Buffeted by a gust of wind, Sister Anne suddenly felt dizzy: ever since she had come to this coastline, her head had been spinning and her body felt curiously numb, as though the sea required a different sense of equilibrium, demanded that she set aside all familiar reference points, the bearings she had learned back in the city.
She pulled her raincoat tighter around her and turned back to the woman who was sitting on the bench, smoking.
‘I would say that it is the Blessed Virgin who knows how to find us.’
With a long groan, shutters opened and clattered against the facades of the houses. On the trees, the burgeoning boughs welcomed the first rays of dawn. The sweeping bay smouldered with every shade of crimson, setting the world ablaze even before the sun appeared above the horizon. Sitting on her bed, Madenn piled her purple hair into a chignon and fixed it with a floral clip; the early light streamed through her window, bathing the room with its warm glow. She got up and set about choosing clothes from her wardrobe; hers was the morning routine of those who wake alone and set about the day in silence, without a glance to left or right. She pulled on a long-sleeved vest, the white wool jumper that had belonged to her mother, a skirt of red cotton that fell to her ankles, and her khaki raincoat, then left the bedroom. Downstairs, the lights in the restaurant were off, the chairs stacked on top of the tables, and a few glasses sat drying next to the sink. She slipped on her wellingtons, grabbed her shopping trolley and headed out.
The smell of wood fires drifted across the narrow road. She walked along the coast, past the fallow fields and the tilled farmland, amid the bitter scent of artichokes and onions, of potatoes and cauliflowers. When she came to the wayside cross at Rhû, she took the winding lane down to the port, where the boat was waiting by the pier. She surveyed the horizon, instinctively noting the colour of the morning sky – now a pale, tranquil blue – the absence of clouds and the level of the tide, reading the signs of dawn in a reflex common to those who lived along the coast. She boarded the boat, kissed Youenn and Igor good morning, and greeted the islanders who were already aboard. The engine roared into life, and the passenger boat set off on its first crossing of the day from the island to the mainland.
In Roscoff, the white tents of the local market had been set up in the car park next to the port. Madenn was among the first customers and people called out to her, chatted with her, filled her trolley with spices and salt from Guérande. They haggled amicably, allowed her to sample dried fruits and a new local honey. She added onions, garlic and shallots, bought two loaves of freshly baked bread for the price of one, and last but not least, a bunch of tulips. The sun broke through the gaps between the stalls, gilding the vivid colours of the fruit and vegetables on display and warming her cheeks. Her shopping done, Madenn set off home, dragging the shopping trolley which groaned beneath the weight of the produce she’d bought. She stopped at the harbour cafe, where she stood at the counter, chatting with the owner and commenting on the glorious weather; the waters of the harbour were flecked with rich tints of bronze, shimmering between the old fishing boats at anchor, as though winter were trying to apologize by offering this sunlight so reminiscent of summer.
Back on the island, Madenn made her way up to the local cemetery, where an elderly woman who had been born and raised on the island was moving between the headstones, sweeping away the dead leaves. Madenn took a withered bouquet of flowers from the vase and replaced it with the tulips she had just bought, setting the vase down next to the marble headstone. She chatted to her parents in silence, since the dead can read the thoughts of those still living. She said a prayer for her mother, a woman much inclined to pray, and joked with her father, a man who loved to laugh. Then she took her trolley and headed back to the restaurant.
A few customers were lunching on the terrace; Goulven, sitting at his usual table, his face red from the sun, was guzzling a galette. In the generous warming light, the diners could shrug off the February blues for the space of their lunchtime and think that, perhaps, this winter might not be so bleak after all.
‘Here, take this home with you.’
Madenn set a plate covered in clingfilm on the counter, a salmon quiche she had made the day before. ‘I ran into your father yesterday. The face on him, the big lug! Enough to scare a ghost away!’
Perched on the bar stool, Isaac was finishing the plat du jour. Kig ha farz, a hearty Breton stew of meat and vegetables with buckwheat dumplings, had whetted his appetite; the intense, intoxicating smell alone was enough to reconnect him with a certain sense of pleasure.
‘He’s not getting any sleep at all. I hear him wandering around the house at all hours of the night.’
‘Well, take this – at least this way he’ll eat something.’
From out on the terrace, a voice called to Madenn for cider; she nodded to say she would be right there, grabbed a flagon, went outside, filled the glasses and joked with the customers, laying her hand on a shoulder, gregarious and friendly, delighted that she could still cook and wait tables, because it was through her work that she managed to do what life demanded: to connect with other people. Isaac, meanwhile, cleared his plate and, taking the salmon quiche, slipped out of the restaurant and headed home.
No one was surprised when the sunny spell ended and the sky grew dark, reminding the diners that winter was not yet over. From the leaden light, Isaac could tell that a rainstorm was brewing and quickened his pace. Coming to the crossroads, he took the coastal path down towards the sea. Below him was the vast expanse of beach, the sand as white as flour, dappled with dark streaks of kelp and the rocky scree left uncovered at low tide. He hurried on; the rain had just begun to fall, and fat drops landed on the clingfilm-covered plate.
To his right, the ground sloped upwards towards a promontory that stood three metres above the sea. He was about to walk past, to hurry home before the worst of the downpour, when suddenly, without knowing why, he turned and gazed at the headland, though for ten years now he had taken no pleasure in looking at the scenery, for ten years he had not watched the dawn break nor the sun set. The rain was heavy, soaking his hair, streaming over his hands, but he did not feel it. His eyes did not even blink. Almost in spite of himself, he left the path and made his way up to the headland, reluctantly drawn to the thing that had caught his eye; there, on the edge of the cliff, this thing that had appeared to him despite the driving rain, despite the fact his head was spinning with an unfamiliar giddiness. Isaac stopped in his tracks and his eyes grew wide with wonder, like a small child, as he stared at something he had never seen here before, something he had never seen anywhere; and forgetting that he was holding the plate, his arms went limp, the plate fell from his hands, and the quiche smashed into pieces at his feet.
Hugo stood in front of his bookcase and hesitated; he took down a book and reread the back cover. The house was quiet. His parents had gone to Morlaix to take his sister to a medical appointment and would not be back before the evening. Julia had been sulking all morning. She had even pretended she was running a temperature to avoid having to go to the hospital; she hated the windowless corridors, the doctors in their white coats, the endless coughing, the squeak of wheelchairs, this place of sickness and suffering that became a part of her as soon as she walked through the doors. Hugo put the book back, took another one, and half-heartedly flicked through the pages. Isaac Asimov was probably a bit too complicated, Albert Einstein was too well known, and he had already dismissed Isaac Newton – too old-fashioned. Again, he hesitated and went back to one of the books he had already put on the pile. He had never given anyone a book before and was only now realizing how much was at stake: giving someone a book was like confiding a secret.
He picked up Cosmos, the first book by Carl Sagan he had ever read, the first book he had read about astrophysics, the one that had opened the way to all the others, and decided that this was the one: the book that had first fuelled his passion. Taking it, he went downstairs and headed off, out through the back gate, shooting the bolt behind him. His house marked the end of the road, the last inhabited place on this part of the island; beyond it, there was nothing but the coastal path that led to the desolate easterly point. He walked along the dirt track, gripping the book so tightly his fingers left an imprint on the cover.
At the foot of the hill was a house that stood apart from the others: the paint on the faded doors was peeling; damp had left traces of black mould on the outside walls; a dislodged roof tile lay amid the unkempt grass. It could easily be mistaken for an abandoned home but for the fact that the lights came on every night, and Alan and his son could sometimes be seen furtively creeping out of the house, like ghosts, oblivious to the fact the building was crumbling before their eyes, aware only of the absence that lived alongside them. A little breathless now, Hugo climbed the front steps and did not even have time to knock before the door opened: standing on the threshold, Alan looked the boy up and down. He was sure he had seen this lad before; he was the son of the new neighbours – or was that someone else? He wasn’t certain. No sooner did he see a face than he forgot it; although he did not realize it, he shared his son’s lack of interest in the world.
‘Hello, I’m Hugo. I live at the end of the road. I’ve got a book for Isaac.’
Startled at the idea that someone had come to visit his son, Alan said in a gruff voice that he was upstairs in his room. He took a few steps towards the road, then hesitated, turning back to the boy whose name he had already forgotten.
‘Was Isaac with you yesterday?’
Yesterday. Shortly after the rainstorm, Isaac had come home sopping wet, his eyes wild, unable even to respond to his own name; leaving a trail of puddles in the hallway, he had headed straight up to his room and Alan had not dared to follow, or even to question him. He had lain awake all night, convinced that there had been another incident, that Isaac was being bullied again, that he had been threatened, maybe even assaulted, and hadn’t known how to defend himself, and that he – the boy’s own father – wouldn’t have known how to help him either.
‘No, I haven’t seen him for a couple of days.’
The man nodded abstractedly, his head teeming with confused thoughts. Hugo watched him walk away, astonished to see in this father a helplessness he had never noticed in his own.
Three knocks on the bedroom door. The taps were so faint that at first Isaac did not hear them; sitting on the bed, his legs drawn up against his chest, he was staring at his room without seeing it. When dawn streamed through the skylight, he had not known whether he had slept at all during the night. The clothes he had been wearing the day before were drying on the back of a chair next to the radiator. Then three more knocks, louder this time. The door half opened and Hugo shyly appeared in the gap, like a creature come from the outside world to remind Isaac of reality. Nervously, Hugo stepped into the room.
‘Remember when we were talking about the planets the other night … Anyway, this’ll explain things better than I can.’
His hand proffered the copy of Cosmos. Hugo longed to say that this was the first book about astrophysics he had read, and that although it was a bit dated now, it was still essential to an understanding of the universe; to say that science was much more than a jumble of theories and computations incomprehensible to the amateur, that it contained a fundamental poetry, that it was the first, the earliest language, the one that linked man to the universe, and that astronomers like Carl Sagan possessed something truly precious, an understanding of the vastness of things. But Hugo did not say any of this: though he trusted the boy he had come to see, he also felt strangely unsettled by his presence.
He glanced around. Unlike his own bedroom, the walls here were bare. A few exercise books were piled up on a little table that served as a desk. Damp clothes were drying on the back of a chair. In a frame on the bedside table was a photo that he could not see. The furniture was rudimentary; it gave no clue to the person living here. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, Isaac skimmed the chapters, instinctively flicking through the pages. Seeing the boy bent over the book, not saying a word, Hugo realized that he’d made a mistake; that he should never have brought the book, that his hobbies interested no one but himself – after all, who in their right mind would be interested in the countless worlds beyond our knowledge? Suddenly, he was sorry he had come, let himself into this room without being invited, where Isaac was not even looking up at him. Hugo stood at the foot of the bed, feeling awkward and self-conscious. Head bowed, he turned towards the door, vowing to forget Isaac and never to set foot in this house again.
‘But if you believe in science, that means you can’t believe in God.’
Silence enveloped the room. Sitting on the bed, Isaac had closed the book and was gazing intently at the cover, as though the book spoke to him more than Hugo could have imagined. ‘Everyone at school knows your father is pretty religious. He says he’s never missed mass in his whole life.’
Isaac shifted forward, sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the boy standing frozen in the doorway: in the pale face he saw the same suffering he saw in his father.
‘But what about you?’ he continued. ‘You spend all your time reading science books. You believe only in the things we can see?’
It was a question that no one had ever asked Hugo. One that had not even occurred to him personally. He shoved his hands in his pockets and frowned as he gave the matter serious thought, because arriving at an answer would take time. It was true that his father had never missed Sunday mass. That he had had his three children baptized within a week of their birth because any life worthy of the name began in that moment, when a priest sprinkled them with holy water and traced a cross on their forehead. The moment he entered primary school, Hugo had been signed up for catechism classes; he had recited the psalms, repeated the lessons unthinkingly – but also obediently, because at that age, education was not something to be challenged. The rift had come in the form of a book, the very book he had brought Isaac. It was the poetry – the poetry of the vast infinite – that spoke to him. The Big Bang Theory rather than the allegories of Genesis. The great feats of science rather than the miracles of Christ. The death of a star was more fascinating than the lives of the saints. His decision had come to him instinctively as he read, and it had never occurred to him to compare and contrast the two worlds. He had never thought that scientific writing needed to be judged against holy scripture: anything that inspired wonder was worthy of study.
‘Scientists are still trying to work out what makes up 95 per cent of the universe. We know that it exists, in the form of matter and energy … we just don’t understand exactly what it is. Science has mysteries of its own. I’ve simply decided to study those, rather than the Rosary.’
There were other doubts, too. The dark expanse of the infinite, in which there were no certainties. The cutting edge of science, teeming with unanswered questions.
Isaac got up and nervously paced around the room. He longed to confide in Hugo, to tell him what he had seen on the little headland the night before, seen as clearly as he was seeing Hugo right now; but the more he thought about it, the more he began to doubt, to wonder whether his mind had played tricks on him, whether it had been a daydream, an illusion created by the rain and the shifting light. In the end, he said nothing, deciding to embrace his denial, for the mind is always prepared to doubt the truth.
‘I think it’s brave, accepting the unknown.’
‘The way I see it … that’s the one place you can truly find yourself.’
Hugo feverishly gripped the door handle, not daring to prolong the conversation; he sensed that the path to real intimacy lay in the words they were sharing, in the vastness they had fleetingly touched, and this feeling, this rapturous, delicate feeling that would never come again, was both thrilling and terrifying. He flashed Isaac a smile that said he was not abandoning him, that he was only going back to his house at the end of the road, that his friendship was always there if ever Isaac needed it. Then he gently closed the door.
