‘He’s making us wait …’
‘I told you, he’s been lying all this time!’
‘Shh!’
‘Calm down. It’s not noon yet.’
‘We’ve swallowed his story hook, line and sinker; we’ve only got ourselves to blame.’
In the distance, the peeling facade of Alan’s house. They could imagine the boy hiding behind the closed shutters, peering through the crack at the gullible crowd gathered in these Roman ruins simply because he had told them to. In and around the chapel there were whispers as people reacted to the slightest sound, the merest change in the light, though they did not seem to know what they were waiting for. Noon had struck and still nothing was happening; there was no break in the clouds, no halo of light. Nothing but emptiness. The cold seeped into the marrow of their bones. Still the boy did not appear. The west wind whistled through the arches and the gable windows, mocking the crowd gathered in this venerable ruin.
Suddenly from the top of the hill came a roar – a Citroën 2CV was hurtling down the road. Here was someone they had not expected to see; in fact, since the incident on the headland, people had stopped thinking about Michel Bourdieu. The prospect of a miracle had made them forget everything else and, for his part, Michel had kept a low profile, staying away from church and avoiding the crowd that had unjustly condemned him. They raced towards the car, forcing it to stop in the middle of the road.
‘Michel, it’s past noon …’
‘And – surprise, surprise – Isaac isn’t here!’
‘He’s been making fools of us from the start.’
The crowd, like the tide, ebbed and flowed, forgetting that only a few days earlier they had humiliated this man. Now they were pressing against his car window; inside Michel Bourdieu and his son sat, both looking solemn, exhausted after a long and gruelling night. Calling the ambulance, the drive to Morlaix, the antiseptic air of the emergency room.
Those clustered around the car did not seem to notice how shattered they were.
‘Maybe we should go and knock on Alan’s door?’
‘The only reason the miracle hasn’t happened is because the lad’s not here …’
The miracle. Michel Bourdieu had forgotten what had been promised on this island. A shiver ran down the back of his neck, the cold caress of death. His daughter, the oxygen mask, her eyes closed as she lay in the hospital bed. It had begun in the evening with a fever. At first Julia had said nothing, had simply gone to bed early, but as the evening wore on, her temperature had soared, her breathing becoming so laboured she could not even tell her parents that Sister Anne had forced her to run all the way up to the headland. By the middle of the night, the child had lost consciousness. Michel Bourdieu’s knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel.
‘My daughter was rushed to hospital last night. There never was any “cure”. But you carry on waiting for this miracle of yours.’
Then he started the engine and sped off back to his house, leaving those who had approached him behind. The news quickly filtered through the rest of the crowd in the old chapel. At first, there was a sense of shock, since all of the islanders had believed that the little Bourdieu girl had been miraculously cured – her asthma had disappeared, even the doctor had been categorical. Then, gradually, there came a visceral rumbling, like the roar of lava surging from the bowels of the earth as the ground gave way; like a wave hurtling towards the rocks; like the tremulous ear-splitting seconds that herald an explosion.
‘It’s all the fault of that lad, Isaac!’
Piety prevails only as long as it is expedient. The meek, reverent congregation of the faithful suddenly erupted with obscenities, profaning the sacred ruins, abjuring the very thing they had come there to find. Righteous anger is more intoxicating than prayers and hymns, than twilight and the full moon. The crowd scattered, the black mass swarming across the dunes to ransack the shrine on the headland, to lay siege to Alan’s house; from everywhere came insults, fists banging on doors and shutters, tossed rocks and flower pots – anything that was to hand was hurled against this accursed house.
In the distance, Hugo stood at the far end of the road and surveyed the mayhem, rooted to the spot, feeling the same knot in the pit of his stomach.
The remains of the day slipped away from the coast; that singular moment when the light faded and the landscape became shrouded in a watery dark blue. A moment of calm, like every other evening. The last calls of the seagulls and the rising tide that lapped against the shore were immutable; all earthly things adhered to the same order, and all of mankind’s troubles stemmed from flouting it.
Sister Anne walked on, hoisting up her habit with one hand as she climbed from rock to rock; from time to time, her foot slipped and she would stop, her heart pounding, and watch as the sea rose and engulfed the reefs. Behind her, the coastline was deserted. The crowd had finally dispersed, sapped of its fury and a little stunned, like a drunk person sobering up and realizing the consequences of their actions. All around, the aftermath of this riot was plain to see: the flayed exterior of Alan’s house, its shutters broken, its windows shattered; the shrine on the headland laid to waste; the ground strewn with rosaries, broken vases, trampled flowers; the smashed statue of the Virgin.
The rocky outcrop, once a focus of prayer, was now a place of despair. At a distance, Sister Anne had waited for the shadowy figure to leave before sliding down the slope to reach the first rock. She had intended to depart the day before, the moment she had turned to Julia and heard her panting, wheezing breath. Like the rest of the crowd, she knew that the little girl was now in hospital. She moved on, clambering from rock to rock, intent only on reaching the boundary between the land and the water.
Only a single step now separated her from the sea. Beneath her feet, the waves broke, grabbing at her ankles like icy fingers come to drag her to the depths. She hunkered on the last rock; in the distance she could see the dark outline of Roscoff, the bell tower soaring above the roofs of the houses. The sky was a deep blue, almost purple, underscored by a golden streak that heralded the last moments of day. The distinctive way light fell over this peninsula was unlike anything Sister Anne had ever seen in Paris; it was truth, it was the wellspring, it was all the things mankind strived for through prayer and through science, and she had finally found it, here on this rocky stretch of coast, when it was too late.
She took a breath and bent over the black waters.
‘Sister.’
At first she was unsure whether the voice had come from within her, whether her mind was already foundering, because for some time now she had heard only the sea, a swelling, disconcerting melody that threatened to engulf her.
‘Sister Anne.’
She turned round, a little panicked, and at first saw nothing but a hand extended towards her. She who had been careful to wait until she was completely alone. She who had wanted to depart with no chance of intercession, had wanted the sea to take her body and never spit it out. She had not noticed that the skylight of the house the angry crowd had tried to breach was open; that, standing on his bed, Isaac was watching her: a navy-blue habit moving across the dark and distant rocks, sometimes stumbling, sometimes slipping, heading towards the sea.
When the silence had finally returned, Isaac had quietly opened his skylight to check that the crowd had dispersed. He had not intended to dupe them earlier. He had been preparing to go down to the ruined church, one hand on the handle of the front door, when he had heard the drone of an engine at the top of the hill, seen the Citroën hurtling down the road and screech to a halt. In the deafening roar of the riot that ensued, he had remained with his father, huddled on the stairs, wondering which of the windows would shatter first.
‘Come, Sister.’
This voice, calling to her, appealing to her to come back, and behind her the whisper of the sea, also calling to her. Sister Anne froze. She stood motionless on the rock, suddenly aware of the rough, slippery surface beneath her feet, of her precarious balance – her next act would be the last. Suddenly she flinched as a wave crashed against the rock, and she felt the cold embrace of the icy water. She grabbed the waiting hand – instinct reacting more swiftly than reason – and everything came together in that touch, that first sense of rediscovered warmth, reconnecting her with the world. She allowed herself to be led away, gazing down at the black rocks, no longer afraid of falling, watching the waves claw at her ankles, enraged that she had abandoned her plan. She gripped the hand, clung to this boy who, against all expectations, beyond all prayer, had come to find her; no moment would ever rival the gratitude she felt.
A steep slope, then the long grass: she had come back, could feel the ground beneath her feet, this earth to which men belonged. In the distance lay the petrol-blue sea, a vast abyss between two coastlines. The rock on which she had stood a moment earlier was gone – she scoured the reef, but it was nowhere to be seen; it had drowned without her. She was shivering all over, but not from the cold so much as from the knowledge that she had been down there, standing on the rock that was now submerged: a few more seconds and everything might have been different.
Isaac stared at her anxiously, wanting to make sure Sister Anne wouldn’t turn back towards the sea. This face that she had bitterly hated, now shining in the half-light, was filled with a gentleness that she had refused to see. She could still feel his hand clasping hers; its imprint would always be with her, there in the hollow of her hand, a gift from this stony coastline. As if this land had finally deigned to grant her something.
‘You should go – the last launch to the mainland leaves in twenty minutes. I’ve got to get back; my father thinks I’m up in my bedroom.’
The boy vanished into the darkness as though he had never been there, as though Sister Anne had only dreamed that he had come to find her, there in that rocky graveyard. She walked away, a little dazed, heading up the dirt track towards the road. The crashing waves behind drowned out all other sound, so she did not hear the dull thud of a body falling to the ground. She hurried back to the harbour, her skirts gathered up, running beneath the pale glow of the streetlamps; far below, heavy blows rained down on the face she had just left, and a rasping, animal breath echoed through the darkness.
Michel Bourdieu held his hands under the tap, the icy water streaming over his grazed and aching knuckles. Slowly, he rubbed his hands together, staring straight ahead. His skin had swollen. The pale red water trickled away. He tried to open his clenched fists but failed; the pain in his knuckles was too intense. A spatter of crimson droplets: a stark contrast to the white porcelain of the sink. Out in the hallway, the packed suitcase had stood since the early evening; some clothes for Julia and for his wife, who had stayed at the hospital with their daughter. He would take the case to them tomorrow morning. Seeing them both again, hugging his wife, kissing his daughter’s forehead – the very thought made his heart swell with a profound happiness: as he stood by the sink, Michel Bourdieu was smiling, even though there was dried blood stuck to his skin and his hands were clenched into fists he could not open, as though he were still punching, as though he could still feel death seeping into Isaac’s body.
It was worse than anything Hugo could have imagined. His premonition, the terrible knot he had felt in the pit of his stomach for days, was nothing compared to what he was feeling now: this terrible wave of nausea as he raced down the road, running through the darkness as though it were day. He had known from the moment he saw his father standing in the kitchen – the crimson hands, the blood no amount of water could wash away – he had known but he had to go and see for himself, to prove that his foreboding had been wrong, to allow himself a few more seconds of disbelief.
There, by the side of the road in the long grass, an arm extended, a shock of curly hair, the viscous blood; a face unrecognizable, destroyed by blows.
Ethereal rifts appeared above the coastline as the clouds parted and the waning moon shone through, its bright glow spilling over everything: the silvery gleam of the rocks; the shimmer of the sea, the translucent waves; the white sand of the shore, the tall grasses, the bands of seaweed; the whole island bathed in the same blue radiance.
