The Mahé Circle (2 page)

He had taken a sudden dislike to that great rock rising up out of the sea so close to them, which continued, heaven knew why, to frighten him. He was getting equally irritated with the sea itself, the perfectly calm blue sea, on which he had been
so happy to sail out on this little white boat with its blue gunnels.

His wife had not dared to tease him when he had come back from the cooperative store wearing a straw hat in the shape of a pith helmet, such as he had seen worn by the locals: she had simply said, with her
provincial accent:

‘You bought a hat, then?'

He had only to look up to see her, perhaps three hundred metres away; it was difficult, with the water in between, to gauge distances. In the curve of the bay lay one of the island's sandy beaches, Notre-Dame Beach, shaded by umbrella
pines. That white patch on the sand was his wife, sitting quite still, occupied in sewing or knitting. The black patch alongside her was Mariette, their young housemaid, whom they had brought on holiday with them from Saint-Hilaire. The tiny figure doing somersaults on the sand or climbing
on to the women's laps was their son Michel, and the little girl, who was called back every time the water reached her knees, their daughter.

He could see them, and from where they were, they could see him, sitting at one end of Gène's small boat. It was very hot. Skin exposed to the sun would bake, and by next morning would have turned brick-red. He had experienced this the day
before. He had gone out for a walk with his shirtsleeves rolled up. Now, as far as the elbows, his arms looked like raw meat, while higher up the skin seemed pale and unhealthy.

He felt light-headed. He was regretting having hired Gène for an afternoon's fishing. He would have liked to turn for home, but dared not suggest it.

It was looking down into the depths especially that did
it. That clear landscape, so strange and inhuman that he felt he was discovering another planet. The smells too, the salt water, his fingers, which had
been handling fish and shellfish, the fragrance from the sun-baked Mediterranean shrubs, carried out to them on the breeze.

He still clung to the childish hope of hooking a good catch and surprising Gène; he frowned even harder, and leaned out over the water until he was dizzy.

They had been in Porquerolles only four days, and already he was tired of it. Utterly worn out. The sun was exhausting. Everything required an effort, an effort to adapt, an effort to understand. The island was indeed beautiful, as his friend
Gardanne, the painter of the river Sèvre near Nantes, had assured him. Probably he was just a fish out of water here himself.

‘Pull in!' Gène said.

He hauled sharply on his line. There was something on the other end, but he had drawn up no more than two metres of it before the fish had escaped.

Now all he could think of was his headache. He was smoking, which was the wrong thing to do because it made him thirsty, and the local wine, which they had brought with them, had warmed up lying in the boat and made him feel sick.

Now and then the sound of an engine could be heard. It would be a boat like theirs, a little larger or smaller. Almost always, there would be one or more summer visitors aboard, while a local man stood motionless at the tiller. As it came level
with them, he would lift his arm in greeting and Gène would do the same.

‘It's Ferdinand,' he would say simply, as if that was enough, as if Ferdinand was world famous.

One of these bustling boats now headed straight for them. It had come from the harbour, not from the open sea. When it was a few metres away, the engine was cut and the boat drifted up until it gently bumped them.

‘You're the doctor? Do you mind coming? It's this woman, she's dying.'

And for Gène's benefit, the man added offhandedly:

‘Frans's wife.'

Then he explained:

‘Yeah, we do have a doctor on the island, but he's away to Fréjus for a wedding, won't be back till next week.'

‘You better get in his boat,' Gène advised him. ‘Faster than mine, it is.'

The doctor was a big man. His ninety kilos made the boat lurch dangerously, and he almost fell into the other vessel, before finding himself sitting on a thwart.

‘Will you be going back now, Gène?'

‘Soon as I've pulled in the lines.'

‘Get any
péquois
?'

‘A few.'

The engine hiccuped, then started to turn over, the boat swung round in a half-circle and now the doctor could see Notre-Dame Beach, with his wife and children, on his left. He waved to them as they went past. He had tried to persuade them to
come out in Gène's boat, saying they could be taken back later, but Hélène hadn't wanted anything to do with it. When they had arrived in their car at Giens Point, and she had seen the ferry, the
Cormoran
, waiting
to take them over
to the island, she had blenched; she had had to overcome her fear in order even to set foot on board, and now the thought of the end of their holiday, which would mean another sea-crossing, had become a nightmare to her.

They sailed on round some rocks, under an old fort baking in the sun and abandoned to the lizards. The family had been there for a walk the previous day. The ground was covered with a strange squashy vegetation, with red berries that crunched
underfoot. The abandoned fort had no doors or windows left. Its walls seemed to be made of white dust, petrified over the centuries by the sun.

There, too, the doctor had felt ill at ease. It had made him think of the Middle Ages, the Crusades. He jumped every time a basking lizard or grass snake made a move, although he had been assured there were no vipers on the island.

‘What's wrong with her?'

‘It's her chest getting her. Nothing new, she's been ailing for years, but this time, looks like the end.'

Here and there, on a beach or one of the island's paths, he could see groups of people, standing still or walking, holidaymakers like his own family, setting out to explore the place, in white clothes and straw hats. Over there, the jetty.
And the harbour, where a dozen yachts were moored, and a man under a derrick was painting a boat bright blue.

‘It's not far, up behind the church. I'll take you. You'll tie up the boat for us, Polyte?'

They left it bobbing in the harbour. The air was thick
and heavy. The ground, the trees, the walls, all gave off fumes, waves of heat. Instead of crossing the main square, a bare yellow expanse where groups
of men were playing boules, they turned left, climbed a steep path and passed a rubbish heap: the doctor allowed himself to be guided and could still feel the movement of the sea inside his head: his whole body was continuing to live at a rhythm too calm and powerful to be its usual one, so
much so that he felt for a moment the urge to feel his pulse, to check that it was normal.

‘Over this way …'

They crossed a road, in a place where he wasn't expecting to find one. They were very near the village, but a little above it, at roof level, and there under the trees, beyond a waste patch, was a row of low buildings, an old barracks
perhaps, or, as it turned out, former storage huts for the French Army Engineers. Two women, standing out in the glare of the sun, watched them approach. On the ground near them, were two half-naked and grubby children.

And a door standing open on to a dark blue shadow, almost the same blue as the bottom of the sea.

The two women followed him with their eyes, without speaking. He almost caught his foot in the long prickly leaves of Barbary figs and cactuses growing there for no particular reason.

‘Go inside, doctor.'

At first he couldn't see anything. Then a figure gradually emerged, a woman coming towards them from the dark interior. She said:

‘I think she's just gone.'

The doctor glimpsed a red patch: a young girl, in a dress as scarlet as a flag, her thin legs bare, crouching in a corner, against the wall, and staring at them.

And finally, on a mattress on the floor, he saw or rather guessed at, the woman he had been called to attend, a motionless form under a blanket, the face terrifyingly thin, the eyes open and unseeing.

She had only just died. The body was still warm. He smelled broth and found a bowl which one of the women had no doubt brought her, but which was untouched.

‘She
is
dead, isn't she?'

The eyes of the girl in the red dress were still staring at him through the darkness and he hesitated to answer the woman, who went on:

‘The last hour, she was trembling all over, I had to hold her … Sweating too … Bad smell … I can still smell it on my hands.'

The young girl hadn't budged. Crouched down as she was, it was impossible to guess how old she might be.

‘She did want to say something … She kept trying, but no, she couldn't manage it. In the end, I saw these two big tears in her eyes, and I thought then, this must be it. With her arms and legs going, like a rabbit when you
knock it out. Just as you were getting in the harbour in Bastou's boat … But even if you'd been here, doctor, you couldn't have done anything for her, could you?'

No, nothing. He looked around. The man who had led him there was talking to the two women outside. They were outlined against a dazzling sunlit rectangle. Another
person was slowly climbing up the path,
between the Barbary figs and cactuses. He wore a wide-brimmed gardener's hat, and the blue of his overall was more sumptuous than the blue of the sky.

‘Look, here comes the mayor now, I sent after him.'

They weren't in a proper bedroom. It was like nothing he'd ever seen. There were four walls that had once been whitewashed. No window, just the open door. Alongside the mattress of the dead woman were others, covered with rags and old
clothes serving as blankets.

Perhaps it was indeed the smell of sweat that lingered in the air, but mixed with other vague and bitter odours, a child's urine, sour milk, garlic and fish, as well as the fragrance of the pines and arbutus which was the background scent
of the island.

‘She's just died, just now; doctor's with her.'

The two women outside were reporting the death to the mayor, who now loomed up in the doorway, accustoming his eyes to the semi-darkness, then came forward and automatically took off his straw hat. But in order not to give too much importance to
this gesture, he scratched his head, his dark hair standing up in spikes.

‘Frans isn't on the island, then?' he asked.

He was the grocer from the shop on the village square, the doctor recognized him, since that very morning he had bought some sweets from him for his daughter.

‘And you're sure she's dead?'

In reply, the doctor simply closed the dead woman's eyes, with a troubled glance at the red dress which had still not moved.

‘Oh, it's a nuisance,' the mayor sighed, scratching his head again.

And turning to the women:

‘How long has he been away?'

‘Since day before yesterday.'

‘So he might not be back for three or four days, say? Come here, my dear, when did your papa go away?'

The girl repeated:

‘Day before yesterday.'

But she didn't move from the spot, still crouching against the wall.

‘And you don't know how much money he had?'

‘No.'

‘Did he leave some for your mama?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Where's her purse?'

He looked around. It was the girl who pointed out to him a hole in the wall, at head height, and where there was indeed a battered purse. The grocer knew it well, because it was from that purse that the woman took her cash when she came to the
shop.

‘Just six francs left,' he announced.

Flies were starting to buzz at the back of the room where the corpse lay.

The doctor had been feeling disoriented for a while now. He didn't try to react or understand. And yet the words burned themselves into his memory so forcefully, without his realizing it, that he was able later on to recall them with as
much accuracy as the nursery rhymes learned in childhood. It was the same with the images, especially the red
dress, the simple red cotton dress that the skinny young girl was wearing as her sole clothing. Her hair was pale blonde, her eyes blue. The
dead woman too had fair hair, the colour of flax.

‘We'll need to send Polyte off to get Frans. He'll find him if anyone can … It stinks in here. You coming outside, doctor?'

And the neighbour who had been there with the dying woman asked him, pointing to the corpse:

‘What'll I do with her?'

Outside, through the greenery, could be seen the pink roofs of the village, the yellow church, the square where tiny figures were still playing boules; then the harbour with its sailing boats and sightseers, the jetty, the blue mountains of the
mainland, and beyond, in the strip of sunlit sea, a warship steaming past at full speed: a torpedo boat with slim lines.

‘You'll maybe come down to the town hall with me, got to get the burial permit?'

Then the mayor scratched his shoulder and complained:

‘We're sure to have caught some fleas. It was crawling with 'em back there. Lucky for us you were there, I'd have had to get a doctor over from Hyères for the formalities.'

The doctor allowed himself to be led down, turning back from time to time, and the low row of army huts, with only one occupied, the grey-green cactuses and thornbushes, the tall umbrella pines with their sloping trunks, imprinted themselves on
his mind, along with the women who had now moved towards the buildings, leaving the two half-naked children to themselves.

‘They're the only people like that we've got on the island,' the mayor explained, as they went down the steep path. ‘They came over under the old mayor, six years ago, or
I'd never have let them settle here. They didn't ask permission from anyone. They just appeared one fine day, off the
Cormoran
, with nothing but an old colonial tin trunk. They only had the two children then. The woman was pregnant. They didn't ask anyone for
anything. I don't even know where they slept the first night, probably on the beach, although I think it was February or March, and the Mistral could've been blowing.'