But when she heard Paimpol on the day that “Mary” had just returned home, she was somehow frantic. The serenity with which he had waited for him had disappeared; He urgently stopped his work, and without knowing why he went home earlier than usual – and on the way he hurried home, he knew Yann far away, coming to him.
His legs trembled and he was a little crashed, Yann was already close by, barely twenty steps away, Gaud saw his handsome body and curled his hair under the fisherman’s hat. This scene was so unexpected to him that he was really afraid to shake, and that Yann would notice it, then he would die of shame … could have been hiding somewhere in the bush, or sinking into the crevice of the earth. Yan also seemed to make the mind turn back or deviate to another path. But it was too late, they had to pass each other’s side on a narrow road.
To give him enough space, Yann jumped to the side of a road like a horrible horse and looked at Gaud at the same time.
Gaud was also looked at a half-second time-up created by him against his will pray worried look. And when their gaze met for a moment, Yann’s flax gray eyes seemed to expand, the flattering idea to illuminate them, the blue light shining, his face had turned red, passing through the limbs, just across the boundary of the log.
Yann raised his strike and said:
– Day, Miss Gaud!
– Day, Mr. Yann, he replied.
It had everything, she had already gone to the page. Gaud continued his journey, even more trembling, but the farther he came from him, his blood calmed down, and his powers returned …
At home, he met in the corner of the old Moan’s wall, head between his hands, he wept and sobbed, “hii, hii, hii”, like a little child, hair was disordered, and gray hats, which looked like an old hemp doll, were hanging under the hood.
– Listen, Gaud, when I met the son of Gaos in Plouherzel, when I came out of the cramps: – We talked about my son, as you understand. They’ve come from Iceland this morning, and at noon when I was out, he was here. The boy’s a couple, he also had tears in his eyes … He followed me up to the gate, carried my little rabbit…
Gaud listened to his heart, his heart began to be distressed: Yann had already gone, and he had set up all his hope for it, he was going to say so many things to him, and he probably wouldn’t come for the second time …
And the cottage felt worse than him, the heavier, the world worse, and the head fell and his mind died.
The winter came gradually as it covered all the objects in a white shell. The other twilight day followed another, but Yannia did not appear – and both women lived their days alone and rejected.
When the cold weather came, their lives became more expensive and harder.
And then it began to be difficult to take care of the old Yvonne. His main park started to mess up; he got angry at the wasted; he said the whims, once or twice a week he came to him without reason, like children.
Grandma’s Parka… In her brighter moments, she was still so gentle and good that Gaud did not wake him up to respect and love. He, who had always been good, eventually came to a blow, he revealed in his last moments the malice that had died all his life, he said he knew the brutal words he had never used before, it was a weird thing.
He also began to sing, and it was even harder to hear when he was angry, he sang what happened to the head, the parts of the fair or the wretching that he had heard in the harbor before the sailors sing. He sang “Paimpol’s Girls”, or others, waving his head and punching his leg. But he was suddenly silent, staring at the blank, and all his expressions disappeared from his eyes, as they were a flaming flame that last flared before his extinction. And then the head fell down, he sat for a long time without power and the jaw longed to rush like a dead man.
And he wasn’t as cool as before, and there was a new concern for Gaud.
Once it happened that he no longer remembered his grandson.
– Sylvestre? “Sylvestre?” He said to Gaudi and seemed to contemplate who it might be, can, evil! my girl, i’m seeing so many boys and girls, girls and boys when I was young so i really did not, now …
And at the same time, he whispered his lean hands almost laughingly.
The next day he could remember him, and he told thousands of little things about what he had done and what he had said, and Grandma’s parchment was crying all day.
Woe to those winter evenings when there were no trees to put in the nest! To do the work and the cold, to work to support her life, to sew the fine sewing she brought every night from Paimpol at home to stop before going to the country.
Yvonne’s morsel was sitting by the fireplace, his feet with a burning charcoal, his hands under the apron. But earlier in the evening I always had to talk to her.
– Why aren’t you talking, my girl? Yes, I once knew your age who could speak. I think we wouldn’t look so sad if you wanted to talk a little.
Then Gaud told him what the news had come to hear from the city, or list the names he had encountered on the road, he spoke of things that were just like him to himself, – otherwise he was all nonsense – and sensitive to talking in his stories when he noticed that the old man had slept.
There was nothing refreshing about the young man around him, his youthful youth craving for youth. His beauty was going to be an infertile emptiness…
The breezes of the sea, which got in every way, caused the lamp to starve, and the wave of waves was so on the ship; and when he listened to it, he was always grieved by Yunnan, whose home was in the waves of the sea; as a big storm storm, when he went outside and whispered, he thought of him more than usual.
And when he was alone, always alone with the grandmother lying, he was scared by him and he looked into the dark corners, remembering his ancestors who had been sailors and had slept in these camps, and who had been drowned at night, and whose souls might be return; nor did he wish to secure their visitation against the presence of an old woman who was almost part of them.
Suddenly, he shook his heel from the heel of the furnace to hearing a weak, submissive, bumpy sound coming from underground. It was Yvonne’s morsel that sang with a cheerful voice, but it fell to the heart.
And she felt a strange horror that the crazy family was giving birth to.
Satan, still raining, coinciding with the lorries, almost without water, falling down the walls, there were places in the old moss that leaked; of them, always from the same place, dropped water, tirelessly, monotonously, and the drops soaked in the mud that was made of clay from the sand and the shoe.
Water was all around them, cold, never-ending water, raging blazing water that filled the air, and made the darkness even darker, and separated the more scattered cottages in Ploubazlanek.
Sunday evenings were the worst for Gaudi because they were otherwise happier than usual, on those evenings in these remote little villages; was always part of a carefully closed cottage, which was a gloomy rain in the drift, heavy-minded singing. Inside, the tables were pushed to one of the drinking clubs, the sailors dry their clothes in front of the warping hardships: the old drank liquor and the youngsters liked the girls, all drunk and sang in their fervor. And close to them sang the sea, their grave, filling their night with a great voice…
Sometimes on Sundays, young men came from crowds, or they returned from Paimpol along the way, near their gate; they were the ones who lived the furthest, in the Pors-Even, They passed by late in the evening, they didn’t care, even when they got wet, they were used to heavy rain and gusts. Gaud listened to their songs and shouts, who dissipated the rain of raining and the breeze of the wind, – he tried to separate Yann’s voice; when he thought it heard, he felt trembling.
Yann did badly when he was no longer watching them – and then he still had a happy life after the death of Sylvestre – it wasn’t like him! No, Gaud didn’t understand him anymore, but he could not wake him thinking, believe him heartless.
And the joyful life Yann spent at home.
First he had a normal October trip to the Gulf of Gascogne, and it is always a fun time for the Icelanders, they have a little money in their purses, which they can worry without wasting (captains pay a part of the price in advance, because a regular break will only happen in winter).
In other years, they had gone to the islands to pick up salts, and there he again fell in love with the brown girl he had loved in the autumn of Saint-Martin-de-Rés. They had walked together on the last sunny days in the red wine fields, where the birds sang and the ripe grapes, sand dunes and the nearby sea filled the air with their scents; they had danced the circuit dance at the grape harvest festival where sweet wines are intoxicating and enthusiastic.
Eventually, “Maria” had traveled to Bordeaux, where she had met a beautiful singer who had given her a bell, and had been indifferent to adore herself within eight days.
After returning to Bretagne in November, he had been in the wedding of many of his friends, a groom, always dressed in a beautiful gown, and often had been dancing at the end after midnight. Every week, she had new adventures that the girls exaggerated told Gaud.
Three times or Fourth, Gaud had seen him come up against
Ploubazlanek’s road, but always so good that he
could have avoided him, then Yann was always out of the way.
They escaped each other by the wordless agreement.
XV.
Paimpoli has a great woman named Mrs Tressoleur; along a street leading to a harbor, she holds a niche well known to Icelanders, and where captains and hosts visit the sailors to wash, choose the best and drink with them.
He was once beautiful, he still loves sailors, but now he has a mustache, he is a man with his body and his speech rough. The face of a narrator under a large, white, nun headdress; there was something religious in him that did not leave him because he was a breton. On his head, the names of all the sailors in the region are written down as a list; he felt good and bad, knew what he deserved and what they were worth.
On the other day in January, he had invited Gaud to sew a new suit for himself, and he could work in a small room behind the guest room.
Mrs. Tressoleur will be through the gate between the two tanks of granite column, under the first floor of the house, in the old way; When it opens, it almost always happens to thank you for a wind gust along the street, and it will stay in the arrivals, so that when you are attacked by the attacker. The hall is shallow and deep, plastered and decorated with gold-framed boards featuring ships, collisions and shipwrecks. On one corner is a faience of a virgin picture placed in the middle of artificial flowers.
These old walls have seen many powerful sailor songs, they have seen a lot of wild, brutal joy, – Paimpol’s elders, the stormy times of pirates, the Icelanders of our days who have not changed much from their ancestors. And many human lives are here to go, washed between two cloaks, at these oak tables.
While sewing, Gaud listened when, on the other side of the wall, Mrs Tressoleur talked about Iceland’s affairs with the two old sailors who were sitting there drinking.
Elderly people talked about a beautiful new boat, which was parked in the harbor: no, “Leopoldine”, will never be ready for the next fishing season.
– Well, but, ma’am, Tokasi, will be ready! – I can tell you that it was already acquired by the crew yesterday: all the men in the old “Mary” of Guermeur, because it is going to be released; five Reima men were washed, here – in front of my eyes, – on this table – with my pen they drew under their name. And I guarantee that they are good boys: Laumek, Tugdual Caroff, Yvon Duff, Keraez’s son, Tréguier, – and the great Yann Gaos, the Pors-Even, who compares to three!
“Leopoldine!”… Gaud’s parade heard the name of the boat that was supposed to be taken by Yann, and it got attached to his memory, as if it was for it, so that it wouldn’t disappear.
When, in the evening, after returning to Ploubazlanek, he stopped working in the light of his small lamp, so he didn’t think the word that the mere echo made him submissive had vanished. The names of people and ships have their own echo, almost meaning. “Leopoldine”, the new, weird name followed him unnaturally stubborn, it became a huji nightmare. He had hoped that he would once again see Yann leave with “Mary” that he once visited, which he knew, and which the Virgin had protected for so many years on dangerous journeys; this move, this “Leopoldine” added to his worries.
But he said to himself that he was not part of him, that nothing related to Yann was in him anymore. And if it was him, Yann was there or here, for that or on this ship, came or went! ; – Or, when the new autumn came, bringing the fishermen back home? … All that was nonsense to him, not bringing him joy or hope. There was no bond between them, there was nothing that could have approached them because Yann had forgotten Sylvestre. Gaudi made it clear that he thought it would be good to give up his only dream, the only hope of his life; he had to wake up thinking about Yannia, everything Whatever the connection with his life, the name of Iceland, which, for his sake, was so sadly attracted to his ears, drove them away completely, wiping them away; he had to realize that it was at the end of the end…
She gently looked at the sleeping old grandma who needed her, but who was dying. And then, why would he live, work, why and where?
The western wind had once again started to rush out, the water had started to drip, calmly and lightly, it was when the baby was crying alongside the wind. And in the eyes of Gaudi, tears began to tear, orphan, abandoned tears, lips left a bit of a bitter taste, and then quietly dropped to his work, like a summer rain that was not carried by the clergy, but dropped heavily and quickly from overcast clouds. She couldn’t see, depressed, horrified by the emptiness of her life;
He vibrated as he stretched out his members in his beautiful dormitory: it became drier and colder every day, like all other objects in this cottage. – But he was young and he was warm and slept in the middle of crying.
