Corsica is a refuge Creasy seeks but cannot quite accept. After leaving Legion operations and drifting through Europe, he comes to the island by impulse, drawn by the French Foreign Legion’s presence and the possibility of returning to a former home. Calvi and Bastia turn that possibility into a brief encounter with the past before he boards a ferry for Livorno.

The island as a possible home

After losing interest in operations, drinking heavily, and being moved into an advisory role, Creasy recognizes the charity behind his new position and leaves. He goes first to Brussels, where a woman he had known has moved on, then travels to Marseilles and catches a ferry to Corsica on impulse. The Legion’s main contingent is based on the island, and Creasy’s instinct leads him there. Years after the 1st R.E.P. mutiny, the Legion has forgiven him; Corsica seems to offer a homecoming for someone who thinks of himself as an orphan returning to an orphanage.

That prospect remains tentative. Creasy reaches Calvi in the afternoon and sits drinking in the square, weighing whether to go up to the barracks. The barracks are physically close, on the hill, but he does not enter them. Instead, the sound of the Legion’s marching hymn, Le Boudin, announces the institution from which he has been absent.

Calvi and the Legion’s passing

The marchers are recruits in new uniforms, displaying their drill as they come around the corner at the Legion’s distinctive pace of eighty-five steps a minute. Creasy studies their young, scrubbed faces and feels a thousand years old. The contrast makes the scene more than a glimpse of military routine: the recruits embody a beginning, while Creasy sees himself as worn out by the years behind him.

When the unit has passed and the singing fades, he finishes his drink and walks to the station. The sequence ends not with a return to the barracks, but with his departure from Calvi. The island has offered a possible place among former comrades, yet the sight and sound of a new generation leave him feeling estranged rather than restored.

Bastia and departure

The next day Creasy is in Bastia, sitting by the docks, drinking, and waiting for the ferry to Livorno. He considers going to see Guido and wonders whether they might get together again—and whether that reunion might not be futile. As passengers board, Creasy crosses the road and passes a small boy sitting on the curb. From the stern of the departing ferry, he sees the boy wave and briefly waves back.

Earlier, the same port is introduced in unseasonably warm weather: a bar owner has set chairs and a table on the cobbled pavement, and Creasy sits watching the docks where the ferry to Livorno is preparing to leave. He drinks whisky for two hours, eventually with the bottle and a plate of black olives, while the boy watches from across the road. Half an hour later, the boy sees the ferry pull away and waves; Creasy acknowledges him from the stern. The repeated view of Bastia’s crossing gives the departure a quiet human counterpoint, while Creasy’s farewell to Corsica and the boy closes his brief return without resolving whether a life among old companions is still possible.