A Tale of Brittany (Mon frère Yves)

The pale sun of Brittany smiled and made festival for this little newcomer, who later on was to love the sun so much, and to love Brittany so much.

Yves made his entrance into the world in the form of a large baby, very round and very brown. The good women present at his arrival gave him the name of Bugel-Du, which in English means: little black boy. This bronzed colouring was, for that matter, characteristic of the family, the Kermadecs from father to son, having been ocean-going sailors and men deeply bitten by the tan of the sea.

A fine summer's day in Saint Pol-de-Léon is a rare thing in this region of fogs: a kind of melancholy radiance is shed over everything; the old town of the Middle Ages is, as it were, awakened out of its mournful slumber in the mist and made young again; the old granite warms itself in the sun; the tower of Creizker, the giant of Breton towers, bathes in the blue sky, in the full light, its delicate grey fretwork marbled with yellow lichens. And all around is the wild moorland, with its pink heather, its golden gorse, exhaling a soft perfume of flowering broom.

At the baptism were a young girl, the godmother; a sailor, the godfather; and, behind, the two little brothers, Goulven and Gildas, holding by the hand the two little sisters, Yvonne and Marie, who carried flowers.

When the little company entered the old church of the bishops of Léon, the verger, hanging on the rope of a bell, made ready to start the joyous carillon called for by the occasion. But the Curé, coming on the scene, said to him harshly:

"Be quiet, Marie Bervrac'h, for the love of God! These Kermadecs are people who never give anything to the Church, and the father wastes all his substance in the tavern. We'll have no ringing, if you please, for people of that sort."

And that is how my brother Yves made his entrance into the world in the guise of poverty.

Jeanne Danveoch, from her bed, listened with uneasiness, waited with a foreboding of ill, for the vibrations of the bell which were so slow to begin. For a long time she listened and heard nothing. Then she understood the public affront and wept.

Her eyes were wet with tears when the party returned, crestfallen, to the house.

All his life this humiliation weighed upon the heart of Yves; he was never able to forgive this unkind reception at his entrance into the world, nor the cruel tears shed by his mother; and as a result he preserved for the Roman clergy an unforgetting rancour and closed his Breton heart to Our Mother the Church.

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.