The Postman's Fiancée

by Denis Theriault; Translated by John Cullen

  In the paved courtyard

  of the Residenz

  pigeons are ambling about

  trilling, cooing – no less proud

  than yesteryear’s courtesans

  Behind the small screen

  the television people

  must find us quite dull

  Rowing on the Starnberg Lake

  out to Rose Island

  that Sisi so loved

  a garden floating in mist

  haloed with melancholy

  In winter Jack Frost

  freezes all the water pipes

  and pounds on the walls

  It’s good to sit by the fire

  and sip scalding hot chocolate

  A firefly, perhaps?

  A visiting star?

  What’s that I see in your eyes?

  For something new was, in fact, shining in Bilodo’s eyes – a sparkle heretofore unseen. Tania thought she detected in it a new feeling that transcended friendship, a feeling she dared not name. Had a few heartfelt haiku sufficed to accomplish what had adamantly resisted two years of painstaking effort?

  Was it, at long last, love?

  She mustn’t say it too loud, lest the word’s mere vibration shatter that crystalline magic, she mustn’t make any move liable to weaken the miracle, and above all, she mustn’t rush anything...

  Deep inside my eyes

  you see yours looking at you:

  my eyes, filled with you

  For that’s where I live

  deep inside your eyes

  no existence outside them

  Compared to your eyes

  the purest emeralds lose

  luminosity

  Deep inside your eyes

  I dissolve, I flow through you

  you’re inundated

  You stream in my veins

  overflow my heart

  I will love you for ever

  And as she read those last words, Tania was overcome by a peculiar combination of bliss and anguish. It seemed to her that she could never be happier, and never more uneasy. So was that what it was like, true love?

  16

  You are the end of my night

  you my rising sun

  you my sacred dawn

  All I can offer

  are a few dewdrops

  will you be content with them?

  To fly your colours

  to fight in your name

  I have no other desire

  Can I ever be worthy

  of so high a love?

  Let’s exchange our hearts

  our souls are already twins

  conjoined everlastingly

  Nothing will separate us

  time will bleach my bones

  commingled with yours

  And must we then wait

  for Death to take us?

  As long as you held me close...

  Tania had never dared to enter the room across the hall, fearing a new erotic defeat, but she soon had good reason to hope for the end of the apartheid: Bilodo’s attitude was rapidly evolving, as demonstrated by the increasingly intimate tone of his haiku:

  I’ll adorn your neck

  with pearls of the rain

  and dress you all in flowers

  It’s with your kisses

  and not your roses

  I desire to be covered

  My bold hand shall venture forth

  on the virgin snow

  of your naked hip

  At night in my thoughts

  I step across your threshold

  slip into your bed

  So that’s the reason

  why I wake up so often

  astonished by you

  Do you dream sometimes

  of departing your body

  and visiting mine?

  I plan to invent

  a new religion

  and its goddess shall be you

  I know a temple

  where the Holy of Holies

  is silky and warm

  From intimacy to desire there was but a step, which Bilodo finally seemed to have taken. It was causing him insomnia. At night, through their shared wall, Tania would hear him tossing and turning in his bed. Then he’d get up and tour the apartment. He’d wander from room to room, making the floor creak in front of Tania’s door, where he’d stand still for long moments. She could imagine him, his hand raised, not daring to knock. Having recently found herself before a similar closed door, Tania enjoyed this reversal of their situations with a touch of guilty pleasure: being on the inside of the door was decidedly more comfortable. Her desire to open it to Bilodo was strong, but her inner voice commanded her to remain under her duvet. The new flame that had been lit by the poetry – Tania decided she should let it burn a little while longer, until Bilodo could no longer stand the heat and finally found the courage to come in. Then and only then would she give herself to him.

  A beach could accommodate

  our swells, our surging

  billows, our high tides

  I would be the sea

  my waves caress you

  submerging you in kisses

  I enter your skin

  swim around in your water

  dive into your heat

  Let yourself founder

  slip into my deepest depths

  abandon that ship

  A sublime shipwreck

  am I touching the bottom

  or is it heaven?

  Plunge into my soft abyss

  explore my secret

  Mariana Trench

  Tania didn’t have to wait long. On the morning of the sixteenth of February, a few minutes before her alarm clock went off, she had the sensation of being observed, opened her eyes, and saw Bilodo standing at the foot of her bed and staring at her vacuously. How long had he been looming there, watching her sleep?

  ‘Here you are at last,’ Tania murmured.

  Looking shattered, like someone suddenly snatched out of a trance, Bilodo fled the room. Tania put on her dressing gown and joined him in the living room, where he was gaping at Bill with eyes no less watery than the fish’s own. Bilodo turned to Tania – his face displaying the expression of a hunted animal – and apologized for having awakened her. Stepping softly, she moved closer to him. Bilodo was shaking. Tania raised herself on tiptoe and placed upon his lips a kiss charged with static electricity, which made them both flinch. Caught in the act, Tania dared not repeat it and instead laid her head on Bilodo’s shoulder. She pressed her chest against his and felt his heart beating hard. Or was it her own heart, she wondered, pounding away for both of them? Wasn’t the excitement she thought she read in Bilodo’s eyes merely a reflection of her own? It was at this point that he took her in his arms and kissed her. A genuine kiss, a desperate kiss, which moved Tania to her innermost depths, and to which she responded passionately, emancipated from time, transported to some voluptuous elsewhere.

  ‘I love you,’ Bilodo breathed.

  ‘I love you too.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘How do you do it?’ he asked, suddenly worried. ‘How can you be certain that you love me?’

  ‘My heart tells me so. It’s got a little voice, and it whispers that we were made to be together.’

  ‘You could have met another man, one you would have loved as much as me.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have been the same. My heart would have told me he wasn’t the right one.’

  ‘Our paths might never have crossed. What would you have done?’

  ‘I would have looked for you until I found you. But I don’t have to, because here you are.’

  ‘Yes, here I am. But what would you have done if you hadn’t been able to bring me back to life after the accident?’

  ‘Don’t say that...’

  Tania cut off Bilodo’s existential apprehensions by sealing his lips with hers. For his part, the newly enterprising Bilodo began to caress her through her dressing
gown, but she gently tempered his ardour.

  ‘Tonight,’ Tania whispered, wanting the pleasure to last.

  Tania’s customers in the Petit Malin complimented her on her animation, her energy, her radiant beauty. ‘Thanks,’ she answered, with Mona Lisa-like reserve. In her distraction, she licked her lips, still tasting Bilodo’s kisses. She had detached herself from his arms with difficulty, assuring him that they would continue their tender encounter that evening. He’d regretfully let her go and promised to prepare something special for their supper. Tania couldn’t keep herself from anticipating the marvellous moments that were waiting for her. After a bubble bath and an excellent meal, she would deploy her charms and draw Bilodo into her bed, and there they would catapult themselves to those ecstatic heights where, it was said, two lovers become one. She would make Bilodo succumb with pleasure, and she’d share with him every spasm of ravishing carnal agony. Her long months of patience would be compensated, and thus would begin a new era, a full-blown romantic relationship, a period of exquisite promise.

  At midday, while serving customers who were on their way north to do some skiing, Tania had an idea: Noémie had the use of a chalet in the Laurentides owned by her mother – Tania and her friend had spent some wonderful ski weekends there. The house stood in the middle of the forest. It was an ideal refuge, isolated and outside of time...once reached by telephone, Noémie voiced no objection to lending Tania her chalet; Tania had only to pick up the keys. She promised to do so the following day, certain as she was that Bilodo wouldn’t say no. That place in the woods was a providential sanctum where they could love each other in total freedom by the fireside, a haven of peace where Tania could calmly ponder the possibilities of allaying the curse of the first of March which still hung over them. Energized by pure air and wild nature, she’d be able to persuade Bilodo to move to Bavaria, or to somewhere else – in any case, she’d find a way to avoid romantic apocalypse.

  ‘It’s me,’ Tania sang out, crossing the threshold of the apartment early that evening.

  She was surprised when she got no response from Bilodo. Noticing that his overcoat wasn’t in the entrance hall, she assumed he was out running errands. In the dining room, Tania found the table set for a candlelight supper, a state of affairs that augured very well. Then she ventured into the kitchen and understood that something was wrong. The refrigerator door was open, and fragments of broken crockery lay on the floor. The ingredients of a half-prepared meal were scattered over the counter. An intense scent of citrus permeated the kitchen, coming from a bowl that contained the grated zest of several lemons. An open recipe book lay next to the bowl. When she glanced at it, Tania realized that Bilodo had set about making a lemon tart.

  ‘My God!’ she exclaimed, remembering what Justine Tao had told her about the catalytic effect certain evocative smells could produce.

  Struggling against panic, she telephoned Bilodo. He didn’t answer. She sent him a text message, asking him where he was. Not long afterwards, his reply came: ‘What have you done with Ségolène’s haiku?’ read the words on Tania’s little screen. She sank down into a chair, crushed, because there could no longer be any doubt: Bilodo had remembered.

  Distraught, Tania mashed the digital keys on her mobile phone, sending Bilodo text after text:

  ‘Where are you, my love?’

  ‘Come back, I’ll explain everything!’

  ‘Come back, I’m begging you...’

  ‘Come back...’

  Bilodo ignored her.

  Outside the wind was howling. Tania shivered. She sat on the sofa, wrapped herself in a blanket, and waited.

  She waited for Bilodo’s return, preparing herself for a stormy showdown, straining to devise a minimally satisfactory explanation.

  She waited, praying that he’d understand her distress and come back.

  Dawn came, and still Bilodo had not returned.

  17

  Bilodo accepted the cup of coffee the flight attendant offered him and then fell to contemplating the Atlantic Ocean through his window. The plane had taken off at dawn, after an interminable night of waiting in the airport, where he’d been able to read the text messages sent to him by his so-called fiancée. Bilodo couldn’t get over Tania’s unbelievable treachery; he hadn’t stopped fuming about it. To think, he’d believed he was in love with her! But that was before his memory had come back to him, before he’d realized the extent to which he’d been duped – it was before he’d remembered Ségolène, before his headlong dash had begun...

  As though suspended

  in an eternal morning

  I’m flying to her

  Soon Bilodo would tread the sacred soil that had witnessed Ségolène’s birth. ‘I’m coming,’ he kept repeating like a mantra, all the while knowing full well he could take absolutely nothing for granted. There was no self-deception involved: he knew he’d never be able to pass himself off as Grandpré. Besides, he had no intention of even trying to do so. On the contrary, he wanted to put an end to the entire charade. He would quite simply lay his love at Ségolène’s feet, leave the rest up to her, and comply with her wishes.

  All my memories

  were buried inside

  the scent of a lemon tart

  For this was how, while he was making that dessert for Tania – supposedly her favourite – everything had suddenly come back to him. The fragrance of the zested lemons had transfixed him, causing in his head a popcorn-like explosion of images that told the story of the past several years of his life.

  It was the tale of a solitary boy, passionate about calligraphy, of a conscientious postman perhaps too curious for his own good. Amid the great mass of wasted paper he delivered in the course of his daily round, the thousands of soulless pages, now and again he found in his hand a personal letter, a very rare object these days, and so all the more fascinating. That letter in Bilodo’s hand didn’t immediately reach its addressee; he took it home with him and read it as if it were the latest episode in a serial that was significantly more fascinating than his own existence. A few of the many letters he purloined touched him in a particular way. Those were the poetic missives written by a Guadeloupian woman named Ségolène to a professor of literature named Gaston Grandpré:

  My neighbour’s macaw

  grumbles jealously

  hearing my canary sing

  Fragmented clouds at sunset

  the ragged canvas

  of a phantom ship

  Orion sparkles

  mocking Jupiter

  wind ploughs furrows in my hair

  Those letters, each consisting of a single haiku, had immediately bewitched Bilodo, bringing him magnificent visions that contrasted with the ordinary drabness of his daily life. Enthralled by those little snatches of eternity, he’d fallen in love with Ségolène. For a long time, he had contented himself with secretly dreaming of her and worshipping her from afar, but then Grandpré’s death had occurred, and it seemed the correspondence that had become so precious to Bilodo must die too. It was then that Bilodo, seeking a way to prevent the dissolution of the sole link connecting him to Ségolène, hit upon the brilliant idea of borrowing the identity of the deceased.

  In his determination to pass himself off as Grandpré, Bilodo had stopped at nothing; he’d burgled the dead man’s apartment and stolen his papers. Since he needed to compose poems that could pass as authentic in Ségolène’s eyes, Bilodo had trained himself to imitate the late Grandpré’s handwriting and set about mastering the subtle art of haiku. In order to identify himself more closely with the deceased, Bilodo had rented his apartment and moved not only into his rooms but also into his clothes. Listening to Japanese music and living on sushi, Bilodo had learned the basics of Zen philosophy and written hundreds of disastrous haiku – until the day when, wearing a red kimono he’d found in a closet, he had at last experienced the sensation of slipping into Grandpré’s skin and written, in a single access of inspiration, a poem that seemed worthy of Ségolène.
r />   Eleven days after Bilodo posted that haiku, a letter from the Guadeloupian woman had arrived. It was a poem that responded to his. It had worked! Ségolène had fallen for it! And thus a strange period of epistolary happiness had begun; secluded in the dead man’s former residence, Bilodo had sent Ségolène a series of rhapsodic haiku, to which she had replied with increasing fervour.

  Now, looking back, he saw that this was clearly the period during which Tania had begun a series of manoeuvres designed to win his heart. First she’d been interested in the haiku he was writing, and then she had taken up haiku-writing too. When she’d suggested that they start a renku, he should have suspected something, but he hadn’t actually become aware of Tania’s feelings until the episode of the stolen tanka, that dirty trick Robert had played on them. Intended for Ségolène, the poem had fallen into Robert’s hands, and that was the way he’d discovered Bilodo’s great romantic secret. Bilodo, desperate to recover his tanka, had confronted Robert and found himself obliged to strike him. An act for which his colleague had got his revenge by giving Tania a copy of the poem and so placing Bilodo in an embarrassing situation, which had degenerated after the young waitress grasped that she’d been played for a fool. Whereupon Bilodo had taken refuge in the private universe of his virtual relationship with Ségolène. Cut off from the world, he’d lived for months on little but fantasies, exploring with the beautiful Guadeloupian the multiple dimensions of a lyrical passion that carried them both to peaks of ecstasy.

  Then, at the end of August, the tanka in which Ségolène announced her impending arrival had come...

  Bilodo squirmed in his seat, reliving the torments into which that announcement had plunged him. For he’d been sure that Ségolène would see through the hoax the moment she saw him. Contemplating the inevitable revelation of his deception filled Bilodo with such despair that he had decided to hang himself. He’d escaped suicide only because, at the moment when the noose was tightening around his neck, Tania had paid him a surprise visit. It had been a truly unique moment, that face-to-face meeting with the young waitress on the balcony. Ultimately, Bilodo had had the impression that something special was on the point of passing between them, and as he watched Tania walk away he’d felt a pang in his heart, not yet suspecting whom and what he was dealing with...The sweet and innocent Tania, so clever at dissembling her selfish schemes.