“Smoking has its advantages,” she said.
Against the back wall, where it stank of filthy toilets and wet sand, lay a cat. My mother threw away the match, handed me the box, and asked me to light another one.
“I thought it was a child,” I said, as we looked at the cat in the restless light of the flame.
My mother squatted down next to the animal and examined it with the skill of a nurse. “Cats can sound frighteningly human,” she said. She felt its flanks with her right hand, while stroking the head with her left. I threw the match on the ground and lit another.
“We’ll stay here a while and wait. It won’t take long.”
“What won’t?”
“She’s having kittens.”
I recoiled. “I’ll wait outside.”
She looked at me over her shoulder and raised one eyebrow. “No you won’t. I’ll need you to light another match for me soon. And I want you to see this.”
“But I don’t want to see it!” I flung the match to the ground and shuffled my feet.
“You can’t avoid everything. We’re staying here.”
The cat had stopped howling. We, too, fell silent, in the muffled hush of the bunker. It was very dark and it was a long time before we were able to see something.
Nearly an hour passed before we left the bunker. In the meantime, the cat had four kittens, blind little worms that burrowed their noses into their mother’s belly. When we came outside, it had stopped raining. Tattered gray clouds scudded over the water, toward the shore, and except for one lonely figure at the tidemark, the beach was deserted. My mother was just turning around, toward the house, when I caught sight of the figure. I peered into the wind, my eyes watering, and didn’t hear my mother calling until she had come back to get me.
“Didn’t you hear? I…”
I didn’t look at her, but saw her hand go to her mouth.
“But that’s…”
There at the tidemark, massive and tall, his coattails flapping, staring at the raging sea, stood Humbert Coe.
THAT EVENING WE ATE in the parlor, by the light of a candelabra I had seen gathering dust on a sideboard for as long as I could remember. The candle flames swayed gently in the twilight and cast a feverish glow on the faces of my mother and Humbert Coe. A bottle had been brought up from the cellar that made Coe nod with approval. He had poured it with his large hands into a crystal decanter that was new to me.
It was a while before I realized that I hadn’t seen my grandparents for quite a while. When I asked about them, I was told that they had eaten upstairs.
I hadn’t exactly been looking forward to an interminable meal with my gun-and-rabbit-crazy grandfather and my vacantly staring grandmother, but the fact that they weren’t there, in their own house, seemed odd to me. I didn’t get the chance to pursue the matter. My mother firmly evaded my glances and launched into deep conversation with Coe.
The room was at the front of the house, where the large bay window provided a clear view of the rolling dunes and the great void of sea and sky. Now, in the darkness, you could see only the faint, distant light of the moon through shreds of cloud and the reflection of the flickering candles on the windowpane. A few hours earlier Coe had sat here, a towel draped across his shoulders, his hair still somewhat wet and wild. He drank from a cup that looked so small in those big hands that I would have found it perfectly normal if he had grabbed the whole teapot and drunk straight from the spout. There were still raindrops leaking from his hair and every now and then he gave a thunderous sneeze and shivered from head to toe.
It was soon decided that Coe would spend the night at my grandparents’ house. There weren’t many trains running at night, and besides, he was chilled to the bone. Even though he himself mumbled “taxi,” and that he’d be fine, really, my mother had brushed aside his objections with her usual briskness and asked the housekeeper to make up a bed in the dream room. I had thrown her a bemused look that she chose to ignore. Instead she sent me into the kitchen to see what we could serve for dinner that night. The cellar and pantry were well stocked, and there was a hare hanging in the scullery that the doctor had brought over two days before. When my mother came in an hour later to see where I was, the potatoes had already been peeled and the hare lay browning in a roasting tin. I was sitting on a kitchen chair, in the hot, heady scent of dried prunes simmering in wine, and stared at the drops of condensation rolling down the kitchen window.
“What are you making?”
I told her. She looked at me with a mixture of surprise and uneasiness. “I thought you weren’t allowed to shoot hare in the summertime,” she said. I grinned. She smiled wearily. “Did you skin that beast yourself?” I nodded. A barely perceptible shiver went through her. Once, when she was still very young, Grandfather had taught her how to skin a hare and pluck a pheasant. It was not a success. For several years afterward, she had been a vegetarian.
She disappeared into the cellar and after a while came back with two bottles. She put them on the table and looked at me expectantly. I nodded, she sat down across from
