Читать книгу Salt on my Skin - Benoite Groult - Страница 13

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I was eighteen when, without either of us realising it, Gauvin entered my heart for life. Yes, it began with my heart, or what I took to be my heart though, at that time, it was still only my skin. He was six or seven years older and, as a deep-sea fisherman earning his own living, he was a match for me, a middle-class student, but still dependent on my parents. My Paris friends were greenhorns and wimps beside this young man, already marked by a calling which turns a sinewy adolescent into a force of nature and, all too soon, a man old before his time. Yet boyhood still lurked in his eyes, which he dropped whenever you looked at him, and youth in the arrogant curl of his mouth. But there was a man’s strength in his great hands, toughened by salt water, and his deliberate gait, each step set firmly, as if on a rolling deck.

Until we reached adolescence we eyed each other with the wariness of incompatible species – he the Breton, I the Parisienne – knowing that our paths were bound in different directions. To aggravate things, he was the son of a poor farmer and I the daughter of summer visitors. He seemed to think that being summer visitors constituted our chief occupation, a way of life for which he felt nothing but contempt. The little spare time he had was spent in violent games of football with his brothers, an activity which left me cold. Or he would shoot birds with his catapult or raid their nests, all of which revolted me. The rest of the time he would be scuffling with his mates or, if he met my sister and me, swearing like a trooper for our benefit. I decided that this was typical male behaviour, by definition hateful. It was he who punctured the tyres of my first little-rich-girl’s bicycle. To be fair, that bicycle was a real kick in the teeth. All he and his brothers possessed was a clapped-out old box on wheels in which they would clatter down the one street in Raguenès, rejoicing in the racket. As soon as his legs were long enough, he flung them across his father’s decrepit old nag of a pushbike and sneaked off every time the old man lay senseless in a ditch after a Saturday-night bender. My sister and I responded by using clothes-pegs to fix postcards to the wheels of our shiny chrome bicycles, with their bells and mudguards and their little baskets. This made a whirring engine-like noise which was meant to impress the Lozerech boys. They took no notice whatsoever.

There was a sort of tacit agreement that we play with the one girl of the Lozerech family, the youngest of what my father dismissively described as ‘that brood of rabbits’. She was a charmless little blonde, with a name, Yvonne, which we thought lamentable. As I said, we had nothing in common.

When he was fourteen or fifteen Gauvin disappeared from my horizon. He was already at sea during the summer as ship’s boy on his brother’s trawler, the Valliant Couturier. I was charmed by the name: for a long time I believed it was for a real valiant couturier, renowned for some unexpected act of bravery at sea. Gauvin’s mother used to say that he wasn’t one to shirk and it wouldn’t be long before his apprenticeship was over. But for the moment he was just ship’s boy, the scapegoat on board. That was the custom and a skipper had less right to be soft with a relative than others.

For my sister and me this simply meant one enemy fewer in the village. But the five remaining Lozerech boys continued to consider us as useless because we were girls and stuck-up because we came from Paris. This was made even worse by the fact that my name was George. ‘George without an s, as in George Sand,’ my mother would proclaim, having sacrificed me on the altar of her youthful passion for Indiana. My younger sister, who had been less controversially christened Frédérique, scolded me for being ashamed. I retaliated by calling her ‘Frederic with a q-u-e’, I would have given much not to suffer the teasing and questions at the start of each school year, before the new ones got used to it. Children are merciless to anyone who doesn’t conform, and I was well into adulthood before I forgave my mother. It wasn’t such a problem at my college, Sainte-Marie, as in the country. At least people there recognised the name, even if it was devoid of the odour of sanctity. But in any case, by the end of her life, George Sand had redeemed herself with a couple of pious novels, and by becoming the good Lady of Nohant. But at Raguenès my name furnished an inexhaustible source of mockery. They never tired of it; the target was irresistible.

It did not help that, instead of being among all the other holiday homes, our house was in the middle of a working village, inhabited only by fishermen and farmers. We stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. The ‘beachwear’ sported by my mother and the vast berets and tweed plus-fours which my father affected caused constant hilarity. The village boys kept quiet if our parents were around, but if they caught us alone they were transformed into a pack of male animals, flaunting the superiority supposedly endowed by their willies, and taking every opportunity, the minute they spotted us in the distance, to scoff at my sister and me. Gauvin in the lead, they would bray stupid doggerel. The sillier they got the more furious we became.

Parisiennes,

Silly hens!

From the town,

Silly clowns!

When you’re a child, the silliest jokes are often the best ones. We got our revenge when we encountered our tormentors singly or in pairs. In a group they were Man. Isolated they were just one kid against another; or worse, a farm boy faced with a city girl.

Gauvin had never been to our house. He didn’t think it was a house anyway, but a pretentious villa with a ridiculous thatched roof. For the villagers real roofs were made of slate. Our meticulously authentic thatch of hand-beaten rye-straw, hard to find and costing the earth from the last thatcher in the district, seemed to be flying in the face of common sense. So to say something as ordinary as ‘Come round to our place for tea’ or, later, ‘Come in for a drink’, was out of the question. It was different with Yvonne. She was my age, and I often asked her to play at our house. We, of course, could tum up at the farm whenever we felt like it. To Frédérique and me, from our pristine house where we had to tidy our toys and whiten our canvas sandals every day, the farm seemed the height of freedom. There was always something going on, the mess of eight children’s clothes all over the place, and rows of muddy clogs by the back door. The farmyard was over-run with cats and dogs and chickens, and cluttered with rickety rabbit hutches and implements of indeterminate use which looked decrepit but would nevertheless, once a year, be indispensable for some task or other. These visits were always one way, as in those nineteenth-century tales where the lady of the manor and her daughters called on the sick and the deserving poor – grateful tenants who would never dream of visiting the big house. Sometimes, after lifting potatoes with Yvonne – an unattractive job if ever there was one, but one which I did in the hope that it would make me look less of a feeble townee – I stayed to eat with the Lozerechs. There, the bacon soup I would have detested at home seemed delicious, and I was prouder of being able to milk a cow than I was of my high grades at school. I liked to think that in another life I might have made a good farm girl.

It was harvest time when Gauvin and I first saw each other as human beings rather than representatives of hostile social groups. At threshing time everyone lent a hand, and families would try to assemble as many people as possible before starting. Three of the Lozerech sons, including Gauvin, were at home at the same time, and the family made the most of the opportunity to fix the date for the big job ahead. Naturally, as immediate neighbours, Frédérique and I helped every year, and we were proud of sharing the work, the exhaustion at the end of the day, and the excitement of the most important event of the year, one which determined the annual income of the whole household.

The last day had been stifling. On the two preceding days we had gathered in the barley and oats, and now it was time for the wheat. The air shimmered with the heat and a fine choking dust which got into our eyes and throats, and throbbed with the noise of the threshing machine. The dust powdered the hair and head-dresses of the women and turned their dark skirts grey, while streams of dark sweat trickled down the faces and necks of the men. Only Gauvin worked bare-chested. Standing on top of the cart, he slashed the twine which bound the sheaves with one stroke of his sickle, then straddled the sheaves and swung them on to the conveyor belt in a gesture I thought magnificent. The sheaves bounced their way down the belt. He gleamed with fine young sweat in the sunlight, the golden wheat flying all around him, while his muscles played ceaselessly under his skin, like the shining muscled quarters of the great horses which periodically brought fresh loads of sheaves.

I had never seen a man so manly except in Hollywood movies, and I was proud to be a participant at this annual ritual. To be, for once, part of his world. I loved everything about those sultry days: the intensity, the smoking bags of wheat with their acrid smell – symbols of abundance filled under the eagle eye of Gauvin’s father who made sure that not a grain of his treasure was lost – and the three o’clock tea: a banquet of fat bacon, pate and deep yellow butter spread thickly on chunks of bread, which made our Parisian tea times seem bloodless affairs. I even loved the men swearing every time the belt slipped and had to be levered back on to the pulleys, while everyone else seized the chance to slake their parched throats with a pull of cider. And how marvellous it was when all the sacks were heaped in the barn ready for the mill, and the fest noz, for which they always slaughtered and roasted a pig, could begin.

That evening everyone sprawled around, drunk with exhaustion. United by work well done, a harvest safely in, we basked in a late July dusk which seemed reluctant to yield to darkness. At that time of year in Brittany the long twilights linger on, giving the illusory hope that, just this once, day will conquer night. I was sitting next to Gauvin, weak with pleasure at being so near him but utterly tongue-tied. At least I knew better than to go into raptures about nature with country people, but having grown out of the games and battles of childhood, we had nothing to put in their place and were silent, constrained by our age. The Lozerech boys and Gallois girls were retreating into their respective social classes after the no-man’s-land of childhood. Soon, when we met, we would be reduced to nods and smiles, having nothing to say, not even the old taunts. Oh, we’d still be ‘friends’ of course, still ask after each other’s lives – ‘How’s the catch these days?’ ‘Exams going OK then?’ – but the answers would be treated absent-mindedly, like shells you don’t bother to gather on a winter beach.

But now, this evening, hovering between day and night, between dream and reality… As the party was about to break up Gauvin, in spite of the tiredness softening his features, suddenly suggested driving over to Concarneau. No one was keen to begin with; they just wanted to fall into bed. But then another Lozerech boy came round to the idea and using all the persuasive tactics at my disposal, I implored Yvonne to join us, pledging my best lacy bra, my most expensive toilet water, anything so as not to be the only girl. Gauvin was one of the few people in the village who had a car, an old 4CV, and he piled in as many people as it could hold. Frédérique stayed behind: a fifteen-year-old simply doesn’t go dancing in Concarneau.

For a girl who had only been to faculty balls, the affair at the Ty Chupenn Gwen hotel was as exotic as an Apache war dance. Luckily Yvonne took me under her wing. I was very much the outsider in this crowd of rowdy young men already the worse for drink, but at least I wouldn’t be the wallflower I was in Paris, too often reduced to hiding behind the record player. As soon as we arrived Gauvin drew me on to the dance floor without a word and, before anyone else had a chance, settled me in his arms as firmly as he would grasp a trawlerstay. I was aware of each finger of the hand on my ribs. Proper hands, I told myself. They wouldn’t let you fall, not like the pale, distinguished hands waved around by the pale, distinguished young men I knew in Paris. He danced like a man of the people, like one of Zola’s workers, with a swing of the shoulders pronounced enough to seem common to my bourgeois code of etiquette. Not once did his eyes meet mine and neither of us said a word. He wouldn’t have known what to say and I couldn’t think of a single subject of conversation. ‘Do you like Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet?’ (even I knew that wouldn’t do) or, ‘How’s the fishing going?’ (that wouldn’t do either). What does a student of classics and history say to a young man who spends most of his time on a trawler on the Irish Sea? I stayed speechless, dumb with shyness and the unexpected sensation of being in Gauvin’s arms. But it didn’t matter, since he kept his arms round me between dances, waiting for the music to begin again. He still smelled of sunshine and wheat, and I thought he handled me with the same serious concentration he had given the sheaves earlier that day. In any case, what words could have expressed the absurd, incongruous feeling of recognition between our bodies, the sense that our souls – for it certainly wasn’t our minds – were striving towards each other, regardless of worldly obstacles. Naturally Plato came into my head. At that age I channelled all my thoughts and emotions through the words of poets and philosophers. And Gauvin had recklessly surrendered to the same spell. I was sure of it somehow, sure that feelings like these are always mutual. The spell held through a waltz and two paso dobles and swung us along in a sultry tango, while reality blurred and receded. The voices of the Raguenès boys reached me as if from a distant planet. They were getting noisier and more facetious to hide their growing lust for the girls they were trying to soften up with drink and hopeful fumbling. When the lights suddenly went out Gauvin and I found ourselves outside by silent accord. Selfish with happiness, we decided that Yvonne and the others could find their own way home, and, like a pair of cowards, drove off in the 4CV.

He took the road to the sea, of course. You head for the sea instinctively at times like this. The sea absolves any need for talk. It enfolds you like a mother, wraps you in indulgent silence. But we were checked at le Cabellou, la Dument, Trévignon and the beach at Raguenès, There was no through road along the coast then, only dead ends, emblematic of our own situation. The less we spoke, the more the silence swelled. Gauvin kept his arm round my shoulders, brushing my cheek with his temple now and again.

At Raguenès the tide was out. The spit of sand which joined the island to the shore at low water shone in the moonlight. To the east, where there was shelter from the prevailing wind, we could just make out the line where the sea met the sand. It was smooth as glass. To the west a breath of wind ruffled the silver expanse with its frilled, phosphorescent edge. It was still, so pure, so like us. We got out of the car to walk in that silent water.

‘Why don’t we take a midnight swim?’ The notion came to me all at once. It was the first time we had ever been by the sea together. In those days Bretons hardly ever went to the beach; swimming was a crack-brained trippers’ fancy. Sailors and fishermen, they had gone down at sea too often, for too many centuries, to think of it as a place for fun and games.

We undressed at a discreet distance from each other, careful not to look. I had never taken my clothes off in front of a boy before but that didn’t stop me feeling disappointed that Gauvin didn’t even glance at me. I was beautiful in the moonlight, I felt sure, less truly naked than in the glare of electric light. As much to hide my ‘front’ as to avoid looking at his, I raced into the sea first, joyously splintering the bright mirror. I didn’t go far. Almost immediately I guessed that Gauvin couldn’t swim. ‘What’s the point? Only makes it worse if you’re swept overboard at night in a freezing sea.’ I realised then that Gauvin’s sea was a different person from mine, and that he knew the real one.

We played around in the icy water for ages, laughing and brushing together like a pair of happy whales, delaying the moment when we would have to get out. On dry land we knew we would don our social differences along with our clothes. It was one of those unreal nights when a sort of phosphorescent plankton comes to the surface, when each stroke, each splash causes luminous ripples, and sends sparks flashing into the darkness. A wave of sudden sadness engulfed us, quite disproportionate to the transitoriness of that moment: it was as if we had experienced a lifelong passion and were about to be separated by something as inexorable as war. That something was dawn, as it happened. The sky was lightening in the east, bringing the world back to its rightful proportions.

Gauvin dropped me off at my door. A light was still on in my mother’s room. He kept a respectful distance as he said in his normal voice, ‘Well, ‘bye then.’ And after a pause, more softly, ‘See you again, maybe.’ I replied just as flatly, my arms clamped to my sides, ‘Thanks for bringing me home.’ As if he could have done anything else! Our houses were next door to each other.

Two days later he was to rejoin his Vaillant Couturier, and I wouldn’t see him again that summer. My family and I were due back in Paris in September. How is it possible to imagine life on the winter seas from the warmth of a city room? What sort of gang-plank can be thrown between the deck of a trawler and the lecture theatre where my professor analysed the protocols of courtly love?

Gauvin’s car set off towards the farm and was soon swallowed up by darkness. I went inside, shaking my wet hair. Saying goodnight to my mother robbed the occasion of all its romance. Everything I had lived that night started to slip away, to vanish like those dreams which fade so fast as you wake no matter how hard you try to hold on to them. But, till the very end of that summer, I felt that my steps faltered a little, that a fine mist lay over my blue eyes.

These feelings came to a head on one of those soft Breton evenings which mark the turn of season, and became a poem, a sort of message in a bottle for Gauvin which I didn’t dare throw in the sea for fear of ridicule. What would his friends say? With them he might snigger at the qualms of the city girl. ‘You know, them that has the thatched house at the end of the village…’ ‘The daughter’s not bad…’ ‘Nah. D’you reckon?’ These fears prevented my sending Gauvin the poem, the first love poem of my life.

So innocent, by the ocean,

So innocent, we two.

You a child-man, diffident,

Who would never read Gide.

And I cold as the first woman,

In the night as tender as night.

We halted on the brink of time,

At the brink of passion.

You a man, I still a girl,

But rigidly calm, controlled –

A pose one’s disposed to at eighteen.

Often I return to Raguenès,

I who have read Gide,

To recapture your fleeting eyes

And the trembling fierceness of your mouth.

Today I am tender as the first woman,

But the nights are as cold as night.

If I could but kiss you now,

With the taste of salt on our skin,

You who sail the Irish Sea,

Who ride the bucking waves,

Away from my twenty years,

Away from the sweet shore,

Where you took me to find the fabulous beast,

Which never did appear.

And you?

Do you ever return to that meeting-place,

To lament the love we never made?

Soon it was time to shut the house up for another winter, to leave my eighteenth summer behind. I abandoned the poem to my weed garden holiday clutter in a drawer, together with a bronze kirby-grip still fastened to its yellowing card, a pink sea urchin shell, a solitary sock whose pair might yet turn up, an ear of corn I’d hoarded from that evening of harvest. When we returned the next summer I didn’t throw the poem away. I still hoped it might reach its addressee one day and recall to him the unforgettable taste of first desire.