The Islands of Dr. Thomas (19 page)

Leaving (end)

I have turned the corner of my eightieth year. I am a tired traveller on the platform of a train station. My body is not suffering but my tortured mind is begging for mercy. I have taken refuge in Brittany, in the comfort of a retirement home that looks out on the sea, and I am reexamining my life. Even if I would like to forget the mistakes I have made, I can't. Every day, at my side, a loving and caring woman sits by my side. Her gentle features remind me of the woman who saved me from my misery and, since then, has left me.

It has been more than ten years since she “closed her eyes,” as they say in Saint-Pierre et Miquelon. I have never considered the possibility of following her, because she gave me the will to live. And then there was her daughter, towards whom I feel a father's responsibility. Now that illness has come, she is the daughter who sits with her adoptive father and brings him some relief in these difficult times. Her presence in my life is a great comfort. At the same time, it cuts me to the quick. She and my own daughter, Marthe, are the same age. I know nothing about the flesh of my flesh. Since Emma's death, I have had no news about her. I'm told she lives in the United States, where she has taken a job as a teacher at a school for young girls. She is not married, has no children, no family at all now. She must lead a sad existence, and I am to blame for that.

This evening, as night fell and drew us to confide in each other, my adopted daughter and I talked about the ghosts who inhabit my memory. This is how I learned that my two daughters—I hope I can be forgiven for calling them that—had met, a decade or so ago, on a transatlantic ocean liner. One was coming home to France for the holidays, the other had gone to visit her biological father. Through one of those unexpected coincidences, they met on the deck of the ship. They had not seen each other since the fateful voyage of 1926, yet they recognized each other instantly. One approached the other with the natural confidence that happiness bestows on people. Marthe, however, turned away and fled.

This confidence extinguished any hope I had of seeing Marthe before I died. Curiously, accepting the fact calmed me. I had no expectations now. My daughter could not forgive my greatest sin, that of destroying her life so that I could go and live mine, betraying her love in order to follow mine. The day she was born, I had the unbearable feeling that she would suffer, and the lightning-bright intuition that I would be to blame.

For many years, I tried to absolve myself. I put myself in harm's way with the Spanish republicans, I joined the Resistance, I documented the horrors of human folly at the gates of the concentration camps, all this in the hopes of paying my debt. When, disgusted with the behaviour of men, I tried to redeem them, and myself, by cataloguing the artwork inspired by the divine, it seemed to me that when I finished this task I would be absolved.

It was a useless battle. There is no absolution, and there is no turning back. Every man's burden, as I understand it this evening, is to move ahead, at any cost, and to carry his sin for eternity. Even more, it is to know that he would make the same error again, because the consequences of not committing it would be even more serious and painful. In the end, the unforgivable thing would have been to not bother trying. I can go now. I hear the train. I would like to return to Miquelon.

Closing the notebook, tears in his eyes, François noticed a letter sticking out of the envelope. He had missed it in his rush to open the book and discover its treasures.

Dear François,

You told me to “do it” last spring. I realized that the doctor had also challenged me: “Tell them the story,” he seemed to say with that insistence in his eyes that you know all too well. So, here, “I've done it!”

Yours,

Émilie

He understood that she was beginning to soar.

Acknowledgements

Many individuals contributed to this novel. Thanks to Yves Leroy, who gave me many details on the life of Doctor Louis Thomas, and to Gracia Couturier, who early on helped me structure my ideas.

Thanks also to Muriel and Yvon in Miquelon and Harry in Prince Edward Island who gave me space and solitude to write. Finally, to all those, far and near, who helped me on this journey alongside Doctor Thomas, I owe my heartfelt gratitude.

Françoise Enguehard was born on the islands of Saint-Pierre et Miquelon. She is the author of the bestselling novel
Tales From Dog Island
, and has also published
Les petits plats dans les grands: l'art de la table a Saint-Pierre- et-Miquelon
, along with the young adult novels
Le tresor d'Elvis Bozec
and
Le pilot du Roy
.