Marianne had been waiting on the quayside for twenty minutes by the time Yann picked her up. She simply hadn’t been able to bear sitting in her room any longer, wondering whether she was dressed smartly enough. She could have spent many more hours changing her outfit. Jeans or red dress? Tight blouse or soft sweater? High-heeled pumps or flat-soled linen slippers? Good heavens, she simply had too little experience of what a woman should wear on her first date to make herself attractive but not too inviting. She had opted for the dark-blue jeans, pumps and a white blouse, which she buttoned up to the top.
She was incredibly excited, and had been for two days. She could barely eat, and above all she couldn’t wipe this ridiculous grin from her face. Excitement didn’t even come close to describing what she felt. Naked panic, more like. Foolish joy. One moment her complexion was pale white, the next bright red.
Eventually she had gone down to the kitchen to see Jean-Rémy and had let him pour her a shot of rum without any objection. It had calmed her down a little, but only until Jean-Rémy undid the top two buttons of her blouse, turned up the collar slightly and signaled to her to tousle her tidily arranged hair a bit. “Très jolie, très rock’n’roll,” he had said, and Marianne had gone shakily out onto the quayside to continue her wait.
Increasingly she felt like a boat at sea, drifting farther and farther from land until the coast was out of sight. The land of her past was fading in similar fashion. Sixty years appeared to have flashed past like a single day, and it was as if that day had occurred many centuries ago.
When Yann got out of his car and walked toward her, she was scared that she might either burst out laughing or dissolve into a never-ending fit of weeping. She was so nervous, her hands were sopping wet.
He gave her that look again. No man had ever looked at her so intently: Marianne could almost feel herself growing warm in the spotlight of Yann’s eyes.
“Salut,” he murmured as he bent forward to kiss her. This time all three touches of his lips were close to the corners of her mouth. He kissed her slowly and deliberately, and she inhaled his fragrance. He smelled of the outdoors, with a whiff of paint and nice tangy aftershave.
He guided her to his dilapidated car, opened the door and made sure that he also got to close it. She had no idea what to do with her hands and where to look.
Yann prayed ardently that he wasn’t about to commit the most stupid mistake of his entire life. Over the past two days he had been continually tempted to come and withdraw his invitation. But a man didn’t do such a thing. Invite someone to a funeral? What on earth had he been thinking?
Yann had often visited the fisherman Jozeb Pulenn in Penmarc’h to purchase ray and cod. The now late Jozeb had also been helpful in Yann’s search for themes for his work. How often Yann had painted the Notre Dame de la Joie chapel, a Gothic church by the shore, and the Phare d’Eckmühl, France’s tallest lighthouse, which dwarfed the adjacent village of Saint-Guénolé. He loved to remove his glasses and paint everything his senses could absorb, not only what his weak eyes were able to perceive.
Yet was that a good enough reason for imposing a funeral ceremony on Marianne? Yann hardly dared to look at her, yet when he did, he could feel her smile and a strange emotion welling up inside himself. That emotion was red and pulsing.
Marianne was shamefully conscious that she blushed every time she looked at Yann or tried to say something to him, so she restricted herself to gazing out of the window or observing the secure yet relaxed grip of Yann’s hands on the steering wheel. Whenever they did catch each other’s gaze, they simultaneously broke into a smile. It was the most wonderful silence Marianne had ever heard.
After half an hour’s drive along the coast they reached the port of Saint-Guénolé and found a host of Jozeb’s cousins, grandchildren, daughters and brothers-in-law waiting on the breakwater to greet them with proper ceremony. For the first time, Marianne felt slightly ill at ease, a feeling that was only exacerbated when everybody—the more elderly among them in traditional costume with white headdresses made of straw and lace, the younger ones wearing casual clothes and white scarves—gave them a welcome kiss. It took fifteen minutes to complete the greetings.
She eventually made it to an old lady standing next to a table on which an urn had been placed. Her face was as wizened as a piece of weathered wood, and she seemed to be leaning more on the urn for support than on her walking stick. It was only then that Marianne understood the purpose of this gathering.
Apple brandy was served, and two men carried the table onto the fishing trawler by the breakwater. The captain lowered the Breton flag to half-mast. As the engine started, Yann offered his hand to Marianne to help her across the short gangway.
When the trawler had puttered out onto the rolling open sea, leaving behind the foaming waves crashing against the cliffs and rocks, each of the funeral guests scattered a handful of the dead man’s ashes onto the waters. The ashes had the texture of the finest sand, and Marianne hoped that she didn’t happen to be crushing the deceased’s heart, or even his eye, between her fingers. As she let the ashes drift out over the railing, she wished the unknown Jozeb happiness in the other world. If what Pascale had told her were true, then the sea was the widest gate into the realm of spirits and gods, where future, past and present were all irrelevant. The sea was like a church and an island, a final song steeped in darkness and tenderness.
A few of the mourners stood together at the ship’s prow and struck up a gwerz, a Breton dirge. Marianne could understand only with her heart what these people were singing with such untrammeled emotion. It was a ballad of utter devotion, and she felt tears sting her eyes. Her heart was overflowing, and she groped for Yann’s hand. He pressed it, then laid an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. When a tear ran down her cheek and caught on her lip, he gently brushed away this salty sign of grief and touched his own lips to her warm temple. They stood beside each other and let themselves sway to the rocking of the boat.
Marianne felt momentarily as if destiny had determined this instant long ago. It was like waking in the middle of the night between two dreams, the moment when you grasp reality for what it truly is, not as it appears in the daytime. Blessed by fate.
Back on land, the group moved on to Jozeb Pulenn’s house. Garlands of shells were draped from the apple trees. Yann talked to the fisherman’s widow, and as they bade farewell, he spoke the sacred words: “Jozeb was always true to three things: himself, his family and Brittany.” Then he took Marianne by the hand and they left the funeral, which now more resembled a garden party, with children playing catch and pulling cats’ tails.
Back in the car, they exchanged a brief look.
“That was wonderful,” Marianne said in a low voice. “Thank you.”
Yann gave a sigh of relief as he turned the key in the ignition.
They drove on in his old Renault to Quimper, the county town, and visited the art museum. Yann didn’t try to explain the pictures to Marianne: he wanted to see how the pictures explained themselves.
Lucien Simon’s painting Le Brûlage de Goémon, which showed women burning seaweed in front of Penmarc’h’s squat chapel while the sea foamed around them, the sky bent glowering over them and the wind billowed their headdresses and aprons, sent a shock wave through Marianne. It wasn’t only that the Notre Dame de la Joie chapel still stood in Penmarc’h and looked exactly the same as it had in 1913 when the artist had painted it; it looked exactly as it had when it was built five hundred years ago. The simple, beautiful church would still exist when Marianne no longer did, when Yann, Colette, Lothar and everyone else had been wiped from the face of the earth. They would all die: only stones and art were immortal.
She suddenly felt an incredible fear of dying prematurely and not having had her fill when her final day came—her fill of life, up to the top and over the rim. She’d never felt such lust for life: the pain of having missed out on so much was threatening to blow her heart asunder. Never had the act she had considered committing struck her as more egregious: she had tried to put herself to death long before her time.
All this the picture told her.
Yann put his hand on Marianne’s back, and her heart was pumping and beating, as if to say: it’s far from over. Every second can mark a new beginning. Open your eyes and see: the world is out there and it wants you.
She turned and threw her arms around him. She had not exchanged more than four or five words with this man so far, and yet she felt as if he understood her better than anyone ever had.