The Little Paris Bookshop (14 page)

Monsieur Perdu sensed eyes brushing over him from under mascaraed lashes. If he caught, held and returned a woman’s gaze, he would already be entangled in the
cabeceo,
the silent exchange of glances that was the currency of every tango negotiation: an ‘invitation with the eyes’.

‘Look down at the floor, Jordan. Don’t look directly at a woman,’ he whispered. ‘If your eyes linger, she’ll assume you’re asking her whether you may invite her to dance. Can you dance
tango argentino
?’

‘I was handy at freestyle fan routines.’

‘
Tango argentino
is very similar. There are very few fixed step sequences. You touch chests, heart to heart, and then you listen to how the woman wants to be led.’

‘Listen? But nobody’s saying a word.’

It was true: none of the women or men or the couples on the dance floor were wasting their breath on talking, and yet they were so eloquent: ‘Lead me more tightly! Not so fast! Give me some room! Let me entice you! Let’s play!’ The women corrected the men: here a rub of the calf with the back of the shoe – ‘Concentrate!’; there a stylised eight on the floor – ‘I’m a princess!’

At other
milongas,
men would employ all their powers of persuasion during the four-dance sequence to arouse their partners’ passion. In soft Spanish a man would whisper in his partner’s ear, to her neck and into her hair, where the breath stirred the skin: ‘I’m crazy for your tango. You’re driving me wild with your dancing. My heart will set yours free to sing.’

Here, though, there were no tango whisperers. Here, everything was done with the eyes.

‘Men run their eyes discreetly around the room,’ said Perdu, whispering the rules of
cabeceo
to Max.

‘How do you know all of this? From a—’

‘No. Not from a book. Listen. Cast your eyes around slowly, but not too slowly. That’s how you seek out the person with whom you want to dance the next
tanda –
the set of four pieces of music – or check if someone wants to dance with you. You ask them with a long, direct gaze. If it’s answered, maybe with a nod or a half-smile, then you may consider your invitation accepted. If she looks away it means “No, thank you”.’

‘That’s good,’ Max said quietly. ‘That “No, thank you” is so quiet that nobody has to worry about being embarrassed.’

‘Exactly. It’s a gallant gesture when you stand up to fetch your partner. On the way over you have time to make sure that she really did mean you … and not the man diagonally behind you.’

‘What about after the dance? Do I invite her for a drink?’

‘No. You escort her back to her seat, thank her and go back to the men’s side. Tango doesn’t commit you to anything. For three or four songs you share your yearnings, hopes and desires. Some people say it’s like sex, only better – and more frequent. But then it’s over. It would be totally improper to dance more than one
tanda
with a woman. It’s considered bad manners.’

They watched the couples under lowered eyelids. After a while Perdu gestured with his chin to a woman who might have been anywhere between her early fifties and her late sixties. Black hair with some grey streaks, tied at the nape of her neck like a flamenco dancer’s; a dress that looked new; three wedding rings on one finger. She had the poise of a ballerina and the slender, firm, supple figure of a young briar. A splendid dancer, secure and precise, and yet charitable enough to make up for her partner’s lack of movement or meekness, disguising the man’s flaws with her grace. She made everything look easy.

‘She’ll be your dance partner, Jordan.’

‘Her? She’s much too good. I’m scared!’

‘Remember the feeling. Someday you’ll want to write about it, and then it’ll be good to know how the fear feels and to go ahead and dance all the same.’

As Max tried, half in panic, half pluckily, to attract the proud briar queen’s gaze, Jean weaved his way to the bar, ordered a thimbleful of pastis in a glass and topped it up with the water. He was … excited. Extremely excited.

As though he were about to step out on stage.

 

 

How frantic he had been whenever he was due to meet Manon! His trembling fingers turned shaving into a bloodbath. He could never decide how to dress, wanting to look strong and slender and elegant and cool all at once. That was when he started running and doing weights to get himself in good shape for her.

Jean Perdu took a sip of pastis.

‘
Grazie
,’ he said on a hunch.

‘
Prego, Signor Capitano
,’ said the small, round, moustachioed bartender in a singsong Neapolitan accent.

‘You flatter me. I’m not really a captain—’

‘Oh yes, you are. Cuneo can see.’

Chart music was spilling out of the loudspeakers: the
cortina,
time for a change of partners. In thirty seconds the band would launch into the next
tanda
.

Perdu saw the briar dancer take pity and allow a pale Max, head held high, to lead her out into the middle of the dance floor. Within a few steps she bore herself like an empress, and this did something in turn to Max, who till then had merely been clinging to her outstretched arm. He took off his earmuffs and tossed them aside. He looked taller now, his shoulders broader, his chest puffed out like a torero’s.

She shot Perdu a quick look with her bright, clear-blue eyes. Her gaze was young, her eyes were old, and her body sang the sweet, passionate song of the tango, beyond all notion of time. Perdu had tasted the
saudade
of life, a soft, warm feeling of sorrow – for everything, for nothing.

‘
Saudade
’: a yearning for one’s childhood, when the days would merge into one another and the passing of time was of no consequence. It is the sense of being loved in a way that will never come again. It is a unique experience of abandon. It is everything that words cannot capture.

He should include it in his encyclopedia of emotions.

At that moment, P. D. Olson came over to the bar. The moment his feet and legs were no longer dancing, he reverted to walking like an old man.

‘You have to dance the things you cannot explain,’ Perdu said under his breath.

‘And you have to write the things you cannot express,’ the old novelist thundered.

As the band launched into ‘Por una Cabeza’, the briar dancer bent into Max’s chest, her lips whispering incantations, and her hand, foot and hips subtly correcting his posture; she created the impression that he was leading her.

Jordan danced the tango, wide-eyed at first and then, following a whispered instruction, with lowered lids. Soon they looked like a well-grooved couple, the stranger and the young man.

P. D. nodded to Cuneo, the chubby barman, who advanced towards the dance floor. He seemed to grow lighter as he walked – light and wondrously gallant in his restrained, deferential movements. His dancing partner was taller than he was, and yet she moulded herself to him, brimming with trust.

P. D. Olson leaned closer to Perdu and whispered, ‘What a magnificent literary figure this Salvatore Cuneo is. He came to Provence as a harvest worker, to pick cherries, peaches, apricots – anything that requires delicate handling. He worked with Russians and Moroccans and Algerians, then spent a night with a young river pilot. She disappeared back to her barge the next day. Something to do with the moon. Ever since, Cuneo has been scouring the rivers for her. It’s been twenty years. He works awhile here, awhile there, and he can now turn his hand to almost anything – especially cooking. But he can also paint, repair a fuel tank and cast horoscopes; whatever you need done, he can do it. And if he can’t, he learns in a flash. The man’s a genius in the guise of a Neapolitan
pizzaiolo
.’ P. D. Olson shook his head. ‘Twenty years. Imagine that! And for a woman!’

‘Why not? Can you think of a better cause?’

‘You would say that, John Lost.’

‘What? What did you call me, Olson?’

‘You heard. Jean Perdu, John Lost, Giovanni Perduto … I’ve dreamed about you on occasion.’

‘Did you write
Southern Lights
?’

‘Have you danced?’

Jean Perdu downed the rest of his pastis.

Then he turned and surveyed the women in the room. Some looked away; others held his gaze … and one shot a glance at him. She was in her mid-twenties. Short hair, a small bust, firm muscles between her upper arms and her shoulders, and eyes blazing with a boundless hunger, as well as the boldness to assuage that hunger.

Perdu nodded to her. She stood up without a smile and walked halfway towards him – halfway minus exactly one step. She wanted to wrench that final step from him. She waited, a raging cat, coiled to pounce.

At the same instant the band finished its first song; and Monsieur Perdu strode towards the hungry cat woman.

Her face said ‘Let battle commence!’

Her mouth demanded ‘Subjugate me if you can, but don’t you dare humiliate me. And woe betide you if you’re too timid to challenge me. I’m soft, but I only feel that softness in the heat of passion. And I can protect myself!’ said her small, firm hand, the quivering tension that held her body upright, and her thighs, which melded themselves to his.

She pressed against him from chest to toe – but when the first notes rang out, Jean transmitted his energy to her with a thrust of his solar plexus. He eased her down further and further until they both had one knee bent and the other leg stretched out to one side.

A murmur ran through the line of women, but it immediately ceased when Perdu pulled the young woman up, winding her free leg quickly and smoothly around his knee. The backs of their knees kissed gently. They were entwined as closely as otherwise only naked lovers could be.

Jean throbbed with long-dormant power. Could he still do it? Could he return to a body he had not used for so long? ‘Don’t think, Jean! Feel!’

Yes, Manon.
 

Manon had taught him not to think during lovemaking, foreplay, dancing and conversations about emotions. She’d called him ‘typically northern’ because he tried to hide his bad moods from her behind stock phrases and a poker face, because he paid too much attention to what was proper during sex. And because he would pull and push Manon across the dance floor like a shopping trolley instead of dancing the way he wanted to – as the impetus of his will, reactions and desire dictated.

Manon had cracked open this stiff outer casing like a nut, with her hands, her bare hands, her bare fingers, her bare legs …

She freed me from my misanthropy, silence and inhibitions. From my compulsion to only make the right moves.
 

They say that men who are at one with their bodies can sense and smell when a woman wants more from life than she is getting. The girl in his arms longed for a stranger, for a permanent traveller: he could smell it as he felt her heart beating against his chest. The unknown man who rides into town and gives her one night of adventure, laying at her feet all the things she cannot find in this village, lost among silent wheat fields and ancient woodlands. This is her only means of protest, of ensuring she does not become bitter in this rural idyll where only land, family and offspring matter, never her, never her alone.

Jean Perdu gave the young woman what she desired. He held her the way no young carpenter, winemaker or forester ever would. He danced with her body and with her womanhood unlike any of the people for whom she was plain ‘Marie, the daughter of the old blacksmith who shoes our nags’.

Jean put the full force of his body, breath and concentration into every gesture. He whispered to her in the language of tango, which Manon and he had learned and murmured to each other in bed. They had addressed each other formally, the way traditional elderly married couples in Spain had in days gone by, and whispered lascivious words to each other.

Everything merged into one – the past, the present, this young woman and the other one called Manon; the young man he had once been, with no inkling of the man he could become; the not-yet-old but nonetheless older man, who had nearly forgotten what it was like to desire and to hold a woman in his arms.