Читать книгу A Tale of Brittany (Mon frère Yves) - Pierre Loti - Страница 6

"And my husband also, Madame Quéméneur, when he is drunk, sleeps all day long."

"So you have come out too, Madame Kervella?"

"Yes, I also am waiting for my husband, who arrived to-day on the Catinat."

"And my man, Madame Kerdoncuff, the day he returned from China, slept for two whole days; and I, you know, got drunk too, Madame Kerdoncuff. Oh! and how ashamed of myself I was! And my daughter, also, she fell down the stairs!"

And these things, spoken in the singing and musical accent of Brest, are exchanged under old umbrellas straining in the wind, between women in waterproofs and pointed muslin head-dresses, who are waiting above, at the top of the wide granite steps.

Their husbands have come on that same boat which has brought Yves, and their wives are waiting for them; fortified already by a little brandy, they are on the watch, their eyes half merry and half tender.

These old sailors whom they await were once perhaps gallant topmen inured to hardship; but demoralized by their sojourns in Brest and by drunkenness, they have married these creatures and sunk into the sordid slums of the town.

Behind these women there are other groups again on which the eye rests with pleasure; young women of quiet mien, real sailors' wives these, wrapt in the joy of seeing once more a sweetheart or a husband, and gazing with anxiety into the great yawning cavern of the port, out of which their beloved ones will come to them. And there are mothers, come from the villages, wearing their pretty Breton festival dresses, the wide coif and the gown of black silk embroidered cloth; the rain will spoil them to be sure, these fine trappings, which are renewed perhaps not more than twice in a lifetime; but it is necessary to do honour to this son whom presently they will embrace before the others.

"See there! The men from the Magicien are now entering the harbour, Madame Kerdoncuff!"

"And those from the Catinat also, do you see! They are following one another, Madame Quéméneur!"

Below, deep down, the launches come alongside the black quay, and those who are awaited are among the first to ascend.

First the husbands of these good ladies. Way for the seniors, let them pass out first! Tar, and wind and sun and brandy have given them the wrinkled physiognomies of monkeys. . . . And they go their way, arm in arm, in the direction of Recouvrance, to some gloomy old street of tall granite houses; presently they will climb to a damp room which smells of gutters and the mustiness of poverty, where on the furniture are shell ornaments covered with dust and bottles pell-mell with strange knick-knacks. And thanks to the alcohol bought at the tavern below, they will find oblivion of this cruel separation in a renewal of their youth.

Then come the others, the young men for whom sweethearts are waiting, and wives and old mothers, and, at last, four by four, climbing the granite steps, the whole band of wild lads, whom Yves is taking to celebrate his stripes.

And those who are waiting for them, for this little band of hot-blooded youth, are in the Rue de Sept Saints, already at their door and on the watch: women whose hair is worn with a fringe combed down to the eyebrows—with tipsy voices and horrible gestures.

Before the night is out, these women will have their strength, their restrained passions—and their money. For your sailormen pay well on the day of their return, and over and above what they give, there is what one may take afterwards, when by good luck they are quite drunk.

They look about them undecided, almost bewildered, drunk already merely from finding themselves on shore.

Where should they go? How should they begin their pleasures? This wind, this cold rain of winter and this sinister fall of the night—for those who have a home, a fireside, all that adds to the joy of the return. To these poor fellows it brought the need for a shelter, for somewhere where they could warm themselves; but they were without a home, these returning exiles.

At first they wandered at hazard, linked arm in arm, laughing at nothing, at everything, walking obliquely from right and left—with the movements of captive beasts which have just been set free.

Then they entered À la Descente des Navires, presided over by Madame Creachcadec.

À la Descente des Navires was a low tavern in the Rue de Siam.

The warm atmosphere savoured of alcohol. There was a coal fire in a brazier, and Yves sat down in front of it. This was the first time, for two or three years past, that he had sat in a chair. And a real fire! How he revelled in the quite unusual luxury of drying himself before glowing coals. On board ship, there was never a chance of it; not even in the great cold of Cape Horn or of Iceland; not even in the persistent, penetrating rains of the high latitudes were they ever able to dry themselves. For days and nights on end, they remained wet through; doing their best to keep on the move, until the sun should shine.

She was a real mother to the sailors, was this Madame Creachcadec; all who knew her could vouch for it. And she was very exact, too, in the prices she charged for their dinners and their feastings.

Besides, she knew them. Her large red face flushed already with alcohol, she tried to repeat their names, which she heard them saying among themselves; she remembered quite well having seen them when they were boatmen on board the Bretagne; she even thought she could recall their boyhood, when they were ship-boys on the Inflexible. But what tall, fine fellows they had grown since those days! Truly it was only an eye like hers that could recognize them, altered as they were. . . .

And, at the back of the tavern, the dinner was cooking, on stoves which already sent out an appetising odour of soup.

From the street came sounds of a great uproar. A band of sailors was approaching, singing, scanning at the top of their voices, to a frivolous air, these words of the Church: 'Kyrie Christe, Dominum nostrum; Kyrie eleison. . . .

They entered, upsetting the chairs, and at the same time a gust of wind laid low the flame of the lamps.

Kyrie Christe, Dominum nostrum. . . . The Bretons did not like this kind of song, brought no doubt from the back streets of some great city. But the discordance between the words and the music was so droll, it made them laugh.

The newcomers, however, were from the Gauloise, and recognized, and were recognized by, the others; they had all been ship-boys together. One of them hastened to embrace Yves: it was Kerboul who had slept in the next hammock to him on board the Inflexible. He, too, had become tall and strong; he was on the flagship, and, as he was a steady sort of fellow, he had for a long time worn red stripes on his sleeve.

The air in the tavern was oppressive and there was a great deal of noise. Madame Creachcadec brought hot wine all steaming, the preliminary to the dinner that had been ordered, and heads began to swim.

There was commotion this night in Brest: the patrols were kept busy.

In the Rue de Sept Saints and in the Rue de Saint Yves, singing and shouting went on until the morning; it was as if barbarians had been loosed there, bands escaped from ancient Gaul; there were scenes of rejoicing that recalled the boisterousness of primitive times.

The sailors sang. And the women, their fingers itching for the pieces of gold—agitated, dishevelled in this great excitation of the sailors' homecoming—mingled their shrill voices with the deep voices of the men.

The latest arrivals from the sea might be recognized by their deeper tint of bronze, by their freer carriage; and then they carried with them objects of foreign origin; some of them passed with bedraggled parakeets in cages; others with monkeys.

They sang, these sailors, at the top of their voices, with a kind of naïve expression, things that made one shudder, or perhaps little airs of the south, songs of the Basque country, and, above all, they sang mournful Breton melodies which seemed like old bagpipe airs bequeathed from Celtic antiquity.

The simple, the good, sang part songs together; they remained grouped by village, and repeated in their native tongue the long laments of the country, preserving even in their drunkenness their fine resonant young voices. Others stuttered like little children and embraced one another; unconscious of their strength they smashed doors and knocked down passers-by.

The night was advancing; only places of ill-repute remained open; and in the streets the rain continued to fall on the exuberance of these wild rejoicings.