?’
‘The cook squeezed the juice of an orange into it, mixed with curry powder she bought at the back of the Comptoir des Indes.’
‘It’s a … treat.’
While the doctor proceeded to fill and light a hashish pipe, the pimp boasted about his staff.
‘Yes, Hélène’s talents aren’t confined to the bedroom department. Having her here for the last year is such a stroke of luck for business. And you haven’t yet tasted her famous cake with crystallised angelica and raisins that she’s made especially for the afternoon’s next clients. But she’s decided she’ll give this dessert only to
people who tell her stories while they’re in her arms.’
‘What sort of stories?’
‘Tell me about the wars, Brigadier … while you have a piece of my cake. Have you ever killed anyone?’
‘Killed anyone, blondie?’
The brigadier plunged back into his past as if a chasm had swallowed him up.
‘I left a trail of bodies wherever I went. Where I’ve come from, my business was killing, not this tick-tock clock stuff. Spread your legs. I fought without pity or remorse. I love slaughter, and this cake. Is there rum in it?’
‘Yes. Is it all right with you if I lie on my back so I can look at you? Think of more memories.’
‘I love the texture of your skin. I finished off wounded men, went after booty, fought with sword and fire.’
The brigadier was inside Thunderflower, still chewing, when he raised one hand. The lines on his palm – the life line, the luck line – were like branches whirling around in the air of the brothel. He opened his hand wide, then suddenly folded in his fingers, roaring as if he had a knife in his hand. With this sudden onset of digestive trouble, his face and eyes were afire, and discoloration already apparent elsewhere. His clenched fist fell back down, sending waves along the sheet on top of the bed.
An adjutant sitting on the edge of the bed frame observed: ‘The brigadier’s given it all he’s got. How he yelled when he came! He’ll sleep like a log from now on, you’ll see. Come here, my lovely, it’s my turn now.’
The lodger of La Sirène snaked her pretty young back towards him, asking, ‘You’ve no objection to angelica in pastries? Are you home from the colonies?’
‘I led one of the assault troops that took Constantine.’
In a few words he evoked a tropical landscape, then ate a little of Thunderflower’s cake before continuing, ‘Ten thousand pieces of artillery thundered on the condemned city with no let-up and no mercy until there was nothing left but an enormous heap of dust. Squeeze up so my guts can get close to the bottom of your spine.’
