Suddenly the room felt empty. Rain was lashing at the window, and only now could Isaac hear it. He hauled himself on to his bed and poked his head out of the skylight.
Down below, Hugo was walking up the road; beyond his dark silhouette, the shore, glittering with pure white sand, cut into the coastline.
Gripping the frame of the skylight, Isaac hoisted himself up and stared at the point directly opposite: the little headland was deserted.
The last remaining customers had finally left. Chairs were pushed behind the tables with others stacked upside down on top of them. The freshly mopped floor still glistened. Behind the counter, Madenn slowly peeled off her rubber gloves. She was exhausted. A party of twelve celebrating a birthday had stayed late into the afternoon, and what with all the comings and goings, taking out more jugs of cider and more glasses of beer, she had not had a minute to sit down. She glanced at the clock: 5 p.m. Isaac had still not shown up. When he hadn’t come by at lunchtime, she had assumed that he was sleeping late and would soon appear, his hair a tousled mess, befuddled by the unusual lie-in. As the hours passed, she had served customers somewhat distractedly, making silly little mistakes, putting too much salt on the steak and not enough on the chips, as she anxiously kept an eye on the road. Now she was pacing the empty restaurant, hands behind her back, her brows knitted in thought.
There had been bad encounters in the past. She had seen Isaac with a black eye, heard the taunts; she had seen other boys pushing him down by the docks and had given them such a tongue-lashing that the whole harbour had heard. Who knew whether the same boys had crossed his path again, taunting and mocking him because he was different. Maybe they had followed him down an alley and … The very thought made her stomach heave. She grabbed her scarf and walked out, slamming the door behind her. Outside, the wind had picked up. The trees swayed as she passed, threatening to catch in her hair; a wind that haunted this stretch of road, taking form in every branch, materializing from behind the low crumbling walls, like a voice dogging her footsteps; a changeable voice, now laughing, now stern. But Madenn hurried on without listening; she had heard enough to guess what the wind was saying. When she came to the final crossroads, she passed the dirt track leading to the shore on her right and walked down the road to Alan’s house. She knocked on the door, and when she got no answer, she went round to one of the windows and pressed her face against the glass. She saw the empty desk, the jumble of papers, the computer switched off. She was buffeted by a gust of wind; all around, the lawns that sloped down to the sea were trembling beneath this unseen force that only manifested itself through the natural surroundings. Madenn trembled too, and knotted her scarf around her neck. She surveyed the landscape in the waning light, her eyes lingering on a detail far off in the distance. A mop of curly hair. That ash-blond hair, that figure with his back to her – it was him.
‘Isaac!’
She raced up the dune, running towards the boy she’d thought she had lost. She called to him again, shouted his name, her words whipped away by the breeze. She crossed the dirt track and arrived at the promontory, but Isaac, standing at the edge, did not react. Arms hanging limply by his sides, he stood motionless, staring at a precise point in the sky. Madenn called his name again, loud and clear. She knew he could hear her now; she was right behind him, only a few steps away, close enough to reach out and touch his shoulder. Lying in the grass at the boy’s feet she saw the broken plate, the ruined quiche, flecks of salmon strewn among the pebbles and sand: it was the quiche she had given him the day before. Her heart pounded. Slowly, Madenn walked around the boy, her ankles prickled by the copper-coloured ferns. She stood right in front of him, saw his ashen face, his wide eyes, his expression a mingle of wonder and terror. Once again, she whispered his name, but this time she said it to herself, to convince herself that this was indeed the boy she knew.
A sudden squall sent her reeling backwards and she almost tumbled down the slope. The day was fading fast. A last burst of sunlight spread along the coast, a dense orange glow that dappled the leaves of the trees, burnished the rocks a radiant bronze; meanwhile the sea roiled beneath the wind, malachite green streaked with foam. Everything along the coast seemed to quiver in this last moment, to reach a crescendo on the cusp of twilight. Seeing Isaac standing frozen on the headland, Madenn might have thought he was simply spellbound, dazzled by the vast immensity of it all, moved by this moment between worlds; but she knew that the boy had had no interest in the world around him for the past ten years, that he cared nothing for the twilight or the cycle of the tides, scarcely noticed the full moon. All that Madenn knew for certain was that, in this moment, Isaac was looking at something else. She could not know that he had come to the headland despite himself. That after Hugo left, he had slept for a few hours and then wakened with a start. That, instinctively, without wanting to, he had left his room, his home, prompted by a hand that had guided his steps and brought him here, back to the headland where a day ago he had lost his way, and now could not bring himself to leave.
The church bell tolled half past eleven. Four distinctive notes that rolled through the air all the way to the old port of Roscoff. On the quayside, a latecomer rushed up, frantically signalling to the launch to wait; he ran down the steps to the quay, finally reaching the boat just as the engine began to roar, ready for the off. Looking around for a seat, the breathless man’s eyes alighted on one of the passengers: a nun, sitting alone on a bench, facing the porthole, her body straight and elegant, like those ballet dancers who maintain their poise even when not on stage. The launch began to reverse. The sudden movement surprised Sister Anne, and she nervously twined her fingers in her lap: until today, all she had ever felt beneath her feet was terra firma. She slid a little closer to the window, keen to observe every detail of her first sea voyage, full of the innocent curiosity of a child discovering what it means to travel. The boat backed up to the entrance to the harbour, then slowly wheeled around, turning its stern to the lighthouse, and set off. To the left, the breakwater loomed above the sea, stretching out, vast, interminable, until it seemed to meet the horizon, where it plunged headfirst into the water and disappeared beneath the waves, making it impossible to tell where the land ended and the sea began.
Now the boat was gliding between two landmasses. Roscoff, to the left, was framed against the light, the dome of the church soaring above the town, the rocky coastline barely distinguishable from the houses; to the right the wild easterly coast of the Isle of Batz, with its pristine beaches, its slanting trees buffeted and beleaguered by storms. Inside the cabin, all that could be heard was the sound of the engine, a continual throb that lulled the body to the rhythm of the waves. At length, Sister Anne turned away from the window: the blinding reflection made it impossible to look at the sea for any length of time. She closed her eyes and waited for the shimmering afterimage to fade. It came to me in a dream last night … She repeated the words in her mind, her hands lying limply in her lap, one side of her face illuminated by the sun, remembering the voice of Sister Rose: You’ll witness an apparition of the Blessed Virgin in Brittany. Passengers turned to look at her, as people often do with nuns, their curiosity tinged with deference, as though certain mysteries were no longer mysteries to those who had renounced the world.
The sound of the engine changed, and the launch slowed as it sailed into the island’s harbour: all around the bay were the pale facades of slate-roofed houses standing cheek by jowl, vying for a narrow ray of sunlight, as though proximity were the only way to survive on this island. The launch moored at the quay and the passengers got up, retrieved their belongings from the bow: trolleys and pushchairs, shopping bags and sacks of cement, suitcases and bicycles. The two sailors lent a hand as they disembarked, straddling the water and the land, their faces weather-beaten by the wind and the cold. One had pale blue eyes, bleached by the water and the salt; the other had eyes as dark as the deepest ocean where no light could penetrate. As she stepped on to solid ground, Sister Anne swayed for a moment, caught in the rolling motion.
‘Sister Anne!’
The Bourdieu family had come to meet her: they had repeated their earlier invitation, insisting that she come to the island, and since her vocation included the pastoral care of the island’s parishioners, Sister Anne had agreed to visit on her day off. She said hello to Michel Bourdieu and his wife, kissed little Julia, and then they climbed into the car and drove away from the port and the milling islanders. As they drove, the paved road gradually gave way to a dirt track. Swerving now and then to avoid stones and potholes, Michel drove through the dunes to the last wooden gate; the track came to an end just outside their house. As she got out of the car, Sister Anne saw the silvery shore below and was amazed by the shallow, almost transparent water that seemed at once green and blue – she had heard about this colour, known in Breton as glaz, but only now did it reveal its extraordinary character; it seemed less a colour than an enigma. The Bourdieus invited her inside. Theirs was an austere house, decorated here and there with a crucifix or a religious icon; Sister Anne had seen less spartan monks’ cells. They sat down to lunch, and together they said grace; the presence of Sister Anne seemed to lighten the mood, and everyone smiled as they reached for their plates and chatted cheerfully. Even Hugo was grateful for her presence here, since it distracted his father. They had had few visitors since coming to the island, and any guest was something to be celebrated. After a dessert of apple tart, Michel Bourdieu solemnly laid his hands on the tablecloth.
‘And now, as we promised, it’s time to show Sister Anne around the island.’
They trooped out and headed east, up the narrow coastal trail flanked on one side by a row of Lambert’s cypresses and on the other by a fence. Brushing aside stray branches that lay across their path, they walked briskly in single file, pushing the pace a little so that they could reach their destination more quickly: from time to time, they caught glimpses of the sea below; the small beaches of fine sand dotted along the coast; the rocky coves that tumbled into the sea; the houses built to face the sun and sheltered from the wind by the bushy cypresses.
‘It would have been nice to show you the Delaselle garden, but unfortunately it’s closed for the winter. It’s a botanical garden, just on the other side of that fence.’
Stimulated by the presence of the nun, Michel Bourdieu suddenly became garrulous. As he led the procession, with his daughter sitting on his shoulders, he proudly pointed out that there was not a single scrap of litter to be seen, that this glorious wilderness was unsullied by man.
‘The Breton people don’t treat nature with contempt, they revere and obey it. They still have a keen sense of the sacred.’
And it was important to revere and to obey, to recognize what was sacred, to tend towards the divine – and it was precisely because modern man had forgotten such things, had embraced the secular in the vain pursuit of freedom, that society was on the brink of collapse.
‘A society that does not venerate anything is not free. It is sick, you understand?’
Gradually, the landscape unfolded to reveal sunlit uplands, the paths criss-crossing the meadows, a deep cobalt blue below that dazzled the eye. They stopped for a minute to catch their breath. Michel Bourdieu’s mood suddenly darkened as he surveyed this boundless space, terrified by all that he could not see, all that scripture had foretold; he was a scholarly man – he had studied the Gospels and the prophets – but more than this, he had seen enough of the world to known that catastrophe was imminent. In that moment, he was no longer severe. There was nothing intimidating about the heavyset build, the broad shoulders, the hands that could both create and destroy. Michel Bourdieu was a man possessed by fear. He felt a hand on his arm: his wife, sensing his distress, interrupted the gloomy thoughts that so often took her husband from her. The gesture soothed him; he gripped his daughter’s ankles, clinging to the child, because this was how he survived, how mankind had always survived: by holding on to the unchanging constant of marriage and children.
They sat on the grass. In the distance some horses were grazing. The path followed the coastline, tracing sinuous meanders before disappearing beyond a rocky outcrop. Not a soul passed by. The island cast its spell on everyone.
‘What’s that thing around your neck?’
The little girl was staring at Sister Anne’s pendant as it glinted in the sun. She had noticed it while they were walking, a small medal that seemed to protect the nun’s every step.
Sister Anne unfastened the clasp and gently handed the object to the child.
‘It’s a Miraculous Medal. It was first given to Saint Catherine Labouré. She was a Daughter of Charity, like me.’
She told the girl how Sister Catherine had decided to take the veil on 19 July 1830 after the Blessed Virgin had appeared to her one night, when no one else was around, in the little chapel of the Daughters of Charity at the Mother House on the Rue du Bac – the same convent where Sister Anne had taken her first steps in the religious life. It was later described by Saint Catherine as the gentlest, sweetest moment of her life.
‘So she saw the Blessed Virgin, like Bernadette did at Lourdes?’
‘Exactly.’
The Virgin had appeared to the young novitiate on two further occasions, and during one of these visions she had asked Sister Catherine to create a medal just like the one Julia was now holding, promising that ‘All who wear it will receive great graces’; no sooner was it created than the medal was in demand all over France.
The little girl silently studied the medal in the palm of her hand: on one side was the Blessed Virgin standing upon the earth as though watching over the world, her head crowned with a halo, rays of light streaming from her half-closed hands; on the other side was a circle of twelve stars, a large letter M surmounted by a cross, and below the stylized Sacred Heart of Jesus crowned with thorns and the Immaculate Heart of Mary pierced with a sword. Gently, thoughtfully, the girl stroked the symbols with her finger, as though this were one of those magical objects that fascinate the pure of heart.
‘So, if you wear it, does it work miracles?’
It was true that miraculous cures had been reported during the cholera epidemic in Paris. A Jewish man named Alphonse Ratisbonne, who wore the medal, had a vision of the Virgin and converted to Christianity, which was much talked about at the time. When Catherine Labouré died, a child who touched her coffin was suddenly cured of a lifelong infirmity. And then there was Catherine Labouré herself, whose body was exhumed sixty years after her death and found to be utterly incorrupt.
‘It’s not the medal itself that’s miraculous … Nobody ever questioned what the young novitiate said about her visions. It is only when you cease to doubt that miracles can happen.’
The little girl found the story unsettling, though she did not know why; she did not guess how much power these words would have over her imagination. She looked at the nun sitting on the grass, her back turned to the sun, her slender figure bathed in light – she found her somewhat frightening too.
‘What about you? Have you ever seen the Blessed Virgin?’
The artlessness of a child, always wedded to a keen instinct. Sister Anne smiled gently and whispered that the Blessed Virgin would always come to those who prayed to her.
They sat for a while, gazing at the coast, then set off home. Their limbs were tired, but it was the pleasurable tiredness of being in the great outdoors, up on a hill with nothing to block the view, where every breath filled the body with a sense of wellbeing.
Before Sister Anne left, the whole family kissed her goodbye as if she were a long-lost friend, and made her promise to come back soon. She got into the car next to Michel Bourdieu, and they set off down the track in a cloud of dust.
At the foot of the hill, a teenage boy suddenly appeared. Sister Anne was struck by the boy’s delicate features, by the anxious darting of his eyes, by a gracefulness she had never seen before; looking at him in the rear-view mirror, she asked Michel Bourdieu whether he knew this boy.
