in a soil black with volcanic ash and the bone dust of woolly rhinos and horses no bigger than cats. He described the water volcanoes of Iceland, the volcanic bombs of Vesuvius, the eruption of Mount Pelée in Martinique caused (or so some said) by an unusual conjunction of the sun and moon. And although it was a story I had heard before, Papa described the whale skull his own father had found digging a wine cellar deep in the yellow clay under rue Dauphine. The famous naturalist Lamanon had rewarded my great-grandfather with a kiss.
“One day I will take you to Holland,” Papa had said, tenderly stroking my hair. “The skull sits alone in a hall of the Teyler Museum.” After a moment’s reflection he added: “The hall is the size of this wood.”
I was roused from this memory, so like a reverie, by Gran’père’s snores. They sounded like a knife shaving bone. M’man’s snores made the sound of a glue pot simmering. I knew that because once I had helped Papa make glue with the hoof of a horse.
“Fais-moi peur, Nanu!” p’tit Pierre whispered in my ear.
“I can’t. Not with them so near.”
“Yes you can! They are both as good as dead. Start like this: ‘The voyage was doomed from the start.’ ” He nuzzled my neck.
“The voyage was doomed from the start,” I began, and p’tit Pierre sighed with pleasure. “A week off the Java coast the ship was swept by plague and all the sailors died.”
“The stench was terrible,” p’tit Pierre agreed. “All the sailors died but one.”
“And this is his story.”
“L’histoire du marin qui se trouvait seul.”
“All his friends were dead and all his enemies too. And now—”
“Sometimes people die of loneliness, Nanu.” Solemnly, p’tit Pierre licked the inside of my elbow.
“Stop that!” I scolded. “You’re like a little dog!” He licked me again.
“A lion,” he corrected me. “A lion. Lions lick each other. Then what happened?”
“He couldn’t manage the ship. The sails were down and he was at the mercy of the tides. There were roaches in the crackers and the water was black.”
“He could fish—”
“The fish were all too big to catch. Off Java the fish are as big as elephants.”
“He ate shit and he was lonely.”
“So lonely one day he shouted into the wind: ‘Goddamn! I’d take the Devil for a bride!’ ”
“He shouldn’t have said that! Your sailor—quel con!”
“He had an inspiration—”
“What’s that?”
“He thought: An entire wood was cut down to fill the hold of this ship with sandal, ebony, and cedar. I’ll find a nice log and cut off a piece and carve a bride for myself.”
“Like Pinocchio! Pinocella! Pinocella!”
“Shut up, idiot. Not like that. You’ll see. . . . He took a lantern and made his way down into the hold.”
“It was dark and full of rats! God knows what else!”
“Pierre—tais-toi. Some logs were loose and rolling. It was dangerous down there. But he climbed a pile as high as a hill and looked until he found something he liked. With his ax he hacked away until he had a piece about one meter long. The wood was so hard that each time he struck it he made sparks! And it was as dense as lead. Even his small piece was too heavy to lift. He struggled with it until he lost patience and gave it a kick.”
“Saying, ‘Goddamn it! Goddamn it! Goddamn it!’ ”
“The log rolled with the sound of thunder, and when it hit the floor the whole ship shuddered. He scrambled down after it and saw that the log had split wide open. The heart of the wood was green. Green as a corpse.”
“I’m scared, Nanu. . . .”
“And it smelled queer. But he was a stubborn man. He heaved it up to the deck and began to carve. He made so many sparks he needed no lantern to work by. It took him six days to cut her rough form: her head, her body, her arms—”
“He made her beautiful, Nanu.”
“—and it took him seven days to carve her features: her eyes, her lips, her little teeth.”
“Thirteen days for bad luck!”
“When he was finished she was beautiful. He kept her beside him and at night he held her close.”
“He called her Plaisance.”
“That’s stupid! Plaisance! What are you thinking? No. He called her . . . Amadée.”
“Si. C’est mieux.”
“Amadée. But, now listen to this, that wood was strange. It was the strangest wood in the world. Because even though it had taken him ages to carve her face, hour after hour, her features had a life of their own. Soon his little bride’s smile was a sneer. The expression of her eyes changed also. Deep lines appeared—on her forehead and beside her nose and mouth. One morning when he woke up, Amadée was so hideous he threw her away in a corner where the ropes—”
“Coiled like snakes!”
“That night he went to sleep alone.”
“Le pauvre, pauvre con!”
“And he had nightmares. In the middle of the night he woke up screaming—”
“A rat! He was bitten by a rat, eh? Nanu?”
“He thought it was a rat. Until he lit his lamp and found Amadée back in his bed, scowling like a shark—”
“Green as death!”
“Cold to the touch. Cold—”
“As ice, Nanu!”
“Colder. Cold as brass. He picked her up—”
“Although she was so heavy he almost ruptured his kidneys, le pauvre connard—”
“—and he threw Amadée into the sea.”
“The sea swallowed her up whole! C’est fini?”
“Non. That night, a strong current pulled the ship back to the Java coast. In the moonlight the sailor saw that the ship was heading toward some immense rocks, so he dropped anchor. But the sea was too deep!”
“Bottomless! And Amadée sinking and sinking!”
“Helpless, he watched as the rocks—”
