The Little Paris Bookshop

by Nina George

  Cuneo stared directly into the book woman’s dark-blue eyes.

  ‘The offer stands, Signora Samy Le Trequesser,’ he said. ‘I am at your service.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten, Salvatore Cuneo from Naples.’

  He called a car to transport her packed belongings to the boat.

  ‘Ahem … would I be right in thinking,’ asked a perplexed Perdu, as Salvo lugged the suitcases over the gangway a little later, ‘that you haven’t only come for dinner, but you’re moving in as well?’

  ‘You would, my dear. May I? For a little while? Until you cast off and toss me overboard?’

  ‘Of course. There’s a free sofa over by the children’s books,’ said Max.

  ‘May I have a say?’ asked Perdu.

  ‘Why? Are you going to say something other than yes?’

  ‘Um, no.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Samy was visibly moved. ‘You’ll hardly hear a peep from me. I honestly only sing in my sleep.’

  On the postcard Perdu wrote Catherine that night were the phrases Max had invented that afternoon so he could present them to Samy at dinner.

  Samy found them so beautiful that she kept repeating them to herself, rolling their sounds back and forth on her tongue like a crumb of cake.

  Star salt (the stars’ reflection in a river)

  Sun cradle (the sea)

  Lemon kiss (everyone knew exactly what this meant!)

  Family anchor (the dinner table)

  Heart notcher (your first lover)

  Veil of time (you spin around in the sandpit to find you are old and wet your pants when you laugh)

  Dreamside

  Wishableness

  This last word was Samy’s new favourite.

  ‘We all live in wishableness,’ she said. ‘Each in a different kind.’

  32

  ‘The Rhône is a nightmare, to put it mildly,’ said Max and pointed to the nuclear power station. It was the seventeenth one they’d passed since the point where the Saône meets the Rhône near Lyons. Fast-breeder reactors alternated with vineyards and motorways. Cuneo had given up on fishing.

  They had wandered around Cuisery and its literary catacombs for a further three days. Now they were approaching Provence; they recognised the chalky hills near Orange that reared up like the gateway to southern France.

  The sky was in flux. It had begun to take on the deep-blue glow of the air above the Mediterranean at the height of summer, when the water and the heavens reflect and intensify each other.

  ‘Like layers of puff pastry, blue upon blue upon blue. The land of blue pastries,’ murmured Max.

  He had discovered a delicious addiction to forming combinations of words and images; he would play tag with words.

  Occasionally Max would get his word games all mixed up, and Samy would chortle lustily. Her laugh was like the honking of a flying crane, thought Jean.

  Cuneo was absolutely besotted with Samy, even though she hadn’t yet taken him up on his offer. She wanted Perdu to solve the mystery first.

  She would often sit in the wheelhouse, playing yes-no-don’t know with Perdu.

  ‘Does Sanary have kids?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A husband?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Two?’

  She laughed like an entire flock of cranes.

  ‘Did she ever write a second book?’

  ‘Nooo,’ said Samy, drawing it out. ‘Unfortunately.’

  ‘Did she write Southern Lights when she was happy?’

  A long silence.

  Perdu let the landscape float past as Samy contemplated her answer.

  After Orange, they quickly left Châteauneuf-du-Pape behind. They would be in Avignon in time for dinner, and from the ancient Papal City Jean could hire a car and within an hour be in the town of Bonnieux in the Luberon.

  Too quick, he thought. Should I – to use Max’s words – ring Luc’s doorbell and say, ‘Hello, Basset, you old wine whisperer, I used to be your wife’s lover.’

  ‘Between yes and no,’ Samy answered. ‘Difficult question. We don’t generally lie around for days wallowing in our happiness like roast beef in gravy, do we? Happiness is so short-lived. How long have you ever been genuinely happy in one stretch?’

  Jean considered this.

  ‘About four hours. I was driving from Paris to Mazan. I wanted to see my sweetheart, and we’d arranged to meet at a small hotel called Le Siècle, opposite the church. I was happy then. For the whole journey. I sang. I imagined her whole body and I sang to it.’

  ‘Four hours? That’s so terribly beautiful.’

  ‘Yes. I was happier in those four hours than during the four days that followed. But looking back I’m happy to have had those four days too.’ Jean faltered. ‘Do we only decide in retrospect that we’ve been happy? Don’t we notice when we’re happy, or do we realise only much later that we were?’

  Samy sighed. ‘That really would be stupid.’

  Musing over belatedly discovered happiness, Jean steered them swiftly and safely down the Rhône, which in these parts resembled a major maritime route. There was no one standing on the bank, waving to them to come and sell them books. The locks were fully automatic and handled dozens of ships at a time. Their languid canal days were well and truly over.

  The closer Jean got to Manon country, the more his time with Manon occupied his thoughts. How it had felt to touch her.

  As though she could read his mind, Samy mused aloud: ‘Isn’t it amazing how physical love is? Our body is better at recalling what it felt like to touch someone than our brain is at remembering the things that person said.’ She blew on the fine hairs on her lower arm. ‘I remember my father mainly in terms of his body. How he smelled and how he walked. How it felt to lay my head on his shoulder or put my hand in his. Almost the only thing I can recall of his voice is how he used to say, “My little Sasa”. I miss the warmth of his body and I’m still furious that he’ll never come to the telephone again, even though I’ve got important things to tell him. God, it makes me mad! But I miss his body most. Where he always used to sit in his armchair there’s nothing but air. Stupid, empty air.’

  Perdu nodded. ‘The trouble is that so many people, most of them women, think they have to have a perfect body to be loved. But all it has to do is be capable of loving – and being loved,’ he added.

  ‘Oh, Jean, please tell that to the world,’ laughed Samy and passed him the on-board microphone. ‘We are loved if we love, another truth we always seem to forget. Have you noticed that most people prefer to be loved, and will do anything it takes? Diet, rake in the money, wear scarlet underwear. If only they loved with the same energy; hallelujah, the world would be so wonderful and so free of tummy-tuck tights.’

  Jean joined in with her laughter. He thought of Catherine. When they’d come together, they had both been too delicate and too vulnerable, and they had hankered more to be loved, rather than having the strength and the courage to love. Loving requires so much courage and so little expectation. Would he ever be able to love someone properly again?

  Does Catherine even read my cards?

  Samy was a good listener, taking everything in and playing it back to him. She told him that she used to be a teacher in Melchnau, in Switzerland; a sleep researcher in Zurich; and a technical draughtsperson for wind farms in the Atlantic. She had reared goats in the Vaucluse and made cheese.

  And she had an innate flaw: she could not lie. She could say nothing or refuse to answer, but she was incapable of telling a deliberate lie.

  ‘Imagine what that’s like in today’s world,’ she said. ‘It got me into such trouble as a girl. Everyone thought I was a nasty little brat who revelled in being rude. The waiter in a posh restaurant asks, “Did you enjoy your meal?” and I reply, “No, not at all.” The mother of a classmate asks after a birthday party, “So, little Samy, did you have a good time?” and I honestly try to squeeze a yes out of myself, but all I can manage is, “No, it was horrid, and y
our breath stinks from all that red wine you drink!”’

  Perdu chuckled. It’s amazing how close you are to your essential self as a kid, he thought, and how far from it you drift the more you strive to be loved.

  ‘I fell out of a tree when I was thirteen, and as I was being examined in one of those tubes, they spotted something: my brain has no lie-making machine. I can’t write fantastical parables – unless, of course, I were to bump into a unicorn sometime soon. I can only talk about things I’ve experienced firsthand. I’m the kind of person who’d have to get into the pan with the potatoes in order to give my opinion on chips.’

  Just then Cuneo brought them some homemade lavender ice cream. It had a tangy yet floral flavour.

  The woman with no aptitude for lying watched the Neapolitan walk away.

  ‘He’s short, fat and, objectively speaking, not the most obvious choice of pin-up boy. But he’s smart, strong and he can probably do whatever’s necessary for a life of love. I think he’s the most beautiful man I will ever kiss,’ said Samy. ‘It’s strange that magnificent, good-hearted people like him don’t receive more love. Do their looks disguise their character so well that nobody notices how open their soul, their being and their principles are to love and kindness?’

  She took a long, languid breath. ‘Strangely, I was never loved either. I used to think it was because of the way I look. Then I thought to myself: why do I always end up in places where every man I meet already has a wife? The cheese producers in the Vaucluse … My word, what a bunch of old foxes! They see a woman as a tall two-legged goat that does the washing. You can consider yourself blessed if they even say hello.’

  Samy licked her ice cream dreamily.

  ‘I think – and correct me if I’m getting too carried away with my ideas about the global sisterhood – that first there is the love in which we think with our knickers. I know all about that. It’s fun for about fifteen minutes. Second, there’s logical love, the type we create in our heads; I’ve experienced that too. You look for men who objectively suit your set-up or who won’t upset your life plans too much, but you don’t feel any magic. And third, there’s the love that comes from your chest or your solar plexus, or somewhere in between. That’s the type I want. It’s got to have the magic that sets my lifeblood alight, right down to the tiniest little globule. What do you think?’ She stuck out her tongue at him. It was purple from the ice cream.

  Jean Perdu thought he now knew the question he needed to ask.

  ‘Samy?’ he asked.

  ‘What, Jeanno?’

  She spoke differently, but that was always the case: the way an author wrote was the true sound of her heart and soul.

  ‘You wrote Southern Lights, didn’t you?’

  33

  It was surely no coincidence that the sun chose that very moment to break through between two banks of cloud and cast a ray into Samy’s eyes, like a finger pointing down from the heavens. It illuminated them – two blazing candles.

  Samy’s face came alive.

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted quietly, then said, more loudly: ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes!’ she cried, laughing and weeping, throwing her arms up. ‘And this book was meant to bring me my man, Jeanno! Someone who loves me from the place between his chest and his belly button. I wanted him to find me because he’d been hunting for me, because he’d dreamed of me, because he enjoys everything I am and needs none of the things that I’m not. You know what, though, Jean Perdu?’

  She could not stop crying and laughing.

  ‘You found me – but you’re not the one.’

  She turned around.

  ‘That chap in his flowery apron, with those nice, firm bunched muscles. With his moustache, which will tickle me: he’s the one. You brought him to me. Together you and Southern Lights brought him. By pure magic.’

  Her joy infected Jean. She was right, as wishable as that might sound: he had read Southern Lights, he had stopped in Cepoy, met Salvo and from there … hey presto, they had arrived here.

  Samy wiped her tear-salted face. ‘I had to write my book. You had to read it. You had to endure and suffer in order to get into your boat and set off at last. Let us believe that’s how it came about. Okay?’

  ‘Of course, Samy. I believe it. Some books were written for a single person: Southern Lights was for me.’ He mustered his courage. ‘I only survived till now because of your book,’ he confessed. ‘I understood your every thought. It was as if you knew me before I knew myself.’

  Sanary-Samy clapped her hands to her mouth.

  ‘That’s so uncanny, Jean. Those are the most wonderful words I’ve ever heard.’

  She threw her arms around him.

  She kissed him left and right and then again on the cheeks, the forehead and the nose. After each kiss she said, ‘I’m telling you: never again will I write to summon love. Do you know how long I’ve waited? More than twenty years, dammit! And now you’ll have to excuse me: I’m going to kiss my man – and I’m going to do it properly. That’s the final part of the experiment. But I probably won’t be in much of a mood this evening if it doesn’t work out.’

  She hugged Jean tightly once more.

  ‘Crikey, I’m scared! It’s horrid! But so wonderful. I’m alive. How about you? Did you feel it, right now?’

  She disappeared down into the belly of the barge.

  Jean caught a ‘Yoo-hoo, Salvo …’

  Jean Perdu realised with astonishment that he had – and it felt great.

  MANON’S TRAVEL DIARY

  Paris

  August 1992

  You’re asleep.

  I see you, and I’m no longer so ashamed that I simply want to bury myself in salty sand because one man can never be everything to me. I’ve stopped berating myself as I have done for the last five cobalt-blue summers. And we had relatively few days together in total: adding them all up, Jean Ravenfeather, I come to half a year in which we breathed the same air – 169 days, just enough to string a double pearl necklace, one pearl for each day.

  However, the days and nights away from you – as far away as a vapour trail in the sky – when I thought of you and looked forward to seeing you, they count too. Double and threefold, in elation and guilt. Seen that way, it actually felt like fifteen years, time to try out several lives. I dreamed up so many different scenarios.

  I’ve often wondered, did I do wrong, make the wrong choice? Would it have been a ‘proper’ life, alone with Luc, or with someone else entirely? Or was I dealt a good hand of opportunities but played it badly?

  There are no wrongs and no rights in life, though. And there’s no reason to ask myself that now anyway: why one man was never enough for me.

  There were so many answers.

  Such as hunger for life!

  And desire, such red-hot, restless, sticky-wet desire.

  Such as letting me live before I grow wrinkled and grey, a half-inhabited house at the end of the road.

  Such as Paris.

  Such as your running into me, like a ship colliding with an island. (Ha-ha. That was my it’s-not-my-fault-it-was-fate phase.)

  Such as does Luc really love me enough to put up with this?

  Such as I’m worthless, I’m bad, so it doesn’t matter what I do.

  Oh, and of course I can only be with one if I’m with the other. Both of you, Luc and Jean, husband and lover, south and north, love and sex, earth and sky, body and spirit, country and city. You are the two things I need to be whole.

  Breathe in, breathe out, and in between: live at last.

  So three-sided spheres do exist.

  But all those answers are now redundant. Now the main question is an entirely different one:

  When?

  When will I tell you what’s happening to me?

  Never.

  Never, never, never and never. Or at any moment, when I touch your shoulder, which is poking, as always, out of the covers you’ve rolled yourself in. If I touched you, you’d wake immediately and a
sk, ‘What’s the matter? What’s up, cat girl?’

  I wish you’d wake up and save me.

  Wake up!

  Why should you? I’ve lied to you too well.

  When will I leave you?

  Soon.

  Not tonight – I can’t. It feels as if I’d need a thousand attempts to break loose from you, to turn on my heel and never look back, to actually manage it once.

  I leave in stages. I count along, telling myself: 1,000 more kisses … 418 more kisses … 10 more … 4 more. I’ve set the last 3 aside. Like three sugared almonds for good luck.

  Everything is counting down. Sleeping together. Laughing together. Our last dances are upon us.