It must be said that everybody has an opinion on what we shall call the topic of Blanche on this pebble of an island, where everybody feels responsible for everyone else’s kids, if only because in that environment, shut off from the rest of the world, they all grow up right under your nose, so nobody is indifferent to the topic of Blanche.
There’s one in every generation in a closed-off community, the one who’s a pain in the neck. The sort of ratbag who’s always involved in the latest scandal. Whenever a holiday house is broken into or a car set alight . . . Whenever lobsters disappear from the traps or the jetty walls are tagged in high season with filthy comments attacking tourists . . . To put it bluntly, for the generation of those born in the ’80s, that historical pain in the arse was me: Blanche de Rigny.
There was the time I ran away, of course, when after yet another fight with my father he wanted to stick me in a boarding school on the mainland before I’d finished middle school. Three days of searching. National rescue helicopters circling the coastline of the island. Every vessel out in the water, right down to the smallest dinghy, carrying out a meticulous search for my body at the foot of the cliffs when, at age thirten, I had left to try to make a living on the streets of Paris. Already.
Better still, even before all of that, there was my birth.
It happened in the middle of a gale, like every other time there’s a drama on this fucking island. My father was at sea off the coast of Africa when my mother started haemorrhaging, and seeing as it’s impossible to fly a helicopter in a 50-knot wind, the lifeguards had to ferry her to the mainland by boat. Obviously I had not been born yet, but I’ve been told the story so many times I can see myself standing between the legs of the sailors’ wives, watching the orange and green lifeboat that would take her to hospital slip down its rails and into the water. Not one of the guys from the national lifeguards hesitated, so the story goes; their wives were weeping because there were walls of water and they feared they’d never see their husbands alive again. During the crossing my mother bled out in front of the powerless men. She was dead on arrival, but me, seriously premmie at only six months, I survived. One of the lifeguards registered my birth at the Brest town hall, and, keen not to make a faux pas, gave me my mother’s first name: Blanche. They also say that when, some days later, my father returned for the funeral, the lifeguards all went to greet him as he came off the boat, looking as devastated as if it were their fault. They were the ones who carried the coffin in their orange uniform. The church was so full the priest had to leave the front door open. The latest instalment in this drama on the high seas saw the island banding together around the widower, the father of the tiny little girl battling in an incubator all alone on the mainland.
Thinking back on it, perhaps that’s the reason I get seasick.
After the funeral, Pater departed quick smart for one of his longest tours at sea, entrusting me to his aunt, Granny Soize, the woman who brought me up and who took care of my every need on a daily basis. He only took his retirement from the Merchant Marine super-grudgingly when all that remained for an old guy like him was the fitting out of rust-buckets filled with Filipinos.
I was twelve years old by the time he started living with us full-time and it goes without saying he was entirely unwelcome, his unsavoury machismo misfiring completely after his lifelong absence.
Every place prompts its own particular set of destinies, so prior to my escape I must have subconsciously sensed that I had to get the hell away from that island and its constant dramas at all costs before I suffered my own calamity, in personam ... And I wasn’t wrong about that.
It’s a pretty banal story when all’s said and done, and as you’d expect, entirely typical of the island, for anybody in the know . . . We were taking advantage of the fact that the police hadn’t yet arrived for the summer season by indulging in one of our favourite pastimes as idle youth, namely taking one of the cars parked at the wharf for a joyride. The keys were always left hanging in the ignition, and we were hammered and had no licence. Here we go, guys! We’re outta here . . . I was with some guys and girls from the camping ground, not kids from the island, otherwise it would never have played out the way it did.
I was sitting in – or, rather, I was squashed into – the backseat, unfortunately too pissed to realise that the idiot who was driving was taking the coast road.
He simply didn’t see that the earth stopped there. Finis terrae. Boom, over the cliff. The two guys in the front were crushed to death and the girl next to me burnt alive, because she had been sensible enough to put on her belt and got stuck. Seeing as I’ve never been sensible about anything, I flew through the rear window when the car rolled and broke my spine.
Paris
12 June 1870
Since drawing a bad number in the ballot, Auguste had spent some ghastly nights tortured by anxiety.
Ever since that cursed day, he had continued to set his alarm clock for 7 am, but having only ever snatched one or two hours’ rest when it rang, he would switch it off and go back to sleep, managing only to drag himself from his bed in the late afternoon. He had not set foot in the university for two months on account of his constant headaches, and relations with his aunt Clothilde had deteriorated considerably.
Recently returned from viewing the new collection at the Printemps department store, his aunt was in splendid humour, but her mood soured irreparably upon coming into her salon to find her nephew, much like the previous day, and the day before that, prone on her sofa like a bundle of linen and moaning, a damp cloth wrapped around his head.
With a deep sigh, she let her displeasure be known.
‘Oh please, Aunt, need you shout? My head is giving me such grief that I’m at the point of wondering if some creature has not been hiding in my pillow and feeding on my brain during the night.’
She swept away his words with an exasperated gesture.
‘You have a letter from your father.’
‘Oh, will you not read it to me . . .’ said Auguste, in a feeble voice. ‘I can scarcely open my eyes.’
‘I have had more than enough of your using my apartment as some sort of health spa where there’s nothing to be done but sleep and have one’s linen laundered. Read the letter yourself!’ And she retrieved the envelope from the table and dropped it on his face.
Auguste waited until she had left the room before breaking its seal.
The news was not good.
The Jewish company on Place Sainte-Opportune that arranged military replacements, and which was supposedly bursting at the seams with men for sale, had proved a dead end: it had been plundered and had not a single man to offer, despite an advance payment of 1000 francs. In the end, Monsieur Levy had provided a refund, but the problem remained; agencies all across Paris were suffering similar shortages. So, they would have to make do without them. His father had then come up with the idea of sending a letter to all his suppliers enjoining them to enquire of innkeepers, coachmen, cobblers and priests – all those occupations who have constant dealings with others – in order to find out if they knew of any out-of-work labourers who would agree to sell themselves to the father of a well-to-do family. Unfortunately, nor had this course of action produced any result.
He had also written to a distant cousin down in the Basque country, but the law of primogeniture in that part of the world had had such a devastating effect that every available young man had left for America. Nor was there any joy to be had in agricultural regions such as Normandy, or the north of France, with the only available substitutes being acquired for outrageous sums by local landowners as replacements for their sons.