Having made sure that no one was left inside, Madenn went out, double-locked the door, and started walking down the road.
Outside Alan’s house there was a gathering of the faithful. An incongruous, impromptu congregation stood, humble and reverent, praying, singing hymns, reciting the Rosary in front of the run-down house in which the seer lived. Madenn appeared, striding down the road, gesticulating wildly.
‘This is private property! Clear off!’
Surprised and intimidated by this sudden display of authority, the crowd scattered and regrouped a few metres further down the road, where they carried on praying. Madenn climbed the steps and knocked several times.
‘Alan! Alan! It’s Madenn …’
The door opened a crack to admit her. Inside there was no daylight; the hall and living room were steeped in a murky gloom. Alan had stopped opening the shutters when curious onlookers began to press their faces against the windows, trying to catch a glimpse of Isaac in his natural habitat. Alan’s house, an unprepossessing building that had been ignored by everyone, was suddenly a shrine, a magnet for busybodies and gossipmongers.
Alan padded down the hall. He seemed resigned to living in this half-light, almost taking a certain pleasure in his home being turned into a fortress. The pale glow from the bulb that dangled on two bare wires revealed all the defects of the kitchen: cracked tiles, peeling paint, coffee stains on the wooden table. Although the shutters were closed, the windows had been left ajar in an attempt to air the room and dispel the cigarette smoke.
Alan opened a cupboard and took down a mug.
‘What brings you here at this hour?’
Madenn slumped on to a chair. Her ears were ringing. She could still hear the piercing echo of shattered crockery. She ran a hand over her forehead.
‘It’s about Isaac … He shouldn’t go back to the headland again.’
Alan poured her a cup of coffee, then went and sat next to the window. A wisp of smoke rose from the smouldering cigarette in the ashtray; he picked it up and opened the windows a little wider. He hadn’t shaved, and the greyish three-day stubble imbued his features with a certain gentleness, and a gravitas that seemed new to him.
‘You were the first to encourage him.’
‘There’s something different about the crowd now … It’s not like it was at the start. And besides …’
Madenn thought about the ominous dull thud that had woken her over the past few nights; the sound of a body being beaten; the vicious, rasping breath like an animal in pursuit of prey. She firmly believed that it was an omen, that it was Death announcing its presence, a premonition like those experienced by her mother, her grandfather, her great-aunt. Countless generations of Bretons had seen the signs of death before it came – the sailors’ wives who saw their husbands walk into the room the very moment the sea swept them away; the clatter of the ghastly cart of Ankoufn2 heard the day before a loved one died; the skeletal hands appearing in a doorway; the severed heads glimpsed in the shadowy corner of a room; the ghostly boats gliding across the waters of the night; the drops of blood that fell from the ceiling – Death in its many forms had appeared so often to the people of this holy, mystical land that they could no longer dismiss such portents.
Madenn laid her trembling hands on the table, her heart still beating wildly.
‘You’ve got to tell Isaac to stop going there. I’ll deal with the crowd. I’ll tell them it’s over, that there’s nothing more to see. Things will go back to how they used to be …’
‘You really want things to go back to how they used to be?’
Through the closed shutters came the sound of footsteps on the grass; someone was creeping around the house. Having become accustomed to prowling strangers, Alan instinctively closed the window. In a curious way, he seemed to accept this new life: the prayers on his doorstep, the shuttered house, the dearth of sunlight, hearing his son hailed by strangers as a messiah, a visionary, a prophet. Alan heard all these names but scorned them; only one thing mattered to him now, and for that he was prepared to put up with the rest.
He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.
‘Can’t you see that for the first time in ten years, Isaac isn’t sad?’
The words were like a knife to her heart. The idea that Madenn had not noticed something so obvious, this woman who fed his son every day, who could sense his mood at a glance, who could recognize him by the way he breathed …
Madenn jumped up from the chair, her lips quivering, checking the tears that welled in her piercing blue eyes.
‘Of course I can! What do you take me for?’
‘Then why? Why do you want to take this away from him?’
‘Because it’s not safe out there any more!’
‘You’re the one who got him into this situation!’
‘Please don’t argue, the two of you.’
Standing in the doorway, Isaac looked very different. His face seemed to change with every passing day. Madenn ran over to the boy, begged him not to go back to the headland, pleaded with him to be sensible, told him the island wasn’t safe any more, that a terrible danger was imminent; she could sense it, it kept her awake at night.
Isaac gently took her hands in his.
‘Don’t worry, it will all be over soon.’
The boy disappeared into the shadowy hallway, going off to finish what he had unwittingly started.
Up the road, the begging and pleading were of a different order: it was Michel Bourdieu, standing at the foot of the stairs, alternately folding his arms then putting his fists on his hips, unsure precisely what to do with his hands and deeply unsettled by events that were contrary to his will.
‘For the last time, I don’t want you taking Julia up there. It’s too crowded, it’ll scare her … Are you listening to me?’
In the hallway, indifferent to his agitation, his wife adjusted their daughter’s hat. Ever since they had found Julia playing on the beach, ever since the doctor confirmed he could no longer detect a wheeze, the couple had been at cross-purposes. The incident had been so sudden, so shocking, and although his wife had completely accepted it, Michel Bourdieu was still in denial. What was required now was patience, a detailed, comprehensive check-up, a second opinion from a specialist – this was the argument he had been making since the previous day, one his wife failed to understand. When she looked at Julia, she saw a rosy glow in her cheeks, a twinkle in her eyes, and a renewed sense of wonder, as though their daughter had just come through a long period of convalescence, as though she had been given a second childhood. She was not the same little girl – the frail, delicate child who had been kept prisoner by a body attempting to suffocate her – and this was proof enough for her mother: the truth had no need for useless caveats.
‘We have to go and say thank you to the Blessed Virgin, Papa.’
His daughter, forthright and radiant, forced herself to smile to reassure her father. It was a sad smile, since she was sorry for the tension she had caused in their home.
Michel Bourdieu hunkered down in front of her, suddenly tender and kind.
‘Sweetheart, just because Mummy thinks you’re getting better—’
‘I don’t think it, Michel. I can see it with my own eyes.’
