“What should I do?” whispered Colette.
Marie-Claude’s daughter Claudine forced her way between them without noticing that she was interrupting something. “Tell me if it’s going to be a boy,” she demanded from Marianne. “My mother says you can do that.” She laid Marianne’s hand firmly on her stomach, which curved up almost to her breasts.
“It’s going to be a girl,” said Marianne in a voice from the tomb.
Marianne brushed aside the hands that tried to catch hold of her in the guesthouse, on the breakwater and on the way to the car. Yann’s hands, Lothar’s hands, the nuns’ hands. The hands of fest-noz guests wanting to thank her, wondering why her wolf-like eyes seemed so dim, and why she hurried off into the night without a word.
Colette tried to object during the quick journey, insisting that they had to respect Sidonie’s decision, as one should any last wish.
Without looking at her, Marianne blurted out, “I’ve seen four hundred and thirty-eight people die, and not a single one wanted to be alone when the moment came.”
They found Sidonie in her studio. Her hand was clutching a pebble she had picked up in Malta, near temples that were older than the Pyramids. Her breathing was visibly strained, but she kept her eyes open for as long as she could, and stared at Colette—at her eyes, her mouth, her soul.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for not listening to me.”
This woman’s face was the sight that Sidonie had wanted to see on this last of all days, and on every previous day. Always, ever since she had first laid eyes on the gallery owner. And Colette had come back after she had let her go.
“One’s whole life is actually dying. From the first breath it goes in one direction, toward…death,” Sidonie said in a voice that seemed to come from very far away.
Now Marianne held Sidonie’s other hand. She was not scared by the cold current she felt in her arms and her neck and even in her heart. She recognized this chill: it was the icy stream of death.
Sidonie’s eyelids fluttered and she sat up. “The stones,” she whispered weakly to Colette. “They’re singing.”
Colette couldn’t cope. She despaired, she wept and she groped for Sidonie’s hand, but Sidonie tried to draw her fingers away to close them once more around the pebble. So Colette gripped her hand, the stone clenched between their two palms. Marianne reached for Colette’s free hand, and together the three women went part of the way toward the frontier from where Sidonie would have to continue alone, as everyone before her had, and everyone after her would too.
They listened to Sidonie’s shallow breathing. Suddenly, as if she could already see the mists of the other world, she whispered her late husband’s name in surprise. “Hervé?” She smiled happily, as if she had caught a glimpse of eternity and what she had seen there held no fear.
The icy, prickling sensation under Marianne’s hand where she was holding Sidonie’s fingers broke off as suddenly. The pebble clattered to the floor.
Sidonie was gone.
—
It was long after four o’clock in the morning when Marianne left Colette alone with her friend’s peaceful body, and set off back to Kerdruc on foot. She was cold in the sleeveless blue evening dress, and in her hand she held Sidonie’s pebble.
She stumbled toward the black horizon. Streaks of lightning flickered in the sky, but without the usual thunderclaps that followed; only a distant rumbling came from the dark clouds. A ghostly calm hung over the land, and the silent lightning illuminated the noiseless meadows, the gray streets and the unlit houses. Only from Kerdruc harbor came a red glow.
You cannot tell love to come and stay forever. You can only welcome it when it comes, like the summer or the autumn, and when its time is up and it’s gone, then it’s gone.
The lightning flashed, striking out around her. The sky was ablaze.
Like life. It comes, and when its time is up, it goes. Like happiness. Everything has its own time.
Marianne had had what was due to her, and that would have to suffice. She tried to imagine in whose arms she might find peace, but discovered that she couldn’t do it. Lothar? Yann?
Lothar had looked at her in the way she had been hoping for years that he might. He was her husband, after all!
Oh Yann, what should I do?
Just as she was reaching the outskirts of Kerdruc, a small shadow detached itself from a tree, jumped down onto the road and stared at her. It was Max, the cat—he had been waiting for her. He rubbed against her legs, but before she could pick him up, he slipped from her grasp and ran off. Glancing back, he stared at her again and then trotted away, as if to say, Come along now! Quickly, or else we’ll miss everything!
The cat scampered toward the car park—the site of Marianne’s first impression of Kerdruc, the place with the glass-recycling container. Under the trees was a raspberry-colored Renault, and Marianne spotted a lifeless figure on the reclined front seat—Marie-Claude’s daughter Claudine!
The young woman’s face was pale and bathed in sweat, and a damp patch had formed underneath her. She was holding a mobile phone, but the battery was dead. Marianne grabbed her hands and felt her racing pulse with her middle finger. It was beating like mad. She was having contractions!
With all her might, Marianne pushed back the seat and sat down between Claudine’s spread legs. She reached for the cat and set it down on the passenger seat beside her, then started the car and drove off with a screech of tires.
“The baby…” Claudine groaned. “The baby’s coming! Too early. Two weeks early!” She was hit by another wave of contractions. “Did you call it? When you put your hand on my tummy?” She gasped with pain again.
“Stop your nonsense,” Marianne ordered. She kept her hand on the horn as she sped down the ramp to the harbor and raced across the dance floor, braking directly in front of the entrance to Ar Mor. Then she gave three short, three long and another three short blasts of the horn—the international SOS signal.
Three people hurried out of the restaurant: Yann, Jean-Rémy and Lothar. They were all a bit drunk.