moment I responded, the door cracked open and a balding, middle-aged man with a heavy moustache peered out into the gloom. “What makes you think your friend is here?” he asked, as his eyes darted nervously up and down the street.
“We were given this address by one of his army comrades,” I explained. “This is his father, and I am Padrig Le Bras, an old shipmate and friend. We are here to bring him home. Your patient will vouch for us.”
With that the doctor relaxed, and he opened the door wider and stepped aside: “Come in quickly, both of you. The curfew goes into effect soon, and they arrest people who venture on the street at night.”
He ushered us into his surgical waiting room. “Please, gentlemen, sit. It must have been a difficult journey.” He turned then to Yann: “Did you come by train, Mr. Le Corr?”
“Mr. Le Corr speaks very little French,” I interjected. “Do you speak Breton?”
The doctor shook his head apologetically. “No, I’m afraid not. But this is unfortunate; I have bad news, and I would rather disclose it personally.”
My heart sank. “Oh God! No. He’s not dead?”
“Your friend has been through hell these last few weeks,” he replied. “But, no. He’s not dead. But—and I’m very sorry to have to tell you this—last week we had to amputate his left leg at the knee. It couldn’t be avoided; gangrene was setting in.”
I glanced at my companion, but he had not followed the conversation. But when I translated the appalling news, his head slowly sank into his hands and he turned away in despair.
Doctor Bertrand continued: “Your friend is hidden upstairs under the mansard. Come, I will show you the way.”
I tried to put my arm around Yann’s shoulders, but he shook it off roughly as we followed the doctor up the main stairs to a landing overlooking the foyer. He pointed to a huge ornamental washstand that stood against the wall.
“If you lift that to one side,” he said, “you will find a detachable panel which conceals a stairway to the attic. The stairs will take you to your son.” He pulled a watch from his vest pocket and snapped open the top. “You may go up and see him now. But be careful. He will probably be asleep, and he keeps a service revolver under his pillow. If you startle him he may try to shoot you.”
As soon as we removed the panel, Yann called up to his son in Breton and followed his voice up the stairs. The doctor and I lingered on the landing to give them a few moments alone. There was a short, uncomfortable silence, and then we both began speaking simultaneously. The doctor held up his hands: “I’m sorry,” he said. “What were you going to say?”
“Do you think he is fit to travel?” I repeated.
“That’s a difficult question to answer,” he replied. “In a perfect world, of course, I’d have to say no—especially not on a tiny fishing boat. But under these circumstances, I don’t think we have much of a choice. There will never be a better opportunity to return him to his home and family.”
I agreed with that assessment—we had a pass to get us through the town; the boat was ready to sail, and I knew that Yann would never leave without his son. So we began discussing any difficulties we might encounter. And while we stood there on the landing, a tall woman, her iron-gray hair swept back into a chignon, ascended the stairs with a tray of bandages. She and the doctor exchanged smiles and he placed his arm around her shoulders when she stepped onto the landing:
“This is Nicole—my wife, my nurse, and my right hand. She has been taking care of your friend, and I see it’s time to change his dressings.”
We exchanged greetings, and then she slipped into the narrow stair well. The good doctor waved me in behind her, and the winding stairs brought me to a box room tucked directly beneath the slate and lath of the roof. I admit I had not known what to expect when I stepped into the room, but when I saw the figure lying on the floor in that cramped and dusty space, I scarcely recognized my young friend.
Gone was the sturdy, self-reliant young man I had sailed beside for more than a dozen years; in his place was a defeated soldier with haggard features and sunken eyes that were accentuated by shadows thrown from an oil lamp on the floor beside the mattress. I knelt beside him and took his hand, and was rewarded by a wan smile:
“Padrig, Padrig,” he said weakly, “I feared I would never see you again.”
I glanced up at his father as I struggled to find words to reflect my sorrow at his plight while, at the same time, offering some solace. And I realized that, in his devastation, Old Yann had also been unable to comfort his son sufficiently. I turned back to the boy, put my arms around him and kissed his cheeks. But in the end all I could manage was a weak, “Thank God you’re alive,” and I lowered my eyes in shame.
Mercifully, the doctor’s wife set her tray down beside me and began preparations for changing the dressings. So I pulled myself to my feet, took Old Yann by the arm and pulled him gently to one side.
“At least we have him back,” I whispered. He nodded grimly, but there was no joy in those eyes.
During the next few days, I came to realize that my old friend was having great difficulty coming to terms with two inescapable facts: the sudden collapse of the invincible French army, after his comrades and he had struggled for four years in the trenches of the Great War; and the loss of his boy in terms of a shipmate and fellow fisherman. In the Brittany of the thirties and forties to lose one’s only son’s wage earning capacities was a calamity, but to have to nurse and financially support an amputee in addition was a devastating burden.
On the third day, we loaded Young Yann into the doctor’s Citroën CV and brought him down to the river where the Kenavo chafed at her moorings, eager to carry him home. And because his patient was still weak from his surgery, the good doctor helped us carry him on board and make him comfortable on a field cot of fishing nets. Doctor Bertrand then cast off our lines and wished us God speed as we fired up our motor and pushed out into the Loire to begin our return voyage.
And as we island-hopped our way back up the coast, our passenger spent most of the first day in a drug-induced sleep. But by the second afternoon the salt air and the gentle roll of the ocean seemed to be having a healthful impact, so I sat him up in the stern, made him comfortable by propping up his stump with my duffel bag, and offered him the helm:
“Here,” I said, with a wink. “If you can’t pay your passage, you are going to have to work for it.”
His contented expression told me all I needed to know as he grasped the tiller and ran a practiced eye over the trim of the sail. Then he looked off to the south-west over the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean and filled his lungs with air laced with the salt and spray of a thousand waves: “This is where the Good Lord intended me to spend my days, Padrig,” he said. “And that’s exactly what I intend to do from this moment on.”
It was good to see Young Yann in such a positive frame of mind after all he’d been through, and we bantered back and forth, just as we had when he was a boy. And when he asked how we came to find him, I entertained him with a lighthearted version of our preparations and our outbound voyage, making sure to emphasize his father’s critical role.
“But you,” I said, when I had finished. “How did you end up in Nantes, of all places?”
“That’s a long and twisted
