View from the lazaret
by Deirdre Gilfedder
As the ship moved closer to the stone, he could hear his blood beat inside. The sound was deafening and muffled all else except the inevitable crunch of the stern. The rope was squeezed through the iron loop in time. The vessel rebounded, the thumping in his head subsided, large gulls plummeted from the sky. He did not remove his long jacket and kept his cap tight down to his eyes, though some of the crew had stripped under the Spring sun. There was nobody on the sand, but black smoke was curling up above the wide wall. He followed those in a hurry to gain shelter without looking at each other, in diagonal file toward the tower.
An agent from the port authority lined everyone up against the wall, one metre apart. Within minutes from the main entrance stalked the nightmarish figure of a crow, steel-grey coat to his feet, claws of rubber and beneath the flat-crowned hat a long chalky beak bearing an expression somewhere between I do not care and sardony. Through the glass holes, brown eyes in wrinkled bags. The beak loomed nearer to Hippolyte and a powerful scent reached him, hard to make out – eggs, gas, turpentine, lavender, spearmint, the vinegar of the four thieves. Marseilles. He concentrated on the lavender and it numbed his temples as he started to cough, a cough of nothing. His eyes smarted and warm tears blinded him. Another cough burned his throat. Through the watery prism the great bird bulged. Its eyes flickered left right left. The winged stick prodded Hippolyte’s neck and pulled apart his jacket as if it were carving goose. Through his beak the doctor croaked at Hippolyte to cease coughing. The movement rose and stifled at the back of his larynx, shuddering like potion on the boil.
‘Touchée’ was written in scarlet on the paper patent handed to the captain. Forty days.
Once through the entrance he could feel the cool of the gallery, a neat perspective of rounded arches set the calm. They passed through in silence with the billowing smell of herbs and flowers again now from the chambre aux parfums. Was shown his small lodging. A room with clean stone, the dust still puffing from the joints, no floral perfume but a sharp reek of acid. For fortune, the small square window was open. The bed was dressed in ivory hemp sheets and a grey wool blanket, in his mind recalling the coat of the plague doctor.
Hippolyte drew himself up to the square of sunshine. Cascading down the hill was the city. Stone from the Couronne Carro, gold, bronze and cream. Glowing marble with leaking rust veins. Some of the ramparts were crumbling. The spires were white. He could see half of the rectangular port with two frigates in berth, one had the flag wound about its mast, the other free and fluttering. The pink fort rose out of a blue and black sea. He could not see Saint Nicolas. From under the shirt in his bag he drew out a volume, La Carithée: contenant sous des temps, des provinces et des noms supposez, plusieurs rares et véritables histoires de notre temps.
…rare and true stories of out time.
© Deirdre Gilfedder, France 2020