The Mahé Circle (4 page)

And meanwhile, Gène wasn't moving. He was as motionless as a Buddha, as usual; and had the same beatifically ferocious smile. What was to say he wasn't being paid to see that the doctor didn't catch any
péquois
? A lean
man with fine tanned skin. Every time
he
pulled in his line, there was a fish on it and the most extraordinary thing was that the
piade
was still intact. He hadn't needed to break open another hard shell with a hammer to extract another hermit crab.

Could it be that he was turning the boat just when he saw that the doctor was at last about to catch his
péquois
? It was easy to distinguish, even from a
sar
, a seabream. It was almost as flat, but not quite, and not quite as
round either, because a
sar
was almost moon-shaped. And it had just one black spot, near the head. As for how good it was to eat … why should it taste better than any other fish? But that was what they'd have him think.

He felt hot. He felt sick. Noises seemed to be pursuing him, to distract him from his fishing. First the sound of footsteps, a procession of footsteps on soft ground. It was the same every night. People stayed on the terrace of the Arche de Noé,
in their shirtsleeves, drinking and listening to the jukebox. Then they went off in groups. Some of them kept walking up and down the jetty, and invariably, they would start singing. You could hear them
from a long way off. They would come nearer, then
move further away, but always with the same sentimental songs. Some of them went off down the Langoustier road, and at times the song would be interrupted by women's laughter.

Hardly had these sounds faded away before it was the turn of the cicadas, and when there were no cicadas, it was the frogs – they'd explained to him that there were frogs in the big reservoir which provided the island's drinking water
supply.

Why did they think he would never catch a
péquois
? Even the mayor in his blue overall hadn't believed in him, he could sense it. All of them, when they talked to him, had the same ironic look in their eyes.

What
was
the reason …?

He scratched himself. That was another thing they'd made him believe: that he'd be covered with vermin. Well, he wouldn't believe them, he'd stop scratching. He was thirsty. The bottle of lukewarm wine was out of his
reach. If he took the time to drink, he might miss his
péquois
.

‘François!'

How could his wife be calling him from Notre-Dame Beach?

‘François!'

She was shaking him by the shoulder. He opened his eyes. Sunlight was flooding in through the shutters, and the bedroom was dazzling white from floor to ceiling, except for the iron bedsteads. The window was open. Birds could be heard chirping in
the trees.

‘Turn over, François …'

He knew why. When he slept on his left side, he sometimes snored, or breathed noisily. They were not sharing a bed. The double bed in their room wasn't wide enough for both of them. The doctor was a
very stout man; ninety kilos. They had brought up another, narrower bed, as well as the two cots for the children, and all these beds were lined up in the sun-striped room like dominoes.

‘You were talking in your sleep.'

His pillow was soaking wet and smelled of sweat. He had the heavy head of a man who had drunk too much the night before. He closed his eyes, but now he could still see the rays of light, even through his eyelids. From the harbour came the
irritating sputtering of two-stroke engines being started.

It was the fishermen, the real ones, the men who sold their catch at Hyères, setting out to pull in their lines on the far side of the island. The doctor had been to watch them the day before, in his slippers, with his nightshirt tucked into his
trousers. The air, at that time in the morning, had a curious smell. The sea too. Particularly the sea. And the world was an extraordinary colour: clear, pale in a way, but a luminous kind of pale. Pale blue. Pale green. Even the brightly painted boats had an amazing lightness. Everything
was covered with a film of dew.

He had felt something like vertigo at the sight. Was it all too much for him? He didn't like to think so. He watched the boats leaving, one after another, all heading in the same direction, leaving behind them the same silvery wake, and in
the boats the men busy mending nets, except for the
helmsman, who was standing, the rudder wedged between his knees, as motionless as a statue, like Gène.

Why on earth had Gardanne sent them on holiday to Porquerolles? They weren't comfortable here, neither his wife nor himself. His wife's digestion was already upset from the southern food. And Jeanne had complained of stomach ache from
the first day, so he had had to ask for her to be served rice.

His own sunburn was painful, and making him feel unwell. Even here, in bed, with the cool of the morning creeping in through the slats of the shutters, he felt as if he were sickening for flu.

The day before, no, it must have been two days ago, his wife hadn't wanted to go out straight after lunch, because she was afraid of the intense heat for the children. He wasn't used to taking a siesta. He had walked across the
square, which was deserted, with blinds drawn down in every house.

He had just had one drink on the terrace of the Arche de Noé, because it was cool there. Inside, Polyte, stretched out full length on a banquette, was sleeping with his mouth open, his seaman's cap down over his eyes. From an invisible
kitchen came the sound of someone washing dishes.

He had dragged himself as far as the harbour. The sailing boats were asleep as well. At the far end of the jetty, he had seen a little old man with a white beard, as thin as a boy, in clothes that seemed too big for him, rather like a cartoon
character, now leaning over the edge dipping a bamboo stick into the water of the harbour.

‘I'll get him, I will!' the old man had cackled.

‘What?'

‘The conger eel, of course! Best conger I've seen in my life. He's down there … Oh, he knows all right I'm going to catch him in the end.'

He pulled the bamboo stick, the length of a fishing-rod, out of the water. On the end was a piece of wire about ten centimetres long, and on the wire a hook with a huge piece of something white.

‘What's that?'

‘Octopus. Piece of octopus cooked over a fire of mastic twigs. I'll get him with this, see if I don't.'

Why, as he spoke to the doctor, did he have that roguish grin? Was he joking? As he gesticulated, holding his fishing line, was he putting on some kind of act?

‘Wait … Look down there … Here … You'll see his nasty old head. He's there … Look quickly.'

The doctor could see only the bamboo rod, its reflection cut in half by the water, and the green seaweed clinging to the jetty wall.

‘See him, did you? He's the tenth, ooh no, maybe the hundredth I've caught from that hole. They've got a housing shortage like us! When I've got this one, there'll be another one along, because that's a
deep hole.'

And the doctor had stayed there, with the sun blazing down on the back of his neck, watching and listening, stupidly. He'd waited almost an hour.

‘Stay here, because I'm telling you, I'll catch him.'

It was time to go back to his wife. He turned around, almost regretfully. He had not yet reached the other end of the jetty when he heard a shout and some boys raced past him, to surround the old man.

Yes, it was true, he had got his conger out of the hole, a black, viscous monster, almost as thick as a man's arm, now writhing on the uneven cobblestones of the jetty. The old man finished it off and
was carrying it proudly at arm's length, its still-twitching tail dragging on the ground, and heaven knew why, it looked somehow obscene.

Since then, whenever he thought about the jetty, he always saw the black head of the conger eel poking cautiously out of its hole, attracted by a repulsive piece of octopus bobbing about at the end of a wire. He imagined this sticky, snake-like
creature being pulled forcibly out of its tunnel, then its head splitting open as it was hammered with a stone.

He wouldn't get back to sleep now; perhaps he would drowse vaguely, dreaming of fish coming and going silently in a greenish world, watching each other from the corners of underwater avenues lined with rocks, and devouring each other.
Michel, in his cot, began to sing, as he did every morning. His mother tried to sleep a little longer. In the adjoining room, just a cupboard without windows, so that they had to leave the door open at night, Mariette was using the basin to wash.

He wanted to find out whether they had found Frans Klamm yet. He was also curious to know how the girl in the red dress had spent the night. Had they left the three children alone in the army hut where their mother had died?

He got up and dressed. He felt nostalgic for their previous holidays, which they always spent in the same hotel near Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre. They were welcomed
there with joyful cries, as if they were
members of the family.

‘Good afternoon, doctor! And madame! Oh, hasn't the little girl grown! I've kept you the same rooms as last year, with a view on the river.'

They still had almost a month to go here, and if not for his self-respect, he'd have decided to leave already, to finish off their holiday in the place where they had been so happy.

He dared not say so to his wife. And yet he knew that she felt exactly the same way. Of course she did. But he kept repeating, in contrary fashion:

‘It's marvellous here, isn't it!'

He went outside, while Hélène and Mariette got the children dressed. It had already become a habit, in scarcely four days, to go down to the harbour to watch the
Cormoran
docking.

The heat was rising. Men like himself, summer visitors, were fishing in the harbour, where all they would catch were gobies, with their revolting fat bellies. Other incomers, women in summer dresses or shorts, were climbing down into the little
boats that would take them for a tour round the island, or to Port-Cros.

He saw the mayor, still in his blue overall, with the same hat, pushing a trolley laden with empty orange-boxes towards the
Cormoran
's jetty. Groups of local men, bare feet in their carpet slippers, not yet washed or shaved, were
taking the air and looking at the white outline of the ferry as it approached from La Tour-Fondue.

‘So,
Monsieur le maire
, what's happening?'

The mayor raised his hat to scratch his scalp or mop his brow.

‘We'll see whether Polyte managed to find him.'

‘What about the children?'

‘Yes, well, we did try to take them away. My sister-in-law would have taken the little ones … And the priest's housekeeper would have taken Elisabeth.'

‘Is that the older girl? In the red dress?'

‘Yes. But she wouldn't have it. She clung on to her brother and sister. She kicked up a terrible fuss. In the end we just had to leave them there.'

‘Alone?'

‘Well, she was the one who wanted it. Look! Polyte's on board, I can see his cap.'

A white peaked cap with a gold badge, like an officer's or a yachtsman's. Gène was there too, and he greeted the doctor with his habitual ironic smile.

‘So doctor, what about those
péquois
?'

He was back from Toulon, bare feet thrust into espadrilles, wearing the same tight-fitting white T-shirt he had worn yesterday, and casually swinging his jacket in his hand. A crowd of visitors spilled off the boat. The bellboys from the hotels
took hold of their luggage.

A man came down the gangway last of all, Frans surely, and by the look on his blank face, he had a serious hangover.

‘Go on down … Move …'

Polyte was pushing him along, like a gendarme pushing a prisoner, all the time winking and telling people:

‘He's not sobered up yet. We made him drink plenty of
cups of coffee, but they all came back up. Then we tried ether, but that didn't work either. What do we do with him,
Gustave?'

Gustave was the mayor, and he was giving priority to getting his empty boxes loaded on the
Cormoran
. As he waited, Frans stayed standing in the sun, unmoving. It was true that he seemed ageless. A thin man, lean and sinewy. His skin had
been fair, but was now tanned by the sun, and he had the same cornflower-blue eyes as his daughter, and light-coloured hair, once blond perhaps, streaked with white.

He wore a dirty faded blue battledress and rope-soled espadrilles. He gazed at the bustle around him. He must have seen it all. He showed no impatience, nor did he seem surprised that Polyte had abandoned him and gone over to report to a group of
locals.

Exactly like a prisoner. Like the convicts the doctor had once seen lined up in the tug taking them from La Rochelle to Saint-Martin-de-Ré, from where they would be dispatched to Guyana: they had shown the same indifference. No doubt it had often
been Frans's lot to be put in a train carriage or a boat, for some unknown destination, then to be set down at a station, an army barracks or a hospital, with a number attached to him.

He was stronger than the men surrounding him. The doctor could sense that. He felt vexed by it, but was nevertheless sure that Frans dominated all of them. The others came and went, chatted, burst out laughing, and he, standing alone in the sun,
isolated by a formidable invisible barrier, neither trembled nor moved a muscle.

‘I thought we'd find him by the station,' Polyte was explaining. ‘Funny that. Most men, they want to get drunk, they head for the harbour, with all the cafés and the music. Or they
try the whorehouses on the ramparts.'

The doctor was eavesdropping, without joining the group.

‘But him, no! I wonder if he even notices women. Say, Frans, do you ever go to see the tarts in Toulon?'