The Little Paris Bookshop (21 page)

The travellers spent a heady evening together. Salvo served pot after pot of mussels, Max played the piano, and they took turns dancing with Samy out on deck.

Later the four of them enjoyed the view of Avignon and the Saint Bénézet Bridge, which had been immortalised in song. July showed itself in all its splendour; even after sundown, the air was a velvety 28 degrees.

Shortly before midnight Jean raised his glass.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘For friendship. For truth. And for this unbelievably delicious meal.’

They all raised their glasses. Their clinking sounded like a bell tolling for the end of their journey together.

Despite this, Samy said with glowing cheeks: ‘By the way, I’m happy now,’ and half an hour later: ‘I still am’; and another two hours later … well, she probably said it in many other ways that did not require words, but neither Max nor Jean heard her. Deciding not to cramp Samy and Salvo’s style, the two men left the couple on
Lulu
for the first of what, hopefully, would be many thousands of nights and ambled through the nearest gate into the old part of Avignon.

The narrow streets were thronged with aimless wanderers. The summer heat had naturally postponed activity till the late hours. Max and Jean bought ice cream on the square in front of the magnificent city hall, and watched buskers juggle with fire, perform acrobatic dances and amuse their audiences in the cafés and bistros with their slapstick comedy. This city didn’t appeal to Jean; it seemed to him like a hypocritical whore, living off her past papal glories.

Max caught the rapidly melting ice cream on his tongue. With his mouth half full, he said in a deliberately casual tone: ‘I’m going to write children’s books. I’ve got a couple of ideas.’

Jean glanced at him out of the corner of his eye.

So this is Max’s moment, he thought. This is the moment he starts to become the man he will one day be.

‘May I hear them?’ he requested, rousing himself from his affectionate astonishment at being allowed to share in this instant.

‘Whew, I thought you were never going to ask.’

Max pulled his notebook from his back pocket and read aloud: ‘The old master magician was wondering when a brave girl might finally come along and dig him up from the garden where he had lain forgotten under the strawberries for a century and a half …’

Max gazed at Perdu dreamily.

‘Or the story of the little cow?’

‘Little cow?’

‘Yeah, the holy cow that always has to take the blame. I imagine that even the holy cow used to be a young calf once, before people started saying, “Holy cow,
what
did you say you want to be? A writer?”’ Max grinned. ‘And another one about Claire, a girl who swaps bodies with her kitty cat. Then there’s …’

The future hero of children’s bedtimes, Jean mused as he listened to Max’s marvellous storylines.

‘… and the one where little Bruno complains to the guardians of heaven about the family they lumbered him with …’

As Max continued, Jean savoured a sensation that was like delicate flowers unfolding inside his heart. He was so fond of this young man! His quirks, his eyes, his laughter.

‘… and when people’s shadows go back to straighten their owners’ childhoods out a bit …’

Wonderful, thought Jean. I’ll send
my
shadow back in time to straighten
my
life out. How tempting. How sadly impossible.

 

 

They arrived back at the barge in the dead of the night, an hour before dawn came stealing across the sky.

While Max took himself off to his corner, noted down a few thoughts and then fell asleep, Jean Perdu paced slowly around his book barge, which was swaying gently in the current. The cats pattered along beside him, their eyes trained closely on the tall man; they sensed impending farewells.

Again and again Jean’s fingers met thin air as he ran them along the rows of books, caressing their spines. He knew precisely where each book had stood before it had been sold, the same way we know the houses and fields on the streets where we grew up – and continue to see them, long after they have made way for a motorway or a shopping centre.

He had always felt that books created a force field around him. He had discovered the whole world on his barge – every emotion and place and era. He had never had to travel; his conversations with books had been sufficient … until finally he prized them more highly than people. They were less threatening.

He sat down in the armchair on the low dais and gazed out at the water through the wide window. The two cats leaped onto his lap.

‘Now you won’t be able to stand up,’ said their bodies, growing heavier and warmer. ‘Now you have to stay.’

So this had been his life. Eighty feet by fifteen. He had started building it all when he was Max’s age: the barge, the collection for his ‘soul pharmacy’, his reputation, this anchor chain. Day after day he had forged and tempered it, link by link – and shackled himself with it.

But it somehow no longer felt right. Were his life a photo album, the random snaps would have all been alike; they would always show him on this boat, with a book in his hand, his hair alone growing more silvery and thinner. At the back would be a picture of him with a searching, pleading look on his wrinkled old face.

No, he didn’t want to end up like that, wondering if it was all over. There was only one solution, a radical one that shattered his chains.

He had to leave the barge. Leave it for good.

The thought made him feel nauseated … but then, as he took a few deep breaths and imagined life without
Lulu,
relieved.

His guilty conscience stirred immediately. Rid himself of the
Literary Apothecary,
as if she were a troublesome lover?

‘She’s no trouble,’ mumbled Perdu.

The cats purred under his stroking hands.

‘What am I going to do with the three of you?’ he said dolefully.

Somewhere nearby Samy was singing in her sleep. And a picture formed in his mind: maybe he didn’t have to leave the barge an orphan, or search high and low for a buyer.

‘Would Cuneo feel at home here?’ he asked the cats on his lap. They nuzzled his hand.

It was said that their purring could patch a pail of broken bones back together and revive a fossilised soul; yet when their work was done, cats would go their own way without a backwards glance. They loved without reticence, no strings attached – but no promises either.

Hesse’s
Stages
came to Perdu’s mind. Most people were familiar with the first line, of course: ‘In all beginnings dwells a magic force …’ but very few people knew the ending: ‘For guarding us and helping us to live.’ And hardly anyone realised that Hesse wasn’t talking about new beginnings.

He meant a readiness to bid farewell.

Farewell to old habits.

Farewell to illusions.

Farewell to a long-expired life, in which one was nothing but a husk, rustled by the occasional sigh.

The day greeted Jean and Max for their late breakfast with 34-degree heat – and a surprise from Samy, who had already been out shopping with Cuneo and had bought them all prepaid mobile phones.

Perdu studied the one she pushed across the table to him between the croissants and cups of coffee with scepticism. He needed his reading glasses to make out the numbers.

‘These things have been around for twenty years; you can trust them,’ Max mocked him.

‘I’ve saved our numbers for you,’ Samy instructed Jean. ‘And I want you to ring us. Even if you’re fine or don’t know how to poach an egg. Or if you’re bored and tempted to jump out of a window to feel real again.’

Jean was touched by Samy’s earnestness. ‘Thank you,’ he said awkwardly.

He was overawed by her open, fearless affection. Was this why people liked friendship so much? Tiny Samy almost vanished in his embrace.

‘I, um … I’d like to give you something,’ Perdu rejoined. Sheepishly he pushed the keys to the barge over to Cuneo.

‘My esteemed world’s worst liar and greatest cook west of Italy, I must travel without my boat from now on. Therefore and herewith, I give
Lulu
into your hands. Always keep a corner free for cats and for writers in search of a story. Do you accept? You don’t have to, but if you do, I’d be delighted to know you are looking after my boat. On a permanent loan, so to speak, so …’

‘No! It’s your job, your office, your soul surgery, your getaway and your home. You
are
the book barge, you stupid nerd. You can’t give something like this away to strangers, however much they’d love to take it!’ yelled Samy.

They all stared at Samantha in bewilderment.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘I … eh … I mean what I said. It’s not on. Swap a mobile phone for a book barge? No way! How distressing!’ She let out a stifled giggle.

‘This inability to lie seems a real gift in life,’ Max remarked. ‘And by the way, before anyone asks me: No, I don’t need a boat, but I would be grateful for a lift in your car, Jean.’

Cuneo had tears in his eyes.

‘Alas, alas,’ was all he could say. ‘Alas, Capitano. Alas, everything. I’m …
cazzo
… and all the rest.’

They discussed at length the pros and cons of the matter. The more Cuneo and Samy appeared to hesitate, the harder Jean argued his case. Max kept his counsel, except once when he asked: ‘Don’t they call this hara-kiri or something?’

Perdu ignored him. He felt that it had to be done, but it took him half the morning to convince Samy and Cuneo.

Solemnly and visibly moved, the Italian said at last: ‘Fine, Capitano. We’ll look after your boat until you want it back. It doesn’t matter when: the day after tomorrow, in a year or thirty years from now. And cats and writers will always be welcome.’

They sealed the pact with an emotional group hug. Samy let go of Jean last and stared at him fondly.

‘My favourite reader,’ she said with a smile. ‘I couldn’t have dreamed of anyone better.’

Max and Jean packed their belongings in Max’s kit bag and a few large shopping bags, and stepped ashore. Other than his clothes, all Perdu took with him were the first pages of his book:
The
Great Encyclopedia of Small Emotions
.

Perdu felt nothing at all as Cuneo started the engine and steered
Lulu
expertly out into midstream. He could hear and see Max beside him, but it seemed as though Max were drifting away too, like the book barge. Max waved with both arms, shouting ‘
Ciao
’ and ‘
Salut
’; Perdu, by contrast, could not even muster the energy to raise his hand.

He gazed after his book barge until it had vanished around a bend in the river. He stared after it when it was long gone, waiting for the numbness to subside so he could feel again. When he was finally ready to turn around, he found Max sitting quietly on a bench, waiting for him.

‘Let’s go,’ said Perdu, his voice rough and dry.

For the first time in five weeks they withdrew money in Avignon from branches of their banks, though this required dozens of phone calls, faxed signatures for comparison and close examination of their passports. Then they rented a small milk-white car at the train station and set off for the Luberon.

They took a minor road southeast from Avignon. It was only thirty miles to Bonnieux. Max gazed raptly out of the open windows. To the left and the right fields of sunflowers, lush green carpets of vines and rows of lavender bushes painted the land a mosaic of colours. Yellow, dark-green and purple, spanned by a saturated blue sky dotted with white cushions of cloud.

Far away on the horizon they could make out the Big Luberon and the Little Luberon – a great, long table mountain with a matching stool to its right.

The sun was beating down on the land, eating into earth and flesh, flooding the fields and towns with its imperious brilliance.

‘We need straw hats,’ Max groaned languidly, ‘and linen trousers.’

‘We need deodorant and sun cream,’ Perdu snapped in reply.

It was obvious that Max was in his element. He slipped into this landscape like the right piece into a jigsaw puzzle. Unlike Jean. Everything he saw seemed strangely remote and foreign to him. He still felt numb.

Villages were perched like crowns on top of the green hills. Beige sandstone and light roof tiles to ward off the heat. Majestic birds of prey patrolled the air. The roads were narrow and empty.

Manon had seen these mountains, hills and colourful fields. She had felt this mild air; she had known these hundred-year-old trees in whose dense canopies cicadas crouched, producing a constant clicking that sounded to Jean’s ears like: ‘What? What? What?’

What are you doing here? What are you looking for here? What do you feel here?

Nothing.
 

This country made no impression on Jean.

They were already passing Ménerbes with its curry-coloured rocks, and approaching the Calavon valley and Bonnieux among vineyards and farmsteads.

‘Bonnieux rises in a stack between the Grand Luberon and the Petit Luberon. Like a five-layered cake,’ Manon had told Perdu. ‘At the very top, the old church and the hundred-year-old cedars and the most scenic cemetery in the Luberon. Down at the bottom, the winegrowers, the fruit farmers and the holiday homes. And between them three layers of houses and restaurants. All connected by steep paths and stairs, which explains why all the village girls have such gorgeous, strong calves.’ She had shown Jean hers, and he had kissed them.

‘I think it’s beautiful around here,’ said Max.

They bumped along dirt tracks, curved around a sunflower field, drove through a vineyard – and were forced to admit that they had absolutely no idea where they were. Jean pulled over onto the verge.

‘It should be somewhere near here, Le Petit St Jean,’ muttered Max, staring at the map.

The cicadas chirped. Now it sounded more like: ‘Hee hee hee hee hee.’ Other than that it was so quiet that only the soft ticking of the cooling engine troubled the deep silence of the countryside.

Then there was the juddering of a fast-approaching tractor. It emerged from one of the vineyards at speed. They’d never seen a tractor like this before – it was extremely narrow, and its tyres were thin but very tall to allow it to race between the rows of vines.

Behind the wheel sat a young man in a baseball cap, sunglasses, cutoff jeans and a faded white T-shirt; he acknowledged them with a nod as he rumbled past. Max waved frantically, and the tractor pulled up a few yards further along the track. Max ran over.

‘Excuse me, Monsieur!’ Jean heard Max call over the noise of the engine. ‘Where can we find a house called “Le Petit St Jean”, belonging to Brigitte Bonnet?’

The man cut the engine, took off his baseball cap and sunglasses, and wiped his lower arm across his face as a cascade of long, chocolate-brown hair fell over his shoulders.

‘Oh.
Pardonnez-moi,
pardon me, Mademoiselle. I thought you were a, er … man,’ Jean heard a distraught Max croak.

‘I bet you imagine women trussed up in tight dresses, not driving tractors,’ the stranger said coolly, piling her hair back under her cap.

‘Or pregnant, barefoot and chained to the stove,’ Max added.

The stranger hesitated – then broke into peals of laughter.

As Jean craned his neck to get a better look at the two of them, the young woman had already put her large dark glasses back on and was explaining the way to Max: the Bonnets’ property lay on the far side of the vineyard, and they simply had to drive around it on the right.

‘
Merci,
Mademoiselle
.’

The rest of Max’s words were swallowed up in the howl of the throttle. Perdu could see only the bottom half of her face now – her lips twitched into an amused smile. Then she pressed the accelerator to the floor and rattled away, whipping up a small cloud of dust as she went.

‘It’s really beautiful around here,’ said Max as he got back into the car. Jean thought there was a glow about him.

‘Something happen?’ he asked.

‘With that woman?’ Max said with a laugh that was a little too loud and a little high-pitched. ‘Well, in a nutshell, straight ahead, that’s the way, so … anyway, she looked terrific.’ Max was as happy as a cuddly toy rabbit, Jean thought. ‘Dirty, sweaty, but really cute. Like chocolate on top of the fridge. Other than that, no, otherwise … nothing happened. Nice tractor. Why do you ask?’ Max looked befuddled.

‘No reason,’ Jean lied.

A few minutes later they found Le Petit St Jean, an early-eighteenth-century farmhouse, something out of a picture book: watery-grey stone; tall, narrow windows; a garden in such full and extravagant bloom that it looked as if it had been painted. In an internet café Max had come across www.luberonweb.com, and through it he had found Madame Bonnet, who had one of the last vacancies in the area. She rented out a room in her converted dovecote, her
pigeonnier,
breakfast included.

Brigitte Bonnet – a petite crop-haired woman in her late fifties – was waiting for them with a warm smile and a basket full of freshly picked apricots. She was dressed in a man’s vest and light-green Bermuda shorts, her outfit topped off with a floppy hat. Madame Bonnet was tanned as brown as a nut, and her eyes shone a liquid blue.

Her apricots were covered with sweet, soft fuzz, and her converted dovecote turned out to be a twelve-foot-square hideaway with a washtub, a toilet the size of a cupboard, a few hooks by way of a wardrobe, and an uncomfortably narrow bed.

‘Where’s the second bed?’ asked Jean.

‘Oh, Messieurs, there’s only one. Aren’t you a couple?’

‘I’ll sleep outside,’ Max swiftly suggested.

The dovecote was small but wonderful, and the view from its high windows stretched as far as the Valensole plateau. The building stood in the middle of a huge fruit and lavender garden with a gravel terrace and a broad stone wall that resembled the remains of a castle. A small, welcoming fountain burbled away next to the dovecote. One could cool a bottle of wine in it and sit on the wall, legs dangling, gazing out over orchards, fields of vegetables and vineyards far down the valley, which seemed devoid of any roads or other farms. The site had been chosen by someone with a keen eye for a view.

Max jumped up onto the broad wall and looked out over the plain, one hand shielding his eyes from the sun. If he concentrated, he could hear a tractor engine and see a small cloud of dust moving steadily from left to right, and then back from right to left.

More lavender bushes, roses and fruit trees had been planted around the dovecote’s terrace, and two chairs with comfy, brightly coloured cushions stood at a mosaic table beneath a generous parasol. Here Madame Bonnet served the two men a bulbous, ice-cold bottle of Orangina each and, by way of greeting, some chilled
bong veng,
as she pronounced
bon vin
in her Provençal accent – a shimmering pale-yellow wine.

‘This is a
bong veng
from here, a Luc Basset,’ she chattered. ‘The estate was founded in the seventeenth century. It’s just the other side of the D36, a fifteen-minute walk. Their
Manon XVII
won a gold medal this year.’

‘Excuse me, their what?
Manon?
’ asked Perdu in shock.

Max had the presence of mind to intervene and thank their flustered hostess profusely. Max studied the wine label as Brigitte Bonnet sauntered away between the magnificent borders, stopping here and there to pick something. There was a printed drawing of a face above the word ‘Manon’ – a gentle frame of curls, the ghost of a smile and large, intense eyes directed at the viewer.

‘That’s your Manon?’ asked Max in astonishment.

Jean nodded initially, then shook his head. No, of course this wasn’t Manon, much less
his
Manon. His Manon was dead and lovely, and she lived on only in his dreams. But now, without warning, she was staring out at him from this wine bottle.

He took the bottle from Max’s hand and ran his finger gently over the drawing of Manon’s face. Her hair. Her cheek. Her chin, mouth, neck. He used to touch her in all those places, but …