Bastia is the port where Creasy waits to leave Corsica for Livorno, and where a brief encounter with a boy gives his departure a human counterpoint. The docks frame a return to Italy that follows years of estrangement from the Foreign Legion: Creasy is still isolated, but now he is moving toward the possibility of seeing Guido again.

Port and Setting

The Bastia scenes unfold in unseasonably warm weather, outside the tourist season. A bar owner has set a table and chairs on the cobbled pavement near the docks, where a ferry to Livorno is preparing to sail. Creasy sits alone for two hours, drinking whisky and watching the harbor; the owner eventually brings out the bottle along with a plate of black olives. The waiting ferry gives the scene its direction: Creasy is physically at rest, but poised to leave.

Creasy and the Boy

A small boy watches Creasy from the curb across the road. The stranger’s stillness, isolation, and striking appearance hold the boy’s attention, while Creasy occasionally glances back without showing interest. After finishing his drink, Creasy picks up his suitcase and crosses toward the docks. The boy waits until he has passed, then runs to gather the olives left on the plate—a small, practical act that punctures the encounter’s solemnity.

Half an hour later, the boy watches the ferry pull away. Creasy stands alone at its stern rail. The boy waves; although the distance is too great for him to see Creasy’s eyes, he senses that Creasy is looking back. Creasy briefly raises a hand in acknowledgment. Their exchange is slight but reciprocal: the man who had seemed absorbed in his own isolation answers the child’s farewell.

Return and Departure

The scene’s later context explains why Creasy is in Bastia. After losing interest in his work, drinking heavily, and becoming lethargic, he had been removed from operations and made an adviser. Conscious that he was being kept on out of charity, he left. He traveled through Brussels and Marseilles before taking the ferry to Corsica, drawn by instinct toward the Legion’s main contingent there and the possibility of returning to the place he had once regarded as a home for an orphan.

In Calvi, the recruits’ march and the sound of the Legion hymn Le Boudin sharpened his sense of distance from his former life: he watched their young, scrubbed faces and felt a thousand years old. He finished his drink and went to the station. The next day, in Bastia, he waited by the docks for the ferry to Livorno, thinking that he might see Guido and that their reunion might not be futile. As the ferry leaves, his farewell to Corsica and to the boy makes the departure more than a change of place: Bastia marks the threshold between an attempted return to the Legion and a renewed connection with his old friend.