by Nina George
She shot Perdu a quick look with her bright, clear-blue eyes. Her gaze was young, her eyes were old, and her body sang the sweet, passionate song of the tango, beyond all notion of time. Perdu had tasted the saudade of life, a soft, warm feeling of sorrow – for everything, for nothing.
‘Saudade’: a yearning for one’s childhood, when the days would merge into one another and the passing of time was of no consequence. It is the sense of being loved in a way that will never come again. It is a unique experience of abandon. It is everything that words cannot capture.
He should include it in his encyclopedia of emotions.
At that moment, P. D. Olson came over to the bar. The moment his feet and legs were no longer dancing, he reverted to walking like an old man.
‘You have to dance the things you cannot explain,’ Perdu said under his breath.
‘And you have to write the things you cannot express,’ the old novelist thundered.
As the band launched into ‘Por una Cabeza’, the briar dancer bent into Max’s chest, her lips whispering incantations, and her hand, foot and hips subtly correcting his posture; she created the impression that he was leading her.
Jordan danced the tango, wide-eyed at first and then, following a whispered instruction, with lowered lids. Soon they looked like a well-grooved couple, the stranger and the young man.
P. D. nodded to Cuneo, the chubby barman, who advanced towards the dance floor. He seemed to grow lighter as he walked – light and wondrously gallant in his restrained, deferential movements. His dancing partner was taller than he was, and yet she moulded herself to him, brimming with trust.
P. D. Olson leaned closer to Perdu and whispered, ‘What a magnificent literary figure this Salvatore Cuneo is. He came to Provence as a harvest worker, to pick cherries, peaches, apricots – anything that requires delicate handling. He worked with Russians and Moroccans and Algerians, then spent a night with a young river pilot. She disappeared back to her barge the next day. Something to do with the moon. Ever since, Cuneo has been scouring the rivers for her. It’s been twenty years. He works awhile here, awhile there, and he can now turn his hand to almost anything – especially cooking. But he can also paint, repair a fuel tank and cast horoscopes; whatever you need done, he can do it. And if he can’t, he learns in a flash. The man’s a genius in the guise of a Neapolitan pizzaiolo.’ P. D. Olson shook his head. ‘Twenty years. Imagine that! And for a woman!’
‘Why not? Can you think of a better cause?’
‘You would say that, John Lost.’
‘What? What did you call me, Olson?’
‘You heard. Jean Perdu, John Lost, Giovanni Perduto … I’ve dreamed about you on occasion.’
‘Did you write Southern Lights?’
‘Have you danced?’
Jean Perdu downed the rest of his pastis.
Then he turned and surveyed the women in the room. Some looked away; others held his gaze … and one shot a glance at him. She was in her mid-twenties. Short hair, a small bust, firm muscles between her upper arms and her shoulders, and eyes blazing with a boundless hunger, as well as the boldness to assuage that hunger.
Perdu nodded to her. She stood up without a smile and walked halfway towards him – halfway minus exactly one step. She wanted to wrench that final step from him. She waited, a raging cat, coiled to pounce.
At the same instant the band finished its first song; and Monsieur Perdu strode towards the hungry cat woman.
Her face said ‘Let battle commence!’
Her mouth demanded ‘Subjugate me if you can, but don’t you dare humiliate me. And woe betide you if you’re too timid to challenge me. I’m soft, but I only feel that softness in the heat of passion. And I can protect myself!’ said her small, firm hand, the quivering tension that held her body upright, and her thighs, which melded themselves to his.
She pressed against him from chest to toe – but when the first notes rang out, Jean transmitted his energy to her with a thrust of his solar plexus. He eased her down further and further until they both had one knee bent and the other leg stretched out to one side.
A murmur ran through the line of women, but it immediately ceased when Perdu pulled the young woman up, winding her free leg quickly and smoothly around his knee. The backs of their knees kissed gently. They were entwined as closely as otherwise only naked lovers could be.
Jean throbbed with long-dormant power. Could he still do it? Could he return to a body he had not used for so long? ‘Don’t think, Jean! Feel!’
Yes, Manon.
Manon had taught him not to think during lovemaking, foreplay, dancing and conversations about emotions. She’d called him ‘typically northern’ because he tried to hide his bad moods from her behind stock phrases and a poker face, because he paid too much attention to what was proper during sex. And because he would pull and push Manon across the dance floor like a shopping trolley instead of dancing the way he wanted to – as the impetus of his will, reactions and desire dictated.
Manon had cracked open this stiff outer casing like a nut, with her hands, her bare hands, her bare fingers, her bare legs …
She freed me from my misanthropy, silence and inhibitions. From my compulsion to only make the right moves.
They say that men who are at one with their bodies can sense and smell when a woman wants more from life than she is getting. The girl in his arms longed for a stranger, for a permanent traveller: he could smell it as he felt her heart beating against his chest. The unknown man who rides into town and gives her one night of adventure, laying at her feet all the things she cannot find in this village, lost among silent wheat fields and ancient woodlands. This is her only means of protest, of ensuring she does not become bitter in this rural idyll where only land, family and offspring matter, never her, never her alone.
Jean Perdu gave the young woman what she desired. He held her the way no young carpenter, winemaker or forester ever would. He danced with her body and with her womanhood unlike any of the people for whom she was plain ‘Marie, the daughter of the old blacksmith who shoes our nags’.
Jean put the full force of his body, breath and concentration into every gesture. He whispered to her in the language of tango, which Manon and he had learned and murmured to each other in bed. They had addressed each other formally, the way traditional elderly married couples in Spain had in days gone by, and whispered lascivious words to each other.
Everything merged into one – the past, the present, this young woman and the other one called Manon; the young man he had once been, with no inkling of the man he could become; the not-yet-old but nonetheless older man, who had nearly forgotten what it was like to desire and to hold a woman in his arms.
And here he was in the arms of a cat woman who loved to fight, be vanquished and then return to the fray.
Manon, Manon, this is how you danced. With the hunger to make something entirely your own, without the burden of your family and the land of your ancestors on your shoulders. Just you; no future, you and the tango. You and I, your lips, my lips, your tongue, my skin, my life, your life.
As the third song, the ‘Libertango’, struck up, the fire escape doors burst open.
‘Here they are, the swines!’ Perdu heard an incensed male voice shout.
23
Five men barged their way through the door. The women screamed.
The first intruder was already tearing Cuneo’s partner from his arms and making as if to slap her. The burly Italian caught his arm, upon which a second man threw himself at Cuneo and punched him in the stomach, allowing the other to drag the woman away.
‘Betrayed,’ hissed P. D. Olson, as he and Jean Perdu guided the cat woman away from the frenzied mob of men, who reeked of alcohol.
‘That’s my father,’ she gasped, turning ghostly pale, and pointing to an axe-wielding maniac with eyes that were too close together.
‘Don’t look at him! Go out that door ahead of me!’ ordered Perdu.
Max was fendi
ng off a pair of furious guys who saw Cuneo as the instigator of their wives’, daughters’ and sisters’ satanic sex games. Salvatore Cuneo had a split lip. Max kicked one of the assailants in the knee, and threw the other on his back with a kung fu move. Then he hurried back to the briar dancer, who was standing motionless and proud amid the chaos. Max bowed and kissed her hand with a flourish.
‘I’d like to thank you, queen of this incomplete night, for the most wonderful dance of my life.’
‘Hurry up or it will be your last,’ called P. D., seizing Max’s arm.
Perdu saw the queen smile as she watched Max go. She picked up his earmuffs and clutched them to her heart.
Jordan, Perdu, P. D., the cat woman and Cuneo ran outside and over to a battered blue Renault. Cuneo squeezed his barrel belly in behind the wheel, a panting P. D. piled into the passenger seat, and Max, Jean and the young woman crawled onto the load bed at the back, alongside a toolbox, a leather suitcase, a bottle carrier with spices, various kinds of vinegar and bunches of herbs, and mountains of textbooks on various subjects. They were thrown higgledy-piggledy as Cuneo put his foot to the floor, pursued by the irate, fist-shaking mob that had chased the strangers out into the car park, no longer prepared to put up with their womenfolk’s secret urge to dance.
‘Dumb hicks!’ spat P. D. Olson, tossing a reference book on butterflies into the back. ‘They’re so small-minded they think we’re a bunch of swingers who start off dancing fully clothed and then strip. That would look fairly repulsive – all those shrunken balls, pot bellies and skinny little grandpa legs.’
The cat woman snorted, and Max and Cuneo laughed too – the exaggerated laughter of people who have evaded danger by the skin of their teeth.
‘Wait, sorry but … can we stop at a bank anyway?’ Max asked in a pleading voice as they raced hell-for-leather back to the boat along Cepoy’s main street.
‘Only if you’re looking to sing castrato,’ P. D. huffed.
They soon pulled up at the book barge. Lindgren and Kafka were lazing by the window in the early evening sun, studiously ignoring an excitable couple of crows that were croaking insults at them from a twisted apple tree.
Perdu noticed Cuneo’s longing glance at the barge.
‘I don’t think it’s safe for you to stay here,’ he said to the Italian.
Cuneo sighed. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve heard those words before, Capitano.’
‘Come with us. We’re on our way to Provence,’ said Perdu.
‘That damn letter splicer told you my story, si? About me travelling the rivers in search of a signorina who has stolen my heart?’
‘Sure did. The Yank spilled the beans again. So what? I’m old and I’m going to die soon anyway – a bit of mischief is all that’ll keep me alive. At least I didn’t post it on Facebook.’
‘You’re on Facebook?’ Max asked in disbelief. He had picked some apples and was cradling them in his shirt.
‘Yeah. And? Just because it’s like tapping on the walls of a prison cell?’ Old Olson snickered. ‘Of course I am. How else am I supposed to find out what people are up to or that village lynch mobs can suddenly recruit members worldwide?’
‘Right. Okay,’ said Max. ‘I’ll send you a friend request.’
‘You do that, sonny. I’m on the internet every last Friday in the month, from eleven to three.’
‘You still owe us an answer,’ said Perdu. ‘After all, both of us danced. Well? And give us a straight answer – I can’t stand lies. Did you write Southern Lights? Are you Sanary?’
Olson turned his wrinkled face to the sun. He took off his ridiculous hat and swept his white hair back.
‘Me? Sanary? What makes you think that?’
‘Technique. The words.’
‘Ah, I know what you mean! “The great Mamapapa.” Wonderful. The personification of everybody’s longing for the ultimate caregiver, the mothering father. Or “rose love”, blooming and fragrant, but without thorns, which is to misconstrue the nature of the rose. Magnificent, every word of it. But not mine, sad to say. Sanary has no regard for conventions, but I consider him a great philanthropist. Which is not a claim I can make for myself. I don’t like people much, although I also get diarrhoea if I have to respect social etiquette. No, my dear John Lost – it’s not me. And that is the unfortunate truth.’
P. D. struggled out of the car and hobbled around to the other side.
‘Listen, Cuneo. I’ll look after your old jalopy until you come back. Or don’t come back, who knows.’
Cuneo was undecided, but when Max picked up his books and bottle carrier and hauled them over to the boat, Cuneo grabbed the toolbox and the leather suitcase too.
‘Capitano Perduto, may I come aboard?’
‘Please do. I would be honoured, Signor Cuneo.’
As Max prepared to cast off, the cat woman leaned on the Renault’s bonnet, her expression inscrutable, and Perdu shook P. D. Olson’s hand in farewell.
‘Did you really dream about me? Or was that idle talk?’ he asked.
Per David Olson gave a roguish smile. ‘A world of words is never real. I read that once in a book by a German called Gerlach, Gunter Gerlach. Not for dimwits.’ He thought for a second. ‘Head for Cuisery, on the Seille River. Maybe you’ll find Sanary there. If she’s alive.’
‘She?’ asked Perdu.
‘Hey, what do I know? I always imagine that anything interesting is female. Don’t you?’ Olson grinned and eased himself carefully into Cuneo’s old car. He waited there for the young woman to join him.
She, meanwhile, clasped Perdu in her arms.
‘You owe me something too,’ she said huskily and sealed Perdu’s lips with a kiss.
It was the first time a woman had kissed him in twenty years, and even in his wildest dreams Jean could not have imagined how intoxicating it was.
She sucked him in, and her tongue briefly met his. Then, eyes blazing, she thrust Jean away.
‘Even if I did desire you, what business is that of yours?’ said her angry, proud gaze.
Hallelujah. What did I do to earn that?
‘Cuisery?’ asked Max. ‘What’s that?’
‘Paradise,’ said Perdu.
24
Cuneo took up quarters in the second cabin, and then declared the galley his private territory. The burly man with the receding hairline extracted spices, oils and blends from his suitcase and bottle carrier, and arranged them alongside a formidable battery of home-made mixtures used to spice up dishes, to enhance dips or simply ‘to sniff and be happy’.
Noting Perdu’s sceptical expression, he asked: ‘Something wrong?’
‘No, Signor Cuneo. It’s just …’
It’s just that I’m not used to such nice aromas. They’re too good. Too unbearably good. And not ‘happy’.
‘I once knew a woman,’ Cuneo began, as he continued to order his things and carefully check his knives, ‘who wept when she smelled roses. Another woman found it incredibly erotic when I baked pâté en croûte. Aromas do funny things to the soul.’
Pâté happiness, thought Perdu. Under P. Or under L for the Language of Aromas. Would he really include all this in his encyclopedia of emotions one day?
How about starting tomorrow? No – how about right now?!
All he needed was a pen and paper, and then someday, letter by letter, he would have achieved his dream. Would, should, could …
Now. It is only ever now. So do it, you coward. Breathe underwater at last.
‘For me it’s lavender,’ he admitted hesitantly.
‘Do you have to weep, or the opposite?’
‘Both. It’s the scent of my greatest failure – and happiness.’
Now Cuneo shook some pebbles out of a plastic bag and arranged them on the sideboard.
‘This is my failure and my happiness,’ he declared, unbidden. ‘Time. It rubs the rough edges that hurt us smooth. Because I tend to forget that, I’ve kept a pebble from every river I’ve ever
travelled.’
The Canal du Loing had merged into the Canal de Briare on one of the most spectacular sections of the Route Bourbonnais, through a trough-shaped aqueduct that carried the canal over a turbulent and unnavigable stretch of the Loire. They had dropped anchor in the marina at Briare, which was so resplendent with flowers that dozens of painters were sitting on the banks, attempting to capture the scene.
The marina looked like a miniature Saint-Tropez. They saw a host of expensive yachts and people strolling along the promenades. The Literary Apothecary was the largest boat there, and a number of hobby yachtsmen sauntered up to stare at her, inspect the conversion work and cast an eye over the crew. Perdu knew how odd they looked. Not merely like rookies, but something far worse: amateurs.