chapter 14

LAURENT  UNDER  THE  SUN

BOOK TWO of "the last canvas"

to read BOOK ONE click here

Laurent and Armand

Sweden, 2010

EPISODE 34

Quand il me prend dans ses bras

il me parle tout bas

Je vois la vie en rose.

La vie en rose, as sung by Grace Jones

That I was heading to yet another island was not by chance, not in my life.

No man is an island, goes John Donne's line, but I might be -- to some extent. I was conceived on the tiny Île du Blanchomme in the Indian Ocean, and born on the fanciful resort island of Punaouilo in the Pacific Ocean, where I spent the only happy years of my childhood.

I was finally on my way, to visit him who had brought his best friend and the man he had loved -- to become my father -- and the half-sister he had despised -- who would be my mother -- together on that first of all islands in my life -- my lost uncle, Armand, who now lived on an island himself, off the Swedish coast.

 The ferry would take me only to a nearby dock in Smögen. From there I would have to take a smaller boat to reach the tiny, more secluded island where he had his house -- and that journey reminded  me of my father's, 36 years ago, headed to the Indian Ocean.

Standing on the deck with my eyes closed tight, I saluted the rising sun, watching my inner darkness become increasingly pink, as the golden light broke across the horizon and through my eyelids.

It was a game I had been playing since I was a teenager, that of seeing colors inside myself, and it helped me think that my personal darkness wasn't so impenetrable.

But that was as close as I ever got to seeing la vie en rose. At thirty five years old, I  thought I still hadn't found the man who would take me in his arms and make my life pink -- though at that stage I already fantasized that Fabrizio Caprice could be the one. Even after our first disastrous date at his apartment in Vice City. With the condition that he would leave his fiancé, of course, and those e-mails he had recently sent about his "crossing" gave me some hope.

If a family is like a building -- and sometimes, it's the only place where you can or might want to live, even if it is in ruins --, I had just started digging for the foundations of mine.

There had always been something missing in my life, from as far as I remember. 

As a child, it was just a feeling that I couldn't quite express. Until Catherine returned to France, leaving me behind in Punaouilo -- and then, I could name it: I missed my mother. Later, when my father and I joined her, I started missing Punaouilo, the tropical island of my birthplace -- and the sea! And when Carlo left home, for years I missed him. Next, when together with Angelo I moved abroad, I should have missed France -- but I didn't. And when Angelo left me... I almost died.

On that boat that took me along the picturesque coast of Sweden, I got a bit closer to understanding what I had missed longest wasn't any of the things I had lost along my life, but the things that I had never had. I felt nostalgia for people I had never met, for the places I had never been -- but that, unconsciously, I knew should have belonged in my life. Like my grandfather Gaston and my uncle Armand -- the De Montbelle family branch that had been hidden from me.

Two years had gone by since that conversation with Carlo at the Nirvana Lounge. I had been trying to contact Armand, through his professional e-mail, on the phone in his office, by letter, but he always dismissed me. Until, all of a sudden, I got my appointment to meet him. Not at one of his offices around the world, not at the Chatêau de Montbelle that had been l'objet du désir of my grandmother Celeste  and that I wanted so much to visit-- but at my uncle's personal retreat on the idyllic Swedish coast.

That morning, at sunrise, quiet and relaxed on the deck, embraced by the salty breeze, I recalled the one thing I missed from France, and I smiled at the memory that was sweet, colorful, perfumed and painful at once.

Behind our rural house in the French countryside there had been an secluded lake. 

It was not until my father left home that I started exploring the neighborhood. It looked dull and deserted to me -- woods and fields and hills and mountains stretching in monotonous beauty as far as the eye could reach. But without Carlo, our empty house seemed even more boring and desolate than the landscape around, and at thirteen years old I became an explorer of the countryside.

My mother was often absent, teaching in Belgium at the time, or locked into the painting studio that she had converted into her own writing corner. And once in there, she had nothing to remind herself of her son's existence, so that I had long hours to wander around the fields in solitude, without being missed. 

Once I found the lake behind the hills, it became my hideaway, where I would go everyday -- and sometimes, even in the evenings too. I'd bring food and drinks and books and the notebooks where I wrote down stories and illustrated them -- and I lived the happiest hours of a couple of my teenage years there, reading, writing and drawing in seclusion.

I had been a loner since I arrived in France, but after the bullying at school and my personal tragedy I became a boy full of fears, and I never swam in the lake. Until one day I took Angelo with me, and before I could catch my breath, he had already undressed and jumped into the waters that, dark and deep, never revealed the bottom of the lake.

Catherine had bought the property where the lake was from its previous owner -- not because she loved the land, but because she thought it was good business. It was so cheap then, and its value had increased vertiginously with the years, so that she made good profit when she finally sold it, only a few years later after she had sold our house. 

But still, it was not my hideaway at the lake that I missed most, though the house in ruins on its shores was so poetical and matched perfectly my mood, back then.  Ruins seemed very appropriate to depict that stage of my own life. Being as psychological as I may, I was probably trying to compensate my father's absence when I had fallen in love with my coach, who was twenty years older than me. He had simply ignored my ludicrous passes, and after him, there had come yet another older guy from the country club -- an affair that had led me into disaster. 

Neither was it the hidden lake itself that I missed. Everything that I had shared with Angelo, after he dumped me, became doomed, and so had the lake -- or perhaps it had been doomed even before that, for it was said that the reason why the land was sold so cheap and the house left to crumble was that the owner's wife had drowned in those waters. 

I wasn't so sure about that local legend of a foreign ghost, but I tended to believe that at least the part of the story that said the woman was Japanese must have been consistent. It was said that when her family fell in disgrace in Japan, and her brother committed harakiri, she had killed herself, too.

And the reason why I knew she was Japanese was the tree that would turn my life pink and peaceful every Spring from 1989 until 1994, when Angelo and I had moved abroad.

One afternoon, I was at the lake when, my eyes wandering up a hill as I was looking for inspiration to finish a sentence, I saw a riveting blotch of pink in a scenery that was plainly green and gray from the trees and rocks. Being bored and yet full of energy, I closed my notebook, hid it in a trunk in the ruined house and decided to run uphill towards the intriguing pink -- and that's the day when I met the sakura cherry tree.

I know, I should have written "the day I found the tree", instead of "met" -- but that cherry tree was a being with a soul. 

Not just an ordinary tree like all the others around her.

Obedient and respectful, I had dutifully submitted to my parents and teachers -- but before that cherry tree I felt something new, that I was not quite able to name at the time -- and that I wouldn't feel again until one decade later, when I met my first Buddhist master. 

Reverence.

I was breathless, and not because I had ran up the hill, as I stood still in front of the cherry tree. I had never seen anything more vivacious or beautiful. As I stood there, recomposing my breath, I realized the profusion of flowers gradually blossoming at once. It was like a slow, prolonged explosion, that I couldn't so much distinguish with my eyes -- but with my awareness. 

A shiver went up my spine, and I felt tears welling up as I slowly approached the tree, entering its soft cloud of heavenly perfume and delicate colors.

How could there be such a tranquil display of beauty, when my own life was a baffling torture, where I had lost track of myself? My father had left, and without his surveillance I felt defenseless. I suffered bullying and I fought it in silence, hiding it simply because revealing my struggles would only lead into further damnation  -- I fancied boys, and that what condemned me and legitimated the hate falling upon me, I knew was actually my deepest, unchangeable truth. I managed fighting the boys that bullied me better than I did battling my own desire for those same boys. I judged myself sincerely guilty, and my shame was complete and genuine, as it took deep roots in my despair. 

'Is everything alright with you, Laurent?' -- Catherine had inquired, shortly after I quit the swim team. I was trying my best to hide the physical marks and the emotional scar that the encounter at the showers had left, and I was terrified when she had asked. I had not thought of an excuse to quit, and revealing the truth was opening up my shame and guilt, and I decided to lie because I did not want to die at my mother's eyes. Having just turned fourteen, and living in a small rural community, coming out was not an option for me.

'A bien sur, maman.' -- I avoided her stare -- 'Sometimes school is too hard for me. Too much homework, you know?' -- trying daily to hide my sexuality had given me a scary ease to lie -- 'I need more time to study, instead of swimming.' -- that's how I had justified my abrupt decision.

'You're old enough to know for yourself what's best for you, Laurent. If school is hard means you are being challenged, and then your education should be appropriate, I guess!' -- and nodding approvingly, she had ended our conversation and returned to her novel, the one she was either writing or reading.

I  had been carrying a question in my heart, when I first arrived at the top of the hill. WHY? I had silently yelled at the sakura tree. 

WHY do I have to be like this? My sexuality that painstakingly placed me off the curve was an ever present affliction.

WHY can't I change, for Heaven's sake? 

WHY does life has to feel like being my opponent, my enemy?

 WHY am I being punished? 

And WHY do I have to endure it all on my own? WHY?

I was not Saint Francis of Assissi and there was no almond tree to perform a miracle for me -- my Japanese cherry tree was the miracle itself.

Because there must have been a bird quietly sitting on the tree, that first day. I didn't notice it, but I'm convinced it must have been there. Having found refuge like myself, it probably was nested among the flowers. And it must have gotten scared when I did not scream, instead burying my cry for help deeper inside my soul. Could a bird have listened to my aggrieved heart? And it must have flown away, agitating the branches of the tree -- otherwise, how to explain that a rain of pink, perfumed petals, like a rain of blessings and balm, fell on me that memorable afternoon?

And the miracle, bear with me, was not that I was covered in perfumed pink, but that I was so happy, so joyful, exultant in the grimmest times of my adolescence. That first healing rain of smooth petals signaled towards the happiest days of my teenage years in France, that would soon start with Angelo.

And that's how a private ritual I would repeat every year began. 

By the end of winter I would already run up the hill to check whether the blossoms were coming, and in anticipation visit the tree, until it became fully alive again and the pink miracle would once more be staged. I would then daily visit the tree in adoration, seeking constant consolation, until the petals were all gone, and the cherries started growing. I preferred strawberries to cherries, and I knew I did not need to return to the tree until next Spring -- with another question in my heart.

I kept the cherry tree my secret. I tried to share it once with Angelo. I had told him about the secret lake, and he had loved it. For all the years we spent together in France, we had never seen another person there. But the tree didn't move him.

'Why would I want to see a bloody tree? Don't we see many already? What is it so special about it?'

'I don't know...' -- I immediately retreated -- 'Nothing, actually.'

'You're funny sometimes, Laurent. Or not the least funny, actually! Come on!' -- and Angelo had jumped again into the waters of the lake we both loved.

Did I lend that tree a soul? 

I had no friends at the time. My heart was broken and still cracking open after Carlo had left. And the affairs with older men I had tried to have at the country club had only opened more and deeper wounds -- or did the tree have the soul of the suicidal Japanese woman? In a period when I was myself daily contemplating suicide, had I somehow connected to her ghost?

Because I was sure she had planted the sakura tree -- or maybe, her husband had planted it in tribute to his deceased wife. Anyways, it must have been the sole Japanese cherry tree in that part of France at the time, and maybe it still is -- that is, if it still exists.

How did I know that the cherry tree had a soul?

Because from that first encounter, it answered my questions. Though sometimes it did not really answer them -- it just talked to me, in that delicate and subtle language of the cherry trees in blossom, of branches swaying and waving at me. I aspired the delicious perfume and I felt I was in the known.

And even when it wouldn't answer my questions, nor talk to me, it helped me to stay silent and concentrated, expectantly waiting for an answer. It was, perhaps, my first experience of meditation.

And it listened to me, too -- patiently listened to my pained heart. I used to cry in the bedroom, or even in my bathroom if Catherine was in the house and I was afraid that she'd listen to me -- but while alone my crying had easily turned into sobbing, under the protection of the cherry tree my tears had an unexpected cleansing quality, and I'd feel comforted.

It sheltered me, and saved me from my own will to end my life, as the blossoms murmured of promises and new hopes. It was the sakura cherry tree to carry me through another year, since I wanted to meet her yet another Spring -- just enough time for Angelo to enter my life and give it a new meaning and direction.

My reverie ended with a click and slam of the door behind me, and I was back on the deck of the ferry boat. No longer a lonely teen cultivating suicidal thoughts in rural France, this was Sweden, and it was 2010. I had endured, and I had survived. I was on my way to meet my uncle Armand.

Inspired by my father, just that year I had been on two meditation retreats already. Yet, I still realized how easily abducted from the present I could be. My memories would drag me into the swamp of my past, where I'd drown in old sorrows and wounds -- but it was already a victory that the noise of a door could awaken me and bring me back to the present moment! 

Just in time to watch the tip of the sun break over the horizon.

With the corner of my eyes, I checked who had arrived on the deck.

And when I realized he was a tall, red-haired and good looking guy, I immediately became self-conscious. I turned and stared at him openly, just like he was staring in my direction.

Since the night I left Fabrizio's apartment in Vice City, when I had picked that Jason or Justin boy who had cried as I dumped him after we had fucked -- since then, I hadn't been with another guy. I hadn't paid attention to his name, like I had  instead delighted in his pretty bubble butt. He had been as young as myself when Angelo had dumped me, and his heartfelt tears had mirrored mine back then. I hadn't been heartbroken when I turned my back on him and walked out of the motel room, but later I did regret how I had treated Jason, or Justin -- and now, despite not knowing his name, I could not forget him.

So much time without sex was a world record to me! Since Angelo had broken up with me, and my recovery period having involved as many torrid encounters as I could have as a means to leave him behind and put some distance between us -- measured in beds, it seemed -- I had never sexually fastened for so many months. In fact, I had never fastened before.

I knew I wasn't going to do anything with that red-haired guy, but I still wanted something from him, as much as he seemed to be seeking something, too. A demonstration of our mutual attraction? The confirmation that I was attractive, and so was he? A recognition of the fact that we could make it, even if we wouldn't make it? The identification of ourselves as brothers in arms, who would love and not beat the other? 

In other times, I would have needed to take those forms of approval to a physical level to placate my own insecurity, and we should have sought the closest restroom, for I needed to profit from every chance to feel accepted when so often I had been rejected.

I no longer had the excuse that I was going to paint him afterwards, and turn him into memories and money. I knew I wasn't going to do anything with the guy, but I still wanted him to try -- just to reject him?

But what he did next was not some cheesy move like grabbing his crotch to indicate his intentions towards me. From guys who lifted their shirts to show off their chiseled abs, to others who would start opening their flies to indicate the urgent nature of their lust and the need to satisfy it, I had seen almost it all before. But not that one -- he just did this subtle movement with his chin, not indicating where the toilets we should be heading to were, but pointing towards the spectacle that hadn't stopped behind me.

And when I turned towards the horizon, I saw I had lost it.

The sun hadn't waited while I checked the hot guy and played with my expectations of what should and could happen between us.

The sun was already above the horizon, and though technically it could still be considered the sunrise, I knew I had lost its most magical moment -- and this realization delivered a powerful blow on me.

I wouldn't often think of myself as "The Sunrise Son", but since Carlo had again shared the anecdote of my announced birth inspiring the famous song, it had become increasingly important as a symbol of renewal in my own life. 

But now, I had lost it. And like all the other times before that, I had lost it to another man. 

And I had lost that man, too -- when I turned to glance at the guy on the deck, he was nowhere to be seen anymore. He might have gone back inside without any noise this time... or he might have been a dream. An apparition, maybe -- as "The Sunrise Son", I should have been an expert in ghostly manifestations at the sun up, shouldn't I?

And I was left alone on the deck, having missed the sunrise, having lost the guy.

But hadn't that been the tragedy of my whole life since I had met Angelo? I had given him the right and power to seduce and convince and talk me into satisfying his needs -- that's how we had both gone abroad, leaving France to study Journalism at Vice City. I had never dreamed about America, I had never cared about Journalism -- those were Angelo's dreams, but his life circumstances would never have allowed him to achieve any of that, not without me.

Once he hadn't needed me any longer, he had dumped me. And I found myself in a foreign country with no good friends -- and yet, I did not consider going back to France, where nothing awaited me but boredom and again submitting to my mother.

Why I had gone to Vice City in the first place? Because I had nothing better to do, nothing else to try. Having no dream or goal of my own, I had willingly embraced Angelo's. But at the end of our relationship I was left with nothing, back to the hollowness that had always been the chore of my existence.

When I arrived in Smögen, I discovered I had misread the transportation chart, thinking there was a regular boat going to Armand's island -- because there wasn't any. I'd have to depend on someone going that direction that day to be willing to take me along. The team at the small tourist office was very friendly and promptly engaged in finding someone heading that direction, but they still recommended that I do my own search at the port.

Smögen was a beautiful island, one of the most celebrated on the charming Swedish West Coast, but there was a general feeling of hangover after the high season had long withered away. I was still able to find a lovely restaurant with a gorgeous view, from where I watched the sky become a mass of grey clouds and the sea turn into liquid metal -- it must have been fascinating shades of silver, but as my own mood darkened, I missed the exquisite luminosity of the North Sea.

While I wandered at the port, not sure if I was just waiting for a message from the tourist information to arrive on my mobile or an actual boat to pick me up, I could not help but recall how my father had seen himself stranded on an island he did not know the name, all alone, wondering whether his friend would come to rescue him or not -- that same friend who had turned to be my uncle. 

I was sure Armand wasn't coming for me, since I had agreed on reaching his island on my own. I knew my situation was not as precarious as Carlo's had been -- this was Sweden and everybody spoke better English than I did, instead of the native language my father had barely understood when he arrived in the Indian Ocean. And I could afford a neat hotel if I had to spend the night in Smögen, before heading to Armand's island -- unlike my father, who had slept rough, feeling cold and hungry and afraid of the rats.

Of course, I hadn't told my parents about my visit to Armand. It was weird to be hiding things from them like a five years old child when I was thirty five -- but it was not that simple.

First, I don't think they would have helped me reach my uncle -- Catherine might even have complicated things. And trying on my own had been hard enough. It had taken me two years to get an appointment with him -- but somehow, I felt Armand had understood the personal nature of our meeting and had thus invited me as his guest to his private retreat, instead of scheduling me for a meeting at one of his offices around the world.

Second, my communication with my parents had never been very close, nor constant.

After a twenty years gap, Carlo and I had reconnected and our friendship had been revived, but that didn't mean we were now intimate confidants. I tried to imagine how the sound of the telephone ringing could disrupt Carlo's tranquil and silent routine in the high mountains in central Italy, where he lived all on his own. He hadn't been randomly nicknamed "The Hermit of the Brushes" by art critics. And though he had never mentioned it, I realized he usually started our conversations with some level of anxiety. It was as if my calls represented an emergency. 

Carlo had always deciphered and perceived me without the need for words. Like when we had visited the Apennines together and he had sensed my sexuality as I was falling in love for Fabio, though not quite understanding it myself. Carlo knew me, intuitively, without the need for further elaborations. Privileges of being a father, perhaps? It had been a grand opportunity for both of us to have that long and clarifying conversation in Vice City -- but since then, we had gone back to our mute mode. 

Having reestabilished a connection to my father seemed to suffice. I knew I could count on him, but I also had learned to live without him. His presence on the planet, knowing that I again dwelled in his heart and thoughts, brought me enough comfort. I did not need to press on him for proofs of his love. 

What had naturally developed in the relationship with my father turned into a struggle when it came to my mother.

Catherine had been a constant presence in my life -- as much as she had been a constant absence in my life, too. Since she had left me at the age of six behind in Punaouilo without any news, my insecurity about her feelings towards me had risen to uncontrolled levels. 

In France, during my adolescence, she was often going abroad to teach, and she would leave me alone for days, knowing that I would diligently perform my duties at school and in our rural home. I don't think that, lawfully, Catherine could have left me alone at the age of thirteen and fourteen, and been gone abroad for weeks. But it became a routine for a couple of years. She had been doing that when Carlo was there -- he would take care of me. And she kept doing it when he no longer was with us, expecting that I would take care of myself. 

I should have enjoyed that unprecedented level of independence and the demonstration of faith from a mother towards her teenager son -- but the truth is I feared that she would also leave me just like Carlo had. I started surfing a wave of high anxiety the moment Catherine left with her luggage, and only when she returned home did I actually relax again, feeling I had once more crashed upon her shores. 

Catherine would return home with a dozen chocolate boxes for me -- Belgians reputedly made the best chocolate, and when I did not have to "share" it with my bullies any longer, my problem became to have the correspondent best pimples ever... 

But once, Catherine had phoned me to say she would stay an extra week away from home. 

'Do you have enough food at home, Laurent? You know you can always eat at the club, don't you, mon cher? And you know where to find money? You can call me in any emergency, do you understand?' -- which meant I should never call her unless it was tremendously important, and instead wait until she checked on me every four or five days -- 'Are you going to be alright?'

I answered yes to all questions -- what else could I have said? I was thirteen years old, no longer a child to beg 'Maman, maman, please come home... I am afraid to stay alone in this isolated house, maman' -- which was often true, specially in the evenings, when the fields around were utterly dark. But it would have been ridiculous of me.

And when, after that phone call about her delay, I had found a couple of Belgian chocolate boxes in our mailbox, I immediately thought Catherine was saying goodbye to me. She seemed to love the academic environment she had found in Belgium, and she had probably found a lover there, too, since in France she had calmed down regarding her love life. I had sobbed while devouring the chocolate, watching my mother's last present to me disappear down my throat -- and it was no consolation to know that they would again surface as pimples. I was aware that the fear of losing my her was not a serious enough reason to call her abroad. 

My desperation had only ceased when again Catherine came home, and I saluted her as if nothing had happened.  

I was convinced my mother would have stopped me from searching Armand, and that's why I hadn't asked her for help. She must have all his contacts through her lawyers, but I did not want to use those channels. Just like I did not alert my father about my trip to Sweden to visit his former friend. I did not want to go as an emissary of my parents, though I knew I would probably be received like that by my uncle Armand.

The same reason why Catherine had forbid me to meet him, made me more curious to actually go and confront him -- if my uncle had known about my existence all along, why hadn't he tried to contact me? I could imagine how hurt he must have been with Catherine and Celeste in the whole De Montbelle judicial process. I understood that he could even blame them for his mother's death -- but that guilt would extend and fall even upon me? 

A cold wind started blowing in the afternoon, and I made my way back to Smögen's tourist office where I had left my backpack. It was a really small piece of luggage; for after so many trips around the world I had learned better to always travel light. 

As I made myself warmer, I received the good news -- the super helpful team at the office had found someone heading the same direction I was going, and the man had agreed to take me on his boat until Armand's island. We were due in one hour or so.

'He is a very famous architect!' -- I tried to chat with the owner of the boat -- 'He was awarded the most important prize in Architecture!'

'I don't know anything about that, so I guess he is not famous for me. No.' -- the man, who somehow reminded me of my great-grandfather Tarso, was very circumspect and after a while I realized I had to shut up in respect to my host, and simply enjoy and be thankful for the ride. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the mist brought in the wind and the sun on my face. The sky had cleared, and a bright light greeted me on my way to the reunion with my lost uncle.

Who must have heard the boat approaching, for Armand was on the deck when I disembarked. As I set foot on the weather beaten wooden floor, I felt Carlo was disembarking with me, like once he had on the Indian Ocean, carrying me as a seed.

I was happy and thrilled to be meeting my long lost uncle for the first time in my life -- but at once I also realized how embarrassing that meeting was, specially for him, and I was grateful to his generosity and openness.

The fact was I did not know what to expect. I had done the most thorough research on Armand de Montbelle that the internet had allowed -- considering that professionally he used the name of Armand Purlux Drurien, after his mother's family.

There were very few pictures of him on the web, compared to the countless images of the buildings he had created around the world. But nothing had prepared me to his... aura? I guess I can call it that, by the way he stood before me, looking solidly grounded to the earth, yet light and airy as if he were ever ready to depart. He had a presence that could not be described as strong, but perhaps as intense, in the sense of a wholeness that did not exclude a certain disembodiment, I thought. Like all things zen, he seemed hard to be grasped and reduced to a few distinct qualities. But there was a sense of calmness about him that was disarming, even the more in contrast to my own nervousness and expectancy. 

'Bonjour, Laurent. Bienvenue.' -- he saluted me as I left the boat. His voice was melodic and silky like Carlo had described, and I was still to marvel on his silvery pronunciation, that was effortlessly better than Catherine's even, she who had always strived to speak so correctly. His vocabulary, I'd find it richer and more poetical than anyone I had ever heard before.

He was dressed very simply, with a tunic, pants and slippers that made him look like a very elegant monastic -- because his simplicity was that of Kenzo or Miyake, judging by the quality and cut of the clothes in a beautiful shade of gray, that changed colors with the sunlight, as if it were mother of pearl. We couldn't be farther from France and the Chateau de Montbelle, but I could see how he always carried around him the echoes of the sophisticated ambients he had been raised in, like an exquisite shell.

 I had fantasized about a welcome hug between the uncle and his never seen before nephew. Despite all the tragedies, deceit and vileness in the story that united us, we carried the same blood, at least partially, and that seemed to matter and stand above all to me. 

Armand just shook my hand, from a polite distance, and though his expression was not tense nor serious, it did not demonstrate any happiness either. Nor was it neutral, because I sensed his curiosity.  He must be trying to guess what had brought me to him -- and I wondered if I knew it clearly myself.

'Merci beaucoup, Armand.' -- I didn't know how to proceed, and his silence and bland expression was not making it any easier for me. I pondered that the lovely scenery was an unemotional enough subject to start our communication -- 'This island is so...' --  I couldn't possibly say tiny, not even small, for it would sound like I was downrating the place I had just arrived to -- 'cozy.' -- I tried.

Armand finally smiled, for a brief moment. I would soon realize he could be as reserved as my father, and propense to long silences, too. No wonder they had been best friends, and their daily life as roommates had always been harmonious and peaceful -- at least, until lust had intruded into their relationship.

'I imagine this is...' -- I did not want to repeat "cozy", yet I couldn't find any other word -- '... pretty much like the Île du Blanchomme?' 

Armand stared at me, inquiringly. It was the first mention to the past that I made, only five minutes after having arrived, pointing to the story I had come to rescue. I think right there and then he started wondering how much I knew. But he didn't lift his shield of silence.

'I mean, this is a Northern version of the Île, I guess.' -- I tried a little laugh and winked; again, to no reaction from my uncle. He seemed to be patiently waiting to see where I would lead the conversation to, and I decided to open up -- 'You know, I want to visit the Île du Blanchomme, where...'

And I stopped. I was about to say "where my life began", but I realized how inappropriate that was. My conception actually meant betrayal to my uncle. It was in his bed that Catherine and Carlo had made love repeatedly, and I suddenly realized how aggressive my simple existence -- and now my inconvenient presence -- in my uncle's life should be. As much as I intended a fresh start with him, I must have been the personification of old wounds. He might have reunited my father and mother, but that hadn't been his will, ever.

'The Île no longer exists.' -- I heard Armand quietly say. At first, I thought he was metaphorically speaking, stating that the past was over.

'Oh... You mean they changed its name, right?' -- the last two years, as much as I had been chasing Armand, I had researched on the internet about the island of my conception. But I could find no information at all. Since the colonial government had left, many islands in that part of the world had changed their names back to their native denominations, and many records had been erased. Not even looking for Herr Weissmann had brought any results, since that was a fictitious name, given to him by the locals because he was German and so white, even whiter in that part of the world. I had no clue about his real name, that I intended to obtain from my uncle Armand -- 'I read that some of the islands are now open air museums, displaying the local culture...'

'The Île du Blanchomme no longer exists on this planet.' -- Armand interrupted me. He wasn't being rude; it was more as if he wanted to end my agony. He spoke very calmly, and I realized he was being tactful, for he sensed I would be shocked -- 'A tsunami has washed it away. It has simply vanished.'

'But... but...' -- sttutering, I felt my heart start to shrink -- 'Hadn't Herr Weissmann built the house on poles? Hadn't he predicted tidal waves? How come it...?'

'No one ever predicted a tidal wave of that magnitude. And it might not have been the wave at all. The Île stood right on the line where the Sunda Trench ruptured. The earthquake alone might have erased it.'

'You mean...' -- I was dumbfounded, still trying to adapt to the fact that the Île du Blanchomme no longer existed, when one of the reasons I had come was to gather enough information to locate and visit it -- '...that 2004 notorious tsunami?' -- I was now wondering if the island still existed when Carlo had first mentioned its existence to me, back in 2008 during our conversation at the Nirvana Lounge.

'No, it was later. It was a tsunami in 2006.'

'The house was destroyed, then?' -- I mumbled.

'Not only the house, Laurent...' -- my name sounded sweet in my uncle's voice, but everything else he communicated was bitter -- 'The entire island disappeared from the map! The Île du Blanchomme was merely a tiny blotch of sand toping a coral and perhaps a bed of lava, standing just few meters above the ocean. It was a single source of water that made it so special, and suitable for life. And Herr Weissmann's superior inventiveness and building skills, too. But it was all rather fragile. It might have existed for a couple centuries only, maybe not even that long. And in the dance of tectonic plates and the rising sea level, just like it once rose above the waters, the Île du Blanchomme again sank to the bottom of the ocean.'

'You mean...' -- and I felt tears welling up -- 'nothing remains of it?' -- I was trying to imagine the house I longed to visit wiped off and turned into floating debris.

'If anything remains, it is a tiny chunk of land mass beneath the waves.' -- Armand's words, that he tonelessly uttered, without any display of emotion, astounded me. As if it was not about a place from his own past, from my own past, where an important event in our lives had taken place. I guess he realized my confusion and sadness, and he complemented, softly, most kindly -- 'And our memories of it shall remain, too.'

And I finally understood. The tenous geographical contours of my personal world had been forever altered and diminished. The piece that had recently fallen into place went missing again. It did not matter whether it had been the 2004 or a 2006 tsunami to erase the Île du Blanchomme from the surface of the Earth. Nothing was left of it -- and the irony was it already didn't exist when I had first heard of it. A delusion like a mirage -- my father must have been completely unaware of the island's extinction. And all the plans I had made to visit it, once I had found its exact location with my uncle's help, sank with the island, just like my heart sank, too. 

'Shall we go home, Laurent?' -- Armand whispered to me, closing that subject, perhaps realizing my emotional state.

I recalled Carlo saying the Île du Blanchomme had the shape of a heart. No longer. And I let the tears flow freely, as I grabbed my backpack and followed my uncle on the path along the coast into this other island. 

Not too close to him, in case I started sobbing. I wouldn't want to embarass him, crying right on my arrival -- just like he had himself, I recalled, on that first night my father had spent with him on the extinct Île du Blanchomme.

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