by Nina George
‘Do you remember, Jean? You and me. Adam and Eve at the end of the world?’
How laughter-filled Manon’s voice could be. Laughter-filled, melting chocolate.
Yes, it was as though they had discovered an alien world at the end of their own, which for the last two thousand years had remained unbeset by man and his mania for transforming the countryside into cities, streets and supermarkets.
Not a single tall tree, no hills, no houses. Only sky, and beneath that one’s own skull as the sole boundary. They saw wild horses passing in herds. Herons and wild geese angled for fish, and snakes pursued green lizards. They sensed all the prayers of thousands of walkers, which the Rhône had carried down from its source under the glacier into this vast delta, and which now flitted about between the broom, the willows and scrubby trees.
The mornings were so fresh and innocent that they rendered him speechless with gratitude to be alive. Every day he had swum in the Mediterranean by the light of the setting sun; he had run, naked and howling, up and down the fine, white sand beaches; and had felt at one with himself and with this natural emptiness – so full of strength.
Manon had been full of genuine admiration for how he had swum and grasped for fish and caught some. They had begun to cast off civilization. Jean let his beard grow, and Manon’s hair dangled over her breasts as she rode naked on her good-natured, sensible mount with its small ears. They were both baked brown as chestnuts, and Jean enjoyed the sweet-and-sour tang on her skin when they made love in the evenings in the still-warm sand beside the crackling driftwood fire. He tasted the salt of the sea, the salt of her sweat, the salt of the delta meadows, where river and sea flowed together like lovers.
When he approached the black fuzz between her thighs, Jean was met by the hypnotic aroma of femininity and life. Manon smelled of the mare she was riding so tightly and masterfully – it was the aroma of freedom. She bore the scent of a mixture of oriental spices and the sweetness of flowers and honey; she smelled of woman!
She had whispered and sighed his name unremittingly; she had wrapped the letters in a stream of breath wreathed in lust.
‘Jean! Jean!’
In those nights he had been more of a man than ever before. She had opened up completely for him, pressed herself against him, his mouth, his being, his cock. And in her open eyes, which held his gaze, there was always the reflection of the moon – first a crescent, then a semicircle and finally a full, red disc.
They had spent half a lunar journey in the Camargue; they had gone wild, turned into Adam and Eve in the hut of reeds. They were refugees and explorers, and he had never asked whom Manon had had to deceive in order to dream their dreams there at the end of the earth among the bulls, flamingos and horses.
At night only her breathing had saturated the absolute silence beneath the starry sky. Manon’s sweet, regular, deep breathing.
She was the world breathing.
It was only when Monsieur Perdu had let go of this image of Manon sleeping and breathing at the wild, foreign, southern frontier – let go as slowly as one might release a paper boat onto water – that he noticed he had been staring ahead with wide-open eyes the whole time – and that he could remember his lover without breaking down.
16
‘Oh, will you please take those earmuffs off, Jordan. Listen to how quiet it is.’
‘Shh! Not so loud! And don’t call me Jordan – it’d be better if I gave myself a code name.’
‘Oh yes. What?’
‘I am now Jean, Jean Perdu.’
‘With all due respect: I am Jean Perdu.’
‘Yeah, brilliant, wasn’t it? Shouldn’t we be on first-name terms?’
‘No, we shouldn’t.’
Jordan pushed his earmuffs back, then sniffed.
‘It smells of fish spawn here.’
‘Can you smell it with your ears?’
‘What happens if I fall into the fish spawn and get eaten up by a horde of underdeveloped catfish?’
‘Monsieur Jordan, most people only fall overboard if they try to pee over the railing when drunk. Use the toilet and you’ll survive. And anyway, catfish don’t eat people.’
‘Oh yeah? Where does it say that? In another book? You know as well as I do that what people write in books is only the truth they’ve discovered at their desks. I mean, the earth used to be a disc that hung around in space like a forgotten dining-hall tray.’ Max Jordan stretched, and his stomach rumbled loudly and reproachfully. ‘We should get something to eat.’
‘In the fridge you’ll find—’
‘Mainly cat food. Heart and chicken – no thanks.’
‘Don’t forget the tin of white beans.’ They really needed to go shopping quickly, but how? Perdu barely had any cash in the register, and Jordan’s cards were floating in the Seine. Nevertheless, the water in the tanks would be sufficient for the toilet, the sink and the shower. He also had two crates of mineral water left. They wouldn’t make it all the way down south on that, though.
Monsieur Perdu sighed. A few minutes ago he’d been feeling like a buccaneer; now he was a rookie.
‘I’m an excavator!’ Jordan said triumphantly, as he emerged soon afterwards from Lulu’s book-filled belly into the wheelhouse with a pile of volumes and a long cardboard tube under his arm. ‘What we have here is a navigation test book containing every traffic sign a bored European bureaucrat can dream up.’ He slammed the book down by the wheel. ‘There’s a book of knots too. I’ll take that one. And look at this: a rear … sorry … stern pennant as well as – wait for it! – an ensign!’
He proudly held up the cardboard tube and slid a large rolled-up flag out of it.
It was a black-and-gold bird with outspread wings. On closer viewing, one could see a stylised book with the spine forming the bird’s body and the cover and pages, its wings. The paper bird had an eagle’s head and wore an eye patch like a pirate’s. It was sewed onto oxblood-red fabric.
‘So? Is this our flag or what?’
Jean Perdu felt a powerful pang to the left of his breastbone. He doubled over.
‘What’s up now?’ asked Max Jordan in alarm. ‘Are you having a heart attack? If you are, please don’t tell me to look up in a book how to insert a catheter!’
Perdu had to laugh despite himself.
‘It’s all right,’ he panted. ‘It’s only … surprise. Give me a second.’
Jean tried to swallow his way through the pain.
He stroked the filigree threads, the fabric and the book bird’s beak – and then its single eye.
Manon had backstitched this flag for the book barge’s inauguration at the same time as she had been working on her Provençal bridal quilt. Her fingers and eyes had glided across the fabric – this fabric.
Manon. Is this the only thing I have left of you?
‘Why are you marrying this wine man?’
‘His name is Luc and he’s my best friend.’
‘Vijaya’s my best friend, but that doesn’t mean I want to marry him.’
‘I love Luc and it’ll be wonderful to be married to him. He lets me be who I am in everything, no strings attached.’
‘You could marry me, and that’d be wonderful too.’
Manon had lowered her sewing; the bird’s eye was only half filled in.
‘I was already part of Luc’s life plan before you even knew we’d be on the same train.’
‘And you don’t want him to suffer a change of plan.’
‘No, Jean. No. I don’t want to suffer. I’d miss Luc. His lack of demands. I want him. I want you. I want the north and the south. I want life with all it involves. I’ve opted against the “or” and for the “and”. Luc allows me every “and”. Could you do that if we were man and wife? If there was someone else, a second Jean, a Luc or two or …’
‘I’d prefer to have you all to myself.’
‘Oh, Jean. What I want is selfish, I know. I can only ask you to stay with me. I need you so I can survive.’
&nb
sp; ‘Your whole life long, Manon?’
‘My whole life long, Jean.’
‘That’ll do me.’
As if to seal the pact, she had stuck the needle into the skin of her thumb and soaked the material behind the bird’s eye.
Maybe it was only sex, though.
That had been his fear: that he only meant sex to her.
Yet it was never ‘only sex’ when they slept together. It was the conquest of the world. It was a fervent prayer. They recognised themselves for what they were – their souls, their bodies, their yearning for life, their fear of death. It was a celebration of life.
Now Perdu could breathe more deeply again.
‘Yes, that’s our flag, Jordan. It’s perfect. Raise it in the bow where everyone can see it. Up front. And the tricolore here in the stern. And hurry up.’
While Max leaned towards the stern to find out which of the cables slapping in the wind was the one for raising the national flag, and then traipsed through the bookshop to the bow, Perdu felt the heat rising behind his eyes. Yet he knew he mustn’t cry.
Max attached the ensign and pulled it higher and higher.
With every tug, Perdu’s heart clenched more and more tightly.
The ensign was now fluttering proudly in their slipstream. The book bird was flying.
Forgive me, Manon. Forgive me.
I was young, stupid and vain.
‘Uh-oh. The cops are coming!’ shouted Max Jordan.
17
The patrol boat was closing in on them. Perdu eased back the throttle as the manoeuvrable motorboat came alongside and tied up to Lulu’s cleats.
‘Do you think they’ll put us in a cell together?’ asked Max.
‘I’ll have to apply for witness protection,’ said Max.
‘Maybe my publisher sent them?’ fretted Max.
‘You really should go and clean the windows or practise a few knots,’ muttered Perdu.
A dashing policeman in a pair of aviator sunglasses jumped on board and clambered swiftly up to the wheelhouse.
‘Bonjour, Messieurs. Seine River Office, Champagne district. I’m Brigadier Levec,’ he reeled off. It was clear from his voice that he loved his title.
Perdu was almost counting on this Brigadier Levec reporting him for having dropped out of his own life without permission.
‘Unfortunately, you haven’t affixed your French Waterways Authority disc in a visible position. And please show me the mandatory life jackets. Thank you.’
‘I’ll go and clean the windows,’ said Jordan.
A quarter of an hour, a warning and a notification of a fine later, Monsieur Perdu had emptied out the cash register money and the change from his pocket onto the table for a disc to be allowed to navigate on French inland waters, a set of fluorescent life jackets, which were compulsory when passing through the locks on the Rhône, and a certified copy of the FWA guidelines. There wasn’t enough.
‘So,’ said Brigadier Levec. ‘What are we going to do now?’
Was that a satisfied glint in his eye?
‘Would you … um … do you by any chance like reading?’ asked Perdu, noticing that he was mumbling with embarrassment.
‘Of course. I don’t approve of the silly habit of lumping men who read together with weaklings and effeminate men,’ the river policeman answered, as he made to tickle Kafka, who trotted away, tail in the air.
‘Then may I offer you a book … or several to make up the balance?’
‘Hmm. I’d take them for the life jackets. But what do we do about the fine? And how do you mean to pay the mooring fees? I’m not sure that marina owners are … bookworms.’ Brigadier Levec had a think. ‘Follow the Dutch. They have a nose for a free lunch and will know where you can moor without charge.’
As they walked through Lulu’s belly and along the bookshelves so that Levec could choose his balance of payment, the brigadier turned to Max, who was polishing the window by the reading chair and avoiding looking directly at the policeman: ‘Hey, aren’t you that famous writer?’
‘Me? No. Definitely not. I’m … er,’ Jordan cast a quick glance at Perdu, ‘his son and a completely normal sports sock salesman.’
Perdu stared at him. Had Jordan just gone and got himself adopted?
Levec picked up Night from a pile. The policeman scrutinised Max’s picture on the cover.
‘Sure?’
‘Okay, maybe I am.’
Levec raised his shoulders in understanding.
‘Course you are. You must have lots of female fans.’
Max fiddled with his earmuffs, which he was wearing around his neck. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe.’
‘Well, my ex-fiancée loved your book. She was always going on about it. Sorry – I mean of course the book by that guy you look like. Perhaps you could write his name in here for me?’
Max nodded.
‘For Frédéric,’ Levec dictated, ‘with great affection.’
Max gritted his teeth and wrote what he’d been asked to.
‘Wonderful,’ said Levec and beamed at Perdu. ‘Is your son going to pay the fine too?’
Jean Perdu nodded. ‘Of course. He’s a good boy.’
After Max had pulled out his pockets to reveal a few notes of small denomination and some coins, they were both broke. With a sigh Levec took some recent publications – ‘For my colleagues’ – and a recipe book, Cooking for the Single Man.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Perdu, then, after a quick search, handed him Romain Gary’s autobiography from the Love for Dummies section.
‘What’s this for?’
‘You mean what’s it against, dear Brigadier,’ Perdu corrected him gently. ‘It’s against the disappointment of knowing that no woman will ever love us as much as the one who gave birth to us.’
Levec blushed and quickly ducked out of the book barge.
‘Thank you,’ whispered Max.
As the policemen cast off, Perdu was more convinced than ever that novels about dropouts and river adventurers left out such minor inconveniences as tax discs and life jacket fines.
‘Do you think he’ll keep it a secret that I’m here?’ asked Jordan as the police boat headed off.
‘Please, Jordan. What is so terrible about talking to a few fans or the press?’
‘They might ask what I’m working on.’
‘So what? Tell them the truth. Tell them that you’re thinking it over, you’re taking your time, you’re digging for a story and that you’ll let them know when you’ve found one.’
Jordan looked as though he’d never considered this.
‘I rang my father the day before yesterday. He doesn’t read much, you know, only sports papers. I told him about the translations, the royalties and the fact that I’ve sold nearly half a million books. I told him I could help him because his pension isn’t so great. Do you know what my father asked?’
Monsieur Perdu waited.
‘If I was finally going to get a proper job. And he’d heard that I’d written a perverted story. Half the neighbourhood was casting aspersions on him under their breath. Did I have any idea of the harm I’d done him with my crazy ideas.’
Max looked tremendously hurt and lost.
Monsieur Perdu felt an unaccustomed urge to hold him close. When he went ahead and did just that, it took him two attempts before he worked out where to put his arms. He pulled Max Jordan cautiously against his shoulder. They stood there stiffly, leaning towards each other, their knees slightly bent.
Then Perdu whispered into Jordan’s ear: ‘Your father is a small-hearted ignoramus.’
Max flinched, but Perdu held him in an iron grip. He spoke quietly, as though he were confiding a secret in the young man: ‘He deserves to imagine people gossiping about him. Instead, they’re probably talking about you, and they’re wondering how someone like your father can have such an amazing, magnificent son – maybe his greatest achievement.’
Max swallowed hard.
His voice wa
s reedy as he whispered back, ‘My mother said he didn’t mean it; he just couldn’t express his love. Every time he swore at me and beat me, he was showing his great love for me.’
Now Perdu seized his young companion by the shoulders, looked him in the eye and said more emphatically, ‘Monsieur Jordan. Max. Your mother lied because she wanted to console you, but it’s ridiculous to interpret abuse as love. Do you know what my mother used to say?’
