The Mahé Circle (17 page)

‘That might take too long …'

They returned to the surgery. Two sheets of paper were ready, and Mahé felt between his fingers a wretched cheap penholder, sticky with purple ink.

‘Here … look … and here. We can look into the details tomorrow. Take your copy with you. I won't offer you an aperitif, if you don't mind … As I never have one, I'm not sure there's
anything in the house.'

‘Thank you. They're waiting for me.'

He had to shake that clammy hand, and when he found
himself outside, he felt as though he was emerging from another world, his eyes clouded, his gait unsteady.

‘Your turn now, doctor. You're with Gène and Bastou. Cabrini sent up the first ball, but you'll be able to deal with him.'

During the whole of the game, he felt he was being mocked. He could see irony in every expression. He ended up wondering whether the entire island was in on the trick that had been played on him.

Who knows, perhaps since the first time he had stepped off the boat … Four years ago now. He had been struggling for four years … Or rather no, it wasn't true. On the contrary he had wallowed in his pain. He had known
that sooner or later it would end in disaster.

But why think it a disaster? He looked round at the square, seeing it with different eyes from the past. He was part of it now. All he would have to do in future was open the front door, in slippers or espadrilles, and walk along, his skin still
damp with sweat, to await the arrival of the
Cormoran
, then sit on Maurice's terrace for the first glass of white wine of the day, reading the paper and chatting with one of the fishermen.

The Mahés could just take a running jump! What had they brought him up to do? Nothing. They had truly fixed a circle of stone round him, just like in his dream. You will marry Hélène, because she's mild and docile. You'll father a
couple of children with her. You'll do your rounds on a motorbike to save petrol. You'll be a country doctor all your life, and your house will be well cared for.

They would have held it against him if he had tried to rise even a little higher above his station. So why should they forbid him to go
down
in the world, if he wasn't happy where he had been
placed?

‘You're not playing too well today, doctor!'

Was he even aware of playing a game at all? He went to pick up his boules. He waited for his turn. He would have all the time in the world to perfect his game now.

Since his team had lost, he paid for two rounds of drinks, one more than was necessary.

‘Are you going to go fishing tomorrow morning?'

He looked across at Gène, who had asked the question, and gave a start, as if these words had awoken something in his subconscious.

‘I'm not sure,' he said in a neutral voice.

‘Well, if you do, there are some
piades
ready in the bucket.'

He had an arrangement with Gène nowadays that he could use his boat, which he had learned to manage.

The bell was ringing for supper at the Pension Saint-Charles. His wife and children were already at table. He looked at them for a long time, astonished to see them there, the children getting so big, his wife so uncomplaining.

‘I've written to Péchade,' she said, as they ate.

Why? He had no idea. He couldn't see the connection. He didn't have the heart to ask her.

After supper, he went for a walk along the jetty. There were hardly any yachts by now. In a few days, the holidays would be over, and the island would return to its quiet
winter state. He went for a drink.
Not too many, two or three. He shook a number of hands.

At last he went to bed, and passed the night tossing and turning. As he slept fitfully, with flashes of consciousness, he was aware of heaving himself on to his side and rolling over on the mattress. The air was cooler now. He wondered whether he
might be catching cold.

Very early next morning, as the first birds were singing in the tamarisks on the roadside, he lay on his back, eyes wide open, feeling very calm, almost eerily calm. He stayed like that for a quarter of an hour, then got up quietly, pulled on his
trousers and the old fishing jacket, combed his hair quickly and tiptoed out, without bothering to shave.

Jojo was washing the tiled floor of the Arche de Noé, with the doors wide open. He went in and ordered a glass of white wine.

‘You're going fishing?'

He said yes, and went out without paying. Now that he was a regular customer, his drinks were marked up on the slate behind the door.

Gène's boat was sparkling with drops of dew, but he knew there was a cloth stowed away below. The air was cool. The fishermen were leaving port.

He went through the ritual gestures, filled the tank, made sure the plugs were clean, and lifted up the basket of hermit crabs soaking in water, then finally went up on the jetty to loosen the moorings.

He did all this with minute care. For a moment, once he had the engine running, he glanced at the square, to
make sure Gène wasn't coming to join him at the last minute. In fact, as they learned
later, Gène arrived at the harbour just after the boat had rounded the jetty, heading straight for the Mèdes.

The engine turned over sweetly, the water bubbled and sparkled behind the boat with its blue gunnel. Sea and sky met each other in the same fresh iridescent green. The fishermen's boats, which had a good start and more powerful engines,
were already nearing the two white rocks which marked the far end of the island.

The doctor stopped the engine near the larger of the rocks, the one where he had been fishing that first day with Gène. He dropped a heavy stone attached to a rope to act as an anchor. He scattered a few
piades
on the seat, and looked
for the hammer and the
boulantins
.

Twice he turned round to look at Notre-Dame Beach, where his wife and children with Mariette had been sitting that first day.

Slowly, he lowered a hand-held line into the water and leaned across the coping. The sea was still as crystal clear as ever. He recognized the underwater scene where fish were swimming, some white, others with black stripes: seabream. And he
remembered the business with the
péquois.
Very far off, at the end of the jetty, a small rowing-boat, setting off for a morning's fishing for tiddlers, came into view: the large straw hat belonged to old Monsieur Forgeard, a retired lawyer who lived on the island all year
round.

His hand automatically gave little jerks on the line, and the first fish he pulled up was – indeed – a
péquois
. He
looked at it with an odd smile, before dropping it into the bottom of the boat,
under a damp towel. Then he let the line down again.

He leaned over the side once more. Some black shapes, longer and swifter, could be seen among the pale fish. He remembered the Admiral's conger eel.

He had left his straw hat in the front of the boat. The sun was beating down on his skull. An invisible swell, which he had not previously noticed, began to lift the boat at an infinitely slow rhythm, and at the same time, his line caught on the
seabed and he leaned further over.

That was all he ever knew. He was standing up, leaning over and looking at the bottom. His head was swimming, perhaps because of the early morning, the bad night he had passed, the wine or the sun, which was already hot.

It seemed to him that thousands of golden sequins covered the surface of the water, and golden needles were piercing his eyes.

He swayed to and fro. He was being pulled forward. And yet he knew perfectly well that he could react, it only needed a little effort.

The movement had something restful and voluptuous about it, the water was coming nearer, and the seabed with its avenues of seaweed and glutinous mountains.

Everyone would think it was an accident. Perhaps it was?

In the split second that it took to be swallowed up by the coolness of the sea, he asked himself the question.

Was it just that question? It wasn't
a
question, it was
the
question, the only one. His eyes widened and asked it,
innocently, of the immensity around him, and he still received no
answer.

The salt water penetrated him, he could see the bottom of the sea very close, as if through a huge magnifying glass, then he came back to the surface, went down again, and his arms pushed away the disapproving circle of the Mahés; he needed, he
could feel it at last, to go deeper, to reach the red dress, there were moments when he was on the point of touching it.

Elisabeth was looking at him, pale-faced and with astonished eyes: perhaps she was wondering what had taken him so long?

He was coming, just a little more effort. The Mahés didn't understand, they would never understand. He himself hadn't understood, it was only now that he could begin to glimpse the truth.

It was a love story. And then there was another truth, even more luminous, a grand passion in which …

But when he reached that truth, when he was absorbed into it like a bubble of air, his human life was over and he could no longer pass on the message.

They found Gène's boat, capsized, with the straw hat floating alongside. It wasn't until the evening that a boathook pulled in the body, over a mile away, near the harbour mouth, where it had floated of itself, between two tides.

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