Fou says a contradictory voice inside her head.
She loves, too, the raddled, rude face of the crooning woman next to her, and the waiter who is leaning over her table, picking coins off a saucer. And the dull brown plastic of the café table, she loves that as well, and the way her felt-tip pen fits in her hand, a part of her body, dispensing freely its inked loops and dashes and points of serious emphasis. “Paris is heavenly,” she writes to Onion, to Strom, to Iris Jaffe, to her sister, Bibbi, to Clyde and Sonya, to her mother and father, to Simon and Stephanie Birrell, to Robin Cummerford, to the staff at the folklore center, “but I can’t wait to get home.”
THE VILLAGE CHURCH in Marigny, in the east of France, dates from the sixteenth century, but the small stone cross that stands outside its door is much older – twelfth century, or perhaps even earlier. Its general configuration is rudimentary, and the carving, with its look of compaction and pitted antiquity, is exuberantly primitive. A square-faced angel with blunt spread wings – a male angel, certainly – is fixed to its center, staring expressionlessly, endlessly, down into the eyes of a muscular mermaid whose magnificent tail is wrapped three times around the base. Her hands, their tiny roughened fingers, cling to the vertical axis as though it represented the only refuge in the world. Her face is a veil of rapture, her neck luxuriantly long, her breasts eroded ovals, rather widely spaced, and where the nipples once stood there is today only a pair of twin depressions filled with calcified stone, faintly green in the late-afternoon light.
Fay has traveled three hours by train and another hour by taxi in order to photograph this wonder. Its location, not just its corruption of Christian symbol, makes it rare. Marigny is far from any seacoast and has neither river nor lake, not even a spring. No one knows where the stone cross came from, but according to the village people – Fay has spoken in her slow, inaccurate French to a number of them – the Marigny mermaid has always stood on this spot.
The stone is soft. She knows from her reading it was probably carved in a day or two by an illiterate mason, an aesthetic transaction so brief and so small when poised against the grid of history that its perfection must be put down to a random accident. Like the elegant unicorn, the audacious griffin, the fleet centaur, those legendary creatures bubbling out of a dark age – not really dark at all, but stained with oddly slanted light – the medieval merfolk exploded from stone or wood to express a twisted, fey longing for the inexpressible. They never existed, and, what is more, no one ever believed they did.
Fay has a certain respect for the medieval mind, for the attention it paid, on the one hand, to a straw-and-turnip economy, and to the playful imagination, on the other hand, that shaped its bestiary. Magical creatures were a kind of shared joke or mad desire. No one believed in such beasts, not even children, not even sailors sodden with rum. Never mind the thousands of mermaid sightings, sightings which occurred as late as the eighteenth century – none of it meant a thing.
Once Fay thought otherwise, but now she more and more imagines that these mermaid testimonies were delivered with a wink of the eye or its psychic equivalent. People are, after all, sensible; people are practical and realistic; and though they create for their diversion a realm of wonder, they remain solidly embedded in what their eyes and ears tell them. The glorious mermaid of Marigny was animated out of whim, out of the moment, and nothing more. And today, stroking the lovely sinuous mermaid tail – the village priest stands a few feet away smoking a cigarette – Fay thinks of Tom Avery, how the two of them had held each other in a long impromptu embrace, a pair of random creatures assigned to a random world.
EARLY ON A Wednesday morning, a cool and overcast day, Fay took the train to the city of Nantes, and from there she drove in a rented car to the village of St. Pierre, on the shore of the Lac du Grand-Lieu.
It is a curious lake – hardly a lake at all, but rather an immense reed-filled marsh that in summer shrinks to a shallow saucer swimming with eels and coated with algae. The water looks dead, but, in fact, it is richly alive – with herons, ducks, muskrats, dragonflies, and many varieties of fish. In this water, eighteen months ago, a mermaid rose suddenly from the lake bottom with mud in her hair and a basket of small fish hooked over one arm. The phenomenon was witnessed by two teenaged girls and reported in the local tabloid, Ouest-France. From there it was picked up by the Herald Tribune, and then by the international wire services. At least half a dozen of Fay’s friends and colleagues had clipped the item and sent it to her.
Fay has contacted the families of the two girls and has written ahead to arrange a meeting – at noon, in the municipal office, the mairie, of St. Pierre. The girls are named Michelène Payot and Sophie Jaud, aged fourteen and fifteen, respectively. Michelène has a smooth, pretty, empty face atop a small, sharp, angular body. She seems suspicious of, or else frightened by, Fay’s list of questions, and soon falls silent. Sophie, on the other hand, is a full-lipped, vivacious girl who can’t stop talking. She wears a blue-checked smock over a pair of red jeans. Her breasts are amazing for a girl of this age, abundant, like a woman’s, but when she talks it is in a jeering, bright, unstoppable, girlish flow.
Fay proposes that the three of them adjourn to a café across the small village square where pizza is served. Michelène’s eyes brighten; so do Sophie’s.
“Voilà,” Fay says when they are seated at a table, “tell me about your siren. Start at the beginning, and please, speak very slowly so that I will understand every word.”
Sophie takes a gulp of air and begins. The sirène, she tells Fay, came swimming toward them as they sat, she and Michelène, on a small wooden boat dock.
Why had they gone to the dock? Fay asks, trying hard to sound matter-of-fact, and keeping her smile bright.
The two girls exchange looks. Well, Sophie says, it happened that they sometimes went to this place to smoke cigarettes after school. Their mothers and fathers would murder them if they knew they did such a thing.
Trust me, Fay says with an upraised hand.
Sophie swallows. On this particular day – it was winter and bitterly cold – they’d been there only a few minutes when they saw the lake waters part, a spot of swirling foam, and then what looked at first like a net full of eels emerged. They observed that it had a sort of face. Silvery looking. Like a cooking pot, une casserole, shining. The sun was on it. They thought it might be some giant fish, but then a long pale arm, like a woman’s, reached up with a basket of fish. The other arm was waving. At them.
“Waving?”
Beckoning. Appelant de la main. Urging them to come into the water.
And had they been tempted, despite the cold?
No, no, they were too frightened. They could scarcely move, scarcely breathe.
And then what?
Then the sirène began to sing.
She sang? What was she singing? Was there a melody, were there words? (Fay has read about the singing in the newspaper reports, but she feels she must test these two directly.)
Non. Oui. Peut-être. She sang the same thing over and over. The tone, it was high-pitched, it hurt their ears. At first they thought she was singing Bonne journée, bonne journée, but afterward they decided she had been saying to them mangez, mangez, eat, eat.
And after that?
Then she dived down into the water. As though she were vexed with them for not responding. Exasperated. She made a great splashing sound, and it was then they saw her long silver tail. A fish’s tail. It had whipped the cold air, a hard smack. (Sophie demonstrates with her fork.)
And that was all?
Oui. She disappeared. All they could see were some bubbles where she had been. And a little hole, un trou, on the surface of the water.
Have either of you ever, Fay asks carefully, seen pictures of sirens?
They look once again at each other and nod, oui.
And did this sirène that you saw, did she look like the ones in the pictures?
Yes, Sophie says after a minute, only she was smal
ler.
And beautiful? Was she beautiful?
She wasn’t beautiful, no, but she wasn’t ugly, either. She was nothing. Just this silver thing. And with her basket of fish.
What kind of basket?
Just a basket, un panier. Like this one here that rests on the table, full of bread.
Do you think that when she said mangez she was offering you the fish to eat?
Sophie shrugs, and Michelène, like a shadow figure, shrugs too. They don’t know. Perhaps. They think so.
How did you feel when she disappeared?
Afraid. Perplexed. But mostly afraid.
What did you do then? Did you go home and tell your parents what you’d seen?
No. Not right away.
Why not?
We didn’t think they would believe us.
When did you tell them, then?
A few days later. Maybe a week.
And what did they say?
Michelène speaks at last. Her father was soon telling everyone about it. All the neighbors. Everyone.
But you never saw the siren again?
No, only the one time.
Did you go to the lake again to look for her?
Our parents forbade it.
Why?
They were worried, they thought it might be dangerous.
So you never returned?
Well. Perhaps once or twice.
Do you believe she’ll come back again, la sirène?
Non. Michelène giggles at this and looks down at her lap. Non, non, non.
Jamais, says Sophie.
FAY DOESN’T TAKE any of this seriously.
She is not so old yet that she can’t remember the dimensions of the adolescent imagination, how she and Iris Corning and others of their friends, at fifteen years, sixteen, fantasized endlessly about chance meetings with Robert Redford, how he would happen to be in Winnipeg for a few days, never mind how or why, scouting for new talent, looking around for a young fresh-faced unspoiled star for his latest film. He would be in disguise, of course, wearing a wig over his beautiful reddish hair and dressed in overalls. There he was, staked out at Polo Park Shopping Mall, pretending to repair a light fixture, when who should walk by but… or perhaps it would be Neil Young. Neil Young, after all, had actually attended Kelvin High School at one time, the same school Fay and Iris attended. What if Neil Young decided suddenly to return, to make a sort of sentimental journey? He would be weary, jaded – it was understandable – and disenchanted with the plastic world of Hollywood, and looking for …
Fay knows what adolescence is. It is a time of intense concentrated boredom, it is never-ending in its sameness. People like to speak of the violent mood swings teenagers experience, but in fact most of adolescence is a killing procession of tedious days and numbing nights that must somehow, by imagination or a shared dramatic gesture, be kicked alive. Anything is better than nothing, monsters, virgins, wild animals, film stars, rock singers, mermaids – whatever can be prised out of the available culture and given a transitory shape. (And does it really end, this kind of fantasy? Hasn’t she every single night since leaving home reached out across the sheets in her various hotel rooms, in Amsterdam, in Copenhagen, in Paris, and conjured the back of Tom Avery’s poplin windbreaker?)
Before leaving St. Pierre, Fay takes a snapshot of Michelène Payot and Sophie Jaud standing in front of the café, smiling and looking pleased with themselves, and after that she drives out to the lake and takes another photo of its green, insect-buzzing surface. What she’ll do with all this she has no idea.
But she knows there’s no point in staying any longer. She might as well drive into Nantes, return her rental car, and catch the late-afternoon train back to Paris. But first she will telephone the hôtel de l’Avenir on the rue du Cherche-Midi to let them know she will be returning tonight instead of tomorrow.
She finds a telephone booth next to the post office in the tiny village of Passey, and a minute later she is speaking to Monsieur Martineau at the hotel desk.
“There is a letter here for you, Madame McLeod,” he says in his best school English, all the vowels propped open. “And it is marked urgent.”
Her heart squeezes. Illness. An accident. Her parents. Bibbi. Matthew or Gordon. Catastrophe.
“Perhaps you will be kind enough to open it for me,” she says into the receiver, then thinks to add, trembling, “s’il vous plait.”
“But, Madame, if you have the intention to return tonight – ”
“Can you at least tell me who it is from?”
“I am sorry. I do not understand.”
“The return address. Is there a name on it, or an address, maybe?”
“It has, I believe – yes, it is a Canadian aerogram.”
“But is there a name? In the corner, maybe, the left-hand corner? A la gauche de la – or perhaps on the back of the envelope? L’autre côté de – ”
“Ah, oui, il y a le nom de l’expéditeur – ”
“What is it?” Can she really be shouting? “Who?”
“It is not so easy to read, I am afraid – ”
“Please try, please try to read it, Monsieur.”
“It appears to be … Tome.” He pronounces it so that it rhymes with loam.
“Tom?”
“And something else, but I cannot – ”
“Avery? Tom Avery?”
“Yes, that is it. Tome Avery.”
“Monsieur Martineau, please, I must ask you to open the letter. Right away. And read it to me over the telephone.”
“But I cannot – ”
“You did say it was marked urgent.”
“Just one minute please. I have misplaced my petit canif – ”
“Just tear it open, it’s all right.”
“One minute, ne quittez pas. Are you there, Madame McLeod?”
“I’m here. I’m listening.”
“It says.” He pauses.
“Yes? What does it say?”
“‘Deee-err Fay.’”
“And then?”
“It says – are you sure you wish, Madame, for me to read this very private letter?”
“Yes, I wish it. Please go on.”
“‘I love you.’”
“I didn’t hear you.” But she did hear.
“In the letter there are written those words. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ Trois fois, I love you. Do you prefer that I continue, Madame?”
“Yes,” Fay says, “yes. Please. Please read all of it, Monsieur Martineau, every word. I’m listening.”
∼ CHAPTER 20 ∼
I Love You
“DEAR FAY,” TOM HAD WRITTEN. “I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU, I love you. I don’t know what else to say to you or why I’m saying it, but I have to tell you. Something is making me. I love you. I’m not a dangerous or crazy person, although I wouldn’t blame you for thinking so. I loved you the minute I saw you coming up the sidewalk carrying that bunch of balloons. I loved the parting in your hair and the shape of your mouth. I loved the way you stood still and put your arms around me – that was later. I think of it every day, a hundred times, or rather I think of it continually, exactly how your hands felt pressing against my back and how it was to hold you, your wonderful thinness. I can’t seem to think of anything outside that minute when we were standing together by your front door. I just love you. I love you plain and simple. I love you. Tom Avery.”
WELL, HE WAS A FOOL. He was a nut case, tetched in the head, as his mother would say – bonkers, balmy. Not because he’d gone silly with love – love was unaccountable, he knew that much just from looking around, just from being alive. No, he was a loony because he’d gone and written that foaming-at-the-mouth letter to Fay McLeod, and not just written it but mailed it. (Christ!) He knows the woman for half an hour and he sends her a letter full of garbage. (What had he written, anyway? He can’t remember the words, only that it was the letter of a man possessed.)
What in sweet Jesus’ name had come over him.
He was a mature man, forty years old, for God’s sake, reasonably steady in his habits, reasonably normal. Well, except for those three marriages, that indissoluble number three. And except for the offbeat hours he kept, and his somewhat eccentric job. Normal, yes, except for his zero of a father. Except for these recent months of, well, mild depression. Impotence? (Don’t say that word, don’t even think it.) Maybe he really did have a screw loose. He should see someone, a shrink, tomorrow, get a referral from Dave Neuhaus. The hell he would. And don’t forget his mother, she’s part of his history. You can’t just go and wipe that off the record, how she’d been hospitalized after his birth, for several weeks – no, several months. Well, it was all a little vague. Postpartum depression, they would have called it these days, and perfectly understandable given the circumstances. Her breakdown, or nervous collapse, whatever the hell it was, it pointed straight toward – what? Erratic behavior? And then there was the other side of his parentage. God only knows what psychotic, riotous blood pours from that unknown font.
Anyway, it was too late. He’d done something dark and dangerous, writing a letter like that. He’d committed a rash act he hoped he’d never have to account for, but knew he would. Jesus. Buying that aerogram and then filling it up with his blustering frenzy, letting it have its way, then actually sealing it, for God’s sake, his tongue traveling along its glued edges. He recalls the gummy taste now with a fresh wave of sorrow, and how he had afterward walked to the corner and dropped it – irretrievable – into the mailbox on River Avenue. Farewell. So be it. Godspeed. Launched like a message in a bottle. Like a bomb.
People get arrested for this kind of thing – harassment. Every night, home from his shift at CHOL, Tom falls asleep sick with the shame of what he’s done, what he’s set into motion, what he’s risked.
But each morning, and it’s been almost two weeks now, he wakes up refreshed and hopeful. “Fay,” he says to his new shower curtain and to the damp folds of his bath towel, and then he smiles into the mirror. Hello, hello. He almost, but not quite, winks; who is that overgrown boy, shaving his cheeks and chin and looking so genial? Why, it’s Tom Avery, you’ve seen that mug plastered all over town, and he’s got his mind wrapped around and around a woman named Fay McLeod. He’s waking up after a long sleep, he’s starting to come alive.