She wanted that letter? She would have that letter. Jean-Rémy pulled off his shoes and his shirt and jumped. As he swam, stroke after stroke, and the currents and eddies caught and wrestled with him, his mind was flooded with every sentence he had written in that first love letter to Laurine.
He swam, repeatedly craning his neck so as not to lose sight of the little boat. His arms burned, the water grew colder and colder, and he could hardly feel his toes, but he swam on as fast as he could, even if it meant following the boat out to sea and drowning there!
The river fairies seemed to be amused by this swimmer chasing after his own words. They made the paper boat dance, sent small waves skimming toward him, causing him to splutter, and drove the love letter hither and thither, as if they were tossing a ball to one another. Then they pushed it into a side channel of the Aven, and Jean-Rémy, who felt his waning strength begging him to give up and simply float on his back, pursued it with furious, powerless tears in his eyes.
Yet Nimue, the ruler of the sea, had an agreement with Jean-Rémy, and sent the letter sailing toward him. He had it! He turned to face Laurine, who was still standing on the quayside. He had swum a long way from the shore, and now he had to return against the current. When his breathing had calmed, he gripped the letter between his teeth and began to paddle back.
As he clambered up the ladder on Kerdruc harbor wall, Laurine first took the letter from his mouth and then bent down to the breathless man. She took his head in her hands and pushed the wet black hair from his forehead, warming his body wherever she touched it with hers.
“Jean-Rémy,” she whispered before kissing him, her lips lightly touching his. He was so stunned by his beloved’s kiss, her closeness, her skin, her scent, her face and her smile, that he almost toppled backward into the water.
She stepped back and carefully unfolded the wet paper boat.
Laurine, you are everything to me. You are my morning, my smile. You are my fear and you are my courage. You are my dreams and my daylight. You are my night and my breath, you are my most important lesson. I beg to be allowed to love you, and I beg for no less than a lifetime by your side.
She read for a long time, savoring it, letting the lines echo in her soul. When she raised her eyes, there was great dignity in her expression.
“Yes,” she said.
Yes. The most beautiful word in the world.
“Love? What do you mean, love?”
“An artist must love if he wants to be any good.”
“Rubbish. He’s got to be free, or he’s not an artist. Free of love, free of hatred, free of every defined emotion.”
Arm in arm with Rozenn, Paul walked past the two men and said quietly to her, “Our first brush with Parisian art critics.”
“That’s what it’s like at previews,” she whispered back.
He let his hand slide down onto her backside. “Let’s go and find the cellar,” he murmured.
No one could really recall whose idea it had been to make the trip to Yann Gamé’s exhibition in Paris after Jean-Rémy had abruptly gone on strike. Yann had wanted to cancel the show. He had wanted to burn, destroy and rip up the pictures, but Colette had stored them in a sealed container. She knew that artists sometimes got this way shortly before their work was due to be exhibited: they would become anxious that someone might take away their paintings, and with them all the emotions and ideas they had invested in them; they were scared that their souls would be stolen.
Colette had chosen her date well. The first of September was the rentrée, when people returned to school and to work. Everyone was back in Paris and desperate to recover from being in the provinces by gorging on culture and novelty until they were in sync with the city’s rhythm once more.
Pascale walked past the pictures like an astonished child. Emile had put one leg up and was sitting in an alcove beside a tall casement window that looked out onto Rue Lepic. Simon came over to him, clutching Grete’s hand tightly. “It’s odd seeing her when she isn’t here herself,” the fisherman said.
“She is here,” mumbled Emile, turning to gesture with a generous sweep of his arm at Paul and Rozenn, Geneviève and Alain, Colette and Marie-Claude, who was being a little too loud and jolly to cover up her nervousness and the strange feeling of being a freshly minted grandmother. They were all filing slowly past the paintings of Marianne, as if they wanted to print every last detail on their memories. Many of them stopped in front of the picture that showed her as a shimmer of dazzling light onstage. It was called The Moon Musician.
“See, she’s in their hearts and in their smiles, as they look at her and think of her. Particularly over there.”
They both looked at Yann Gamé, who was gazing at a portrait of Marianne standing by the window of the Shell Room. Her birthmark, the glowing sky behind her, the line of surf in the background: it was a picture composed of countless shades of red, and the sea glittered in her eyes. Yann had named the painting L’Amour de Marianne.
“What is it about her?” asked Simon.
“She reminds you of your dreams, back when you still had some,” Emile said slowly.
The fisherman nodded. “That’s right. Look at them—they’re all suddenly recalling their dreams.”
Colette escorted guests over to the pictures, sticking the odd yellow dot on the card bearing the title of the painting to signal that it had been optioned and would be sold after the exhibition.
Simon, Grete and Emile observed the Parisians who were now appearing in growing numbers at the door of the gallery, some of them wishing to catch up with Colette. Colette looked very frail and pale, dressed entirely in black. Her love for Sidonie had softened her features, but her grief had hardened her movements and made them angular, as if without her companion she could no longer feel the boundaries of her body.
Now a man in a tweed suit, carrying an official-looking briefcase, approached Yann, stirring the painter from his brooding silence. They walked over to L’Amour de Marianne. The man pointed to the birthmark that had seared Yann to the quick like fire. Yann shrugged, and Emile got up and leaned on Simon so that the two of them might creep closer and eavesdrop on the conversation.
“…genetic and genealogical research can use pigment disorders such as this striking example to conclude whether someone might be descended from Celtic druids…”
Yet Yann was no longer listening to the man, who was seeking to explain, in ever more excitable fashion what, in his view, the special pattern of Marianne’s flame mark might mean, namely a trail back to the people who had produced so many magicians and knights, female druids and healers in King Arthur’s day.
He glanced over at the woman in a red dress who had just entered Galerie Rohan and, slowly removing her chic dark glasses, was now looking around helplessly—at the twenty-seven oil paintings, eighteen ink drawings and thirty watercolors, all of them showing the same woman.