The Boy Who Belonged to the Sea Read online

  * * *

  Luc has reached certain conclusions. He thinks he has figured out what my father is trying to convey to me: he wants me to return his head to him.

  The hypothesis is nutty beyond words but does have the merit of fitting the facts into a coherent scheme. Luc thinks Papa is a prisoner of Kilometre 54, that he’s bored to tears there and keeps Mama with him so he won’t be lonely. Luc supposes he would willingly release her if he could break away from that purgatory himself and attain the rest owing the dead, but he cannot do this. According to Luc, Papa can’t escape from the Kilometre because he is incomplete, because his head is missing. Therefore, the solution is obvious: we need to return it to him. Luc thinks he has been asking for this all along; the visions and all those imploring gestures are to be interpreted in this way. In his opinion, there’s no question about it: my father wants me to help him find his head. An impossible task, on the face of it, since his head was annihilated by the train. But is there any real proof that it was crushed? I have always been convinced my father’s skull was destroyed because this is what I was told, but what are the known facts?

  * * *

  I have subjected my grandfolks to a close interrogation. They were baffled and somewhat disturbed by my questions but answered them to the best of their ability. As far as they knew, the head was indeed shattered. At least, this was the conclusion reached by the police officers involved in the investigation, because they could find no trace of if. But now that I stop to think about it, the assumption strikes me as rather improbable. It must have been difficult to conduct a thorough search when winter held the fifty-fourth kilometre in its arctic grip. What if, instead of being crushed, Papa’s head had only been severed? What if it had been hurled into the air and had landed at some distance in the deep snow, thus escaping the officers’ attention?

  * * *

  Once upon a time, my venerable forefather chose a lonely place away from the village to bury his dead, and that same spot, on the hill, is still the site of Ferland’s cemetery. Big, leafy trees grow there and their bows form an openwork archway over the tombs. When I entered this lacy cathedral, I was surprised to see how thick the grass on my father’s grave already was. I came to look for a sign, some sort of confirmation, and I questioned his epitaph for a long time, but it remained silent. Unless, of course, one counts as a reply the rustling of the leaves, the creak of branches stirred by breaths of ocean air, and those quiet sobs drifting up from the trees — the ethereal sighing of the wind.

  16

  Boudine, the notary’s son, agreed to rent his motorbike to me for five hundred humbugs, gas not included. Luc loaded an extra fuel can onto his back and, after a spluttering three-hour ride on the hinterland’s gangways, the fifty-fourth kilometre revealed itself to us in its true, vaguely radioactive light. A sky dotted with timid fleecy clouds. A picture-postcard bush. At long last, I saw the setting of the tragedy with my own eyes. It had all happened right there, between the iron bridge that stretched across the river and the difficult curve oozing from the north. A great spot for skidooing, providing you added snow, then superimposed the shadowy light of a winter’s evening and summoned up a murderous north wind. But it was hard to envision the place like that on this scorching August morning, with the sun making our caps stick to our heads and swarms of miniature choppers attacking us. Frightened at first by our arrival, the birds soon went back to twittering and the crickets to crittering in the narrow strip of swampy ground. We anointed ourselves with fly oil, then began our search under the impious gaze of the crows, those negative gulls. We meant to scour the area around the railway line, but also the tall grass and the edge of the forest — rugged stretches of wasteland where the head could easily have been catapulted. I was trying not to think about what I might find. I only hoped the local necrophagous life forms had had the time to finish their job.

  We were advancing into enemy territory, because this was the train’s dominion. Walking along the rails was like following the monster’s fresh tracks, and I moved cautiously forward with nerves as taut as an anchor rope in a stormy sea. My insides churned with rage. I wished it dared to show itself, that scrap heap, that mangler of fathers, so I could vent my vengeful fury and pepper the monster with stones and abuse. I felt like setting a trap for it, removing the bolts from the rails or blowing up the pillars of the bridge. How sorry I was I didn’t have the necessary tools with me! Now, all I could do was pelt the detested track with my spit.

  We came across traces of the accident here and there: Plexiglas splinters and fragments of fibreglass, mechanical parts, shreds of a saddle. Then a whole ski oddly planted in the bushes like some cabalistic sign. Luc suddenly called out to me and I crossed the track. I prepared myself for the worst. But it wasn’t the head. It was one of my mother’s mittens. I put this relic in my bag and we beat the undergrowth even more zealously. We were convinced the object of our quest was close by.

  Never, ever, would the fifty-fourth kilometre be scanned with greater precision than by our young, radar-like senses. Yet the day drew to a close without us finding even my father’s helmet, and we ended up near the bridge empty-handed, mortified. We got home at dusk. We were so dirty Grandmother almost had a fit, but after a series of thorough scrubbings she agreed nevertheless to feed us. Luc decided to stay overnight.

  He’s right there, heaped on top of the other bed like a pile of caviar, snoring away while I write. What has happened to the head? Was it pinched by an animal? Did a wolf or bear make off with Papa’s skull to savour it quietly in the comfort of his lair? And what am I supposed to do now?

  * * *

  It must have been midnight or thereabouts when Luc’s aquatic gibberish woke me up. He was jabbering with some merman he knows. I got up to go to the bathroom and, as I walked by Mama’s room, I noticed the door was ajar. I went in to make sure everything was all right. A tranquil moon hovered in the window, blanketing Mama with an extra eiderdown. I was just going to leave when something caught my eye: by the foot of the bed, the floor glistened. The boards were wet. There were even puddles. Footprints. With my blood running cold, I turned towards the darkest corner of the room and found myself staring at Papa.

  He was terribly real in his Ski-doo suit with that melted snow dripping from his boots. Out of the volcanic crater of his neck rose an icy exhalation that condensed into a ghostly face. I would have liked to believe he was only here to visit my mother, but when I saw his hands reaching towards me, I knew he had come to get his head.

  ‘I couldn’t find it,’ I gasped out. ‘We searched everywhere, but it wasn’t there.’

  I tried hard to think of an excuse, an explanation. I wanted the phantom to realize it wasn’t my fault, but his hands remained extended, insistent, and from his fingers radiated cold waves that twisted my stomach into a tight knot. He started to move. He came towards me, making the floorboards creak beneath his unearthly weight, and it was no longer to implore that he stretched out his fingers, but to demand. I was stiff as a poker, unable to run away while the hands lengthened to catch me and a warm snake slid down my leg, slithering away through my pajama bottoms…

  Suddenly, I was back in my bed, with Luc smothering my screams. He explained it was a nightmare and ordered me to be quiet before I alerted the whole household. I managed to control myself although the darkness around me crawled with living things. My sheets were wet with urine, but at this point sleeping was out of the question anyway. We threw on our clothes, slipped out of the house, and headed for the Cove to consult the iguana. Because the ghost will definitely return tonight. And again tomorrow night, and the night after that. He will keep coming back for as long as he needs to. I have no choice; I must find a way to give him what he wants.

  17

  After a hellish morning spent racking our brains, we finally thought of a solution: we were going to make a duplicate head. We had no other option, since the original article couldn’t be found. At least we would be taking action rather than giving i
n to apathy.

  Everything we needed, I found in the attic, in the cupboard where Grandmother keeps her wigs from the sixties. A dozen synthetic scalps were gathering dust up there, and I simply picked one, also taking along the Styrofoam head that served as its stand. At the Cove, the handyman tools were waiting for me on the little table, laid out like surgical instruments, and we got down to work, trimming, gluing, and combing like fanatical do-it-yourselfers. I soon realized that achieving a likeness wasn’t essential. What needed to be done was to win the ghost over by presenting him with an extraordinary object, and not irritate him with a bad copy. And since the project was an artistic one, we unleashed the full force of our imaginations, losing all track of time until the evening hour, when the curious sun bent down to cast a ray into our cave.

  I have before me the result of our inspired exertions. It is a dazzling golden head. The cheeks are backs of sea-urchins, the pupils tiny pebbles, and enamelled shells serve as ears. We have painted it a bright gold, embellished it with arabesques, topped it with feathers before encircling it with a wreath of whalebone. It looks like a precious mask belonging to the pharaoh of some underwater realm. This head is truly magnificent. Even the iguana seems impressed. What remains to be seen is whether the ghost will accept it…

  * * *

  A canopy of branches concealed the cemetery from the moon’s inquisitive gaze. The Ancients’ tall, elaborate cross towered over that spot like a scarecrow over the gums of an enormous gap-toothed mouth. As light-footed as sprites, we noiselessly slipped between the tombstones until we reached my father’s, which was frighteningly pale. But the time for shilly-shallying was past and, in the flashlights’ self-centred glow, our spades bit into the lawn. Devoid of its crust, the earth responded to the shovels’ cold caresses, and we turned into valiant muscle machines, taking care to pace ourselves, working away with the determination of those who have made up their minds to see their task through to the end. One must have exhumed one’s father to be able to understand what I felt while the pit was dug and my thoughts deepened along with it. It was as though the massive tapestry of oblivion drew aside, as though the memory of the one who was at the core of things suddenly burst through the surface like a great white whale. Childhood re-emerged, a mosaic of harmonious moments, but of clashes as well — an artesian recalling of insignificant hours, which are ultimately all that matter. Time grew elastic. Now, the only vivid, sparkling thing in that narrow world was the thud of our shovels gutting the fresh earth and ruthlessly slicing through innocent earthworms — a cruel necessity we were able to ignore on account of the primordial humus smell and the hypnotic coming together of steel and sweat. A languorous, intoxicating warmth overwhelmed us. I had the strange feeling I was plunging more truly into my inner self than into the depths of the earth, that I was piercing the tendon-like membrane of reality and fleeing from the distant aperture. The earth piled up, rose steadily, but grew heavy nonetheless, because the sand, attuned to the seriousness of the occasion, would fall in deliberately. To keep our spirits up and maintain our momentum, we launched into a digging song, the one belonging to miners and moles, to secret philosophies. We didn’t worry about anyone hearing us, for the world now ended at the frontiers of that pit in which we toiled.

  We were into it all the way up to our eyebrows when, at last, we hit a hard surface. The coffin, the closed door to my father’s catacomb. We finished freeing it, then I grabbed hold of a screwdriver. The tool shook between my fingers. I had difficulty aligning it with the screws but refused Luc’s help: opening a father’s casket was a sacred task, which only an unworthy son would have the audacity to delegate. The last screw popped out. Since I felt my courage ebbing away, I quickly lifted the lid and we crossed the beams of our flashlights.

  Papa was there. Up to the collar, at least. He didn’t appear to be in too bad a shape. He even looked rather handsome in his Sunday best. Luc passed me the wig box. I took out the head and held it up to show my father. Respectfully, I laid it down at the upper end of the coffin and wedged it in with stones so it wouldn’t roll about. Lying there with his new head, Papa resembled a recumbent statue in its medieval crypt. All he lacked was the noble rocky beard and the large sword: he was like a king with a gold mask, relieved at last of the burden of the ages, dreaming for all eternity. Struck by this Arthurian image, I began humming the Carmina Burana overture. Swept along by the music’s epic grandeur, I caught myself singing at the top of my lungs. I filled the pit with glorious melodies. I was flying high. My spirits soared. This was the last salute, the final homage to my father, and I didn’t want it to stop. Luc tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the rosy glow in the east. Re-entering the continuum of time, I tightened the screws on Papa’s box and we grabbed our shovels, because everything had to be put back into its proper place without delay. We had to piece the grassy puzzle together meticulously: no trace of our digging should remain.

  It must have been seven o’clock when we staggered, reeling, into Clown’s Cove. We were wrung out but happy, basking in the satisfaction of having done our duty. After a swim in the sea, we went to meditate at the feet of the iguana. We claimed we had no use for sleep, but the strain of our nocturnal journey soon caught up with us and, next to each other, we drifted into a dream suffused with a tropical early-morning radiance. I dreamt about an enormous sun rising on Kilometre 54. Papa stood on the railway track in that blood-red dawn. On his shoulders sparkled the golden head, and I could tell from his smile that the offering had been accepted. I went up to him. He welcomed me and folded me into his powerful warmth. He planted a kiss on my forehead, then turned around and marched off, because the sun was waiting for him. I would have liked to make him stay, or go with him, but I knew I shouldn’t. The sun split open like a wound to take him in. Inside, a vast tunnel opened up. At its far end pulsated crimson flashes of soundless lightning. Proudly wearing his new, golden head, Papa strode across the horizon and disappeared into the bowels of the hollow star. And as Kilometre 54 registered the shock of this nuclear daybreak, thousands of crows flew away, scattering in all directions. I woke up crying and slipped out, with the compassionate face of the high arbiter of the skies beaming down on me. Luc came and found me at the water’s edge. I was unable to speak but he didn’t need to be told anything; he knew the quest for the head was over and that my tears heralded my recovery.

  * * *

  The most extraordinary part was yet to come. Later, when I got home, I found my grandfolks beside themselves with excitement, completely overwhelmed as they gave me the news that Mama had opened her eyes.

  Not even for a minute, a second, or a sigh, but they say she mumbled a few indistinct words before falling asleep again. Her breathing is deep, her pulse can be felt, her skin is warm to the touch. And I know it is thanks to Golden Head. Before migrating to the heart of the sun, he has presented me with this final token of love; he has released Mama and unsealed her eyes. So this is how miracles happen: suddenly, after you have hoped and prayed for a very long time.

  18

  She is coming back to us bit by bit. An eyelid lifts, a pupil drifts like a tiny chunk of ice floe, a murmur barely crosses the frontier of her lips, then she sinks back into limbo. All she does is ripple the surface like a whale coming up for air.

  * * *

  She has uttered her first coherent words, but there’s something wrong. She kept asking for a mysterious individual called Grelot. Grandmother explained to me this was a Persian cat, a family pet when Mama was a little girl. It died twenty years ago. Misled no doubt by the decoration of her childhood room, she is coming back to life in the shrunken shape of a kid who has lost her way, and it worries her to find her parents so changed, so much older all of a sudden. As for me, she doesn’t recognize me at all. That’s only natural since I belong to a distant, inconceivable future.

  She is now calling for her older brother, Hugues, and still clamouring for her pussy cat. Dr. Lacroix, whom Grandmother telephoned, advises us to wa
it; he feels we should avoid at all costs giving her a shock. He says this sojourn in the past is most likely just a stopover on the road that will take her back to us. I hope so, because I can’t imagine myself bringing up my own mother.

  * * *

  This morning, the tape of Mama’s memory kicked in at the right spot. She called me by my name, and all her years had caught up with her. But our joy was short-lived, because now we had to answer her questions about the room, about that impossible August scene at the window, about the immense weakness that was weighing her down. The last thing she could recall dated back to February — the promise of an exciting snowmobile ride. But of the outing itself she remembered nothing. She wanted to see Papa and grew uneasy when we didn’t respond. Grandfather took it upon himself to tell her about the fifty-fourth kilometre. He chose his words with the utmost care, but the truth proved to be too grim and, my heart slowly breaking, I watched a telluric horror cracking my mother’s face inch by inch. Her only reaction was an ominous, bloodless silence. I would have much rather that she’d wept or screamed, but I saw a monumental lassitude descend upon her. Her gaze closed up. Her hand froze in mine. I thought I heard the blizzard moaning behind the walls. Kilometre 54 took advantage of her extreme vulnerability to recapture her, and this time Papa had nothing to do with it.

  She has been ice-cold to the touch ever since. Dr. Lacroix tells us to be patient yet again, but what does he know about the evil spells of the vast immaculate dream? What if Mama was being swept away for good this time? Luc refuses to let the miracle come to nothing. He talks about carrying Mama into the cave so she’ll be able to soak up the iguana’s regenerative emanations. Better still, he suggests we smuggle the lizard into the house and hide it under the bed or in the cupboard in order to bring them as close together as possible. Another crackpot scheme of his. After supper we’ll head out to the Cove to ask for advice and pray, even though our hearts aren’t in it. I can already guess what I’ll be dreaming about tonight: a cold-storage place where Mama will lie slumbering like Snow White in a matrix of ice, with Luc and me, resembling a pair of mournful dwarfs, kneeling by her side.