Just as it felt that my imagination could no longer sustain the image of the craft and I must drown, I felt myself thrown up onto the sand. I lay still for a moment, dazed with all I had seen. I was drenched from the spray. The waves lapped at my legs but I hadn’t the strength to pull myself upright. Then I noticed the gaunt man already trudging away up the beach. The sun was rising and a pale shaft of yellow light illuminated his sunken features.
I dragged myself to my feet and ran after him. ‘Why you?’ I cried.
He held my gaze for a moment then replied, in a voice thick with sorrow and resignation:
‘Because I was called.’
I let go of his arm and the man continued on his weary way. I watched him go. There was, in the awkward droop of his shoulders, a terrible lassitude – or at least so it seemed to me.
I thought again of the carved bones that dangled from the timbers of his roof – all the vile little faces. I pictured him in his lonely cabin, working away at some of that very evening’s passengers. He carved them as they must have been in life, but I could not have done the same. I wondered if he was the only man allowed to see the men they had been. As an interloper or a stowaway, I had perceived the desperate transformations that death had wrought.
I knew that I would be haunted for ever by what I had seen. But how much worse must it be for he whose role was forever to transport the drowned into the next life? And, in recompense for this task not of his own choosing, to be ostracised by family, neighbour and friend.
I sank back down onto the sand. The sun was not yet warm but I allowed its brightness to banish the visions of the night from my consciousness. The waves lapped closer, I shielded my eyes and looked out at the island.
Some time later, the routine of the day in the village began again. The men dragged their boats down past me and put out to sea. The women brought wood for the fire. The two children brought me one of the earthenware jugs of fresh water and I thanked them and drank deeply. The other jug was emptied into the eternal broth and the children were dispatched to refill them.
Did they know what horrors I had endured during the night?
I stayed where I was until the sun was high in the sky, allowing the steady and timeless pace of the villagers going about their business to soothe my troubled spirit. Someone brought leaves for the pot. Someone else climbed the uncertain stair and returned a little later with a hessian bag of root vegetables – turnips, I thought, from a distance.
Finally, the fishing boats came back in with their catch, without mishap. I watched but, this time, did not assist as they were hauled up onto the sand. The fishermen tidied their nets and lines and prepared their catch for the cauldron.
I realised it was time for me to be gone. I did not belong here, however romantic my first associations had been. I returned to the small house where I had been so generously received and collected my things. I left a few coins on the table in recognition of their hospitality.
Outside, the sun was bright on the monument in the centre of the village. I paused a while, now understanding it did not commemorate a saint. The opposite, in fact. It was, rather, Ankou. The fisherman called by name in the deep of the night to transport those lost to the sea to the world beyond.
At the base of the monument a small drift of loose sand had blown against the stone, forming a soft dune. I knelt and brushed it away, revealing an inscription. The stonemason had carved the letters in an angular style, almost like Celtic runes. It took me a moment to decipher their meaning. Eventually I solved the puzzle by tracing them with my finger. In this way I imparted to them a kind of cursive flow that put me in mind of my grandfather’s old-fashioned handwriting. Indeed, no sooner was the memory of those days rekindled than I realised that I had known the name of the place all along: the Bay of the Departed.
I made my way to the stair and began to climb back up the cliff. I paused halfway and scanned the beach. I suppose the rhythm of life was the same each day in that place. I saw the gaunt villager cross the sand and watched as he disappeared among the rocks and pools at the northern end. No one paid him any attention. He was afforded no more respect than a shadow.
When I reached the fingerpost, with its three directions offered to the traveller, this time I took the path inland as most likely to lead me to a town where a train could transport me, as swiftly as technology would allow, back to the metropolis.
My journey was done.
Author’s Note
This is the second of the stories inspired by Breton folklore. The westernmost tip of the Brittany coast, jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean, is alive with legends of the sea. Mythical creatures, giants, sprites, a kind of Dreamtime that explains the violence and the beauty of the coastline. The stories are often harsh and, to modern ears, cruel. Men and women destined to live out the same sacrifices for all of time, retribution for crimes committed by earlier generations or as an attempt to appease the angry sea.