The only person she had told that he didn’t need to wait up for her during this night of blurring worlds was Yann.
Yann. There had been nights with him and nights without him. There had been days filled with music and days of mourning when they carried Sidonie’s ashes to the stones and buried them there. There had been hours of wonder when Simon went on a tour of Normandy’s Calvados distilleries with Grete and they came back as a couple; and when Paul and Rozenn said “I do” for a second time, and Marianne had heard for the first time at the registry office that Paul’s place of birth was Frankfurt. He was a German, and yet could not have been less of one. When he joined the Foreign Legion, he’d cast off everything he no longer wanted to be—the son of an SS officer. That was the secret that had overshadowed his entire life. Marianne continued not to speak a single word of German with him, for he willed it so, and her respect for someone’s will had grown since she had possessed one of her own.
There had been minutes of joy when Jean-Rémy and Laurine made enquiries about baby names, and seconds of gratitude when Marianne looked out from her room at the peach-colored reflections of the sun and the sky in the Aven.
There were also those recurring Mondays at Kerdruc harbor when Marianne sat together with friends who loved her, chatting about God, goddesses, the world, and dreams both big and small.
—
Now she was sitting by the sea on this night of all nights. She had set up a folding stool beside her in case one of the dead wanted to sit down.
With her eyes closed, she played a song for the dead, for women and for the sea. It had no title, and her fingers decided freely on the tune. “Sa-un,” she whispered, pronouncing the Breton name for this timeless time. Sa-un, the waves whispered back. Are you ready for your journey into the ephemeral?
Marianne thought she heard steps and laughter. She thought she could feel gusts of wind as the dead ran over the sand, leaving footprints in it.
Are you happy? asked her father. He was sitting next to her with folded hands, gazing out at the black Atlantic.
“Yes.”
My resilient girl.
“I love you,” said Marianne. “I miss you.”
He had your eyes, said her grandmother, moving over the waves toward her. I loved your grandfather, and after him, no one else. It is a rare form of happiness when a man makes your life so rich that you need no one else after him.
“Was he a magician?”
Any man who loves a woman as she deserves to be loved is a magician.
Marianne opened her eyes. Her fingers stopped playing. The beach was empty, no footprints in the sand, and yet they were all there: the dead, the night and the sea. The sea offered her a song of bravery and love. It came from a long way away, as if someone somewhere in the world had sung it many years ago, for those on the shore who didn’t dare to take the plunge.