When night began to cozy up to the day, the whole of Kerdruc sang the “La Marseillaise.” As the last note died away, the musicians launched straight into a tango, and the breakwater seemed to glow with a kaleidoscope of swaying dresses.
Paul was sitting with his arms crossed on Ar Mor’s terrace. He was watching Rozenn, who was standing on the margins, observing the couples spinning past her.
The boy, as Paul called her new young boyfriend, hadn’t danced with her once so far. She wouldn’t be happy about that. Rozenn loved dancing, especially Argentine tango. She channeled all her romantic emotions into her body—reserve, lust, fear and pride.
Paul knew that refusing to dance with a woman was tantamount to ignoring an important aspect of her personality, a slight that she would never fully forget. That was because she had something to offer—her devotion—and she would never truly reveal her soul to a man who didn’t dance with her. For Rozenn, Paul had taken secret dance lessons with Yann, who knew how a man should dance to make a woman fall for him.
Now Paul caught sight of the boy. Having just fetched two glasses of red wine from the bar, he had spied Paul at exactly the same time. He was coming toward him!
“Good evening, Paul,” he said with exaggerated politeness.
“My wife looks delightful tonight, don’t you think?” Paul cut him off.
“She isn’t your wife anymore.”
“Have you told her how beautiful she is?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.” The young man turned to leave.
The musicians rounded off their up-tempo tango and struck up a plaintive gwerz. Couples who loved each other so achingly that only their bodies could express their emotion continued to dance; the others took refuge in their drinks or in their private thoughts.
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to love my wife the way she needs to be loved,” said Paul to the boy’s back. The name he had managed so successfully to block out chose this moment to pop into his mind. Serge, the little milksop!
“She isn’t your wife anymore!” said Serge again, angry now.
“She still feels as if she is, though. Want to bet?”
Serge turned away a second time.
“Want to bet?” Paul repeated more loudly.
Now Serge turned to face him, his arrogance deflated. “Our love is greater than anything you ever had with her,” he hissed.
“In that case, you’ve no need to worry about the outcome of our bet. Or do you? Are you scared of an old man?”
Serge glared at him. Paul uncrossed his arms and smiled at the man who was sleeping with the love of his life, who woke up alongside her, argued with her and saw her laugh.
“What do you want?” snarled Serge.
“A dance. Just one.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I know. Nothing to be scared of.” Paul stood up, offered Serge his seat with a lavish gesture and then bent down to him one last time. “Watch and learn.”
—
Colette saw Paul call to the musicians. She spotted Simon walking toward her carrying something that looked like one of his peculiar presents, and noticed how he retreated when he saw her sitting so close to Sidonie. Yet she pushed everything she saw down into a part of her where it had no bearing. She and Sidonie were sitting on the renovated upper terrace of the guesthouse in silence.
Colette laid her hand in its short salmon-colored glove on the cover of the book lying in front of her, then pushed it across the table to her companion.
“For the anniversary of our friendship, 14 July,” she said. Her words rang stilted and hollow in her ears. Sidonie only reached for the book when Colette had withdrawn her hand.
“The Language of Stones by Roger Caillois,” she read under her breath.
Colette saw Paul approach Rozenn and bow to her. She saw her turn away, Paul say something to her back and Rozenn spin around as if she’d been slapped.
“Caillois was a philosopher and sociologist. In the 1930s he was a member of the Surrealists, and later founded the Collège de Sociologie with Georges Bataille,” Colette heard herself lecture in an unnaturally high-pitched voice.
“Oh,” said Sidonie. “How nice.”
“He sees stones as a counterweight to dynamics, for it is only through their immobility that man’s quest becomes visible. You see, without stones we wouldn’t notice that we’re moving and…” Colette paused. What on earth was she babbling on about?
“Stones aren’t immobile,” said Sidonie after a while.
They were both completely focused on Paul and Rozenn. He was steering his ex-wife toward the middle of the breakwater; he was half pulling her and she was half pushing him, their expressions a mixture of truth and pain. Onstage the violinist gave a signal, and the first chords of a tango could be heard, led and carried out into the night by the accordion, then taken up by the violin.
“They do move, it’s just that no one sees it. There’s a place in America,” Sidonie went on, “called Death Valley. Boulders roam across the sand. No one pulls them, but the tracks are visible. They’re hundreds of yards long. Stones move.”
“They move when we’re not looking?” asked Colette. Are we really discussing stones? she thought.
“Yes,” whispered Sidonie. “Nobody sees them moving.”
“I thought we had a fixed position,” said Colette.
“We?” asked Sidonie.
“We stones.”
For the first time, Sidonie turned to look at Colette. “They say that standing stones in Brittany move on Christmas Eve when the clock is striking twelve, heading toward the sea to drink. But it’s not enough for us stones to do what we want only once. We move because we’re searching for the object of our desire,” she said, and Colette didn’t dare to blink for fear of missing a single moment of Sidonie looking at her.
“But what do stones desire?” she asked, staring straight at Sidonie, although she could already sense what it was. She sensed that she had always known what Sidonie was trying to express. Something inside her snapped in half. It burst apart like a rock, and she could taste powdered stone on her tongue.
—
Marianne cleared the tables, even rescuing several empty cider glasses from the flowerpots. She glanced over at Yann, who was sitting on a folding chair next to the stage, his pencil flying across the thick pages of a drawing pad. His eyes kept seeking Marianne amid the crowd, and every time they met hers across the intervening gap, time seemed to skip a beat. She felt something in her chest explode like a tear splashing on someone’s hand. The next moment her view was again blocked by a dancing couple. Marianne loved the instants when she took a few steps to one side and watched Yann scanning the throng for her. He’s looking for me.
She took a deep breath and then exhaled all the air from her lungs. Perfume, barbecue aromas, salt water, sea air. A night steeped in celebration and laughter.
He wants to find me.
She lifted her tray and spied some tartrate crystals in the glasses.
I’m in love.