The rain stopped as she emerged from the wood, and the footpath ended at a dirty glass-recycling container in the middle of a small graveled car park. She looked around her. A road with no center line. Golden fields. To her left, a village appeared.
She felt numb from all the fresh air and walking. A rising breeze carried the magnetic, dusty scent of an imminent thunderstorm. Marianne’s knee was throbbing. She passed hydrangeas of all colors. She ignored them, as she did the chaumières, the Breton sandstone cottages with the brightly colored shutters, and their gardens with flowering fig trees, fragrant oleander and sedges whispering in the wind.
Her whole attention was concentrated on the narrow village lane.
At the top of a small hill, she curved left around a three-storey white house, and all of a sudden, on a still Sunday in June, she had arrived at Kerdruc harbor.
Kerdruc harbor had a jetty reaching out into the Aven at a right angle to the quay that ran upstream along the riverbank. Rowing boats were snuggled up against each other on the quayside like bright spoons in a cutlery drawer. Thatched cottages nestled on the slopes leading down to the river like white flowers amid the luscious green of the pine trees and the meadows of sedge. Dozens of motorboats and yachts were moored to an anchor cable between red buoys, and swung in the mouth of the Aven like white moonstones on a handcrafted necklace, dancing on the salty tide as it mingled with the fresh water of the river. Where water and sky, blue and gold, placid woods and rugged cliffs met, the sea began.
The restaurant on the ground floor of the three-storey white house, named Ar Mor, boasted a wooden deck, a red-and-white awning and a blue wooden gate. The guesthouse next door, Auberge d’Ar Mor, was a romantic, weather-beaten granite building whose entrance was overgrown with creepers and surrounded by faded hydrangeas.
On the far bank of the Aven, the left bank, was another tiny port with a short quay, squat fishing boats and a bar with a green awning.
There was no one in sight. The only sounds were the gurgling kisses of tide and current, the irregular slap of steel cables on masts, and a woman’s quiet weeping. That woman was Marianne, and she was weeping, unable to avert her eyes, because the view of Kerdruc spread out before her was so unbearably beautiful. Every place she had visited in the previous sixty years suddenly paled in comparison.
The feeling of having come home grew ever stronger. She smelled salt and fresh water, the air was as clear as glass, and a gleaming carpet of gold-and-blue silk lay over the river. The radiance of this beautiful scene shed a cruel light on every past horror, every insult tolerated, every unspoken retort, every gesture of rejection. Marianne was grieving, and her boundless grief made her regret every moment of cowardice in her life.
A cat jumped out of a tree and sat down behind her. When the sobs shaking her body still did not abate, the cat got up, paced around, sat down opposite her and stared.
“What?” cried Marianne, wiping the tears from her face.
The cat took three steps toward her and butted her hand with its head. It rubbed itself vigorously against her palm and purred deeply and raspingly; Marianne tickled the cat under its chin.
The shadows of the trees and the houses grew longer, and the silky water glowed ever brighter as Kerdruc sank into darkness.
Marianne made a quick mental calculation of how much money she had left. It might be enough to take a taxi to the coast, or for a meal and a drink, but it was not enough for a room. She breathed out heavily; it had been a long day.
There was a sudden clap of thunder. The startled cat twisted out of her hands and bounded away. Soon the first needles of rain began to darken the black asphalt. The steel cables slapped louder and louder, and the water became gray and unsettled as rain speckled the waves with foam. The boats by the quayside huddled together like shivering sheep. A cabin door rattled and slammed in the wind.
Marianne ran to the harbormaster’s office and tugged at the door. It was locked. She dashed over to the restaurant. Locked. She banged hard on it. The rain was now coming from below too; the raindrops were hitting the ground so hard that they rebounded from it. Water was running down the back of Marianne’s neck and into her sleeves, and it was soaking her shoes. She held her coat over her head and raced back along the quayside.
The cat galloped toward the jetty. It looked as if it was about to jump into the river, and Marianne set off after it in a flash. “Don’t do it!” she called in horror as it gathered itself to leap, and landed in the last boat moored to the jetty. Marianne managed to clamber after it over the rocking gunwale. She slipped on the wet floor, grabbed hold of the door and squeezed through into the cabin and down the steps, slamming the door behind her.
Immediately the sound of the rain was reduced to a trickle, and from beneath the hull came a groaning and a murmuring.
The cat was sitting on the bunk. Marianne began to peel off her sodden clothing. She washed her clothes in the cabin’s tiny bathroom, which had both a shower and a toilet. Then she wrapped herself in a blanket beside the cat and drew the curtains. She curled up to get warm, and the cat crawled into the hollow between her arms and purred into her throat. The rocking and swaying of the boat, the patter of the rain and the darkened bunk calmed her nerves. I’ll rest for a bit, thought Marianne. Just a bit.
—
She dreamed of the Carnac stones of Brittany. Every stone bore Lothar’s astonished features. Only Marianne could set him free, and she searched long and hard for the most beautiful Lothar stone before deciding that she would rather fly away in an oyster shell. The oyster was warm, and she sailed over the clouds. The sea below was green, and tiny lights flickered on the waves.
It was to light that Marianne awoke, and it took her a moment to figure out where she was. The bright daylight glittering through the porthole told her that she had slept for longer than she had intended. She wound the blanket tight around her naked body, cautiously opened the cabin door—and stepped into a dream.
She was alone on a small white boat, all around her only water.
A sudden cry startled her. About sixty feet from the boat, a man was swimming in the waves—a man with white hair, a mustache and large black eyes.
Marianne waved her arms for a few seconds, desperately trying to keep her balance, but ended up toppling overboard with a gasp. She sank below the surface like a rock. As the first gulp of water ran down her throat, she opened her eyes wide.
No! No!
She kicked out, and the knotted blanket came loose from her body and floated away. With a final effort she thrust herself out of the water and sucked air deep into her lungs.
“Help,” she whimpered as a salty wave choked her cry.
“Madame!” the man called. She struck out in panic toward him and caught him in a sensitive spot. He yelped and went under.