The Islands of Dr. Thomas (14 page)

Even before she got her high school diploma, she could feel that the islands, their population, and their institutions had joined forces to send her away, to force her to go and see what was happening in other places.

“Nothing you do will keep you from coming back,” they added, trying to convince her.

She had her doubts.

She was in this uneasy state of mind when they flew over the coast of France. From the window, she looked at the gentle curves of the coastlines of Brittany and Normandy—she had no landmarks to distinguish them—the irregular patchwork of farms, fields, and forests, the little brick-coloured villages, the houses tight against each other in order to leave a little room for farmlands. Suddenly she felt a lump in her throat; tears blurred her vision, as a song by Jean Ferrat called
Ma France
came back to her. She had heard it years ago and thought she had forgotten it. Why, when she considered herself so North American? When she laughed at François for calling her “my European girl”?

Her convictions shaken, taken aback, this young North American who had claimed the only thing European about her was her ancestry now had her nose glued to the window so she would not miss a single piece of the gradually approaching landscape. The view reminded her of the aerial photos she had pored over in her geography textbooks. It was completely different from Saint-Pierre and Canada. Here, there was no snow anywhere; everything was green. She could even identify the trees in bloom: apple trees, cherry trees, and, as they got closer, vegetable and flower gardens.

And now Paris. The Eiffel Tower, first of all, the winding curves of the Seine, Notre-Dame. She tried in vain to situate herself: the left bank, the right bank, she could not figure it out. She wondered where François' office was. In the end, the only thing that mattered on this expedition was that two men were waiting for her—François and Doctor Thomas—whose portrait she had slipped into her diary and whose face she had stared at many times as they flew over the Atlantic. She was still trying to figure out the circumstances that led this man to return to France, and why he had never tried to reconnect with the islands.

François was at the airport, looking proud of himself and as impatient as a child at the idea of showing her around his world.

“There you are!”

He rushed to meet her, the way she had done that winter morning in front of the Pointe aux Canons, the day they had made the acquaintance of Doctor Thomas.

Once he was at her side, he realized that there was something wrong, a sadness perhaps, weighing her down. He looked at her without a word, took her hand, and went over to pick up her suitcase. She could feel in this contact with him an energy that swept away all her indecision.

“So, here's my plan,” he announced. “First, we'll bring the plates to my office for safe keeping. Then we'll get you settled at the hotel. Tomorrow morning, first thing, we'll take the plates to the museum and meet the curator. I've invited him to have lunch with us. After that, you can decide what we'll do with the rest of the day. What do you think?”

He had chosen a hotel near his apartment, near the Seine, “on the right bank,” he said. Through the car windows, as they moved around the boulevards of Paris, she had the feeling she was travelling through a history book: the galleries of the Louvre stretching along, with its breath-taking architectural precision, the Tuileries garden on the other side of the Seine, the Orsay train station that they were converting into a museum.

“It's so much bigger than I imagined...”

Farther along she glimpsed the menacing towers of the Conciergerie and the steeple of the Sainte-Chapelle. François named all of these places she had heard about in school—
I should have paid more attention
, she thought—and she realized that Paris was not like other cities, certainly not like the young cities of North America. Here, from Notre-Dame to the Lutèce arenas, daily life took place in the middle of French history. The polluted air of the capital did not seem quite as unbearable anymore, and she could even ignore the dark-brown waters of the Seine.

After dropping her bags off at the hotel, he took her to a sidewalk café at Place Colette; “Just a few steps away from the Comédie-Française!” he exclaimed, as he pointed out the famous theatre. She had seen a performance on its stage on television once or twice, but had never even thought about what the building looked like or where it was.

He smiled at her enthusiasm.

“Inside, they even have Molière's armchair. I think you can go in and see it, but I'm not sure.”

He got up quickly, spotting a bookstore on the other side of the square, and asked her to wait for a minute.

“You'll need tourist guides and a map so that you can explore the city. I'll be right back.” She smiled as she watched him walk away. He was almost skipping like a kid.

“Here are some things to look at tonight, if you don't fall asleep right away,” he said a few minutes later, placing his loot on the tiny round table. “Try to find out if we can tour the theatre. We'll find time to go at some point. I am at your service...and that of the doctor.”

She smiled happily. It felt like everything was possible now.

To the great frustration of his colleagues, François had tossed the planning for the week out the window. Moreover, he took a mischievous pleasure in doing so.

“How about going for a walk? My legs feel numb from the airplane,” she suggested.

He pushed back his chair and took her arm. They crossed the square, went down the Rue de Rivoli, where the traffic was incredibly busy and loud, then through the grounds of the Louvre to the banks of the Seine. Night was falling peacefully, the trees were adorned with bright new leaves, and there was a gentle spring warmth in the air that would not be felt in Saint-Pierre et Miquelon for two or three months yet.

“It's as warm as it is in the middle of the summer in Saint-Pierre, and there is so much green!”

“That's right,” he said, smiling at her surprise, “But smell the air...it's not quite the same here, is it?”

True enough, despite the gentle caresses of spring, the flowers blooming in flower-boxes on balconies, and the bright green leaves newly deployed, there was a lingering odour of exhaust fumes, hot rubber from tires, stagnant water and refuse. Even in the relative calm on the banks, you could hear the noises of traffic, horns, and sirens in the background.

“Listen. It sounds like the ocean on the west shore the day after a storm...”

He burst out laughing, amused at the parallel that seemed so odd but was absolutely correct.
From now on
, he thought,
that's what I'll think about before I start complaining.

“Can you see, now, why I love the wind and the storm in Saint-Pierre? The air is so clean and fresh, it cleans out my lungs.”

She smiled, moved a little closer to him, and adjusted her pace to walk at the same rhythm as he did. She began to think that here, in Paris, in the middle of the pollution and the millions of people around them, they were alone in the world; while on their islands, where there were only six thousand people, in the wilds of nature, they were never alone.

At about the same time, he stopped to look at her, enthralled to see her in this Paris evening, in the place where, decades ago, he had become resigned to solitude.

“Paris is beautiful with you here!”

The curator of the Marine museum, a rear admiral with a rather intimidating physique but debonair, met them in his office the next morning. Émilie was given a quick tour of the public galleries. Then the three of them went into the workshops and offices where, among other things, the Doctor Thomas exhibition was being assembled.

“Here,” the curator said, with a sweeping gesture, “are the photos taken during the First World War. The army has loaned them to us. We've made most of the prints. Sit down; I want to show you something amazing.”

The curator and his guests took their seats around a large desk, where two beige file folders were set before them. In the first was a photo that dated back to the beginning of the war. It showed a group of soldiers at the front, sitting on a mound of earth eating their lunch—a few carefree minutes in the middle of long days for these men destined to suffer under machine-gun fire. There were little details that emphasized how precarious the moment was: their weapons within arm's reach, their soiled uniforms and muddy boots, the tiny rations they were eating. The soldiers' attitudes reflected the full range of human emotion. One had a lofty pose of a young man confident he could make short work of the German army. Another expressed the inescapable anxiety of someone who feared the worst. The third one had a blank stare, as if he no longer expected anything of the time he had left to live.

Émilie could feel her heart sinking. She turned to François, who nodded his head, sharing her sentiment. In this innocuous setting, and despite the rather pleasant scene of men taking a break to eat together, the photograph conveyed war, drama, sweat, dirt and sulfur.

“Once again, the doctor has managed to express the worst of life through an ordinary event.” She sighed.

“Exactly,” agreed the curator. “That's what makes his work so interesting. Now, look at this one,” he said, opening the second folder.

They were speechless. The second photo had been taken at the same place. The lens had not moved an inch, and the shot was framed the same way. But where an instant before three soldiers had been eating their ration, now there were only twisted bodies, torn apart like the mound of earth behind which they had taken shelter.

“It looks as though the doctor was protected from the explosion because he was standing a few steps out of the way, taking the picture,” he commented. “That may be when he got his injury. We're trying to confirm the facts.”

“How could he have survived such an event?” Émilie asked, her eyes glued to the carnage.

“A stroke of luck,” replied the curator.

“Remember, in Miquelon, people told us he came back from the war and he wasn't the same person,” François said, guessing that she was not trying to figure out how the doctor had escaped the blast, but rather how he had managed to go on living.

“As you can guess, those two photos will be part of the exhibition,” the curator stated. “They are absolutely unique. We're still looking for the ones he took during the Spanish Civil War.”

“After this, I wonder where he found the courage to pick up his camera and go to help the Republican troops in Spain,” François said.

“Especially since he didn't have to go, the way he did in 1914,” she added.

“The more closely we examine his career, the more obvious it becomes that Doctor Thomas was only happy when he was in the centre of the action,” the curator continued. “He seemed to have volunteered for every task, complex or petty, as long as there was something new to see and learn. They don't make men like that anymore.”

Once more she looked at both photos side by side. For anyone, like her, who had not known the horrors of war, the two photos made the soldiers' terror tangible, as well as the ordinary aspect of war. Despite the fear, the thought of death stalking them, the men had to meet their most basic needs: eat, rest a little, maybe even laugh. This was clear in the first photo, in the rather relaxed posture of the soldiers in a kind of cease-fire. Then came the second photo, which made it clear that war did not give anyone a break, that the cease-fire was an illusion, that death could strike at any moment.

The explosion of this rogue shell must have devastated the doctor. She could almost hear, trapped under the jagged rocks, the dying men scream in agony, moan in pain, their limbs ripped apart and their cries lost in the whistling of bullets and the deafening thunder of bombs.

Émilie had to shake that terrible feeling. The curator had other things to show them, photos taken on the Grand Banks during a fishing expedition.

“I've already seen some of these,” she explained. “He left a whole series of them in Saint-Pierre.”

“The doctor must have printed some of the photos and kept some of the glass plates for himself. They date back to his last stay on your islands, in any case,” the curator explained. “When we asked the Navy authorities for Thomas' photos of the French fishing fleet in Newfoundland, they just stared at us...No one knew about the collection. It took a long time to find it.”

Since she had seen the war photos taken by the doctor, Émilie had a better understanding of how he had managed to infuse such dignity in the eyes of the exhausted, soiled, and shaggy-haired fishermen.

“Between his atrocious war memories and the feverish commercial activity around the Prohibition in Saint-Pierre, those men must have seemed irreproachable.”

“In any case,” François agreed, “I have a better idea of why he volunteered for a mission to the banks. I'm sure he appreciated the peace on the sea!”

Now it was time to tell the curator about the series of photos the doctor had taken about the Prohibition, smuggling as it was called in Saint-Pierre et Miquelon. “That's something else to research,” François announced.