Episode 55 | Destination: Punaouilo

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Quite unexpectedly, we were living our honeymoon. Albeit unintentional a honeymoon it was. 

We'd go every day to the port, considering now the possibility of travelling to France with many stops at various ports to give Catherine the chance to recover, before boarding back on another ship. We had several months at our disposal until we reached France, where Catherine would finally give birth.

I had envisioned that possibility during the first time we went to a beach on the Elder Sisters Islands. 

Catherine had kept on ignoring me, even sexually, seeking refuge in her books and writings, while I felt very lonely, without any connection to anything around me -- not even to the future mother of my child.

Although I never mentioned it, I really missed Armand and the Île du Blanchomme, without actually being able to distinguish between the two very well. The Île wouldn't have existed in my life without my friend's invitation, and only at that tropical paradise had he felt safe to open his heart to me, thus transforming himself before my eyes -- and heart. Armand and the Île were inextricably intertwined, but similarly, Armand and the Île had brought me Catherine, and through all of them, my future son... or daughter... -- and that was what brought me back to the present, where I had a family coming in a deadlock situation that I was trying to solve while sun bathing in a tropical paradise.

I don't know exactly how I had that insight. At that time, I used to meditate without assuming the lotus position in order not to irritate Catherine, who had become a bitter enemy of meditation. 

There, on the lonely beach while apparently sun bathing, having the crash of waves and seagulls cries as a distant background, I concentrated on my breathing. Since Catherine did not speak to me, didn't even look in my direction, and all around us was only emptiness and silence, I finally was able to again cultivate a bit of calm and clarity. And in that stability and mental space, the solution had emerged.

As she listened while I tried to explain -- and it hadn't been easy to make her leave the pages of a book, Catherine was silent and expressionless for a moment. "Can't you be clearer?" she had demanded. The scheme was actually very simple, and suddenly she surrendered to the idea that would actually solve our problem. The strategy was 'quite reasonable', she pondered, but above all she was fascinated with the possibility of turning her tormented return to France, her via crucis on a ship or a plane, into a world insular tour.

Catherine was delighted with the idea, and more than that, soon she was all excited about it!

"After all, you're not as unresourceful as I had imagined you to be!" Catherine gave in and was quite contented. That was enough for her to end the sex strike she had put me on, and right there on the beach we made ​​love, madly and swiftly, without even getting undressed, to celebrate our new perspectives. As I  pressed my body against and into hers, I marveled at her beauty -- and I was intrigued with the fact that she hadn't grown a belly yet. How could she -- or the doctor -- know she was pregnant, when it did not show at all? Being a man, I had no idea how long would it take. 

Sometimes I wondered... Could it be that Catherine was faking a pregnancy to hoist me? Just to steal me from Armand?

Happy days followed, when we started making our newly conceived travel plans. The problem was again financial. Several short trips would cost far more than a single long trip, and Catherine was not considering boarding freighters along the way -- no matter how much the sailors had attracted and excited her fantasies, as I was beginning to suspect. In our neighborhood next to the port, I had more than once noticed Catherine's long, languorous looks towards the seamen who excitedly hunted for girls -- and I was aware that, on the Elder Sisters Islands, Catherine was the best looking woman of all by far, at least to my taste. I too was proud of having snatched her as a prize.

We also had to consider -- or I was to consider it -- that stopping at several islands meant more food and lodging expenses. And Catherine, once she had begun dreaming of the journey, could only think of paradisiac islands and luxury resorts.

Finally, she agreed on requesting money from her mother. She could not mention my existence, and the plan was that I would be using Armand's money for my own travel expenses, while all the money that Celeste would send should be used for her travelling. 

Yet I feared I wouldn't have enough money for the entire journey, and certainly not to stay at resorts, but I could always work on the vessels we boarded in exchange for my own transportation and food... and why not also at the resorts? As a waiter or cleaning staff, I might be able to get to France accompanying Catherine, and taking care of her. But I decided to hide that scheme from her, assuming she wouldn't be happy to have a servant as her travel companion.

Celeste, or Madame Mortinné to me, was a little surprised with the new plans, and asked many questions in details about them. Catherine had justified the sudden change by means of health problems, claiming that her mother had always known that she got sick on ships -- hadn't it been so since their first sea voyage returning from the holidays in Tunisia? Celeste pondered that Catherine should just get on a plane under tranquilizers and fly straight back to France.

"Don't you think it's better to suffer only a few hours of fear, no matter how tremendous, than many, endless hours of seasickness?" Celeste inquired.

But Catherine had become obsessed with the idea of ​​a journey full of stops at different ports -- or perhaps imagining that with such a long journey she would have more chances of losing the baby... because I still feared she was thinking about that -- and with her talent for words she tried to convince and to pass her excitement on to her mother. By the end of their conversation, Celeste had agreed on seeing how she could help.

Those crazy plans brought us an unprecedented complicity, and at times we actually seemed like a couple on honeymoon. I felt truly cheerful and content during several conversations with Catherine, and it finally felt like she was my wife, that I could take care of her in my own way. And that together we would take care of our baby, and we would build a happy family.

But at other times, it was enough to look at Catherine to understand she wasn't actually satisfied with her new status, and that ultimately I could not make her happy, not ever.

"This is a wonderful evening, don't you think so?" I tried to cheer her up.

I was pleased with the prospects of our trip, joyful with the prospects of our family, and also happy with my present, waiting for the next ship that would soon take us towards our future. 

It had been one beautiful starry night, and not too hot nor humid, on the Elder Sisters Islands. We were having dinner in the restaurant at the quiet back of our hotel, next to the rose garden that had been cultivated aiming to neutralize the awful smell of oil and dead fish coming from the port. Since there were no ships parked in the harbor, the island was lazily silent. There were no boisterous sailors with whom I would have to compete for Catherine's attention, and I relaxed. We were the only customers in the restaurant and the cook herself, a funny fat woman who smelled to a mixture of spices and sweat, had been waiting on us.

"What is it nice about it?" Catherine replied in disbelief.

I had dropped my worries and was feeling generous. On that evening in particular, I had even ordered a bottle of champagne, for the first time in my life.

"Don't you think that champagne makes everything special?" I asked naively, inviting her to celebrate -- whatever.

"You don't actually know the difference between champagne and sparkling wine, do you?" Catherine asked me, sighing. More than disappointed, she was disheartened with my lack of sophistication and refinement.

I then realized that we didn't share the same notions for life, nor values​​, and that my 'wonderful' was rather simplistic, humble and narrow-minded in comparison to the wonders of her universe.

My poor sparkling wine in a tropical night could never have competed with the Veuve Cliquot that her handsome and rich dates would have offered Catherine at the best restaurants in Paris. Her memories of those glamorous moments were plenty and still fresh, gleaming like the myriad of crystal chandeliers she had dined under, to let her actually appreciate the candle at our table in that insular restaurant. It was as romantic as it was practical -- emitting a feeble light over our simple yet tasty meal, the candle liberated an acrid smell to keep the insects away.

I could not get a sense of how much Catherine was abdicating at that point of her life, except for the tremendous unhappiness that she sometimes revealed. Her academic career, the vibrant Parisian life, her smooth transit among so many wealthy boys, all handsome, and others less so, but certainly more interesting and stimulating, both intellectually and sexually, than me.

As much as I was the trophy she had snatched from her brother, I wasn't after all a very valuable trophy.

At last, when Catherine talked again to Celeste, we learned about our first destination -- Punaouilo. Yet another island which I had never heard of. But Catherine was all excited about it, because it was an island for the rich and famous, very exclusive and fancy. We would be staying at the home of one of Celeste's friends, who was also a famous actress. "A grand house, a proper colonial mansion! They often host famous people!" Catherine had declared, gleefully. There, her mother would send more money through her husband's friend, who used to travel between Punaouilo and France several times a year.

It seemed wonderful to us -- Catherine was enthusiastic about heading to an island visited by the international jet-set, and I did not have to worry about our hosting and food, at least for that first leg of the trip. 

She agreed to lie about me -- once we got to Punaouilo, I would be presented as someone whom she had met on the ship, and as her tropical date I would also stay as a guest with her mother's friend. I would also use a false name, something that sounded fancier and nobler than Carlo D'Allegro -- fortunately enough, that suggestion came from Catherine herself, and it would also solve my problem on the ships owned by Monsieur de Montbelle's friends. All seemed to fit perfectly well.

"But we have to buy new clothes for you! That's a must!" Catherine had stated. "You cannot pretend to be my date if you keep on using these rags." I was about to reply that I was actually wearing nearly to new clothes that had been given to me by Armand, but I new I'd better shut up. "We're going downtown tomorrow, to see if we can find something at least acceptable to buy in these savage lands."

Finally, we found a ship headed to an island near Punaouilo, and from there a smaller vessel that would take us to our final destination. 

We just forgot to check it on the map. Unless Celeste had confused the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal, she was sending us in the wrong direction.

Punaouilo was further into the Pacific, towards French Polynesia and South America, and even farther from Europe than we were, already. 

But we only were to find we were headed the opposite direction of France after we had already boarded.

*****

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(and the start of Interlude ONE)

Author's note: having been imported from a former version of the story, some of the comments below are dated previous to this post. Once the plot has not been altered, just the pagination, I am keeping them since they are very dear and precious to me.

Episode 54 | A nullity

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nudity and sex

Even without knowing it had been recommended by Armand, Catherine hated the hotel, and only agreed to stay there for a day or two because she was too weak to go in search of a better one. It was more like a plain pension than a hotel, truly, and while I thought it had a certain Parisian flair, holding in its backyard the single rose garden we would see for years around those islands, she was disgusted with the neighborhood. But in fact, there wasn't any neighborhood -- apart from the port and its Authority building just across the street, there were some sparse houses doting a wide stretch of empty lots, and a couple of derelict pensions for budget travelers. Busiest every now and then was the brothel, for sailors from the few ships that actually halted a bit longer at the Elder Sister Islands. 

Our hotel had its front overlooking the foul-smelling docks, and its back to a desolate small town atmosphere, where our room was -- number 8, as suggested by Armand. Catherine was not pleased upon learning that her half-brother used to stay at that same hotel -- although I was not naive to tell her we were in the same room he had usually occupied, too.

But the only other hotel stood on the other side of the island, which would make our access to the port more difficult and costly. I had not taken all of Armand's money, and although I had in my hands a larger amount than I had ever dreamed of, still I had to save it to make sure that we could buy our tickets. Unfortunately, we had lost a ship by three days -- maybe even the one Armand had arrived on? -- and the next one would arrive within ten days or so. It was a freighter, which did not exactly thrill Catherine.

We found nicer accommodation when we went to the hospital to make an international call. Catherine had tried two other public telephones, but she finally agreed to return to the hospital, which to her was linked to bad recollections.

But that other hotel, although more luxurious than our pension by the port, was mainly occupied by relatives of the patients, or even by some patients who were awaiting surgery or in recovery, and it had a mood just as gloomy as the hospital. Depressed with what she saw, I was happy when Catherine gave up staying there, since it was far more expensive.

Again, Catherine wouldn't let me stay by her side when she called Paris. Hadn't I learned everything, already? I just wanted to make sure that she wouldn't tell anything about me to her family, putting our travel plans in danger. Dismissing my concerns, she assured me that she would not announce her pregnancy until we got back to France. Her return -- on her own -- was the only news she wanted to communicate.

By chance, or was it a stroke of luck, or even bad luck as we first thought, the doctor who had first examined Catherine spotted her and wanted to examine her again. Catherine would not obey nor subject herself to many people, but that woman doctor seemed to have power over her.

"What is it, Catherine, for heaven's sake?!" I almost cried when I saw her again leave the hospital looking devastated. "Did something happen to the baby?"

"That woman..."  she grimaced, indicating the hospital we had just left, on our way back to the port area, by foot, "she said I'm not healthy enough as to spend so many days on a boat to France! She... forbid me to travel. Mérde!" 

The only option was to fly back to France, but I hadn't brought enough money to go by boat to a larger island that had an airport, much less to buy two airline tickets to France. We checked the prices at the port, but that was not why we gave up that scheme -- the fact was that Catherine was insanely terrified of flying!

She had flown only once as a child, for a holiday in Tunisia with Celeste. But her despair had been so great on the flight, and she had been so sick in Tunisia just thinking that she would have to fly back to France, that her mother had actually agreed on returning by ship, and then on a train to Paris.

"Flying is for birds! And for fools!" she told me.

Saint-Exupéry, Glenn Miller, Rocky Marciano, Carlos Gardel, Roald Amundsen, Jacques Thibaud, Carole Lombard, Leslie Howard,  and most recently Alexander Onassis, the son of Aristotle Onassis... Catherine's list of famous people who had died on airplane crashes, or went missing,  was extensive and eclectic. And by no means she would fly.

I was pacified because, at least, we wouldn't have to spend money we didn't have. However, she didn't want to give birth in that part of the world.

"No!" she protested, "I don't want to stay here! No, I don't want it!"

We pondered that we could dope Catherine with tranquilizers so she could cross the oceans, but at that proposition the doctor looked at us as if we were dangerously mad, and threatened us with the police again. Catherine still feared Armand would have died from inanition, and did not want to risk being accused of another death. Depending on that woman doctor, the baby was going to be born in the Elder Sisters Islands.

"I don't want to stay here, I don't want it!" Catherine helplessly repeated every day, disconsolate and angry. "And I don't understand that woman's insistence that I should have this baby... Isn't this world wronged enough, and overpopulated already?"

The fact is, none of us knew what else to do.

If the baby would be born on the Elder Sisters Islands indeed, I started considering getting a job and probably moving to simpler accommodations, because we could not live off to Armand's money and generosity for seven or eight months.

"Why not?" Catherine was indignant. "The money is not his! That money is coming from my father!"

"Then how about asking for more money from your family?" I suggested. Catherine was going to call Paris again, to announce that she wouldn't be returning to France so soon, though we hadn't yet prepared an excuse for that delay.

"And why not ask your family?" she confronted me.

I was indeed getting ready to write to my grandfather, explaining him the whole situation and informing him about his great-grandson or great-granddaughter to be born. But the money he could send would be little. And it would take a long time to arrive because, unlike Monsieur de Montbelle, he had no chance to wire money to us. There was not even a tiny village close to his farm, and no cities at all on those mountains! Telephones and banks might have been otherworldly for Tarso, who could only cope with the post.

There was no longer how to hide my reality from Catherine. She was completely baffled.

"Are you really that poor?" But she was not expressing disdain, nor sympathy for me, just concern for her own complicated situation that my company seemed to aggravate, putting us on a cul-de-sac.

Finally, Catherine realized whom and what I was. Not an exotic native, as she had thought at first, neither a heir from Armand's millionaire's club, as she had fantasized. A nullity, she would accuse me in the following years. Another lame lower-class European, so uninteresting and bland. 

Slightly worse, perhaps, since I was a peasant simpleton.

For several days, during which we expected and awaited nothing, her grief was so immense that she even lost sexual interest in me. If she had once been excited at the mere sight of my penis, she now averted her eyes at my nakedness, and always looked terribly bored.

"Help yourself next door." She suggested, and I knew she meant the brothel for the sailors. Was she willing to give up on me, already? Like in the chiaroscuro technique I had learned at the Ecóle, I thought my relative value depended on Armand's presence -- and if Catherine could no longer arouse his jealousy, I feared she would soon regard me as useless. But I was being short-sighted -- Catherine was already thinking on the impact when Armand would learn I had given her a child. To be certain that the news would find him, she would even write him herself -- once we reached France safely.

As we started losing our intimacy, when she continuously refused my touch, an almost unbearable tension was created in our small, claustrophobic hotel room that smelled to rust, damp and camphor. 

While Catherine was glad to be back to civilization, having doors to lock and windows to shut, commonly afraid of burglars and insects as she was, those same circumstances made me miserable -- and I missed the freedom and the far flung horizons of the Île du Blanchomme so badly!

How naive I was. I had imagined myself to be a dynamo of pleasure in her life -- but the truth was that Catherine would have been content to just have had sexual experiences with me. She had come to perceive me as Armand's sex toy; except for the fact that I was hung and tireless, she was unable to see any other of my qualities that would keep her aristocratic brother's interest in me. In time, even I came to believe that myself -- name the flowers and predict the weather, who would have cared about that? Hadn't Armand eyed me with desire from the start? What were his true intentions, when he had invited me to share the apartment -- the same room, and sometimes even the same bed -- with him? And I finally realized Catherine would have dumped me at the end of her stay on the Île, if she hadn't gotten pregnant.

Just sex, no love -- but disaster had ensued as she had gotten pregnant, and she was trying to at least profit from that baby against Armand.

I could not imagine a past for Catherine, and probably I was afraid to inquire about it, for fear of feeling even more inferior.

By the way she had led me in bed, I could imagine that Catherine had had a lot of sexual experience. But still I could not have known how much freedom she had had during the years at the Université... L'amour libre was not just another theoretical discussion for Catherine. Neither simply a justification that she gave for never marrying me the following years, and the entire time we stayed together -- I am sure it would have been different and 'Free Love' would never have been mentioned to me, had I been a wealthy heir.

Her father's double conduct, foundational of her family and life, had given Catherine the ease to live several lives herself. She behaved with the utmost demure and elegance, but always very seductive, with the dates that her mother would arrange her, usually with rich heirs -- which often led to the same programs that Armand was also going on with his arranged girlfriends. More than once she had seen her half-brother at L'Opéra, as she would later tell me, though Armand still hadn't known about her existence.

A different behavior she reserved to the Université  and its students and teachers ranks, where her studies ran parallel with romances that could boost her academic career. Although she did not feel attracted to older men, among the young students and scholars there was a handsome variety of promising writers, prestigious film-makers, and bold leaders to the student's movement that contented her both intellectually and sensually.

But to the intellectual crowd, although Catherine gave more freedom, she yet held a certain reputation for modesty and being a difficult girl, who could on a fickle change her opinion and favors about her expectant male companions, as rapidly as she changed hairstyles and fashion, often trying to look prettier than Brigitte Bardot and Françoise Dorléac, two actresses to whom  she was often compared and secretly, privately competed with.

Catherine did not intend to be a continuation of her mother's tumultuous love liaisons -- the advice coming from Celeste herself, who did not wish for her daughter a life of being relegated to 'second choice' and conforming to the role of a man's entertainer. She therefore insisted on choosing Catherine's dates among Europe's finest, wealthiest young men, with whom her daughter could engage in 'something serious'. Catherine accepted that game of interests -- was it the lure of money, was it the lure of intellect, she kept her companions of both careers, the economic and the educational, in the narrow confines between thrill and frustration.

It was a great achievement for someone that young, and she was usually self-contented with her life many and varied scenarios, and the glamorous prospects of picking her chosen partner among the richest or the cleverest. 

As to her body, that would not accept to be disdained, she reserved it to strangers, especially immigrants and foreign tourists who abounded in Paris. She was glad to have a renewed stock of them constantly available, because she did not need establish any connection with these men. Her first time was with an immigrant who had been deported shortly after. Catherine hadn't been the least heartbroken when he was arrested and sent back to North Africa, because she hadn't been in love, not even involved with him -- as the guy had found out himself when he pleaded for her help.

In such a transient atmosphere, Catherine pursued her sensuality with freedom. She hungered for the exotic as much as she feared it. With her passion for words, she'd have preferred to understand what her lovers were grunting while they were doing it to her, may it be swearings, or compliments to her body, but that was not mandatory. She had already learned a few of these words, the most common in Arabic, that men expeled in their love making just like sweat and semen. And her skills in English and Dutch were enough for the rather limited repertoire of conversations in bed, that usually took place while undressing, or when putting the clothes back on. Above all, she wanted to stay in control of her feelings as opposed to the other way around -- and in bed, had a few men made her lose control, I wasn't one of them. They made Catherine surrender to them -- while I had always been obedient, perhaps the most obedient of them all. I was too gentle even to bite her, unless she demanded it, and  slapping her flesh never occurred to me during those first years. I never opposed to her domination in bed, and my passivity somehow diminished her pleasure in being the dominant, just because I was too naive to comprehend the subtleties of an intercourse, already enough worried in being technically satisfying. 

How did I discover so many things about Catherine? I learned how to read between her lines -- paying a lot of attention when she was talking to other people, when she revealed herself more than she ever would to me --, carefully reading her books and their heroines' stories to distinguish between her imagination and experiences. That's how I became aware of Catherine's "extra marital" affairs -- through her books. But it's not the case of bringing that up now, since we were never married.

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Episode 45 | Held hostage

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For a few minutes I cherished that idea, thinking I would share it with Catherine. My suggestion was that she'd stay on the Elder Sisters Islands -- a mighty marvel of civilization if compared to the undisturbed palsy of the Île du Blanchomme. From where she could easily board a ship to return to France whenever she wanted, back to her beloved studies at one of the most prestigious Universities in the world, and to her rich girl's spoiled life. Or then, if she wanted to stay, agree that we cool off our relationship, returning to its previous state of cordial coexistence. In such condition we would decently welcome Armand -- like the involuntary guest and host she and I had been at the start. 

I finally realized there was at least one thing that was greater than my lust -- my cowardice. The fear of hurting Armand, deeply and irreversibly... losing him. But then... for how long hadn't I thought of him? While making love to Catherine in his bed? While showering in his house? While cooking and eating from his food? I realized how I had exiled him from my heart and mind after having started my affair with Catherine. It could not continue that way. A love affair, a sex idyll, whatever it was I had with that girl -- it had to end.

I was so engrossed in my selfish stream of thoughts that I missed Catherine standing right behind me, paralyzed. But once my eyes fell on her, obviously in a state of shock and devastated, I immediately lost the courage to desert her.

"I am sick." She said, in a low, somewhat disembodied voice. "Or I have been... You were right, food poisoning..." As she sat on the steps, I realized her body was shaking. The night had fallen, and it was much cooler than the usual temperature on the Île. I hadn't thought of bringing warmer clothes to us. I hadn't thought we'd stay until so late, and now I worried about the next boat... On which I would return all on my own or not? With a shrug, I dismissed those concerns and tried to concentrate on Catherine, whose voice was barely audible. "And the heatstroke. You had it right, too. And they say you took good care of me..." She tried to smile. "And of my skin..."

"Grazie, Dio! Did they give you some medicine?" I asked, sincerely relieved. I realized the doctor to whom I had spoken that morning was observing us from the reception area, and I felt like a child being observed.

"But... there is something else..." She gulped. "Something terrible..." And before I could ask, she added quickly "I'm pregnant."

"You are..." I felt my heart stop for a few seconds and then madly accelerate -- "...pregnant!" Catherine had been speaking so low that her voice seemed to come from another world. Another world, indeed, it turned to be.

"I'm in the first weeks." She murmured. "It's still time to interrupt it..." 

"What are you talking about?" I was dumbfounded with Catherine's announcement, and scared with the perspectives it brought. But her own reaction to it was the worst. "How could you do it? We cannot do it, Catherine, we cannot do that!" I cried in desperation. 

"What do you mean, we?" I guess I had again chosen the wrong words. Her voice rose, and she was enraged. "What are you talking about, we? This is my body, and I do with it as I wish!"

"I will not let you do that Catherine!" I gently took her arm to direct her to the deck chairs to continue our conversation. But she resisted, and when I insisted I must have twisted her arm, or made her fell like I was forcing her. Intimidating, even. And just like when we first met at the Île, she pushed me away.

"Let me go! You are hurting me!" She whined. Harming her was absolutely not my intention, and I immediately backed up. "You have no right... This is a tragedy! This is my tragedy!" Though speaking louder than normal, she was talking to herself. "What's going to become of my life?! This ruins everything!!" She screamed. "I can't have a baby! I'm too young to have a baby! I don't want this baby!"

I raised my hand to again lead her by the arm, but just dropped it. The girl seemed so very mignon in her desolation, again resembling a hapless prey. And standing tall against her, aware that I could easily dominate, grab and drag her as I wished, I felt like a brute. "Please, Catherine..." I begged. One of the nurses had come out to check what Catherine's screams were about. "I think we are disturbing the other patients..."

She gave me a look of consternation, as if saying Who cares?, and suddenly Catherine ran, fleeing the hospital's grounds.

For a moment I was motionless, still taken aghast at the news of her pregnancy, above all surprised with Catherine's reaction to it, and finally, stupefied with her sudden escape. It took me a while to decide to run after her.

Being weakened, and not knowing really where to go, she did not reach far, and I soon caught her, at the square in front of the hospital.

I could not -- or would not -- understand Catherine's reasons for being so miserable and mad with her pregnancy.

I was just surprised. It was my first couple relationship, and naive, inexperienced as I was, in no moment at all, while we made love several times a day, I thought I was repeatedly depositing my seed in her -- even though sometimes it was so abundant that it came out seeping between her thighs, and I'd then lick it and... I felt so proud. Not of any nasty features in bed -- but at the prospect of continuing the lineage of D'Allegros. Though far away from my original land, I immediately felt connected to my ancestors. And I thought of Tarso, my grandfather, who would probably be delighted with the news. I wanted to phone him right away in the Apennines, but of course we did not have a telephone in our stone house, nor at any other property nearby. The stars of a tropical night, on a faraway island to which I held no connection at all, shared my pride and stood bright over me.

There were all these details that I could not have told Laurent, ever, and not during our reunion at the Nirvana Lounge. I hadn't flown all the way from Italy to reunite with him after twenty years to break his heart -- though I could hardly imagine it not being shattered to pieces at some point of that night. 

 I completely omit our visit to the hospital in the Elder Sisters Islands. Nor did I want him to be aware of his mother's initial rejection to being pregnant -- because at that moment there was actually no Laurent. Catherine was considering aborting a faceless, nameless and almost formless baby, as she perceived it. 

Nor did I want to brag about having convinced Catherine to keep the baby, because it was not what happened.

Although Catherine had never mentioned the Île du Blanchomme to Laurent when telling him about his birth, she enjoyed using the anecdote that he had interrupted her vacations with his premature birth in a remote part of the world, implying that he had also interrupted -- most important of all -- her academic career. And maybe that's why he asked me that night at the Nirvana Lounge:

"I know that I was not a planned baby... It was an accident, of course..." Laurent tried to smile, but it was clear that having been generated by chance was one of his sorrowful burdens in life. "Were I, at least, a wanted baby? I mean..."

"You were an announced baby, Laurent!" I interrupted him immediately. "It's true there was no family planning, but you have been blessed even before your birth! 'The Sunrise Son', remember?"

"Yeah, I know..." He was not convinced. "But what about Catherine? I have so often heard her anecdote... I took holidays from the university and never returned... Instead of a nice suntan, I was given a premature son at the end of the world!" -- Laurent imitated his mother's blasé intonation. "She was always reinforcing that I was prematurely born... Not just a couple of months ahead, but years ahead in her life... She always made ​​fun of it, but I never heard her sincere feelings about it..."

"She was... worried." What else could I have told my son? It was heart-wrenching, telling a lie about something so foundational in his life, but the truth was too cruel. Much worse than the legend of the Birth Island that could turn him into a doomed baby. Or was it the doom not being born, never again, not even after having been conceived? "Largely, I think, because of me..." I was ready to take the blame, and avert his attention. "I was so... immature, inexperienced... and she must have thought... How can this goofy man be a father and head of a household?"

Partially, it was so true.

"Can we go to a hotel?" She requested, still sobbing, on the street in front of the hospital, that was almost deserted at that time of the night.

"A hotel?" I mumbled. Suddenly I realized I had not thought about our lodging. I had intended to spend as little time as possible on the Islands, and I had wanted to check the schedule for the next boat right there on our arrival... but with Catherine's sickness, I had forgotten about all my plans.

"We are going to a hotel, aren't we?" Catherine groaned in disbelief, and she almost fainted when she saw the surprise on my face. "A pension, an auberge, whatever..." When I remained powerlessly silent, she finally realized how much at loss she was in my company.

I had brought enough money for the groceries -- Armand's money -- but at no time I had thought about our lodging... I was an inexperienced traveler, and if I were alone in such a situation, I would not mind sleeping rough, right on the streets. Like I already had, upon my arrival on those same Islands.

But with Catherine, especially the condition she was in, it was impossible.

She turned away from me and headed to a bench at the edge of the square, where she lay crying.

I did not know what to do -- I was scared and worried. Whatever pride I had experienced moments ago, it had been overtaken by a devastating panic. I felt lost.

Despite knowing of Catherine's enthusiasm and dedication to her academic career, I was slow in understanding how threatened she must have felt, thinking of all the things she saw herself losing with that pregnancy. And I knew nothing about her dysfunctional family situation, that would lead her to hide that pregnancy, if she could not get rid of it.

"Let's go back to the hospital!" It was the only sensible idea that occurred to me. "You'll get hospitalized the next few days as I purchase the groceries and find out when the next boat leaves..."

"Are you crazy?" she cried, "I did not come here to be hospitalized! And I will not go back..." She must have seen desperation stamped all over my face, when I thought she refused to go back to our Île, and she clarified, "to that shitty hospital."

"It's getting cold, Catherine..." A damp wind had began to blow, just the same as I remembered on my first night in the Islands, when I had slept on a table at the port. I had endured it, but the poor girl absolutely wouldn't. "Aren't you hungry? Thirsty? I'm almost sure they would feed us, if I'd talk to someone there..." What other way could I provide her with her needs? If we'd spend the money for the groceries on lodging and a meal, how could we go back to the Île? I had been so improvident. 

And so things took their way. Catherine was physically weak and too mentally shaken to oppose to my idea -- the only possible solution to our precariousness. She must have felt humiliated, but still she allowed me to guide her back to the hospital. Once the nurses understood our situation, they immediately took her inside.

There was no place for me; however, they let me sleep on the porch, and even lent me a blanket.

During those days I went all over the Elder Sisters Islands in search of good food, and the cheapest too, to maximize the money, while Catherine was hospitalized -- "held hostage" as she would put it. And with the healing passing of time, she decided to keep the baby. 

That's what I believed for many years, until Catherine confessed that it was the woman doctor with whom I had spoken at the entrance to the hospital, and who had examined her, after having tried to lecture her, finally threatened to report Catherine to the police if she tried an abortion. 

That's how and why Laurent survived -- how could I have told him this?

While we waited for the next boat, I ate, slept and showered in the hospital, thanks to the kindness of the medical staff. But I was forbidden to visit Catherine -- on her own orders.

My beard grew and, as I hadn't brought clothes to change, by the end of those days I had that appearance of a homeless person that had so worried Armand at my arrival, on those same Islands. 

I confess that I didn't even want to think about him -- whenever I noticed my mind racing towards my best friend, I'd start singing a song or doing anything else to distract and occupy me, mentally. But thinking solely of Catherine, whom I thought now depended on me, yet was rejecting me -- and, truth be said, she remained a mystery and a stranger to me -- and the baby -- the prospect of being a father suddenly seemed threatening -- none of those things was soothing or calming me. It felt like my previous life was a maze I had finally emerged from -- to find myself before another even greater maze.

I started wondering if the Elder Sisters held something against me. 

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