The Little Paris Bookshop (17 page)

‘Max! Another chamber of horrors ahead!’

Jordan dragged himself out on deck. ‘Want to bet that the lock-keeper’s mutt pees on my hand again, like the ones at the last thousand locks or so? My fingers are all bloody from winding these damn handles and opening the lock paddles. Will these gentle hands ever be able to caress another vowel?’ Reproachfully, Max held out red hands dotted with tiny suppurating blisters.

Having passed countless pastures from which cattle descended into the shallow waters to cool off, and the imposing castles of former royal mistresses, they were now approaching the La Grange lock shortly before Sancerre.

The wine-growing village sat on top of a hill that was visible from afar and signalled the southern limit of the twenty-kilometre-long Loire Valley nature reserve.

Weeping willows trailed their branches in the water like playful fingers. The book barge entered the embrace of shifting green walls that seemed to close in around them.

It was true that a jittery dog had barked at them at every lock that day. And every yapping dog had peed unerringly on the precise bollard to which Max tied the two ropes that held the book barge steady in the lock while the water flowed in and drained out again. This time Max let the two lines slide from his fingertips onto the deck.

‘Don’t worry, Capitano! Cuneo will take care of the lock.’

The short-legged Italian set the ingredients for the evening meal to one side, clambered up the ladder in his flowery apron, pulling on his brightly coloured oven gloves when he reached the top, and swung the mooring line back and forth like a snake. The dog retreated in the face of this rope boa constrictor and trotted sullenly away.

Cuneo then twisted the iron rod with one hand to open the paddle regulating the inflow; his tensed muscles bulged under his striped short-sleeved shirt. He sang ‘Que Sera, Sera’ in a gondolier’s tenor as he worked, and winked at the delighted lock-keeper’s wife while her husband wasn’t looking. He handed the man a can of beer as they sailed past. This earned Salvatore a smile and the tip-off that there was a dance at Sancerre that evening, and that the harbourmaster at the next harbour had run out of diesel. He also replied in the negative to Cuneo’s most important question: the cargo boat
Moonlight
had not passed this way in a long time. Last seen towards the end of Mitterrand’s lifetime, or thereabouts.

Perdu watched Cuneo’s reaction as he received this news.

The guy had been hearing the same word for a week now: ‘No no no.’ They had asked lock-keepers, harbourmasters, skippers, even customers who beckoned to the
Literary Apothecary
from the bank. The Italian would thank them, his face impassive. He must have an unquenchable flame of hope burning inside him. Or did he simply keep on looking out of habit?

Habit is a vain and treacherous goddess. She lets nothing disrupt her rule. She smothers one desire after another: the desire to travel, the desire for a better job or a new love. She stops us from living as we would like, because habit prevents us from asking ourselves whether we continue to enjoy doing what we do.
 

Cuneo joined Perdu at the wheel.

‘Aye, Capitano. I lost my love. What about the boy?’ he asked. ‘What has he lost?’

The two men looked over at Max, who was leaning on the railing and staring at the water, his thoughts apparently far, far away.

Max was talking less and had given up playing the piano.

I’ll try to be a good friend, he had said to Perdu. What had he meant by ‘try’?

‘He’s lost his muse, Signor Salvatore. Max made a pact with her and gave up his normal life. But his muse has gone. Now he doesn’t have a life – either a normal one or an artistic one. And so he’s on a quest to find her.’

‘
Si, capisco
. Maybe he didn’t love his muse enough? If so, he’ll have to ask for her hand all over again.’

Could writers marry their muses afresh? Should Max, Cuneo and he dance naked and chanting around a fire of vine twigs in the middle of a wildflower meadow?

‘What are muses like? Are they like kitty cats?’ asked Cuneo. ‘They don’t like people grovelling for their love. Or are they like dogs? Can he make the muse jealous by making love with another girl?’

Before Jean Perdu could reply that muses were like horses, they heard Max yell something.

‘A deer! There. In the water!’

It was true: ahead of them, an utterly exhausted young doe was flailing in the middle of the canal. It panicked when it caught sight of the
péniche
looming up behind it.

It tried again and again to find a foothold on the bank, but the smooth, vertical walls of the man-made canal made escape from the lethal waters impossible.

Max was already hanging out over the railing, trying to rescue the exhausted animal with the life buoy.

‘Leave it, Massimo. You’ll fall in.’

‘We have to help it! It won’t make it out on its own – it’s drowning!’

Max now formed a lasso with one of the mooring lines and threw it repeatedly in the direction of the deer. But the animal panicked and writhed even more, disappeared underwater and then resurfaced.

The complete fear in the deer’s eyes touched off something inside Perdu.

‘Keep calm,’ he beseeched the animal. ‘Keep calm, trust us, trust us … Trust us.’ He throttled back
Lulu
’s engine and threw the barge into reverse, though it would continue to glide for another dozen metres.

The deer was already level with the middle of the boat.

It struggled more and more desperately with each splash of the rope and the life buoy on the water. The animal twisted its slight young head towards them, its brown eyes wide with panic and dread.

And then it screamed, making a sound somewhere between a hoarse whimper and a plaintive cry.

Cuneo was whipping off his shoes and shirt, readying himself to dive into the canal.

The deer screamed and screamed.

Perdu feverishly assessed the options. Should they tie up? Perhaps they could grab hold of it from the land and pull it out of the water.

He steered the boat towards the bank and heard the side scrape along the canal wall.

The deer kept on screaming the same shrill, desperate call. Its movements were growing ever wearier, and its efforts to gain a grip on the bank with its front legs were flagging. It couldn’t find one.

Cuneo stood by the railing in his underpants. He must have realised that he wouldn’t be able to help the little doe if he was unable to climb out of the canal himself. And
Lulu
’s hull was too high to heave the struggling deer aboard or to clamber up the emergency ladder with it in his arms.

When they finally managed to moor, Max and Jean leaped onto the bank and raced back through the undergrowth towards the deer. In the meantime, it had pushed away from their bank and was attempting to reach the far side.

‘Why won’t it let us help it?’ whispered Max, tears running down his cheeks. ‘Come here!’ he croaked. ‘Come here, you stupid bloody animal!’

All they could do was watch.

The deer mewled and whimpered as it tried to scale the far bank. Then it even stopped doing that. It slid back into the water.

The men watched in silence as the deer struggled merely to keep its head above water. Again and again it glanced at them and tried to paddle away from them. Its fearful gaze, full of distrust and defiance, pierced Perdu to the bone.

The deer gave one final desperate, lingering scream. Then the screaming ceased.

It went under.

‘Oh, God, please,’ whispered Max.

When it reappeared, it was floating on its side, head below the water, and front legs twitching. The sun shone, the midges danced, and somewhere in the woods a bird trilled. The deer’s body turned in lifeless circles.

The tears trickled down Max’s face. He lowered himself into the water and swam out to the corpse.

Jean and Salvatore watched Max pull the deer’s limp body along behind him until he reached Perdu’s bank. Max raised the slender, wet body into the air with unsuspected strength until Jean was able to grasp it. He was barely able to lift it out onto the bank.

The deer smelled of brackish water and leaf litter, and carried the aroma of an alien, ancient world far from the city. Its wet fur was bristly. As Perdu laid the deer carefully beside him on the sun-warmed ground, with its small head on his lap, he hoped that by some miracle the deer would shake itself, stand up on wobbly legs and dart off into the bushes.

Jean ran his fingers over the young animal’s chest. He stroked its back, then its head, as though his mere touch might break the spell. He felt the remaining warmth in its spare frame.

‘Please,’ he begged softly. ‘Please.’

Over and over he caressed the head on his lap.

The deer’s hazel eyes stared glassily past him.

Max was swimming on his back with his arms spread wide.

On deck Cuneo had his face in his hands.

None of the men dared look at the others.

Without a word they motored south through Burgundy along the side canal of the Loire, through mighty green cathedral-vaults of trees that arched over the canal. Some vineyards were so large that the rows of vines seemed to stretch off to the horizon. Everywhere flowers were blooming; the locks and bridges were bright with them.

The three men ate in silence, sold books to customers on the banks in silence, and avoided one another. That evening they read, each in his own corner of the boat. The bemused cats wandered from one to the other, but even they could not tear the men from their wilful isolation. Head nudges, intense stares and questioning meows elicited no response.

The deer’s death had scattered the three-man star. Now each man drifted alone through time – the hideous mazes of time.

Jean spent a long time pondering the lined school notebook he was using for his encyclopedia of emotions. He stared out of the window without noticing how the sky was ablaze with every colour from red to orange. Thinking felt like wading through treacle.

The next evening they passed Nevers and after a brief, tense discussion – ‘Why not Nevers? We can sell some books there.’ ‘There are enough bookshops in Nevers, but no one who can sell us diesel’ – they tied up minutes before the locks closed for the night near a tiny village called Apremont-sur-Allier, which nestled on a bend in the Allier River. Cuneo knew some people there – a sculptor and his family who lived in an isolated house between the village and the river.

From here, in the ‘Garden of France’, it wasn’t far to Digoin and the turn-off onto the Canal du Centre, which would carry them towards the Rhône and thence along the Seille to Cuisery, the town of books.

Kafka and Lindgren scampered off into the riverside woods to hunt. Seconds later a flurry of birds exploded from the trees.

As the three men walked through the village, Jean felt as though they had stepped back into the fifteenth century. The tall trees with their broad canopies, the many unpaved lanes, the smattering of houses built of yellow sandstone, pinkish earth and red tiles, even the flowers in the farm gardens and the ivy sprouting over the buildings – it all combined to suggest that they had entered a bygone France of knights and witches. There was a small castle perched above this erstwhile village of stonemasons and builders, its walls shining golden red in the rays of the sinking sun. Only the modern bicycles of touring cyclists picnicking on the banks of the Allier spoiled the impression.

‘A bit bloody twee, this place,’ griped Max.

Passing behind an ancient squat round tower, they crossed a garden of flowers, which were blooming in such myriad pinks and reds and whites that the sight and scent made Jean dizzy. Enormous wisterias bowed over the paths, and a lake was dominated by a lonely pagoda, which could only be reached via stepping-stones.

‘Do any real people actually live here, or are they all movie extras?’ Max asked. ‘What’s it meant to be? A picture postcard for American tourists?’

‘Yes, Max, people do live here. The kind who resist reality a little more than others do. And no, Apremont isn’t for Americans; it’s for the pursuit of beauty,’ answered Cuneo.

He parted the branches of a large rhododendron bush to reveal a concealed door in a high old stone wall. He pushed it open and they stepped into a spacious garden with a well-tended lawn leading to a splendid manor house with tall casement windows, a turret, two wings and a terrace.

Jean felt awkward and out of place. It had been a long time since he’d last been to someone’s home. As they drew closer, they heard the tinkle of a piano and peals of laughter and, crossing the garden, Perdu caught sight of a woman sitting on a chair under a copper beech, dressed in nothing but a stylish old hat and painting a canvas. Near her a young man in an old-fashioned English summer suit was sitting at a piano on wheels.

‘Hey! You with the pretty mouth! Can you play the piano?’ the naked woman called when she spotted the three men.

Max blushed – and nodded.

‘Then play me something; paints love to dance. My brother doesn’t know a B from a B-flat.’

Max wedged himself in between the stool and the piano on wheels, and tried not to gawk at the woman’s breasts – especially as she had only one, the left one. A fine red line on the right-hand side betrayed where its round, full young twin had once been.

‘Take a good look to satisfy your curiosity,’ she said. She took off her hat and exhibited herself to him: a bald skull covered in sprouting fuzz, a cancer-damaged body fighting its way back to life.

‘Do you have a favourite song?’ asked Max, after he’d swallowed his embarrassment, fascination and pity.

‘I do, Mr Pretty Lips. Lots. Thousands of them!’ She leaned forward, whispered something to Max, donned her hat again and dipped her brush expectantly in the red paste on her palette.

‘I’m ready,’ she said. ‘And call me Elaia!’

‘Fly Me to the Moon’ struck up soon after. Max played a wonderful jazz rendition of the song while the artist waved her paintbrush about to the stream of music.

‘She’s Javier’s daughter,’ whispered Cuneo to Perdu. ‘She’s been battling cancer since she was a girl. I’m pleased to see she’s obviously still winning.’

‘No way! It can’t be true! You think you can just turn up out of the blue, after all this time?’

A woman of about Jean’s age came running over from the terrace and flew into Cuneo’s arms. Her eyes sparkled with laughter.

‘You bloody pasta twizzler! Look who’s turned up, Javier – the stone stroker!’

A man in threadbare coarse corduroy trousers and a checked shirt emerged from the house, which, as Jean noticed upon closer inspection, was by no means as grand as it appeared from a distance. Its glory days of golden chandeliers and a dozen servants must have lain many decades in the past.

Now the woman with the laughing eyes turned to Perdu.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Welcome to the Flintstones’!’

‘Hello,’ Jean Perdu began, ‘my name’s—’

‘Oh, forget about names. There’s no need for them here. Here we can call ourselves whatever we want. Or by what we’re good at. Are you especially good at anything? Or are you something special?’

Her dark-brown eyes scattered sparks.

‘I’m the stone stroker!’ called Cuneo. He was familiar with this game.

‘I’m …’ began Perdu.

‘Don’t listen to him, Zelda. He’s a soul reader, that’s what he is,’ said Cuneo. ‘And his name’s Jean and he’ll supply you with any book it takes to get you sleeping well again.’

He spun around when Zelda’s husband tapped him on the shoulder.

The lady of the manor studied Perdu more intently.

‘Is that right?’ she asked. ‘Can you do that? That would make you a miracle worker.’

There were marks of sadness around her laughing mouth.

Perdu’s gaze roamed around the garden and settled on Elaia.

Max was now pounding out a tearaway version of ‘Hit the Road, Jack’ for Javier and Zelda’s sick daughter.

Zelda must be tired, thought Perdu, tired of having death share this beautiful house with them for so long.

‘Have you … given it a name?’ he asked.

‘It?’

‘The thing that lives and sleeps in Elaia’s body – or only pretends to sleep.’

Zelda ran her hand over Perdu’s unshaved cheeks.

‘You know all about death, huh?’ She gave a sad smile. ‘It – the cancer – is called Lupo. That’s the name Elaia gave it when she was nine. Lupo, like the cartoon dog. She imagined that they lived together in her body like housemates. She respects the fact that it sometimes demands more attention. That way, she says, she can rest easier than if she imagines it wants to destroy her. What on earth would destroy its own home?’

Zelda smiled lovingly as she gazed at her daughter. ‘Lupo’s been living with us for more than twenty years. I get the impression that he’s starting to feel old and tired too.’

She suddenly turned away from Jean to flash a glance at Cuneo, as though she regretted her candour.

‘Your turn. Where have you been, have you found Vivette, and are you staying the night? Tell me everything. And help me with the cooking,’ she commanded to the Neapolitan, linking arms with him and leading him off to the house. Javier laid his left arm around the Italian’s shoulders, and Elaia’s brother, Leon, followed along behind.

Jean felt superfluous. He wandered idly around the garden. He discovered a weathered stone bench in the deeper shadows under a beech tree in a corner of the garden. No one could see him here, but he could see everything. He could see the house and he watched the lights come on one by one and its inhabitants moving around the rooms. He saw Cuneo at work with Zelda in the large kitchen, and Javier appeared to be asking the occasional question as he and Leon sat smoking at the dining table.

Max had ceased playing the piano. Elaia and he were chatting quietly. And then they kissed.

Shortly afterwards Elaia drew Max after her into the depths of the house. A candle flared in a bay window. Jean could see Elaia’s shadow kneeling over Max, holding his hands to the spot where her heart beat as she bent over him. Jean observed her stealing a night on which Lupo had no claim.

Max was still lying there when Elaia waltzed out of the room into the kitchen in a long T-shirt. Perdu saw her take a seat on the bench next to her father.

Max soon stumbled into the kitchen too. He lent a hand setting the table and opened the wine. From his hiding-place Perdu could see how Elaia looked at Max when his back was turned. She pulled a mischievous face as she did so, as though it were all some big prank. He cast her a shy, doe-eyed smile when she wasn’t looking.

‘Please don’t fall in love with a dying woman, Max. It’s almost unbearable,’ whispered Jean.

He felt something constrict in his chest. It wormed its way up his throat and spilled out of his mouth.

A deep, shuddering sob.

How it screamed. How the deer screamed! Oh, Manon.
 

And then they came: the tears. He just about managed to lean against the beech tree and press his hands against the sides of the trunk for support.

He whimpered, he wept. Jean Perdu wept like never before. He clung to the tree. He broke out in a sweat. He heard the sounds coming from his mouth, and it was as if a dam had ruptured. He had no idea how long it lasted. Minutes? Quarter of an hour? Longer?

He wept into his hands with deep, desperate sobs until suddenly they stopped; it was as though he had cut open a sore and pressed out the infection inside. All that was left was an exhausted emptiness – and warmth, an unknown warmth that might have been produced by an engine fuelled by tears. It was this that made Perdu stand up and stride across the garden, faster and faster until he was running, straight into the large kitchen.

They hadn’t started eating yet, and this caused him a strange, fleeting sense of joy, because these strangers had waited for him, because he wasn’t superfluous.

‘And of course, like a painting, good pâté can—’ Cuneo was raving. Halfway through his sentence, he and his audience looked up in amazement.

‘There you are!’ Max said. ‘Where were you hiding?’

‘Max. Salvo. I’ve got to tell you something,’ Jean blurted.