The Islands of Dr. Thomas (12 page)

“That would definitely put some local flavour into the school curriculum,” she added. “That way, we could learn more interesting things about the islands than just the definition found in geography textbooks: ‘Islands located in North America, French colony, population 6,000. Harsh climate. Abundant snow in winter, fog in summer. And so on.'”

Some time later, François sent her another installment of Doctor Thomas' biography.

A fervent amateur of dory construction and navigation, Thomas was given an Award of Merit for sailing 3,600 kilometres at the helm of vessels on the seas off Newfoundland, and for his part in designing the first dory with a relatively high-speed motor.

“Is there anything that man didn't do?”

Apparently not:

In 1938, Louis Thomas became Chief Physician, First Class. An assistant to Professor Calmette at the Pasteur Institute, he served on the standing committee for rheumatism of the Ministry of Public Health, and also on the committee on health services for Spanish refugees. He went to the Cantabrian front, where he organized and managed a screening service for contagious diseases, sometimes during bombing episodes and even when he was detained for a while by Franco's forces.

“Another war! Do you think there is a series of photos of the Spanish Civil War somewhere, like the series on the fisheries or the one on the Prohibition?”

“No doubt,” replied Jacques, “just like there is probably one on the Great War.”

To think they had wondered if he had died shortly after he went back to France or that he had been reduced to a shadow of himself by his struggles! Not only had he continued to move up through the ranks of his profession, but his curiosity had also led him in such fascinating directions.

This portion of the biography of Doctor Thomas elicited, with even more urgency, the mystery question: Why had he left his precious collection of photos on the islands? Why had he not contacted his fellow photo- graphy buffs, or his other friends from the islands? Why had Marthe never written to her classmates?

In any case, if the man had burnt the bridge that connected him to the islands, it was not because of anything that incapacitated him—he was still fighting every imaginable battle—but for some other reason. François told Émilie on the phone that he had found out something about Doctor Thomas during the Second World War: “In 1940, he refused to pledge allegiance to the Vichy government, was put on armistice leave, and sent to Algeria. Since he wasn't the kind of man to just take it easy, he returned in secret to Toulon in 1941 and joined the special services of the Resistance. When Paris was liberated, he was with the French interior forces. Then he took part in the liberation of Lorient, both as physician and photographer. Imagine, he recorded the German surrender in his photographs!”

“That's incredible!”

“Wait! I'm not done. At that point, he left for Germany to be a doctor for prisoners of war. He was decorated with the Military Cross and the Legion of Honour. That's pretty special.”

“What was his family doing all this time?”

“That's the strange thing. I can't find anything about them at all. There is no mention of them in these archives.”

“Does it say what he did after the war?”

“No, but he must have been getting old by that time. I'll keep looking. And I'll put a portrait of the doctor I found in the archives into the mail for you. It dates back to the 1930s. You'll see, it's pretty interesting.”

The photograph was a conventional shot and looked like any other official portrait taken in those days. But something about it troubled François. He was not sure why. He counted on Émilie's opinion to help him understand.

She waited for the mail with a bit of trepidation. Aside from the view of the island and the photograph of the doctor on the capstan in Miquelon, she had never seen a close-up or a good full portrait of the doctor.

“When you get the portrait, look at it carefully,” Jacques suggested. “A person's expression, hands, forehead, stance...all that can be really telling. They sometimes reveal the true person.”

Two weeks later, the eagerly awaited envelope arrived.

She knew the mail boat had landed that day and hurried home after school. Inside the envelope she found a note glued on a second manila envelope: “I would like to introduce you to the man who has been occupying our thoughts for months. I have made a copy of it for my files. Please, let me know as soon as you can what you think of it. The second copy is for Jacques.”

She opened it quickly and found herself face to face with Doctor Thomas.

A wave of nostalgia—of genuine sorrow—emerged from the image. The man was sitting and looking to one side, into the lens. His hair neatly combed back, he was well-dressed in a suit, a white shirt, and a tie attached to the collar with a pin, and he had tucked his right hand halfway into his pocket. His left hand rested on his thigh. There was nothing pretentious or affected in his manner. Louis Thomas was posing with good will, but his thoughts seemed to be elsewhere.

Émilie read the sorrow in his empty gaze, in the wrinkles of his high forehead and around his eyes, his unsmiling mouth, the lips hidden under his moustache. All that was painful to see.

“What suffering!” she sighed.

Despite its classic appearance, the photo sent a cry through the years that seemed to pierce her eardrums. She drew her attention away from the doctor's unbearable gaze and studied the hand in the foreground. It was an artist's hand: graceful, strong, lined with wide veins, a hand that conveyed the force and the character of this uncommon man, but also betrayed his unparalleled fatigue. And there should have been a wedding band on this hand, but it was completely bare.

The other one, partially hidden by his jacket pocket, showed something shiny, a bracelet. Or was it a ring?

The emotion she felt became almost intolerable. She set the photograph aside and concentrated on the letter that accompanied it. François explained to her where and how he had found the portrait and added some details to the doctor's biography. A few minutes later, incapable of thinking of anything else, she returned to the portrait.

Louis Thomas' eyes moved her deeply. Why, though? Staring at the image for a long time, she realized that a contradictory feeling was reflected in the man's face, an inner peace mixed with a pain that seemed to have been appeased slightly, but not completely. The man was no longer suffering, it seemed, but he had definitely suffered terribly in the past. What had happened to him? How had this infinite sadness been imprinted on his features, only to finally make room for a certain serenity tinged with resignation?

The secret of Louis Thomas was hidden in this portrait. She placed the photo in full view above her desk and got into the habit of contemplating it for long periods of time. When she opened her diary, it was as if he was staring at her, as if expecting something.

As a writing exercise—she liked grappling with words this way—she tried to write a portrait of the doctor following the instructions on the familiar topic for school compositions: “Describe your favourite character by describing his physical features in a way that reveals his personality.” Doctor Thomas did not lend himself easily to this game. He did not meet the usual criteria. His face reflected both pain and joy, in a paradoxical blend that made it useless to try to see where one ended and the other began.

After giving it a lot of thought, she concluded that the photograph did express, on its own, the life experiences of its subject. The sum of his experiences was not made up of its various parts: his tired body, the wrinkles that heavily lined his face. In fact, the opposite was true. In the prime of his life in 1930, Louis Thomas was a handsome man, and he emanated a vital energy. It was in this combination of energy and fatigue that the essence of the man revealed itself: a man who had suffered hard blows, a humanist who was open to the world and who refused to follow conventions, a courageous man whose spirit had not been broken by pain, and despite everything, someone who seemed to look forward to the future, to life.

Émilie, who was so fearful of the future, envied his look that affirmed: “I have lived.” The more she looked at it, the more it seemed to want to speak to her. A single question seemed to flow from his lips, full, sensual, and even, she thought from time to time, rather mocking.

“And you, Émilie, what are you going to do with your life? Do you even know?”

For her, it was a question that could no longer be avoided. In less than a year, her schooling in Saint-Pierre would be finished and she would have her high school diploma. She had no doubt about that part, at least. Even though it was popular for the most serious students to worry about failing, she refused to do so. Of course, some students were jealous of her and would have liked to see her get nervous. These young people called her “arrogant.” She had been called that often, but she did not really mind. What did worry her, however, was what she was going to do after she got her diploma, which in the islands bore an odd resemblance to an exit visa.

“What are you going to do later?”

How many times had she heard this question? And she never knew how to answer. The fact that the doctor, too, was now silently asking her from his frame in her room did not surprise her whatsoever. The same question was on the lips of her grandmother, her parents, her girlfriends, and even François. He was, in fact, becoming insistent: “Will you come to France? Promise me you'll come.” He wanted her to study in France, in Paris, near him. He dazzled her with what she would be able to study and their proximity which would be such a gift to both of them, and the amazing possibilities that awaited her. She could do anything. He knew it and he did not hesitate to tell her that. Still, she hesitated.

“Why?” he asked her, completely serious. He rarely had doubts about anything, and certainly had none about her.

“I'm not sure what I want to do. It's as simple as that. It isn't a question of what I can do, but what I want to do.”

To be honest, she knew exactly what she wanted to do: She wanted to be a writer. The reason she did not tell anyone, that she hardly dared to write it in her diary under the watchful eyes of Doctor Thomas, was that she did not want to commit the horrible sin of pride. It was too hard to say even to Francois—that this was what she wanted to do with her life. Maybe in person she would be able to, but certainly not over the telephone.

Did he sense that she was hiding something? She could feel it every time he called, in every note he scribbled for her on one trip or another. He was determined to convince her to come and study in Paris. “Did you apply for university yet?” “Have you decided where you want to study?” He was growing more and more insistent.

“To do what afterwards, though?”

That was the dilemma, for her. As she had read one day in a passage by Jean d'Ormesson, she had a taste for life without being qualified for it. For the time being, at any rate. Given her admiration for Mr. d'Ormesson and his brilliant literary career, this admission by the writer was something of a consolation for her. At least she was not alone in feeling attracted by the world, by writing, and yet totally unconcerned with her future. She realized that this was why she was so fascinated by Doctor Thomas:
He studied medicine, but actually it was something else that nurtured him. He didn't do what was expected of him
, she thought.

And what did people expect of her? She was unable to answer that question. She was intelligent, a gifted student, artistic, and sensitive. She knew she would be able to take on anything and succeed, but she had absolutely no ambition and no career plan. What was she going to do for the rest of her life? How would she channel her energy, her talents? How was she going to make a decision that would not disappoint her parents, and François? How do you go about becoming a writer?

Every time the question came up, she was tempted to reply that the only ambition she had was to be happy and to make the people around her happy. That was the simple truth, because she could not imagine being happy unless she wrote.

As the date of her matriculation exams came closer, she still did not know where she would continue her studies. She knew she had to fill out the application forms and apply for scholarships right away, but she had no interest in doing it. There was no program, no university courses or degree listed for students who wanted to be writers. In no way did she feel capable of asking, as casually as possible, “I'd like to be a writer. What do you think?”

It is easy enough to answer the question “What do you want to do later?” with “doctor,” “teacher,” “lawyer,” “fisher,” or even “notary,” but she could not see herself saying she wanted to be a writer. “That doesn't sound very serious,” some of her teachers would remark, while her classmates would answer, “Arrogant !” No, she had to think of something else and trust her secret to her Clairefontaine notebook.

While she continued to think about her dilemma, the revelations about Doctor Thomas' activities continued to make their way across the ocean, reinforcing her initial impressions she got from his gaze.

In June 1948, he defended his doctoral thesis in Natural Science in Paris: “A contribution to the comparative histopathology of fish.”...He was the assistant director of the cancer research laboratory at the École des hautes études.