The Little Paris Bookshop (15 page)

And here he was in the arms of a cat woman who loved to fight, be vanquished and then return to the fray.

Manon, Manon, this is how you danced. With the hunger to make something entirely your own, without the burden of your family and the land of your ancestors on your shoulders. Just you; no future, you and the tango. You and I, your lips, my lips, your tongue, my skin, my life, your life.
 

As the third song, the ‘Libertango’, struck up, the fire escape doors burst open.

‘Here they are, the swines!’ Perdu heard an incensed male voice shout.

Five men barged their way through the door. The women screamed.

The first intruder was already tearing Cuneo’s partner from his arms and making as if to slap her. The burly Italian caught his arm, upon which a second man threw himself at Cuneo and punched him in the stomach, allowing the other to drag the woman away.

‘Betrayed,’ hissed P. D. Olson, as he and Jean Perdu guided the cat woman away from the frenzied mob of men, who reeked of alcohol.

‘That’s my father,’ she gasped, turning ghostly pale, and pointing to an axe-wielding maniac with eyes that were too close together.

‘Don’t look at him! Go out that door ahead of me!’ ordered Perdu.

Max was fending off a pair of furious guys who saw Cuneo as the instigator of their wives’, daughters’ and sisters’ satanic sex games. Salvatore Cuneo had a split lip. Max kicked one of the assailants in the knee, and threw the other on his back with a kung fu move. Then he hurried back to the briar dancer, who was standing motionless and proud amid the chaos. Max bowed and kissed her hand with a flourish.

‘I’d like to thank you, queen of this incomplete night, for the most wonderful dance of my life.’

‘Hurry up or it will be your last,’ called P. D., seizing Max’s arm.

Perdu saw the queen smile as she watched Max go. She picked up his earmuffs and clutched them to her heart.

Jordan, Perdu, P. D., the cat woman and Cuneo ran outside and over to a battered blue Renault. Cuneo squeezed his barrel belly in behind the wheel, a panting P. D. piled into the passenger seat, and Max, Jean and the young woman crawled onto the load bed at the back, alongside a toolbox, a leather suitcase, a bottle carrier with spices, various kinds of vinegar and bunches of herbs, and mountains of textbooks on various subjects. They were thrown higgledy-piggledy as Cuneo put his foot to the floor, pursued by the irate, fist-shaking mob that had chased the strangers out into the car park, no longer prepared to put up with their womenfolk’s secret urge to dance.

‘Dumb hicks!’ spat P. D. Olson, tossing a reference book on butterflies into the back. ‘They’re so small-minded they think we’re a bunch of swingers who start off dancing fully clothed and then strip. That would look fairly repulsive – all those shrunken balls, pot bellies and skinny little grandpa legs.’

The cat woman snorted, and Max and Cuneo laughed too – the exaggerated laughter of people who have evaded danger by the skin of their teeth.

‘Wait, sorry but … can we stop at a bank anyway?’ Max asked in a pleading voice as they raced hell-for-leather back to the boat along Cepoy’s main street.

‘Only if you’re looking to sing castrato,’ P. D. huffed.

They soon pulled up at the book barge. Lindgren and Kafka were lazing by the window in the early evening sun, studiously ignoring an excitable couple of crows that were croaking insults at them from a twisted apple tree.

Perdu noticed Cuneo’s longing glance at the barge.

‘I don’t think it’s safe for you to stay here,’ he said to the Italian.

Cuneo sighed. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve heard those words before, Capitano.’

‘Come with us. We’re on our way to Provence,’ said Perdu.

‘That damn letter splicer told you my story,
si
? About me travelling the rivers in search of a
signorina
who has stolen my heart?’

‘Sure did. The Yank spilled the beans again. So what? I’m old and I’m going to die soon anyway – a bit of mischief is all that’ll keep me alive. At least I didn’t post it on Facebook.’

‘You’re on Facebook?’ Max asked in disbelief. He had picked some apples and was cradling them in his shirt.

‘Yeah. And? Just because it’s like tapping on the walls of a prison cell?’ Old Olson snickered. ‘Of course I am. How else am I supposed to find out what people are up to or that village lynch mobs can suddenly recruit members worldwide?’

‘Right. Okay,’ said Max. ‘I’ll send you a friend request.’

‘You do that, sonny. I’m on the internet every last Friday in the month, from eleven to three.’

‘You still owe us an answer,’ said Perdu. ‘After all, both of us danced. Well? And give us a straight answer – I can’t stand lies. Did you write
Southern Lights
? Are you Sanary?’

Olson turned his wrinkled face to the sun. He took off his ridiculous hat and swept his white hair back.

‘Me? Sanary? What makes you think that?’

‘Technique. The words.’

‘Ah, I know what you mean! “The great Mamapapa.” Wonderful. The personification of everybody’s longing for the ultimate caregiver, the mothering father. Or “rose love”, blooming and fragrant, but without thorns, which is to misconstrue the nature of the rose. Magnificent, every word of it. But not mine, sad to say. Sanary has no regard for conventions, but I consider him a great philanthropist. Which is not a claim I can make for myself. I don’t like people much, although I also get diarrhoea if I have to respect social etiquette. No, my dear John Lost – it’s not me. And that is the unfortunate truth.’

P. D. struggled out of the car and hobbled around to the other side.

‘Listen, Cuneo. I’ll look after your old jalopy until you come back. Or don’t come back, who knows.’

Cuneo was undecided, but when Max picked up his books and bottle carrier and hauled them over to the boat, Cuneo grabbed the toolbox and the leather suitcase too.

‘Capitano Perduto, may I come aboard?’

‘Please do. I would be honoured, Signor Cuneo.’

As Max prepared to cast off, the cat woman leaned on the Renault’s bonnet, her expression inscrutable, and Perdu shook P. D. Olson’s hand in farewell.

‘Did you really dream about me? Or was that idle talk?’ he asked.

Per David Olson gave a roguish smile. ‘A world of words is never real. I read that once in a book by a German called Gerlach, Gunter Gerlach. Not for dimwits.’ He thought for a second. ‘Head for Cuisery, on the Seille River. Maybe you’ll find Sanary there. If she’s alive.’

‘She?’ asked Perdu.

‘Hey, what do I know? I always imagine that anything interesting is female. Don’t you?’ Olson grinned and eased himself carefully into Cuneo’s old car. He waited there for the young woman to join him.

She, meanwhile, clasped Perdu in her arms.

‘You owe me something too,’ she said huskily and sealed Perdu’s lips with a kiss.

It was the first time a woman had kissed him in twenty years, and even in his wildest dreams Jean could not have imagined how intoxicating it was.

She sucked him in, and her tongue briefly met his. Then, eyes blazing, she thrust Jean away.

‘Even if I did desire you, what business is that of yours?’ said her angry, proud gaze.

Hallelujah. What did I do to earn that?
 

‘Cuisery?’ asked Max. ‘What’s that?’

‘Paradise,’ said Perdu.

Cuneo took up quarters in the second cabin, and then declared the galley his private territory. The burly man with the receding hairline extracted spices, oils and blends from his suitcase and bottle carrier, and arranged them alongside a formidable battery of home-made mixtures used to spice up dishes, to enhance dips or simply ‘to sniff and be happy’.

Noting Perdu’s sceptical expression, he asked: ‘Something wrong?’

‘No, Signor Cuneo. It’s just …’

It’s just that I’m not used to such nice aromas. They’re too good. Too unbearably good. And not ‘happy’.
 

‘I once knew a woman,’ Cuneo began, as he continued to order his things and carefully check his knives, ‘who wept when she smelled roses. Another woman found it incredibly erotic when I baked
pâté en croûte
. Aromas do funny things to the soul.’

Pâté happiness, thought Perdu. Under P. Or under L for the Language of Aromas. Would he really include all this in his encyclopedia of emotions one day?

How about starting tomorrow? No – how about right now?!
 

All he needed was a pen and paper, and then someday, letter by letter, he would have achieved his dream. Would, should, could …

Now. It is only ever now. So do it, you coward. Breathe underwater at last.
 

‘For me it’s lavender,’ he admitted hesitantly.

‘Do you have to weep, or the opposite?’

‘Both. It’s the scent of my greatest failure – and happiness.’

Now Cuneo shook some pebbles out of a plastic bag and arranged them on the sideboard.

‘This is
my
failure and
my
happiness,’ he declared, unbidden. ‘Time. It rubs the rough edges that hurt us smooth. Because I tend to forget that, I’ve kept a pebble from every river I’ve ever travelled.’

The Canal du Loing had merged into the Canal de Briare on one of the most spectacular sections of the Route Bourbonnais, through a trough-shaped aqueduct that carried the canal over a turbulent and unnavigable stretch of the Loire. They had dropped anchor in the marina at Briare, which was so resplendent with flowers that dozens of painters were sitting on the banks, attempting to capture the scene.

The marina looked like a miniature Saint-Tropez. They saw a host of expensive yachts and people strolling along the promenades. The
Literary Apothecary
was the largest boat there, and a number of hobby yachtsmen sauntered up to stare at her, inspect the conversion work and cast an eye over the crew. Perdu knew how odd they looked. Not merely like rookies, but something far worse:
amateurs.

An undaunted Cuneo asked every visitor whether he or she had spotted a cargo vessel called
Moonlight
on their travels. A Swiss couple, who had been cruising around Europe on a Luxe motor barge for thirty years, thought they remembered it. Maybe ten years back. Or was it twelve?

When Cuneo’s thoughts turned to dinner, he found the larder full of air, and only cat food and the aforementioned white beans in the fridge.

‘We have no money, Signor Cuneo, and no supplies,’ Perdu started to explain. He told him about their impetuous departure from Paris and their various mishaps.

‘Most river-goers are glad to lend a hand, and I’ve got some savings,’ was the Neapolitan’s comment. ‘I could give you something towards the fare.’

‘That’s very noble of you,’ said Perdu, ‘but it’s out of the question. We have to earn some money somehow.’

‘Isn’t that woman waiting for you?’ said Max Jordan in all innocence. ‘We shouldn’t waste too much time.’

‘She’s not expecting me. We’ve got all the time in the world,’ said Perdu hastily, dismissing the question.

Oh yes, we have all the time in the world. Oh, Manon, do you remember that basement bar, Louis Armstrong and us?
 

‘A surprise visit? That’s so romantic … but fairly risky.’

‘If you don’t take any risks, life will pass you by,’ Cuneo chipped in. ‘But let’s get back to the subject of money.’ Perdu gave him a grateful smile.

Cuneo and Perdu studied the waterways map, and the Italian marked a few villages. ‘I know some people here in Apremont-sur-Allier, the other side of Nevers. Javier is often looking for help repairing gravestones. And I worked as a private chef in Fleury once … for a painter in Digoin … And here in Saint-Satur, if she’s got over the fact that she and I didn’t, um …’ He blushed. ‘Some of them are bound to help us out with food or fuel. Or they’ll know where there are jobs to be had.’

‘Do you know anyone in Cuisery?’

‘The book town on the Seille River? Never been there. But maybe I’ll find what I’m looking for there.’

‘The woman.’

‘Yes, the woman.’ Cuneo took a deep breath. ‘Women like her don’t come along that often, you know. Maybe only once every two hundred years. She’s everything a man could dream of. Beautiful, clever, wise, considerate, passionate – absolutely everything.’

Amazing, thought Perdu. I could never talk about Manon that way. Talking about her would mean sharing her. It would mean owning up, and he couldn’t yet bring himself to do that.

‘So the big question,’ Max mused, ‘is how to earn a quick buck. I’m telling you right now that I’d make a terrible gigolo.’

Cuneo glanced around. ‘What about the books?’ he asked tentatively. ‘Do you plan to keep them all?’

Why hadn’t he thought of it himself?

Cuneo went off into Briare to buy fruit, vegetables and meat with his own money and talked a wily angler into giving him his day’s catch. Jean opened the book barge, and Max went off to drum up some business. He strolled around the marina and the village calling out: ‘Books for sale! All the latest releases. Entertaining, smart and cheap – books, glorious books!’

Whenever he passed a table of women, he would announce: ‘Reading makes you beautiful, reading makes you rich, reading makes you slim!’ In between times he posted himself outside Le Petit St Trop restaurant and cried: ‘Feeling unloved? We have the book for you. Having trouble with your skipper? We’ve got the book for that too! Caught a fish, but don’t know how to gut it? Our books know everything about everything.’

Some passers-by recognised the author from newspaper pictures, others turned away in irritation, and a handful did make their way to the
Literary Apothecary
for advice.

And so Max, Jean and Salvatore Cuneo earned their first euros. A tall, dark monk from Rogny also presented them with a few pots of honey and jars of herbs in exchange for Perdu’s non-fiction titles on agnosticism.

‘What on earth is he going to do with them?’

‘Bury them,’ Cuneo reckoned.

Having asked the harbourmaster about the
Moonlight
cargo ship, he bought a few more herb seedlings from him, and using timber from some bookshelves, speedily created a kitchen garden on the afterdeck, much to the delight of Kafka and Lindgren, who made a mad dash for the mint. The cats were soon chasing each other around the boat, their tails bristling like scrubbing brushes.

That evening Cuneo, sporting a flowery apron and matching oven gloves, brought in their meal.

‘Gentlemen, a variation on the ratatouille so demeaned by the tourist industry:
bohémienne de legumes,
’ Salvatore explained, setting down the dish on the makeshift table out on deck. The dish turned out to be finely diced roasted red vegetables, seasoned with a generous pinch of thyme, pressed into a mould, then skilfully turned out onto a plate and drizzled with the finest olive oil. It was accompanied by lamb cutlets, which Cuneo had passed three times over the open flame, and a snow-white, melt-in-the-mouth garlic flan.

Something strange happened when Perdu took his first bite. Images seemed to explode inside his head.

‘This is unbelievable, Salvatore. You cook the way Marcel Pagnol writes.’

‘Ah, Pagnol. A good man. He knew that you can only really see with your tongue. And your nose and your stomach,’ said Cuneo with an appreciative sigh. Then, between two mouthfuls, he added, ‘Capitano Perduto, I’m a firm believer that you have to taste a country’s soul to understand it and to grasp its people. And by soul I mean what grows there, what its people see and smell and touch every day, what travels through them and shapes them from the inside out.’

‘Like pasta shapes the Italians?’ Max asked as he chewed.

‘Watch what you say, Massimo. Pasta makes women
bellissima
!’ said Cuneo, enthusiastically tracing a voluptuous female figure in the air with his hands.

They ate and they laughed. The sun went down to their right, the moon came up to their left; they were enfolded in the luxurious scent of the harbour flowers. The cats explored the surrounding area, and later they kept the men company from their vantage point on top of an overturned book crate.

Jean Perdu was overcome by an unfamiliar sense of tranquillity.

Can eating heal you?
 

With every bite of food steeped in the herbs and oils of Provence he seemed to absorb a little more of the land that lay ahead; it was as if he were eating the surrounding countryside. Already he could taste the wild banks of the Loire, covered in forests and vineyards.

He slept peacefully that night. Kafka and Lindgren watched over his sleep, the tomcat stretched out by the door, Lindgren by his shoulder. Occasionally Jean would feel paws patting his cheek, as if to check that he was still alive.

 

 

The next morning they decided to stay a little longer in Briare. It was a popular base and meeting point, and the houseboating season had begun. New canal boats arrived almost every hour, bringing potential book buyers.

Max offered to share his few remaining clothes with Jean, who had set out with only the shirt, grey trousers, jacket and jumper he was wearing. For the time being, clothing was not high on their list of essential purchases.

Perdu found himself wearing jeans and a faded shirt for the first time in what felt like centuries. He barely recognised the man he glimpsed in the mirror. The three-day beard, the slight tan he had caught at the wheel, the airy clothes … He no longer looked so uptight or older than his years, though not exactly much younger either.

Max had started to draw an ironic pencil moustache on his upper lip and combed his hair back to cultivate a gleaming, black pirate ponytail. Every morning he practised kung fu and tai chi out on the rear deck in only a light pair of trousers. At lunchtime and in the evening he read aloud to Cuneo while the latter prepared the meals. Cuneo would often request stories by women authors.

‘Women tell you more about the world. Men only tell you about themselves.’

They were now keeping the
Literary Apothecary
open late into the night. The days were getting warmer.

Children from the nearby villages and the other boats would hang out for hours in
Lulu
’s belly, reading the adventures of Harry Potter, Kalle Blomquist, the Famous Five and the Warrior Cats, or Greg’s diary. Perdu frequently had to suppress a smile at the sight of Max sitting on the floor in the middle of a circle of children, his long legs folded and a book on his lap. His reading aloud was constantly improving, and his stories were more like radio plays. Perdu suspected that these small children, listening with eyes wide and in rapt concentration, would one day grow up to need reading, with its accompanying sense of wonder and the feeling of having a film running inside your head, as much as they needed air to breathe.

He sold books by weight to anyone under fourteen: two kilos for ten euros.

‘Aren’t we running at a loss?’ asked Max.

Perdu shrugged his shoulders. ‘Financially speaking, yes. But it’s well known that reading makes people impudent, and tomorrow’s world is going to need some people who aren’t shy to speak their minds, don’t you think?’

Giggling teenagers would crowd into the erotica corner and then fall suspiciously silent. Perdu made sure to approach noisily so that they had time to pry their lips from each other’s and hide their flushed faces behind a harmless book.

Max often lured customers aboard by playing the piano.