The Islands of Dr. Thomas (6 page)

“But Doctor, that's how he caught cold!”

“On the contrary! He is having trouble breathing and his lungs are tired because he has been sitting at home in the heat, doing nothing. He needs fresh air and exercise,” the doctor adds, trying to sound authoritative, but is just barely convincing. “If you want him to be able to go back to his fishing in the spring, you'll have to listen to me on this one…”

He feels his instructions carry some weight. The work argument is more persuasive than all his theories about fresh air and exercise, which he knows confuses his patients and their families. According to an old local saying that people would not stop repeating to him, a draft that is not strong enough to blow out a candle is still strong enough to kill a man.

Mrs. Gautier stands up.

“Can I go and see him?” she asks.

“Certainly. We'll keep him here a few more days and then he can go home. Go ahead.”

After Mrs. Gautier leaves, Doctor Thomas goes back to his office. He thinks about the numerous patients upstairs in the sanatorium, fighting their disease, alone, away from their loved ones. Some days he observes the patients who are still strong enough to stand at the window, to “watch life go by,” as they say, or wait for a member of their family to come by and from the street shout the latest news from their child, their mother, their grandfather.

He feels desperately inadequate in his struggles against the disease which he fights without much success most of the time. “Such misery! On the sea, on the land, in their homes...everywhere, illness and accidents afflict these poor souls. I see nothing but suffering, from morning to night.”

All the trusting expressions on the faces of his patients and their families affect him deeply. “They look at me as though I can do anything. And I know so little...”

“Doctor, Doctor, come quickly! Marie-Marthe Puchuluteguy is about to deliver her baby,” explains Sister Hélène, utterly flustered. “It's a breech birth...” she adds, with a worried look.

One day, Émilie studied and then put aside the photographs taken at sea or onboard fishing boats. A sailor's daughter, she could appreciate the sailboats, three- masters, brigs, and schooners cutting a fine figure on the banks. But aside from the boats themselves, she could find nothing that connected the photos to the islands. On the other hand, she liked to look at every little detail of the ones taken on the decks of fishing boats. These ones reminded her of the working class world of Émile Zola's novels, which were taught in high school that year. Although there were no mines or shantytowns in the photos, the scene was just as sad: The men, overworked, dirty, freezing cold (it was easy to tell), were catching, splitting, and cleaning the cod.

“How did the doctor manage to take such clear shots when he was standing on the deck of a boat in constant motion, and with everything going on around him?” she asked Jacques, after she had shown him the series of photos.

“And what was he doing on a boat, anyway?” she added.

Other shots showed the ships in the Saint-Pierre harbour, while the fish were being taken off the boats and weighed. One in particular fascinated her. Cod was piled on a scale, and all around stood the men who had loaded it. There was salt everywhere: on their clothes, in their scruffy beards, on the deck. The photo was the colour of a shroud, allegory of death, faithful companion of the Terre-Neuvas as they sailed the seas. Suddenly, rather than Zola, the image brought to mind passages from
Pêcheur d'Islande
, a novel she had read a few years ago. She realized that the author, despite her earlier impressions, had not exaggerated anything. Would François like this photo? She could not decide right away, so she put it to one side. She remembered what her grandmother often used to tell her: “We are here only because of the cod. Everything that happened was related to it. Lucky for some, unlucky for others. In Saint-Pierre, just like in Miquelon, the meaning of our life has always been fish...fish and nothing but fish.”

She began a new pile next to the pile of rejected photos, which she would have to look at again later. Time was running out. The end of the school year was just around the corner, and her family would be going to Langlade for the summer holidays. She would only be back in Saint-Pierre at the beginning of September, right before school started again. The family wanted to make the most of the summer paradise.

Already, preparations were underway. There was only one way to get to Langlade, a weekly mail boat that brought the supplies: bread, meat, fresh fruit, and vegetables. For the common necessities, they had to plan and pack carefully, so they would not find themselves missing something essential. You did not want to start making a cake only to realize you did not have enough sugar, look for pasta to eat with your ham and find only alphabet soup noodles, or even worse, get a picnic basket ready for the mid-afternoon snack and notice that there were no teabags or cans of milk left. It was a bit shameful to have to go to your neighbour's—who, like the ant in La Fontaine's fable, had never been caught “without”—to borrow a cup of sugar, a box of noodles, or a dozen teabags. And then you had to contact the grocer in Saint-Pierre and give him the grocery list so that you could replace the items from the neighbour's pantry as quickly as possible. The neighbour would give you an indulgent smile that seemed to suggest she was thinking how badly organized the family was.

Having experienced this many times in the past, Mother and Grandmother tried harder every year to better prepare their supplies, and filled every box they could find—empty crates of condensed milk, Sunkist oranges, Johnny Walker whisky—with supplies, tied them up neatly, and stored them in the entryway. The pile was getting higher every day.

Sardines in oil and Géo brand pâté for picnics; boxes of soup mix for busy evenings; sauerkraut, blood pudding, and wieners to have on hand for the tropical storms that occurred after August 15, and that prevented the mail boat from delivering the provisions; a big tin full to the brim with Milady brand English toffees (which Émilie took large handfuls of and shared with her friends); and Poulain brand chocolate bars she stuffed in a pocket of her backpack, along with two chunks of baguette, when she went swimming in the Belle Rivière. All these preparations usually filled her with happiness, and she could not wait to be on her way. This year, however, she barely noticed the activity. She had not yet finished choosing the photos and would be away for two months.

“Don't worry,” the photographer said. “It'll give me time to sort out the rest of the plates. When you come back, you'll have a better selection.”

His reasoning did not manage to convince her. In her race toward the finish line, she began to spend every moment of her spare time in the studio.

“I've been thinking,” the photographer announced to her one day. “Why don't you take the photos of Miquelon-Langlade with you? I've just finished printing them. Once you're there, you can sort them.”

Standing with the wind blowing in her face, her knees rocking in harmony with the waves, Émilie watched as the coast of Langlade emerged on the horizon and then hid behind the slightly dishevelled fog banks hanging onto the crests of the waves in the middle of the bay. A little further out—she could tell by the mild temperature of the air that caressed her face and the brightness in the west—the fog was going to disappear all of a sudden, leaving the sunshine in its place filling the air with its glittering reflections, dancing gleefully on the waves, and setting the quartz cliffs of Langlade alight. Indeed, a few minutes later, on the deck, the passengers opened up their pea jackets or oilskin coats to take in the welcome rays of sunshine. Voices became louder, as people knew they no longer had to keep the silence mandatory in the fog, which allowed the captains to hear the sound of the surf that announced the coast only a few minutes before they landed, or the approach of another craft also blinded by the fog and risking a collision. The use of radar in the mail boat had done nothing to change this reflex, which had been reinforced by centuries of “Hush!” “Be quiet!” “Shut up!” or “Listen,” repeated by the captains who knew they could never be too careful.

This is the way the
Saint-Eugène
sailed into the Langlade summer, around the Anse-aux-Soldats. Well protected from the coast, the boat stopped moving; the hunting dogs tied to the rail that had moaned and groaned from the time they left Saint-Pierre now calmed down, feeling the inshore breeze. The poor people who had suffered from seasickness could now relax, happy to have refrained, by sheer will power and concentration throughout the entire crossing, from heaving their breakfast into the ocean, though it had been calm this morning.

For Émilie, summer began with this familiar ritual that never bored her. As soon as the steam pushing the boat ahead died down, and the boat began its graceful slide into its moorings, it signaled for her a slower, gentler pace of life.

The dune stretched out straight ahead of her. To the left above the pebbles of the shoreline was the mouth of the Belle-Rivière. Further back, at the edge of the woods, the little red and white chapel hailed its parishioners. Here, even religious ceremonies were lighter. On Sunday they gathered at the chapel at the convenience of the priest from Miquelon or the one from Saint-Pierre, whenever they could get a “lift” in a vacationer's dory or some other vessel. “What time is Mass?” people would ask, on the road to the farm. If no one managed to find out, they would keep an eye on the activity around the summer camp and the chapel...Sometimes they simply waited for the first person to arrive to ring the church bells. The parishioners would sit cheerfully in the tiny chapel, trying not to make the old wooden pews creak as they sat down, and would delegate the duties: “Who wants to read the Scriptures?” “Do you want to take the collection?” “How about the offertory?” Everything in Langlade required collaboration, whether it was in the chapel or on the beach, where the men were clustered right now, rolling up their sleeves and in their waders, as they waited for the dories full of supplies and passengers to help unloading.

In her little suitcase, safely tucked in a plastic bag to keep them out of harm's way (sometimes packages fell into the water between the ship and the dory when they were unloaded), she had carefully (and secretly) packed Doctor Thomas' photos to bring them back to the place where they had been taken. Émilie choked up at the thought. She had not even had a chance to look at them, since Jacques had finished printing them just before she left.

“Keep it as a surprise for when you get to Langlade,” Jacques had suggested the night before. “That will be even better! And enjoy your summer. You've got plenty of time; François won't be back until fall.”

Standing on the shore amidst the ruckus, Émilie started collecting her things, the way everyone else was doing, to find the crates and the suitcases that belonged to her family in the clutter of packages and containers of all sorts: Robin Hood flour bags full of weekly bread supplies (six baguettes, three one-pound loaves of bread, four three-pound loaves, two thinner baguettes, and four loaves of sliced bread), pots of paint and cans of nails, piles of wood and roof felting to repair the summer homes. To her great relief, she saw her suitcase and hurried to put it in safety above the high-water mark, before she went to give her mother a hand carrying everything to Mr. Olivier's trailer. Every year Olivier, the only farmer in Langlade, who was also the radio operator, the postmaster, and the makeshift mayor in this paradise without a government, kindly delivered their “move” to the foot of their property on his way back home. At the end of the day, when most of their things were put away, Émilie's mother would open the garage doors and try to get the old jeep started.

Since arriving in Langlade, Émilie had slowed down even more, the way one might expect when people are on holidays. She never accepted the farmer's offer to drive her to their place; instead, she happily set out on foot along the dirt road. She needed to walk, at least the first time she went to the house every summer. The smell of manure, seaweed, and firs was intoxicating. The road, its surface a patchwork of potholes and cow dung, imprinted the irregular and deep rhythm of nature on the soles of her feet as she walked, and she found this made her feel good after the endless artificial flatness of the paved streets. The straps on her backpack weighed heavily on her shoulders, her feet overheating in her rubber boots, and sweat dripped down her back under the heavy sweater and yellow oilskin that were part of the uniform of travelling Langlade citizens. But it did not matter. She felt as light as a soul floating towards happiness.
Did the doctor feel this way when he landed here?
she wondered.

She was delighted to be in her room again with its pleasant musty smell and a faint odour of grass and sand as well. Her back was warmed by the heat beginning to penetrate the roof felting, which in August would make her refuge in the attic stifling. She opened her suitcase and took out the envelope of photos, which she stuffed under her pillow, along with her diary, until she could find a minute alone to freely look at them. Her mother was already calling her to take care of some necessary chores: go and get water, bring in the wood to make a little fire, and get rid of the humidity that lingered after the full yearly cleaning her father had done the week before.

Langlade belonged to the women of the family. Her father hardly had time to visit in the summer; he would take a week or two of holidays at most. However, before they got there he made sure everything was in working order: took off the shutters that protected the windows, removed the cowl at the top of the chimney, and primed the pump. Then he got the twelve-volt generator going, charged the batteries, and started the gas refrigerator stored in the little shed behind the house that made it possible to keep the meat cold a little longer than in the old days. They could even make delicious ice cream.