The Islands of Dr. Thomas (17 page)

“Does the fact that we're doing research on him upset you?” asked Émilie, who was a little ashamed to be bringing such intimate details of the doctor's story to light.

“Not at all! The doctor deserves to be better understood. He never tried to explain the decision he made on the wharf in Le Havre, why he made such a dramatic change in his life. In a way, he never really forgave himself. That's why he never tried to get back in touch with his friends in Saint-Pierre et Miquelon. He talked about them all the time, though. I never went there, but I know all about the places he loved: Langlade, Mirande, Miquelon, le Chapeau, le Barachois...It's as though he had gone into exile,” she added with the conviction of someone who sees injustice and suffers from it. “And besides, he deserved to have people take an interest in him and his work while he was still alive. Nobody did. If you want to honour him today, that is a good thing. The only person who might keep me from giving you this material is Marthe, and she has made it perfectly clear that she is no longer part of the family.”

“Would you like to stay here while we look at them, at least?” asked François.

“No, thank you. I already know every detail by heart. I'd rather let you look at them yourselves. You know where to find me, and I can come back if you need me.”

She stood up. As she turned to say goodbye, her eyes were drawn to one of the photos hanging on the wall, the one of the doctor sitting on the capstan with the seal in his arms. She went up to look at it.

“It would be good if people in Saint-Pierre et Miquelon knew what happened to him. He loved them so.”

She went out, her eyes filled with tears. Émilie realized that this woman must be the spitting image of her mother at the same age. She and François sat down together, the briefcase in front of them, rather intimidated by the idea that it might contain answers to their questions, and also the end of the road.

“Jacques should be with us now,” she murmured.

“We'll show him when he gets here,” replied François.

He pulled the worn briefcase, its leather soft with age, delicately towards him. He unfastened the two straps, then took out the albums and handed Émilie the letters.

There was really not much there. A few official letters from the department of the Navy, some notes to accompany various glass plates, letters from Emma that gave news of Marthe, and a little package of envelopes tied up in a ribbon that Émilie undid with the greatest care possible.

“What's in it?” asked François, intrigued.

“They're letters addressed to people in Saint-Pierre et Miquelon,” she replied, leafing through them. “One for Auguste Maufroy, another for Paul Chartier, one for Dominique Borotra, and one for Ernest Hutton. They're all stamped and ready to be mailed...”

“And he never mailed them...”

Delicately, she opened one of the envelopes and took out the letter addressed to Auguste Maufroy.

Dear Auguste...

Except for the greeting, the page was blank. She quickly opened the other envelopes. It was the same thing:
Dear Paul, Dear Dominique
…and then nothing.

“He didn't write anything!” she cried. “He addressed the envelopes, wrote the greetings, and that's it!”

“He didn't know what to say.”

François had long since stopped looking at the albums, which contained photos that he had not seen before but which were not much different from thousands of others the doctor had abandoned on the islands. Émilie held the envelopes on her lap, vain attempts to reconnect with the past.

François got up and turned some lights on while Émilie went to get a glass of water, as if they absolutely had to move around to bring back some sense of reality, of the ordinary world, in order to soften the intensity of the moment. They sat down on the sofa next to each other. She leaned her head on his shoulder, hoping to be comforted a bit from the pain of this man who had never found the words to reconnect with his islands. In the rust-coloured light of the lamp, in the silence of the building that the employees had left hours ago, a feeling of serenity descended on them.

“He must have suffered so deeply from not being able to reconnect with the people he cared about,” she sighed.

He stroked her shoulder without saying anything.

“At least we have a chance to honour him now. Everyone will be able to admire his life and his work, and realize what an exceptional man he was.”

“And they'll finally know what happened to him,” she said.

“We owe it to him...”

And François, who had never been a fan of words any more than of confidences, added: “He made me aware of a lot of things,” he said, casting his gaze on the luxury of his office. “For a long time I thought financial and social success was all I needed. If we hadn't met the doctor, I would no doubt have kept on working like a mule. Fortunately, this adventure has taught me something, a new way of enjoying life, appreciating the beauty of friendship...and of you.”

She smiled and gave him a look that was so full of tenderness that he felt that he was powerful enough to change his life for the better. For him, now over fifty years old, the world was opening up new and unexpected possibilities, as exciting as the day when, as a young scholarship student, he stood on the deck of the ship that was taking him to France, watching the islands disappear behind him as his future spread out before him on the horizon.

“I've made a decision...One I've been thinking of since you got here. And here it goes: I've done enough here. I'm going to pass the business over to one of my associates and I'm going to do something else.”

“What?” she asked, her eyes wide with astonishment.

“I don't know yet, but I can tell you that I'm going to be spending more time in Saint-Pierre. I'd like to do something in heritage preservation there, or maybe teach. Why not? A completely different way of life, anyway, as I see it. I know what I don't want to do. Life is too short, and I don't want to have regrets all my life the way the doctor did.” He suddenly sat up straight and asked, in an excited voice, “Do you think that Edmond would like me to design a museum for him?”

She smiled knowingly. “You know he's not the type to refuse an offer like that!”

“Well, I'll start there,” he said, thrilled with his idea. “Then we'll see. And you?”

“Me, too. If it weren't for the doctor and you, I would have missed out on what's essential,” she whispered like a confession.

“And the essential, for you, would be...?”

“To get over my fears, to come here and study, to see if I can measure up to others...to succeed.”

For a brief moment, it seemed as if, on top of his capstan, a small smile appeared on Doctor Thomas' face.

Six months later, François arrived at his mother's house for lunch. He had spent the morning in the land registry and the public works offices in Saint-Pierre, examining the piece of land where the new museum would soon be built. As was to be expected, Edmond had enthusiastically agreed to François' offer to design a museum. “And he's a local son, too!” he had exclaimed. They were still looking for funding, but neither Edmond nor François viewed that as a serious obstacle. The exhibition in France of Doctor Thomas' photographs had rallied political will for the construction of a new museum, and the purse-strings seemed to be loosening up.

François began his project with great enthusiasm, feeling that his new life and the light-heartedness it brought him would strengthen his creativity, or even transform it completely. He was tremendously eager to get to the drawing board.

As he explained to Edmond, “It's almost as if it's my very first contract!”

As he entered his home that morning, he noticed the mail had been put on the little table next to the telephone. There was a large envelope addressed to him. “Émilie!” he cried. Since she had moved to Paris in September, she kept him informed of everything she was discovering, and entertained him with silly stories about getting used to the big city and the university. She was staying in his apartment. “Why look for an apartment,” he told Émilie's parents, “when mine is free? When I visit, it is plenty big for two people.”

My, she's on a roll!
he thought, looking at the size of the envelope. He opened it impatiently. There was a Clairefontaine notebook in it, one of those school notebooks with a margin and lines to keep the notes clear and organized.

On the first page, in the still uncertain handwriting of a teenage girl, were a few words carefully underlined with such a straight line it was obvious that it had been made with a ruler. It read:
The Islands of Doctor Thomas
. He hurried to turn the page. On it was a photo, the one of Cap Blanc in the winter, followed by a handwritten text. Further on he found the photo of the doctor on the capstan with the seal on his lap; further still a pebble beach in Miquelon, near the church. And at the end, the incredible portrait of the doctor. A written passage accompanied each photo.

Miquelon
February 10, 1913

I took off from the village as though the Devil were at my heels. I took refuge here, on top of a little hillock, where I am looking at the nature around me, frozen into ice. My camera is at my feet. Glacial, immobile, nature seems to be crying out to me: “Why did you come here?”

In
the Doctor's House
, as people in Miquelon call it with deep respect in their voice, Emma is resting, our little Marthe snuggled in her arms. She was born last night. Emma, who was calm and serene throughout her pregnancy, gave birth the same way, without screaming or fighting, a very simple birth. “It's not an illness,” she likes to say. “Childbirth is not necessarily painful.” She certainly proved it to me. I was feverishly awaiting this birth, filled with joy to bring into the world the flesh of my flesh. It's a privilege that most men don't have a chance to experience the way I did.

The whole world was peaceful around us. The old midwife from Miquelon was even discreet enough to leave me alone with my wife once she had checked to see that the baby was presenting normally. The miracle of the birth of our first child took place in the privacy of our own bedroom, the same place where she had been conceived.

When I saw the head of the baby emerge from its cocoon, with a beautiful full head of hair, I took the tiny shoulders in my hand and I turned the tiny, slippery body around. I was thunderstruck by a happiness which must be akin to God's when he created the Earth in his image. Our little girl slipped into my open hands with a confidence that was all the proof I needed that we would be united in infinite love.

The moment I raised my head to reassure Emma and to tell her that we had a baby girl, I felt as though I was the master of the world. I was certain that my heart would never be big enough to contain all the love I had for these two women.

An instant later, after I held our daughter by the feet and gave her a little tap in the back, all this happiness brutally and inexplicably transformed into an intolerable pain. I looked at the little face, contorted with pain, the anguished cries of this child who had been taken away from the reassuring sound of her mother's heartbeat, who was forced to learn how to breathe on her own, thrown into the world, and I was conscious of the enormity of what Emma and I had done. What right did we have to bring this child into the world? What sorrows would she have to endure? And at the very moment I was asking myself these disturbing questions, trying to appease my fears and relieve my remorse, I put my face close to hers. I felt instinctively that this wrinkled face was like the one my daughter would have at the time of her death. I wanted to howl with fear. When her blind eyes stared back at me, I wanted to die.

How can the horror of this vision be explained? How can it be explained, especially to the woman who is, at that very moment, exhausted by the delivery and flooded with a new and overwhelming motherly love for her child, who has closed her eyes and rests, smiling and comfortable on her pillow? What could be said to the midwife who, seeing me rush out of the room, attributed my emotion to pride and a desire to tell everyone we had a little girl?

I kept the horror of my thoughts to myself. I would have been ashamed to share them. During the hours that followed—it seemed like centuries—I shook hands and accepted congratulations, embraced Emma and kissed the forehead of the little victim that I had forced to live and that I barely dared to look at for fear of having a vision of the apocalypse.

That is how I came to be here, on top of this hill. Emma looked at me with a tired smile as I left. Because she is always pragmatic, I don't doubt for an instant that she believes my instability is due to a combination of fatigue and exaltation. The people of Miquelon would probably see it as more proof of my being odd: “He doesn't do anything the same way as the rest of us,” they will say, shaking their heads.

I am crying. I am thinking about my patients who struggle day after day for their bread, sitting in a dory clutching their fishing line, who, at the end of their day on the sea, lean over a pebbly plot of land to pull up carrots, potatoes, or cabbage, who hunt, gather, build, repair, knit, sew, and cook to survive. They couldn't care less about my state of mind. I feel guilty.

At the end of a long while, drowning in tears, I raise my eyes to the horizon. I observe that on this day after another storm, even nature cannot take any more. Not a wave on the exhausted ocean, not a ray of the weak sun, too tired to make the slightest effort, and no warmth in these freezing hills on which, you would swear, no bakeapple will ever ripen again, these icy ponds on which no ducks or geese will ever again land, or this brush in which no deer or rabbit will ever again hide.

Several minutes pass. Little by little, however, in the calm of nature, I can feel serenity emerge from below the frozen surface. Quietly, patiently, in the ineffable beauty of my surroundings, in spite of the heavy cloud cover and the biting cold, I begin to feel comforted. Beauty and suffering are one, each existing only because of the other. Nature is beautiful because it is sad. The cold that invades each of my pores makes me dream of the warmth of the house I have just fled.

Over there in the distance, despite the ocean that is pretending to be docile, the lighthouse at Cap Blanc keeps watch over the sailors. It keeps watch over the fishers, just as I will keep watch over Marthe. Why did I run away? Why was I so frightened?

I am getting the photo ready. Through my camera, will I be able to express what I have just understood: That without horror, there is no beauty; without fear, no true love; without danger, no real attachment? The horror of our condition is exactly this—in order to appreciate one, we must inflict the other upon ourselves.

One day, I will try to explain all this to Marthe. Perhaps, then, she will forgive us...