It was twenty-four years later, on an evening of December, at Brest.
A fine rain was falling, cold, penetrating, continuous; it streamed down
the walls, rendering deeper in colour the high-pitched roofs of slate,
and the tall houses of granite; it watered with calm indifference the
noisy crowd of the Sunday, which swarmed nevertheless, wet and
bedraggled, in the narrow streets, beneath the mournful grey of the
twilight.
This Sunday crowd consisted of inebriated sailors singing, of soldiers
who stumbled, making with their sabres a clatter of steel, of people of
the lower class adrift--workers of the town looking drawn and miserable;
women in little merino shawls and pointed muslin head-dresses, who
walked along with shining eyes and reddened cheek bones, exhaling an
odour of brandy; of old men and old women in a disgusting state of
drunkenness, who had fallen and been picked up, and were lurching
forward, on their way, with backs covered with mud.
The rain continued to fall, wetting everything, the silver-buckled hats
of the Bretons, the tilted bonnets of the sailors, the laced shakos and
the white head-dresses, and the umbrellas.
There was something so wan, so dead, about the air, that it was
difficult to imagine that there could be anywhere a sun . . . the notion
of it had gone. There was a feeling that you were imprisoned under
layers and thicknesses of dense, humid clouds which were deluging you.
It did not seem that they would ever be able to break, or that behind
them there could be a sky. You breathed water. You were no longer
conscious of the hour, and knew not whether the darkness was the
darkness of all this rain or whether the real winter's night was closing
in.
The sailors brought into the streets a certain rather surprising note of
gaiety and youth, with their cheery faces and their songs, with their
large bright collars and their red pompoms standing out in sharp
contrast with the navy blue of their uniform. They went and came from
one tavern to another, jostling the crowd, saying things which had no
sense but which made them laugh. And sometimes they stopped on the
footpath, before the stalls of the shops where were retailed the hundred
and one things they needed for their use: red handkerchiefs, in the
middle of which were imprinted designs of famous ships, _Bretagne,
Triomphante, Devastation_; ribbons for their bonnets with handsome
inscriptions in gold; cords of complicated workmanship destined to close
securely those canvas sacks which they have on board for storing their
kit; elegant attachments in plaited thread for suspending from the neck
of the topmen their large knives; silver whistles for the
petty-officers, and finally, red belts and little combs and little
mirrors.
From time to time came heavy squalls which sent bonnets flying and made
the drunken passers-by stagger. And then the rain came down more
heavily, more torrentially, and whipped like hail.
The crowd of sailors steadily increased. They could be seen coming on in
groups at the end of the Rue de Siam; they ascended from the port and
from the lower town by the great granite stairways, and spread singing
into the streets.
Those who came from the roadstead were wetter than the others, dripping
with sea-water as well as with rain. The sailing cutters, bending to the
cold squalls, leaping amid waves deep-edged with spray, had brought them
quickly into port. And joyously they climbed the steps which led to the
town, shaking themselves as cats do which have been sprinkled with
water.
The wind rushed through the long drab streets, and the night promised to
be a wild one.
In the roadstead--on board a ship which had arrived that very morning
from South America--on the stroke of four o'clock, a petty officer had
given a prolonged whistle, followed by cleverly executed trills, which
signified in the language of the sea: "Man the launch!" Then a murmur of
joy was heard in the ship, where the sailors were penned, on account of
the rain, in the gloom of the spar-deck. For there had been a fear for a
time that the sea might be too rough for communication with Brest, and
the men had been waiting anxiously for this whistle which set their
doubts at rest. For the first time, after three years of voyage, they
were about to set foot on the land of France, and impatience was great.
When the men appointed, clothed in little costumes of yellow oilskin,
were all embarked in the launch and had taken their places in correct
and symmetrical order, the same petty officer whistled again and said:
"Liberty-men, fall in!"
The wind and the sea made a great noise; the distances of the roadstead
were drowned in a whitish fog made of spray and rain.
The sailors who had received permission to go ashore ascended quickly,
issued from the hatches and took their places in line, as their numbers
and names were called, with faces beaming with the joy of seeing Brest
again. They had put on their Sunday clothes; they completed, under the
torrential downpour, the last details of their toilet, setting one
another right with airs of coquetry.
When "218: Kermadec!" was called, Yves appeared, a strapping youngster
of twenty-four, grave in mien, looking very well in his ribbed woollen
jersey and his large blue collar.
Tall, lean with the leanness of the ancients, with the muscular arms and
the neck and shoulders of an athlete, his whole appearance gave an
impression of tranquil and slightly disdainful strength. His face,
beneath its uniform coat of bronze, was colourless; in some subtle way
impossible to define, a Breton face, with the complexion of an Arab.
Curt in speech, with the accent of Finistère; a low voice curiously
vibrant, recalling those instruments of very powerful sound, which one
touches only very lightly for fear of making too much noise.
Hazel eyes, rather close together and very deep-set beneath the frontal
bone, with the impassive expression of a regard turned inwards; the nose
small and regular in shape; the lower lip protruding slightly as if in
scorn.
The face immobile, marmorean, save in those rare moments when he smiles.
Then the whole face is transformed, and one sees that Yves is very
young. The smile itself is the smile of those who have suffered: it has
a childlike gentleness and lights up the hardened features a little as
the rays of the sun, falling by chance, light up the cliffs of Brittany.
When Yves appeared the other sailors who were there regarded him with
good-humoured smiles and an unusual air of respect.
This was because he wore for the first time on his sleeve the two red
stripes of a petty officer, which had just been awarded him. And on
board ship a petty officer is a person of consequence. These poor
woollen stripes, which, in the army, are given so quickly to the first
comer, represent in the navy years of hardship; they represent the
strength and the life of young men, expended at every hour of the day
and night, high up in the crow's nest, that domain of the topmen which
is shaken by all the winds of heaven.
The boatswain, coming up, held out his hand to Yves. Formerly he also
had been a topmen inured to hardness, and he was a shrewd judge of
strong and courageous men.
"Well, Kermadec," he said. "You are going to water those stripes of
yours, I suppose?"
"Yes, bo'sun," replied Yves in a low voice, but preserving a grave and
abstracted air.
It was not the rain from heaven that the old boatswain had in mind; for,
as far as that went, the watering was assured. No, in the navy, to water
your stripes means to get drunk in order to do them honour on the first
day they are worn.
Yves remained thoughtful in the face of the necessity of this ceremony,
because he had just sworn to me very solemnly that he would be sober,
and he wanted to keep his promise.
And then he had had enough, at last, of these tavern scenes which had
been repeated so many times in all the countries of the world. To spend
one's nights in low pot-houses, at the head of the wildest and most
drunken of the crew, and to be picked up in the gutter in the
morning--one tires of these pleasures after a time, however good a
sailor one may be. Besides the mornings following are painful and are
always the same; and Yves knew that and wanted no more of them.
It was very gloomy, this December weather, for a day of return. Of no
avail was it to be carefree and young, the weather cast over the joy of
homecoming a kind of sinister night. Yves experienced this impression,
which caused him, in spite of himself, a mournful surprise; for all
this, in sum, was his own Brittany; he felt it in the air and recognised
it despite this darkness of dreamland.
The launch moved off, carrying them all towards the shore. It travelled
aslant under the west wind; it bounded over the waves with the hollow
sound of a drum, and, at each leap that it made, a mass of water broke
over them, as if it had been hurled by furious hands.
They made their way very rapidly in a kind of cloud of water, the large
salt drops of which lashed their faces. They bowed their heads before
this deluge, huddled close one against the other, like sheep in a storm.
They did not speak, all concentrated as they were on the prospect of the
pleasure that awaited them. There were among them young men, who, for a
year past, had not set foot on land; the pockets of all of them were
well-lined with money, and fierce desires bubbled in their blood.
Yves himself thought a little of the women who were waiting for them in
Brest, and from among whom presently they would be able to choose. But,
nevertheless, he was gloomy, he alone of all the band. Never had so many
thoughts at one time troubled the head of this poor simpleton.
It is true that he had had melancholy moods of this kind sometimes,
during the silence of the nights at sea; but then the return had
appeared to him from the distance in colours of rose and gold. And here,
to-day, was the return and, on the contrary, his heart was sadder now
than it had ever been before. And this he did not understand, for he had
the habit, as the simple and as children have, of suffering his
impressions without attempting to interpret them.
With head turned towards the wind, heedless of the water which streamed
down his blue collar, he had remained standing, supported by the group
of sailors who pressed close against him.
All this coast-line of Brest, which could be distinguished in vague
contours through the veil of the rain, awoke in him memories of his
years as ship-boy, passed here on this great misty roadstead, pining for
his mother. . . . This past had been rough, and, for the first time in
his life, his thoughts turned to what the future might be.
His mother! ... It was true indeed that for nearly two years he had not
written to her. But that is the way with sailors; and, in spite of all,
these mothers of theirs are very dear to them. What usually happens is
this: they disappear for a few years, and then, one happy day, they
return, without warning, to the village, with stripes on their sleeve
and pockets full of hard-earned money, and bring back happiness and
comfort to the old forsaken home.
They sped on through the freezing rain, leaping over the grey waves,
pursued by the whistling of the wind and the roar of the water.
Yves was thinking of many things, and his fixed eyes now saw nothing.
The image of his mother had all at once taken on an infinite tenderness;
he felt that she was now quite near to him, in a little Breton village,
under this same winter twilight which enveloped him; in two or three
days from now, he would go, with an overmastering joy, to surprise her
and take her in his arms.
The tossing of the sea, the wind and speed, rendered his changing
thoughts incoherent. At one moment he was disconcerted to find his
country under a sky so gloomy. During his voyage he had become used to
the heat and blue clearness of the tropics, and, here, it seemed that
there was a shroud casting a sinister night over the world.
And a little later he was telling himself that he did not want to drink
any more, not that there was any harm in it after all, and, in any case,
it was the custom among Breton sailors; but, first of all, he had given
me his word, and secondly, at twenty-four, one is a grown man and has
had a full draught of pleasure, and it seems that one feels the need of
becoming a little more steady.
Then he thought of the astonished looks of the others on board,
especially of Barrada, his great friend, when they saw him return
to-morrow morning, upright and walking straight. At this comical idea, a
childlike smile passed suddenly over his grave and manly face.
They had now arrived almost under the Castle of Brest and, in the
shelter of the enormous masses of granite, there was suddenly calm. The
cutter no longer rocked; it proceeded tranquilly through the rain; its
sails were hauled down, and the men in yellow oilskins took over its
management with rhythmic strokes of their long oars.
Before them opened that deep and dismal bay which is the naval port; on
the quays were alignments of cannon and of formidable-looking maritime
things. All around nothing but high and interminable constructions of
granite, all alike, overhanging the dark water and staged one above the
other with rows of little doors and little windows. Above these again,
the first houses of Brest and Recouvrance showed their wet roofs, from
which issued little trails of white smoke. They proclaimed their damp
and cold misery, and the wind rushed all about with a great dismal
moaning.
It was now quite dark and the little gas flames began to pink with
bright yellow dots these accumulations of dark things. The sailors could
already hear the rumbling of the traffic and the noise of the town which
came to them from above the deserted dockyard, mingled with the songs of
drunken men.
Yves, out of prudence, had entrusted to his friend Barrada on board all
his money, which he was saving for his mother, keeping in his pocket
only fifty francs for his night ashore.