At first it was only the scent of dust and electricity, but then gusts of wind tore around the eaves of houses and through the gaps in door frames, lifting the tablecloths in Ar Mor and sending glasses smashing to the floor. It was shortly after eleven o’clock at night.
Old Bretons battened down their shutters and drove their animals into their sheds. The men went around the houses looking for unattached objects that might be swept away. They leaned into the wind as if they needed it for support. Children and cats took fright, even if they couldn’t remember the events of Boxing Day morning ten years previously, in 1999, when a hurricane had crashed through Brittany. It had been the fiercest hurricane since records began. Its name was Lothar.
The clouds hung low and black, and the first raindrops were as thick and heavy as blood. Jean-Rémy, Geneviève Ecollier, Madame Gilbert and her husband (both on their anniversary date) were with Padrig (the temporary kitchen help), and Marianne at Ar Mor. Jean-Rémy didn’t dare to look at Madame Gilbert.
“You shouldn’t drive in this,” Madame Geneviève said to Madame and Monsieur Gilbert. She had to raise her voice to make herself heard over the rain pounding on the windowpanes.
“Do you still have a suite available?” asked Monsieur Gilbert. He was an ethnopsychologist and extremely proud of the fact that he could put entire countries on the couch. He saw migrants setting fire to cars in Paris as an expression of their cultural depression. Madame Gilbert let the smoke curl from between her red-painted lips.
Geneviève smiled. “King-size bed, double bathtub and a mirror on the ceiling.”
“That would be just the right thing for our special day, don’t you think, ma tigresse?” Monsieur Gilbert suggested to his wife, and she nodded, smiled and hugged him, all the while looking Jean-Rémy in the eye over her husband’s shoulder. Geneviève gave them their key.
There was a massive clap of thunder, followed by a hiss, a bang and a blinding flash that lit up the breakwater. The electric lamps flickered briefly, then went out. Now the only light came from the table candles. In the intimate darkness, Jean-Rémy saw Monsieur Gilbert’s hand feel its way down to his wife’s bum.
Suddenly the door flew open with a crash to reveal Laurine. She was completely soaked, her shirt transparent. Padrig stared at her, Monsieur Gilbert stared at her, and Jean-Rémy felt like murdering them all.
“Padrig!” he called angrily. “Give me a hand in the kitchen. I have to start the back-up generator for the cooler.”
The rain was now beating against the windows with such force that Geneviève had to shout. “Another Calvados to warm you all up.” She poured six shots.
The sky was piled high with red-black towers of cloud. A streak of lightning split the blackness of the sky like a seam.
—
Jean-Rémy and Padrig started the generator, and the lights flickered into life again. The dusky, sensual magic that had filled the room a moment earlier was banished by a cruel neon blaze.
“What’s that?” asked Padrig, pointing to a half-hidden box of flowers and letters in the cooler. Without a word, Jean-Rémy held out the envelopes to him. Each bore Laurine’s name and a date. Dozens of love letters.
“And you never gave them to her, you idiot?”
“I’ll never be able to now. I’ve hurt her. None of these will mean anything to her now.”
Padrig shook his head in exasperation.
—
Laurine had put on her jacket and fetched the rest of her belongings from her locker in the staff toilets.
“Will you drive me home, Padrig?” she asked firmly, not deigning even to glance at Jean-Rémy. Madame Gilbert had her eyes trained on him, though, and Monsieur Gilbert was watching his wife and smiling, as if he knew everything and had come to terms with his wife’s desires. He drained his glass.
The storm rumbled on; the rain was coming down almost horizontally, slicing through the air. Padrig and Laurine vanished into the wall of fog, and Madame Gilbert and her husband ducked underneath the awning with Geneviève and scurried up the stairs into the guesthouse. Jean-Rémy and Marianne stayed behind in the kitchen with a bottle of Calvados and a pile of unsent love letters.
“Was that the other woman?” asked Marianne after a while. Jean-Rémy nodded and propped his chin on his hand, then filled both their glasses to the brim.
Later, as she hauled herself up the stairs to the Shell Room, Marianne decided that she would commence the next morning by apologizing to everyone. She would apologize for coming, for leaving, and for not being honest with them. It was only when she was lying in bed with one leg on the floor so that the room didn’t spin around her so much that she realized that she wanted to give a name to the cat. He should belong to her, and his nomadic soul would have reached its home.
“Good night, Max,” whispered Marianne into the darkness. The cat purred.
Was it only when hearts broke that they revealed their true nature?
Sidonie, the sculptress, sensed a surge of something inside her that she hadn’t experienced for many years: sadness. She caught a tear as it ran down her cheek, and examined her rough, chapped fingers. She failed to hear someone knocking on the garden door to her studio.
“Hello. Anyone there?”
As Marianne came in, Sidonie set down the two halves of the broken stone heart that she’d been sculpting on top of the laboratory report. It had just arrived from her doctor’s office this morning.
Marianne’s smile faded and was replaced by a look of concern. “What’s wrong?” she asked, noticing Sidonie’s tears.
“Nothing,” said Sidonie. “Just…some dirt. And the sun.”
And death and love.
Marianne crossed the studio in a few long strides and put down on the table the basket containing groceries for the Goichons and a bag of chocolates resembling small pebbles that she had brought for the sculptress. Then she embraced Sidonie, who was too surprised to dodge her approach. To an unwitting observer it must have looked as if Marianne were forcing the other woman to dance with her. Sidonie’s arms hung limply by her sides, her head resting on Marianne’s shoulder, and together the two of them rocked back and forth, their feet moving in time.
As they performed this strange waltz, Sidonie sobbed, noiselessly at first, then more and more uncontrollably, until she had to cling to Marianne to prevent herself collapsing. Her sobs were interspersed with words of attempted explanation. She felt that Marianne’s embrace was drawing something out of her—a torrent of fear, anguish, sorrow, and rage at the injustice of death.
Marianne felt Sidonie’s emotions flooding toward her like a spring tide. She also felt pulsing inflamed areas as she let her fingers glide a few fractions of an inch, like sensors, across the sculptress’s stout torso. Her fingers picked up what her eyes would never be capable of seeing. She wanted to heal her friend.