At the other end of the line, the cheerful, rasping voice; the same voice she had heard ever since her arrival, reminding her of the encounter that awaited her in this place.
‘There is a boy who claims he has seen her, Sister Rose. He lives on the little island, off the coast of Roscoff.’
‘I knew it would happen. Praise be to our Most Holy Mother.’
‘But you were mistaken, Sister Rose. And you are never mistaken.’
‘You just told me yourself that She has appeared?’
‘But not to me, to someone else!’
Sister Anne had raised her voice and could now feel eyes boring into the back of her neck: she suddenly became aware that she was not alone in this cafe, and her distress, not to mention her rage, were obvious to all. Her cheeks flushed purple. She was unaccustomed to such outbursts; she never gave in to intense emotion. Like all children who had experienced the unbridled excesses of a parent, she had made restraint her chief virtue.
She leaned against the wall in a clumsy attempt to hide this sudden weakness.
‘I was there … But I didn’t see her, Sister Rose, I saw nothing.’
On the other end of the line, Sister Rose was silent as she began to grasp the extent of her companion’s anguish, and the misunderstanding that had clearly haunted her for weeks. She had not intended to mislead Sister Anne that morning in the hallway. She had simply wanted to tell her about her dream, to confide in someone she had watched grow up and in whom she placed her trust. She had forgotten that Sister Anne had been praying to the Virgin Mary since she was thirteen, that she had been in awe of the grace bestowed upon Saint Catherine Labouré, that she had spent her whole life waiting for her own encounter with the Blessed Mother. How could she have been so thoughtless as not to realize that Sister Anne would hear only what she so devoutly desired?
‘My child … I never said that She would appear to you.’
Sister Anne stared at the opposite wall, the receiver pressed to her ear. The words came back to her, the words she had felt she understood, the words that had led her here, to North Finistère, to the edge of the ancient County of Léon, and she realized that she had been deceived by the single word – witness.
It came to me in a dream last night – you’ll witness an apparition of the Blessed Virgin in Brittany.
Behind her, the hubbub of customers coming in, greeting the owner, ordering coffees or beers; the rumble of the coffee machine, the clink of cups, the shriek of metal as chairs were pulled out. And that was all it took. Sister Anne’s whole world was completely capsized. She hung up the phone and walked back through the cafe, her face ashen, her steps faltering. She pushed open the door, saw the ground begin to shift and the mist close in, the mist that contained the soul of every sailor lost at sea, about to swallow her whole.
‘Sister Anne!’
A pair of arms caught her as she fell. She could not see who it was, could see nothing but the veil before her eyes; she surrendered herself to the arms that were supporting her, sheltering her from the drizzle. Seated on a bench, she brought a feverish hand to her brow.
‘Would you like a glass of water? A little sugar, maybe?’
Next to her stood Father Erwann, with his compassionate gaze and his reassuring smile. There was not a single wrinkle on his forehead, he was completely beardless, as yet untouched by the vicissitudes of time. Behind his thick glasses, the eyes of the young priest possessed a self-assurance common to those who had chosen prayer as a means of connecting to the world. He kept his eyes on her, still supporting her arm, and this attention bothered Sister Anne, as it exposed a lack of decorum that went against her character.
‘I just missed the step and lost my balance. There’s nothing more to it. We can go now, Father.’
The priest did not insist and released his grip. A cloak of rain enveloped the old port before them. Beyond the harbour, the receding tide revealed wet, grey sand with pleasure boats sunk into its cement-like sludge, their shipwrecked hulls waiting for high tide to raise them up and restore them.
The priest clasped his hands in his lap.
‘Sister Delphine will not be joining us. I’m afraid the sea does not agree with her.’
Father Erwann was thinking about his parish. In the past two days it seemed utterly changed. Suddenly, people were crowding into his church, asking him to confirm or deny the rumours that were circulating everywhere – in the shops, in the brasseries, on every street corner and alleyway – that over on the Isle of Batz there was a boy who had seen the Blessed Virgin. Some named the lad as Isaac, the son of a widower called Alan; some claimed that both father and son had been unstable since the death of Alan’s wife, that they had become withdrawn, holing themselves up in a house that had been crumbling away for more than a decade. Others disputed this, insisting that they had seen Isaac in a state of rapture that had sent shivers down their spine, something no one could feign. Everyone offered a different opinion, defended the improbable, argued over what was truth and what was falsehood, and it was left to Father Erwann to calm them, to suggest he go and meet the lad himself and try to shed some light on these claims.
‘You’ve seen the boy, Sister Anne … Do you think he’s telling the truth?’
‘It’s not for me to judge, Father.’
After a moment, they set off, walking along the deserted shore. Since it was low tide, they would have to walk six hundred metres across the concrete jetty to reach the launch. They stepped on to the pier, which towered several metres above the water and was buffeted by fierce winds. Without thinking, they bowed their heads as they braved the fierce gusts; below them, between the pillars, was a vast expanse of scree, boulders covered with brackish seaweed, the ancient wounds that the coast carried within its memory. They walked on, leaning into the wind, battling the invisible force that impeded their progress towards the boat.
Just before they boarded, Father Erwann paused: in an instant, his face changed and now bore a grave look that Sister Anne had not witnessed while they were sitting on the bench. It was as though he was intimidated by the prospect of the crossing – not physically but spiritually.
‘If I’m honest, I hope the lad’s not telling the truth …’
He gazed at the island, uneasy about what he might encounter there, overwhelmed by a sense of responsibility he had never envisaged when he took holy orders.
‘History tells us that being a visionary is rarely a good thing.’
A pendulum ticked away the seconds, every swing followed by a dull clank that marked each moment of silence in the room. The half-open shutters let in a wan light. A film of dust lay over the shelves; in every corner, balls of fluff lay waiting to be vacuumed up; sand was ground into the wool pile of the threadbare carpet. The house was so neglected, the very walls seemed to be crumbling.
‘Tell me, Isaac, is it true that you see the Blessed Virgin?’
On the sofa, with his jacket unbuttoned to reveal the clerical collar that singled him out from the layperson, elbows propped on his knees, Father Erwann sat stiffly, doing his utmost to mask his sense of inner dread.
‘I never said it was the Blessed Virgin.’
Isaac settled his hands on the armrests of the chair, fingers nervously plucking at the fabric. He knew that the circumstances required him to offer up some explanation. The previous day, he had been all too aware of the troubled looks of those gathered on the headland, the hands that touched his shoulder, the prayers whispered as he passed. It was a curious feeling, one he had found so unsettling at first that he had almost turned back home; he did not understand the meaning of the flowers, the burning candles, these strangers he had not invited approaching him piteously, as though he were the bearer of some promise, as though his personal experience now belonged to other people.
‘So what is it that appears to you? I mean, you do see something, don’t you?’
‘I see a woman.’
Standing in the doorway, leaning against the wall, Alan watched his son talk to the priest as though their conversation were completely normal, as though nothing in what he was saying was implausible. All his life, Isaac had stood apart. He had attracted attention, firstly because he had a sad and gentle face, secondly because his mother’s death meant that he was someone to be pitied, a boy deprived of a mother’s love. Isaac’s presence elicited a whole gamut of emotions – curiosity, admiration and pity, but also violence – and, as if it were not enough that he already stood out, that he seemed condemned to be different, now people were suggesting that he had spoken to the Blessed Virgin.
‘Can you describe her? Does she speak to you?’
The adolescent looked to be deep in thought, and everyone leaned forward, keenly observing his silence, trying to determine whether Isaac was genuinely remembering something or whether he was pretending, choosing words at random, pleased by the naive interest people seemed to be taking in him.
