So today was to be the last day on which she would see and feel the sea, just as the sight of the endless horizon was inspiring an unfamiliar feeling of boundlessness within her. This was the last time she would hear her own voice, but it had to be done.
Who said so? Salty spray spattered her face. Yes, who said so? Was she not free to do or not do whatever she pleased? She could do it right now! She had the power to decide at any moment that it was over.
She spun around to take in the rugged beauty of the coastline.
Tomorrow.
She turned and waded back to the shore.
Tomorrow.
Yann Gamé liked watching Pascale Goichon, probably because they were both artists who regarded their work not as work but as a passion. Pascale’s hands had a way of shaping clay that was only bettered, if at all, by her gardening or her cooking. When she could remember a recipe, that was.
Pascale was a woman who lived her life to the full, and sometimes the painter could barely stand to watch his old friend losing her memory. Her husband Emile and Yann had known each other since the evening almost fifty years ago when Emile and Pascale had fallen in love.
Yann stroked Merline, the snow-white retriever. She’d been the first dog Pascale had taken into her home, followed by a growing number of stray dogs and cats, which now populated the plot of land. From his seat on the terrace, he watched Madame Pompadour chase a bumblebee. Pascale had named the dogs after royal mistresses, even the males. The cats all had names inspired by fruit and vegetables. Mirabelle and Petit Choux—Little Cabbage—had made themselves comfortable in the sun by his feet.
“My muse? You’re asking me if Emile’s my muse?” Pascale repeated. The freckles under her bangs—formerly ginger, now milky white—seemed to be mocking Yann. “I work with emotions.”
Her sculptures often showed a couple reaching out to each other, but only rarely was their passion fulfilled in an embrace. Often only fractions of an inch separated the figures as they implored each other for a kiss, forever frozen in yearning.
“Are Emile and his leg in good working order?” asked Yann. It was mad: Emile, a bear of a man, whose brain was gradually divorcing from his body. First his foot had started to twitch, then his leg. The whole of his left side would tremble and obey its own rules if he forgot to take his medicine.
“Are your tiles in good order?” Pascale asked in return.
“Yeah, everything in good order,” Yann lied. Everything in good order, everything as always. He gave painting lessons to less able artists, visited Pascale and Emile twice a week, ate at Ar Mor on Mondays, painted tiles and composed mosaics for the rest of the week and otherwise waited for summer to shade into autumn.
“Order will be the death of us,” commented Pascale. “So, what’s wrong?”
He should have known that he wouldn’t get off so lightly. He removed his glasses so that he didn’t have to look at Pascale. It was hard for him to admit what was making him more and more desperate with each passing day.
“Art has always been everything to me, Pascale. And now I’m sixty I’ve realized it’s not enough. My life is empty. An empty canvas.”
“Oh get down from your cross; we need the timber. And what do you mean by art, Yann Gamé? Art is a muscle that needs exercise. It doesn’t care if it paints tiles, forms funny little people”—Pascale pointed to the clay sculpture in front of her—“or reels off lines of words. Art just is.”
She made a gesture that combined rolling her eyes, shrugging her shoulders and pointing out at the countryside and the world, all in one. “It is, that’s it. The question is how you feel. Do you feel lonely? I’ll tell you something, Yann Gamé: what’s missing in your life is love. Can you remember love? The feeling that makes people do stupid things or become heroes? No art in the whole world will ever love you back. You put everything you’ve got into art, but it gives you nothing back. Nothing at all.”
Yann loved Pascale for those thirty seconds, for that speech. It was possible that Pascale might tune out of the conversation at any moment and ask Yann who the hell he was. Then she would shuffle into the kitchen and recognize nothing—not the table as a table, the sugar as sugar, or her husband as her husband.
Art. Love. Yann didn’t consider himself an artist. He was an artisan, a craftsman. The little bit of “art” in “artisan” was enough for him. But what about love? Love was like a giant canvas—he didn’t know how to fill it; he had no picture of this feeling inside him. It was the missing element.
He thought of how Colette Rohan was always trying to persuade him to paint larger pictures. Or merely pictures, not just tiles. The gallery owner had compared him with Gauguin, Sérusier and Pierre de Belay, and eventually convinced him to paint women—naked women.
Naked women in Pont-Aven? God, this was the provinces, not Paris!
“Colette Rohan wants orgies,” he said, sighing. “Big pictures with big naked women in them.”
Pascale gave a snort. “It’s Colette’s business if she sees bigger things in you. But who knows, maybe one of your tiny tiles has made someone’s life a big thing.”
“You honestly believe that?”
“It’s nice to imagine,” she said, smiling dreamily at him. “Will you promise me something, Yann?”
“No,” said the painter. “I don’t like promises. Tell me what I can do for you, and a yes will have to suffice.”
“Will you fall in love again?”
Merline, who had so far lain quietly by Yann’s feet, yelped and jumped up. He had pinched the dog’s ear.
“Yes or no?”
“I can’t promise I’m going to fall in love!”
“Why not, you shortsighted Breton twit! Falling in love is the best thing that could happen to you. Food will taste better, the world will be more beautiful and you’ll finish your paintings quicker. Don’t be such a coward. Fall in love! Open your eyes, open your heart, stop being so damned shy and reclusive, and start behaving like an idiot!”
“Why should I be an idiot all of a sudden?”
“The more willing you are to act like an idiot, the sooner you’ll fall in love. Do it! Otherwise you’ll grow old on your own and die earlier than you’d like.”
Yes, Pascale, queen of passion. Yann knew full well that she had driven dozens of men crazy in her youth. As an air stewardess she had met men from all over the world. Yann was happier for those men than he was for his friend Emile. They’d surely got to know one of the most exciting women of their lives, but Pascale loved only Emile. The ways of love were sometimes strange.
Love—a feeling that swells in the face of death. It finishes and you’re cold turkey, amputated of your head and your heart.