The Postman's Fiancée

by Denis Theriault; Translated by John Cullen

  ‘It’s really too strange,’ Madame Brochu went on. ‘I’m afraid I have to inform the police.’

  ‘The police?’ Tania exclaimed. ‘Why?’

  Madame Brochu regarded her keenly and asked her to describe precisely what her connection to Bilodo was. Facing that piercing look without flinching, Tania asserted that she was a close friend.

  ‘You appear to be a respectable girl,’ Madame Brochu decided at last. ‘I believe you have the right to know. Come,’ she added, inviting Tania to accompany her.

  ‘Come where?’

  ‘To Mr Bilodo’s. There’s something I must show you.’

  The key turned in the lock. Madame Brochu made it clear that she was not in the habit of letting herself into her tenants’ quarters and that she had presumed to do so only as an exception after the ambulance workers had taken Bilodo away, because his door had remained open and she’d wanted to turn off that music – ‘Chinese’, she’d called it – that was still playing in the empty apartment. As she stepped over the threshold of Bilodo’s abode, Tania felt as though she’d been whisked away to the land of the rising sun. The furniture, the décor, the lamps – all were of Japanese inspiration or style. Wherever Tania’s gaze rested, it encountered the tortured shape of a bonsai, a print, a statuette representing a languid geisha or a podgy bonze or a touchy samurai brandishing his sword. The floor was covered with tatami mats, soft carpets fitted together like pieces of a gigantic puzzle. Leading Tania into this exotic cave of wonders, Madame Brochu explained that Bilodo had turned up shortly after Grandpré’s death and offered to rent the apartment. He’d insisted on taking it as it was, still furnished with the possessions of the deceased.

  In a room that must have served as both a living and a dining room, embroidered cushions surrounded a low table on which lay a tiny Zen garden. There was also a fishbowl with a goldfish swimming in it. Tania supposed that this sea creature was none other than Bill, Bilodo’s little aquatic companion, whose existence he’d revealed in a rare moment of confidence. Partitioned off by a screen painted with cherry trees in blossom, the second area of the room presumably served as a workspace: it contained a writing desk flanked by tall racks stuffed with books. And it was there that Madame Brochu, lifting a trembling finger, indicated the reason why she’d brought Tania to this spot: a cord hanging from a ceiling beam and ending in a slip knot.

  The slip knot was gently swaying, even though there wasn’t the slightest air current in the room, and Tania couldn’t take her eyes off it. The cord must be the belt of a dressing gown – or rather of that kimono she’d seen Bilodo wearing on the balcony. The feverish look she’d seen in his eyes, the disillusioned expression on his face that she could at this point interpret only as that of a man who had given up on life...So he’d planned to hang himself. But he hadn’t put his plan into action. Was it Tania’s visit that had stopped him? Had he changed his mind after she left, choosing rather to imitate Grandpré by throwing himself under a truck? So many hypotheses, but one undeniable fact remained: Bilodo’s injuries were due to a suicide attempt, not to an accident.

  ‘What do you think about this?’ Madame Brochu murmured. Averting her eyes from the visual attraction exercised by the slip knot, Tania turned towards the window. Rue des Hêtres stretched out in soft peace below her. Tania stared at the place in the middle of the road where she’d breathed back into Bilodo the life he had wanted to cut short. Whereas on the previous evening Tania had still been congratulating herself on having intervened in time, now she reproached herself for having been so late: had she arrived sooner, maybe she could have dissuaded Bilodo from committing such a senseless act. ‘Just a little too late,’ she thought regretfully. But then wasn’t that the story of her peculiar relationship with Bilodo?

  ‘I have to feed the fish. The poor little thing is starving,’ said Madame Brochu.

  While the lady was scattering yum-yums into the fishbowl where Bill had suddenly morphed into a piranha, Tania went over to the desk. Pinned on the wall above it was a photograph of a black woman. No doubt the famous Ségolène, for whose love Bilodo had become a poet. Tania was impressed by the Guadeloupian’s beauty, by her beaming smile. Ségolène must be a teacher, for happy schoolgirls in uniform surrounded her in front of a blackboard, gazing at her with admiration that Tania found completely understandable, given the radiant aura of kind-heartedness that emanated from her. ‘It’s not surprising that Bilodo fell in love with her,’ Tania sighed, finding herself desperately ordinary in comparison. How could the pallid Tania Schumpf compete with that charismatic islander?

  The sheet of paper with Tania’s future contact details lay on the desk. There was also Bilodo’s mobile phone, along with various documents, but what magnetized Tania’s attention were the haiku. Dozens of poems, carefully classified, forming a symmetrical stack. This must be Bilodo’s poetic correspondence, she thought, the renku he was exchanging with Ségolène – and Tania felt the immediate conviction that this exchange held the key to the secret of Bilodo’s tormented soul. The desire to know took possession of her. To satisfy her curiosity, to learn the reason why Bilodo had desired to kill himself, all she needed to do was to reach out her hand. However, not daring to make that move in Madame Brochu’s presence, Tania pretended to feel only a superficial interest in the poems.

  ‘We have to inform the authorities, don’t you think?’ asked the lady, staring at the slip knot with an anxious eye.

  Tania wanted to avoid letting the police rummage through Bilodo’s things, and so she recommended that Madame Brochu not tell anyone about the suicide attempt; she, Tania, promised to inform Bilodo’s doctor about the matter herself, and he would know what measures to take in order to provide his patient with the appropriate psychological support. The lady greeted this solution with relief.

  ‘I can also take care of feeding the fish,’ Tania offered. ‘I’ll do some housekeeping at the same time.’

  Madame Brochu accepted eagerly, pleased at not having to return any time soon to that apartment, which, she said, made her skin crawl. She gave a key to Tania, who saw her out. As soon as the lady was gone, Tania bolted the door and leaned back against it, satisfied: she now had free access to the place and could conduct her investigation as she wished. She would get to the heart of the mystery, and she’d discover what had plunged Bilodo into such distress that he had wanted to take his own life.

  The first thing she did was to climb up on a chair and untie the cord that was hanging from the ceiling.

  7

  From the moss-cheeked volcano

  dangles a chain of

  slender waterfalls

  A beach in HD

  on a screen in the metro

  sunshine guaranteed

  Lofty royal palms

  from their great height observing

  a kid on his bike

  Hard-charging caterpillar

  running by itself

  its own marathon

  My neighbour Aimée

  gardens in a floral dress

  you would water her

  The exchange continued like this, steadily, one poem per page. The haiku weren’t dated, but knowing how meticulous Bilodo was, Tania supposed he’d kept them in chronological order.

  Spicy, these accras!

  they’d make a paralytic

  dance a flamenco

  Child takes her first steps

  unknowing that at the end

  her grave lies waiting

  Two feathers and nothing else

  in the open cage

  the cat licks itself

  The sleeping city

  displays its belly

  constellated gold and gems

  Abracadabra!

  the hat is empty

  what’s become of the rabbit?

  Ségolène’s haiku were scented with citrus oil and written in a pretty hand. Her poems alternated with Bilodo’s, and each one acted in the manner of a dreamcatcher, trapping in the fine web of its sevent
een syllables a fleeting vision, a flight of fancy, a shiny particle of eternity. They presented a bouquet of colourful images next to which Bilodo’s everyday universe, the little prosaic world Tania was a part of, must have seemed pretty drab to him.

  A Rorschach with blotted ink

  saturates the sky

  hurricane coming

  These moving faces

  images snatched from the wind

  soon to disappear

  Dancing to the beat

  of the bola drums

  she-devils of Carnival

  Walking with head down

  then I remember

  the existence of the sky

  Vanilla – curry

  cinnamon – saffron

  malangas – carambolas

  After about fifty poems of the same crystalline kind, the form suddenly changed; Bilodo abandoned the haiku and came up with his first tanka. And Tania, who wasn’t expecting it, found herself staring at the confession she’d had the weakness to believe was addressed to her:

  Some flowers, it seems,

  are seven years a-blooming

  For a long time now

  I have longed to say to you

  all the love words in my heart

  Tania was devastated at the sight of those lines. She regretted not having died the first time she’d read that poem, at the moment of her most perfect happiness; regretted having lived on, only to learn that she was but the caretaker of another’s happiness; and especially regretted not being that other woman, whom Bilodo adored, but instead only Tania Schumpf, ordinary girl and mediocre poet. Burning nonetheless to know how Ségolène had responded to the postman’s tender declaration, Tania turned the page. And what she read there took her breath away...The Guadeloupian had accompanied Bilodo to the land of feelings, but she hadn’t settled for merely following his footsteps; she had most boldly taken the lead by sending him a resolutely aphrodisiac tanka:

  Steamy, sultry night

  The moist sheets’ soft embrace burns

  my thighs and my lips

  I search for you, lose my way

  I am that open flower

  These lines, obviously intended to titillate, had no doubt achieved their goal, for Bilodo, needing no further coaxing, had plunged headfirst into sensuality:

  You are not just the flower

  You’re the whole garden

  Your scents drive me wild

  I enter your corolla

  and I drink in your nectar

  All petals outspread

  I lean to you on my stem

  From my tilted cup

  drink the nectar I distil

  drink to intoxication

  Every drop of you I drink

  only increases my thirst

  I taste the honey

  dripping from your lips

  I revel unslaked in you

  From then on, the poetry threw off all restraints, turned breathless and panting, and the erotic tanka verses were intermingled with some steamy haiku:

  Your words have touched me

  intimately caressed me

  I’m still quivering

  Think of all those words

  you’re quivering from

  as so many single tongues

  I cram my pillow

  high and hard between my thighs

  it isn’t enough

  Fortunate pillow

  what joy to be in its place

  clinched to your belly

  I take you deep inside me

  I’m utterly filled with you

  Your heat plus my heat equals

  temperature close to

  liquefaction point

  Your breath’s growing short

  I’m groaning into your ear

  and sighing your name

  Suddenly in spate

  the raging river

  overflowing my delta

  I fall in all directions

  hanging on to you

  everywhere at once

  From our own Big Bang

  a new universe is born

  of endless pleasures

  She was getting hot, Tania noticed, and all of a sudden she felt ashamed of herself, feeding like a vampire on other people’s emotions. To calm her excited senses, she took a shower, gradually decreasing the proportion of hot water. Shortly afterwards, having cooled off and prepared a cup of strong coffee, she judged herself fit to go on. Once again, she sat down with the poems in front of her. They continued for a few more pages to rise towards a kind of erotic-poetic climax, but then the tone changed: the tanka genre returned in force, and the poems became tender, like so many sweet secrets whispered in a lover’s ear.

  I dream about waking up

  from sleep by your side

  into a bright dawn

  surely the most beautiful

  of all mornings in the world

  I hate the geography

  that keeps us apart

  but what does distance matter

  on the map of my heart there’s

  nothing separating us

  I’m inventing us

  our own private world

  where time no longer exists

  an eternal Saturday

  an unending fifth season

  Bilodo and Ségolène exchanged a few more of these horribly romantic poems, and then the chain ended with a tanka from the Guadeloupian woman, five lines that seemed to constitute the most recent dispatch:

  As a child I dreamt

  of Canada’s bright autumn

  I have bought my ticket I

  arrive on the twentieth

  Will you have me, then?

  This could mean only one thing: Ségolène was announcing her arrival in Montreal on the twentieth of September – that is, in a little more than two weeks. Tania felt her stress level skyrocketing. The Guadeloupian’s approaching visit would surely reduce to nil Tania’s already slim chance of conquering Bilodo. Would she not be instantaneously eclipsed by a Ségolène in flesh and blood, who needed only to appear in all her glorious beauty for Bilodo to swoon and cast himself at her feet?

  Tania had the nightmarish sensation that the walls were closing in around her.

  Bilodo had been transferred to a room where he was being kept under observation. He slept, connected to the world only by the network of wires and tubes that probed him and nourished him. Soothed by the hushed atmosphere of the room, Tania relaxed a little. Her critical faculties seized the opportunity to take over, and a sudden question dawned on her: was there some connection between Ségolène’s impending arrival and Bilodo’s suicide attempt?

  Logically speaking, the imminent prospect of a face-to-face meeting with the woman he’d been loving from afar should have enthralled Bilodo. But to all appearances, the prospect had instead prompted him to take his own life. How to explain this emotional incoherence? Why had the announcement of Ségolène’s visit produced such a devastating effect on Bilodo?

  Out of her depth, Tania had to settle for chalking up this new mystery on her mental slate. After conducting an initial inventory of the elements she’d been able to gather in her investigation, she had to acknowledge that the results were pretty slim. The nature of the relationship linking Bilodo to Grandpré remained opaque, and the similarity between their two accidents was still incomprehensible. What was it about, all that?

  Ségolène would arrive in two weeks’ time, which meant that Tania had no more than a fortnight to clear up this multi-faceted mystery, and then to decide on a course of action.

  8

  Ségolène was smiling.

  Tania took the photograph off the wall and stared at the Guadeloupian woman, trying in vain to hate her. How could she blame Ségolène for having inspired a love so strong that it put life and death in the balance? Some words were written on the back of the picture: ‘Delighted to make your photographic acquaintance. Now it’s my turn. Here I am with my pupils.’ So they had exchanged photographs.

  To begin
her in-depth researches, Tania explored the contents of Bilodo’s mobile phone. The call-history log and address book were empty. The device seemed to have been used mostly as a camera: there were numerous photos and short videos of Bill swimming in his fishbowl and many different views of the sky, with clouds of every form. There followed a jumble of disparate images: a frozen puddle in a pothole; kids playing hockey in an alley; a car buried in snow after a storm; a transient, sitting on a bench and smiling; a squirrel clutching a peanut; two café waiters in the Quartier Latin, carrying loaded trays and racing each other; a pair of lady’s knickers, pink in colour, pinned to a clothesline; and other snapshots of daily life, caught in its most poetically ordinary moments. Subject matter to inspire some future haiku?

  Tania examined the desk drawers. The first one contained calligraphy materials, various articles related to the art of haiku and Gaston Grandpré’s death notice.

  The second drawer was filled with personal papers, a birth certificate, and other documents attesting to Bilodo’s official existence. In an envelope, Tania found a newspaper clipping, a report on an accident that had taken place in Vieux-Québec, the oldest part of Québec City, four years previously. She remembered the accident, for it had made a great stir: the cables of a funicular had broken, and the cable car had crashed to the foot of the bluff, causing seven deaths. Two documents and a photograph accompanied the article. The documents were the death certificates of Alain Bilodo, 53, and Nancy Lavoie-Bilodo, 49, two names that, as Tania observed, also appeared on the list of the accident victims. The photograph, which was older and had apparently been taken a number of years before the tragedy, pictured three members of a family, posing in front of what Tania guessed was the funicular in question: a man and a woman with depressed faces stood on either side of a skinny little boy whom Tania recognized to be Bilodo at perhaps ten years of age. Wedged between the two adults, little Bilodo looked vaguely terrorized. Tania was moved when she read the inscription on the back of the photo: ‘Maman, Papa, and me in Vieux-Québec.’ Bilodo’s handwriting intrigued her; it wasn’t the same as the one he used when composing his haiku. Trying to explain the dissimilarity, Tania assumed that the words before her had been written a long time ago, in a child’s hand.