Читать книгу A Tale of Brittany (Mon frère Yves) - Pierre Loti - Страница 5

It was twenty-four years later, on an evening of December, at Brest.

A fine rain was falling, cold, penetrating, continuous; it streamed down the walls, rendering deeper in colour the high-pitched roofs of slate, and the tall houses of granite; it watered with calm indifference the noisy crowd of the Sunday, which swarmed nevertheless, wet and bedraggled, in the narrow streets, beneath the mournful grey of the twilight.

This Sunday crowd consisted of inebriated sailors singing, of soldiers who stumbled, making with their sabres a clatter of steel, of people of the lower class adrift—workers of the town looking drawn and miserable; women in little merino shawls and pointed muslin head-dresses, who walked along with shining eyes and reddened cheek bones, exhaling an odour of brandy; of old men and old women in a disgusting state of drunkenness, who had fallen and been picked up, and were lurching forward, on their way, with backs covered with mud.

The rain continued to fall, wetting everything, the silver-buckled hats of the Bretons, the tilted bonnets of the sailors, the laced shakos and the white head-dresses, and the umbrellas.

There was something so wan, so dead, about the air, that it was difficult to imagine that there could be anywhere a sun . . . the notion of it had gone. There was a feeling that you were imprisoned under layers and thicknesses of dense, humid clouds which were deluging you. It did not seem that they would ever be able to break, or that behind them there could be a sky. You breathed water. You were no longer conscious of the hour, and knew not whether the darkness was the darkness of all this rain or whether the real winter's night was closing in.

The sailors brought into the streets a certain rather surprising note of gaiety and youth, with their cheery faces and their songs, with their large bright collars and their red pompoms standing out in sharp contrast with the navy blue of their uniform. They went and came from one tavern to another, jostling the crowd, saying things which had no sense but which made them laugh. And sometimes they stopped on the footpath, before the stalls of the shops where were retailed the hundred and one things they needed for their use: red handkerchiefs, in the middle of which were imprinted designs of famous ships, Bretagne, Triomphante, Devastation; ribbons for their bonnets with handsome inscriptions in gold; cords of complicated workmanship destined to close securely those canvas sacks which they have on board for storing their kit; elegant attachments in plaited thread for suspending from the neck of the topmen their large knives; silver whistles for the petty-officers, and finally, red belts and little combs and little mirrors.

From time to time came heavy squalls which sent bonnets flying and made the drunken passers-by stagger. And then the rain came down more heavily, more torrentially, and whipped like hail.

The crowd of sailors steadily increased. They could be seen coming on in groups at the end of the Rue de Siam; they ascended from the port and from the lower town by the great granite stairways, and spread singing into the streets.

Those who came from the roadstead were wetter than the others, dripping with sea-water as well as with rain. The sailing cutters, bending to the cold squalls, leaping amid waves deep-edged with spray, had brought them quickly into port. And joyously they climbed the steps which led to the town, shaking themselves as cats do which have been sprinkled with water.

The wind rushed through the long drab streets, and the night promised to be a wild one.

In the roadstead—on board a ship which had arrived that very morning from South America—on the stroke of four o'clock, a petty officer had given a prolonged whistle, followed by cleverly executed trills, which signified in the language of the sea: "Man the launch!" Then a murmur of joy was heard in the ship, where the sailors were penned, on account of the rain, in the gloom of the spar-deck. For there had been a fear for a time that the sea might be too rough for communication with Brest, and the men had been waiting anxiously for this whistle which set their doubts at rest. For the first time, after three years of voyage, they were about to set foot on the land of France, and impatience was great.

When the men appointed, clothed in little costumes of yellow oilskin, were all embarked in the launch and had taken their places in correct and symmetrical order, the same petty officer whistled again and said: "Liberty-men, fall in!"

The wind and the sea made a great noise; the distances of the roadstead were drowned in a whitish fog made of spray and rain.

The sailors who had received permission to go ashore ascended quickly, issued from the hatches and took their places in line, as their numbers and names were called, with faces beaming with the joy of seeing Brest again. They had put on their Sunday clothes; they completed, under the torrential downpour, the last details of their toilet, setting one another right with airs of coquetry.

When "218: Kermadec!" was called, Yves appeared, a strapping youngster of twenty-four, grave in mien, looking very well in his ribbed woollen jersey and his large blue collar.

Tall, lean with the leanness of the ancients, with the muscular arms and the neck and shoulders of an athlete, his whole appearance gave an impression of tranquil and slightly disdainful strength. His face, beneath its uniform coat of bronze, was colourless; in some subtle way impossible to define, a Breton face, with the complexion of an Arab. Curt in speech, with the accent of Finistère; a low voice curiously vibrant, recalling those instruments of very powerful sound, which one touches only very lightly for fear of making too much noise.

Hazel eyes, rather close together and very deep-set beneath the frontal bone, with the impassive expression of a regard turned inwards; the nose small and regular in shape; the lower lip protruding slightly as if in scorn.

The face immobile, marmorean, save in those rare moments when he smiles. Then the whole face is transformed, and one sees that Yves is very young. The smile itself is the smile of those who have suffered: it has a childlike gentleness and lights up the hardened features a little as the rays of the sun, falling by chance, light up the cliffs of Brittany.

When Yves appeared the other sailors who were there regarded him with good-humoured smiles and an unusual air of respect.

This was because he wore for the first time on his sleeve the two red stripes of a petty officer, which had just been awarded him. And on board ship a petty officer is a person of consequence. These poor woollen stripes, which, in the army, are given so quickly to the first comer, represent in the navy years of hardship; they represent the strength and the life of young men, expended at every hour of the day and night, high up in the crow's nest, that domain of the topmen which is shaken by all the winds of heaven.

The boatswain, coming up, held out his hand to Yves. Formerly he also had been a topmen inured to hardness, and he was a shrewd judge of strong and courageous men.

"Well, Kermadec," he said. "You are going to water those stripes of yours, I suppose?"

"Yes, bo'sun," replied Yves in a low voice, but preserving a grave and abstracted air.

It was not the rain from heaven that the old boatswain had in mind; for, as far as that went, the watering was assured. No, in the navy, to water your stripes means to get drunk in order to do them honour on the first day they are worn.

Yves remained thoughtful in the face of the necessity of this ceremony, because he had just sworn to me very solemnly that he would be sober, and he wanted to keep his promise.

And then he had had enough, at last, of these tavern scenes which had been repeated so many times in all the countries of the world. To spend one's nights in low pot-houses, at the head of the wildest and most drunken of the crew, and to be picked up in the gutter in the morning—one tires of these pleasures after a time, however good a sailor one may be. Besides the mornings following are painful and are always the same; and Yves knew that and wanted no more of them.

It was very gloomy, this December weather, for a day of return. Of no avail was it to be carefree and young, the weather cast over the joy of homecoming a kind of sinister night. Yves experienced this impression, which caused him, in spite of himself, a mournful surprise; for all this, in sum, was his own Brittany; he felt it in the air and recognised it despite this darkness of dreamland.

The launch moved off, carrying them all towards the shore. It travelled aslant under the west wind; it bounded over the waves with the hollow sound of a drum, and, at each leap that it made, a mass of water broke over them, as if it had been hurled by furious hands.

They made their way very rapidly in a kind of cloud of water, the large salt drops of which lashed their faces. They bowed their heads before this deluge, huddled close one against the other, like sheep in a storm.

They did not speak, all concentrated as they were on the prospect of the pleasure that awaited them. There were among them young men, who, for a year past, had not set foot on land; the pockets of all of them were well-lined with money, and fierce desires bubbled in their blood.

Yves himself thought a little of the women who were waiting for them in Brest, and from among whom presently they would be able to choose. But, nevertheless, he was gloomy, he alone of all the band. Never had so many thoughts at one time troubled the head of this poor simpleton.

It is true that he had had melancholy moods of this kind sometimes, during the silence of the nights at sea; but then the return had appeared to him from the distance in colours of rose and gold. And here, to-day, was the return and, on the contrary, his heart was sadder now than it had ever been before. And this he did not understand, for he had the habit, as the simple and as children have, of suffering his impressions without attempting to interpret them.

With head turned towards the wind, heedless of the water which streamed down his blue collar, he had remained standing, supported by the group of sailors who pressed close against him.

All this coast-line of Brest, which could be distinguished in vague contours through the veil of the rain, awoke in him memories of his years as ship-boy, passed here on this great misty roadstead, pining for his mother. . . . This past had been rough, and, for the first time in his life, his thoughts turned to what the future might be.

His mother! ... It was true indeed that for nearly two years he had not written to her. But that is the way with sailors; and, in spite of all, these mothers of theirs are very dear to them. What usually happens is this: they disappear for a few years, and then, one happy day, they return, without warning, to the village, with stripes on their sleeve and pockets full of hard-earned money, and bring back happiness and comfort to the old forsaken home.

They sped on through the freezing rain, leaping over the grey waves, pursued by the whistling of the wind and the roar of the water.

Yves was thinking of many things, and his fixed eyes now saw nothing. The image of his mother had all at once taken on an infinite tenderness; he felt that she was now quite near to him, in a little Breton village, under this same winter twilight which enveloped him; in two or three days from now, he would go, with an overmastering joy, to surprise her and take her in his arms.

The tossing of the sea, the wind and speed, rendered his changing thoughts incoherent. At one moment he was disconcerted to find his country under a sky so gloomy. During his voyage he had become used to the heat and blue clearness of the tropics, and, here, it seemed that there was a shroud casting a sinister night over the world.

And a little later he was telling himself that he did not want to drink any more, not that there was any harm in it after all, and, in any case, it was the custom among Breton sailors; but, first of all, he had given me his word, and secondly, at twenty-four, one is a grown man and has had a full draught of pleasure, and it seems that one feels the need of becoming a little more steady.

Then he thought of the astonished looks of the others on board, especially of Barrada, his great friend, when they saw him return to-morrow morning, upright and walking straight. At this comical idea, a childlike smile passed suddenly over his grave and manly face.

They had now arrived almost under the Castle of Brest and, in the shelter of the enormous masses of granite, there was suddenly calm. The cutter no longer rocked; it proceeded tranquilly through the rain; its sails were hauled down, and the men in yellow oilskins took over its management with rhythmic strokes of their long oars.

Before them opened that deep and dismal bay which is the naval port; on the quays were alignments of cannon and of formidable-looking maritime things. All around nothing but high and interminable constructions of granite, all alike, overhanging the dark water and staged one above the other with rows of little doors and little windows. Above these again, the first houses of Brest and Recouvrance showed their wet roofs, from which issued little trails of white smoke. They proclaimed their damp and cold misery, and the wind rushed all about with a great dismal moaning.

It was now quite dark and the little gas flames began to pink with bright yellow dots these accumulations of dark things. The sailors could already hear the rumbling of the traffic and the noise of the town which came to them from above the deserted dockyard, mingled with the songs of drunken men.

Yves, out of prudence, had entrusted to his friend Barrada on board all his money, which he was saving for his mother, keeping in his pocket only fifty francs for his night ashore.