by Nina George
‘Nope. From the 1992 Compendium of Dream Interpretation. That was my bible. My mother blacked out the bad words with a marker. I used it to interpret everyone’s dreams: my parents’, the neighbours’, my classmates’ – I knew Freud inside out.’
Jordan was doing a few stretches and tai chi exercises. ‘It got me into trouble, particularly when I interpreted the headmistress’s dream about horses. I’m telling you, women and horses are something else.’
‘That’s what my father always says.’
Perdu recalled that when he was getting to know Manon, he had had dreams in which she turned into a female eagle. He tried to catch and tame her. He would chase her into the water because when her wings were wet, she couldn’t escape.
We are immortal in the dreams of our loved ones. And our dead live on after their deaths in our dreams. Dreams are the interface between the worlds, between time and space.
As Max stuck his head out into the breeze to blow the sleep from his eyes, Perdu said, ‘Look, that’s our first lock up ahead.’
‘What? That baby’s bath next to the dollhouse all covered in flowers? We’ll never fit in there.’
‘Just you wait and see.’
‘We’re too long.’
‘This is a péniche and smaller than the Freycinet standard all French locks are built to.’
‘Not this one. It’s too narrow.’
‘We’re 5.04 metres wide, which leaves at least 6 centimetres, 3 to the right and 3 to the left.’
‘I feel sick.’
‘Imagine how I feel. Because you’re going to operate the locks.’
The two men looked at each other and burst out laughing.
The lock-keeper impatiently beckoned them forward. His dog planted its legs wide and snarled at the boat; meanwhile, the lock-keeper’s wife brought out some freshly baked plum tart and let them keep the plate in return for the latest John Irving.
‘And a kiss from the young writer there.’
‘Give her another book, Perdu, I beg you,’ Jordan hissed. ‘That woman’s got a beard.’
She insisted on a peck on the cheek.
The lock-keeper called his wife an ogress while their shaggy blond dog barked himself hoarse and peed on Max’s hand as he held on to the ladder. In return, the exasperated lock-keeper’s wife berated her husband for being a show-off and an amateur janitor. He irritably shouted, ‘Bring her in!’
Wind the left lock gate shut, walk around, wind the right lock gate shut. Walk forward, open the upper lock barriers on both sides – water runs in. Open the right lock gate, walk around, open the top left one.
‘Take her out now!’ The lock-keeper was stern and could probably bark this order in twelve different languages.
‘How many locks left before the Rhône?’
‘About a hundred and fifty. Why do you want to know, Jordan?’
‘We should take the canal between Champagne and Burgundy on the way back.’
Way back? thought Perdu. There is no way back.
21
The Loing Canal ran level with the surrounding countryside. They saw the occasional single-minded cyclist, dozing angler or lonely jogger on the towpath. Meadows where sturdy white Charolais cattle grazed and fields of sunflowers alternated with lush woodland. Sometimes a car driver would give them a friendly honk of his horn. The small villages they passed had good moorings, many of them free of charge and vying for boats to tie up so that the crew would spend their money in the local shops.
Then the landscape changed. The canal was higher now, and they could look down into people’s gardens.
By the time they had entered the Champagne region with its many fisheries, Max was operating the locks almost like an old pro. An increasing number of side channels flowed off from the canal into lakes. Gulls rose shrieking from patches of reeds and clumps of bulrushes and wheeled inquisitively over the waterborne Literary Apothecary.
‘What’s the next major mooring place?’ asked Perdu.
‘Montargis. The canal flows right through the town centre.’ Max flicked through the houseboating book. ‘The flower-filled town where pralines were invented. We should look for a bank there. I’d kill for a piece of chocolate.’
And I’d do the same for some detergent and a fresh shirt.
Max had washed their shirts with liquid hand soap, so they both smelled of rose potpourri.
Then a thought struck Perdu. ‘Montargis? We should pay a visit to P. D. Olson first.’
‘Olson? The P. D. Olson? Do you know him too?’
‘Know’ was too strong a word. Jean Perdu had been a young bookseller when Per David Olson was being talked about as a potential Nobel laureate for literature – along with Philip Roth and Alice Munro.
How old would Olson be now? Eighty-two? He’d moved to France thirty years ago. La grande nation appealed to this descendant of a Viking clan a lot more than his American homeland did.
‘A nation that has less than a thousand years of culture to look back on, no myths, no superstition, no collective memories, values or sense of shame; nothing but pseudo-Christian warrior morals, deviant wheat, an amoral arms lobby, and rampant sexist racism’ – those were the words of a New York Times article in which he had laid into the United States before leaving the country.
However, the most interesting thing about P. D. Olson was that his was one of eleven names on Jean Perdu’s list of possible authors of Sanary’s Southern Lights. And P.D. lived in Cepoy, a village on the canal just this side of Montargis.
‘So what do we do? Ring his doorbell and say, “Hi, P.D., old buddy, did you write Southern Lights?”’
‘Exactly. What else?’
Max puffed out his cheeks. ‘Well, any normal person would write an email,’ he said.
Jean Perdu had to restrain himself from making a remark that smacked of ‘we had to walk to school uphill both ways, and things were still better than now.’
In place of a harbour, Cepoy had two large iron rings in the grass, through which they pulled the Literary Apothecary’s ropes taut.
Soon afterwards the owner of the waterside youth hostel – a sunburned man with a red bulge on the back of his neck – directed them to the old rectory where P. D. Olson lived.
They knocked on the door, and it was opened by a woman straight out of a Pieter Bruegel painting. A flat face, hair like coarse flax on the spindle, a white lace collar on a plain grey smock. She said neither ‘Hello’ nor ‘What do you want?’ nor even ‘We don’t buy from door-to-door salesmen’; she simply opened the door and waited in silence – a silence as hard as stone.
‘Bonjour, Madame. We’d like to see Monsieur Olson,’ said Perdu after a pause.
‘He doesn’t know we’re coming,’ added Max.
‘We’ve come by boat from Paris. Unfortunately, we don’t have a phone.’
‘Or any money.’
Perdu elbowed Max in the ribs. ‘But that’s not why we’ve come.’
‘Is he at home?’
‘I’m a bookseller and we met at a book fair once. In Frankfurt, in 1985.’
‘I’m an interpreter of dreams. And an author. Max Jordan. Pleased to meet you. You wouldn’t have any leftovers from yesterday’s casserole? All we have on our boat is a tin of white beans and some Whiskas.’
‘Plead all you like, gentlemen, but there’ll be no forgiveness and no casserole,’ they heard a voice say. ‘Margareta has been deaf since her fiancé threw himself off a church tower. She tried to save him and got caught up in the midday bell ringing. She lip-reads only with people she knows. Damn church! Heaps misery on any who haven’t already given up hope.’
Before them stood the notorious critic of America: P. D. Olson, a stunted Viking in a pair of rough cord trousers, a collarless shirt and a stripy waistcoat.
‘Monsieur Olson, we do apologise for ambushing you like this, but we have an urgent question we—’
‘Yes, yes. Of course, everything’s urgent in Paris, but it’s not the same here, gent
lemen. Here time cuts its own cloth. Here the enemies of mankind toil in vain. Let’s have a little drink and make acquaintances first,’ he said, inviting in his two visitors.
‘The enemies of mankind?’ Max said under his breath. He was obviously concerned that they might have run into a madman.
‘You’re regarded as a legend,’ he tried by way of conversation when Olson had taken a hat from the coat-rack and they were striding along beside him towards the bar tabac.
‘Don’t call me a legend, young man. It makes me sound like a corpse.’
Max said nothing, and Jean Perdu decided to follow his example.
As Olson preceded them through the village, his gait betraying a stroke sometime in the past, he said, ‘Look around! People here have been fighting for their homeland for centuries! Over there – do you see how the trees have been planted and the roofs tiled? See how the main roads give the village a wide berth? All part of a strategy that was centuries in the making. Nobody here thinks of the present.’
He greeted a man who came clattering past in a Renault with a goat in the passenger seat.
‘Here they work and think for the future, always for those who will come after them. And then their descendants do the same. This land will be destroyed only if one generation stops thinking of the next and tries to change everything now.’
They reached the bar tabac. Inside, a TV over the bar was showing a horse race. Olson ordered three small glasses of red wine.
‘A bet, the backwoods and a little booze. What more does a man need?’ he said with pleasure.
‘Anyway, we’ve got a question—’ Max began.
‘Easy, son,’ said Olson. ‘You smell of potpourri and look like a DJ with those earmuffs on. But I know you – you’ve written something. Dangerous truths. Not a bad start.’ He clinked glasses with Jordan.
Max glowed with pride. Perdu felt a stab of jealousy.
‘And you? Are you the literary apothecary?’ Olson said, turning to him. ‘What ailments do you prescribe my books for?’
‘For retired husband syndrome,’ Perdu answered, more pointedly than he had intended.
Olson stared at him. ‘Aha. And how does that work?’
‘When, after his retirement, a husband gets under a woman’s feet so much that she feels like killing him, she can read your books and she’ll feel like killing you instead. Your books are lightning conductors.’
Max looked perplexed. Olson pinned Perdu with his gaze – and erupted into gales of laughter.
‘God, that brings it all back! My father was always getting in my mother’s way and criticising her. Why do you have to peel the potatoes before cooking them? Welcome home, dear, I’ve done a little tidying in the fridge. Terrible. He’d been a workaholic and didn’t have any hobbies. Fairly soon the boredom and lost dignity made him want to die, but my mum wouldn’t let him. She kept sending him out with the grandchildren, to DIY courses and into the garden. I think she’d have ended up in jail for murder.’ Olson chuckled. ‘We men become a pain if our job’s the only thing we were ever good at.’ He drained his wine in three long swigs.
‘Okay, drink up,’ he said, leaving six euros on the counter. ‘We’re off.’
And because they hoped he would answer their question once he’d had a chance to listen, they, too, knocked back their wine and followed P.D. outside.
In a few minutes they reached the old schoolhouse. The playground was full of cars with registration numbers from all over the Loire region and from as far afield as Orléans and Chartres.
Olson marched purposefully towards the sports hall.
They entered and suddenly found themselves in central Buenos Aires.
Along the left-hand wall: the men. On the chairs to the right: the women. In the centre: the dance floor. At the front, where the climbing rings hung: a tango band. At the end where they were standing: a bar, behind which a short, very rotund man with bulging biceps and a bushy black moustache was serving drinks.
P. D. Olson turned and called over his shoulder, ‘Dance! Both of you. Afterwards I’ll answer whatever questions you like.’
A few seconds later, as the old man strode confidently across the dance floor towards a young woman with a severe ponytail and a slit skirt, he was utterly transformed into a lithe, ageless tanguero who pressed the young woman tightly to him and guided her gracefully around the hall.
While Max gawked at this unsuspected world, Monsieur Perdu grasped right away where he was. He had read about places like this in a book by Jac. Toes: secret tango milongas in school halls, gymnasiums or deserted barns. There dancers of all levels and ages and every nationality would meet up; some would drive hundreds of miles to savour these few hours. One thing united them: they had to keep their passion for the tango a secret from jealous partners and families who greeted these depraved, suggestive, frivolous moves with disgust and rigid, pinch-mouthed embarrassment. No one had a clue where the tangueras were at this time of the afternoon. They thought they were playing sport or attending a course, at a meeting or at the shops, in the sauna, out in the fields or at home. Yet they were dancing for their lives; they were dancing for life itself.
Few did it to meet their mistresses or lovers, for tango was not about that: it was about everything.
MANON’S TRAVEL DIARY
On the Way to Bonnieux
11 April 1987
For eight months I’ve known that I’m a very different woman from the girl who came to the north last August and was so scared that I wouldn’t be capable of loving – twice.
It still comes as a huge shock to me to discover that love doesn’t need to be restricted to one person to be true.
In May I’ll marry Luc, beneath a thousand blossoms and amid the sweet scent that a new beginning and confidence bring.
I shall not break up with Jean; I shall, however, leave it up to him whether he does so with me, the voracious want-it-all.
Am I so terrified of transience that I need to experience everything immediately, just in case I’m struck down tomorrow?
Marriage. Yes? No? To question that would be to call everything into question.
I wish I were the light in Provence when the sun goes down. Then I could be everywhere, in every living thing. It would be who I am, and no one would hate me for it.
I must arrange my face before I arrive in Avignon. I hope it’s Papa picking me up, not Luc, not Maman. Whenever I spend time in Paris, my features seek to adapt to the expressions urban creatures wear as they jostle past each other in the streets, as though oblivious to the fact that they’re not alone. They are faces that say: ‘Me? I don’t want anything. I don’t need anything. Nothing impresses me, nothing shocks me, surprises or even pleases me. Pleasure is for simpletons from the suburbs and from stinking cowsheds. They can be pleased. The likes of us have more important matters to attend to.’
But it’s not my indifferent face that’s the problem; it’s my ninth face.
Maman says I’ve added it to my other ones. She has known my every gesture and facial expression since I entered this world as a wrinkly little grub. But Paris has transformed my face from my hair parting to the tip of my chin. She must have noticed the last time I came home, while I was thinking of Jean, his mouth, his laugh, his ‘you’ve got to read this, it’ll do you good’.
‘I’d be scared to have you for a rival,’ she said. She was stunned that she’d blurted it out.
We’ve always dealt with truths in that direct, clear way. I learned as a girl that the best type of relationship was ‘clear as mountain water’. I was taught that difficult thoughts lost their poison when spoken aloud.
I don’t think that’s always true.
My ‘ninth face’ unsettles Maman. I know what she means. I’ve seen it in Jean’s mirror as he rubbed my back with a warm towel. Every time we see each other he takes a part of me out and warms it up so I don’t wither like a frost-damaged lemon tree. He would be a father hen. My new face is sensual, but it hides behind a mask of
self-control, which only makes it seem spookier to Maman.
Maman’s still anxious for me. Her anxiety is practically infectious, and I think that should something happen to me, I want to have lived as intensely as possible up to that point, and I don’t want to hear anyone complain.
She asks little, and I tell a lot – I give virtually a blow-by-blow account of my weeks in the capital and I hide Jean behind a beaded curtain of tinkling, brightly coloured, transparent minutiae, detail upon detail. Clear as mountain water.
‘Paris has taken you further from us and closer to yourself, hasn’t it?’ says Maman, and when she says ‘Paris’, she knows I know she’s got a man’s name in mind, but I’m not prepared to tell her.
I never will be.
I am so foreign to myself. It’s as if Jean had peeled back a shell to reveal a deeper, truer self who is reaching out to me with a mocking grin.
