The Little Paris Bookshop

by Nina George

  An undaunted Cuneo asked every visitor whether he or she had spotted a cargo vessel called Moonlight on their travels. A Swiss couple, who had been cruising around Europe on a Luxe motor barge for thirty years, thought they remembered it. Maybe ten years back. Or was it twelve?

  When Cuneo’s thoughts turned to dinner, he found the larder full of air, and only cat food and the aforementioned white beans in the fridge.

  ‘We have no money, Signor Cuneo, and no supplies,’ Perdu started to explain. He told him about their impetuous departure from Paris and their various mishaps.

  ‘Most river-goers are glad to lend a hand, and I’ve got some savings,’ was the Neapolitan’s comment. ‘I could give you something towards the fare.’

  ‘That’s very noble of you,’ said Perdu, ‘but it’s out of the question. We have to earn some money somehow.’

  ‘Isn’t that woman waiting for you?’ said Max Jordan in all innocence. ‘We shouldn’t waste too much time.’

  ‘She’s not expecting me. We’ve got all the time in the world,’ said Perdu hastily, dismissing the question.

  Oh yes, we have all the time in the world. Oh, Manon, do you remember that basement bar, Louis Armstrong and us?

  ‘A surprise visit? That’s so romantic … but fairly risky.’

  ‘If you don’t take any risks, life will pass you by,’ Cuneo chipped in. ‘But let’s get back to the subject of money.’ Perdu gave him a grateful smile.

  Cuneo and Perdu studied the waterways map, and the Italian marked a few villages. ‘I know some people here in Apremont-sur-Allier, the other side of Nevers. Javier is often looking for help repairing gravestones. And I worked as a private chef in Fleury once … for a painter in Digoin … And here in Saint-Satur, if she’s got over the fact that she and I didn’t, um …’ He blushed. ‘Some of them are bound to help us out with food or fuel. Or they’ll know where there are jobs to be had.’

  ‘Do you know anyone in Cuisery?’

  ‘The book town on the Seille River? Never been there. But maybe I’ll find what I’m looking for there.’

  ‘The woman.’

  ‘Yes, the woman.’ Cuneo took a deep breath. ‘Women like her don’t come along that often, you know. Maybe only once every two hundred years. She’s everything a man could dream of. Beautiful, clever, wise, considerate, passionate – absolutely everything.’

  Amazing, thought Perdu. I could never talk about Manon that way. Talking about her would mean sharing her. It would mean owning up, and he couldn’t yet bring himself to do that.

  ‘So the big question,’ Max mused, ‘is how to earn a quick buck. I’m telling you right now that I’d make a terrible gigolo.’

  Cuneo glanced around. ‘What about the books?’ he asked tentatively. ‘Do you plan to keep them all?’

  Why hadn’t he thought of it himself?

  Cuneo went off into Briare to buy fruit, vegetables and meat with his own money and talked a wily angler into giving him his day’s catch. Jean opened the book barge, and Max went off to drum up some business. He strolled around the marina and the village calling out: ‘Books for sale! All the latest releases. Entertaining, smart and cheap – books, glorious books!’

  Whenever he passed a table of women, he would announce: ‘Reading makes you beautiful, reading makes you rich, reading makes you slim!’ In between times he posted himself outside Le Petit St Trop restaurant and cried: ‘Feeling unloved? We have the book for you. Having trouble with your skipper? We’ve got the book for that too! Caught a fish, but don’t know how to gut it? Our books know everything about everything.’

  Some passers-by recognised the author from newspaper pictures, others turned away in irritation, and a handful did make their way to the Literary Apothecary for advice.

  And so Max, Jean and Salvatore Cuneo earned their first euros. A tall, dark monk from Rogny also presented them with a few pots of honey and jars of herbs in exchange for Perdu’s non-fiction titles on agnosticism.

  ‘What on earth is he going to do with them?’

  ‘Bury them,’ Cuneo reckoned.

  Having asked the harbourmaster about the Moonlight cargo ship, he bought a few more herb seedlings from him, and using timber from some bookshelves, speedily created a kitchen garden on the afterdeck, much to the delight of Kafka and Lindgren, who made a mad dash for the mint. The cats were soon chasing each other around the boat, their tails bristling like scrubbing brushes.

  That evening Cuneo, sporting a flowery apron and matching oven gloves, brought in their meal.

  ‘Gentlemen, a variation on the ratatouille so demeaned by the tourist industry: bohémienne de legumes,’ Salvatore explained, setting down the dish on the makeshift table out on deck. The dish turned out to be finely diced roasted red vegetables, seasoned with a generous pinch of thyme, pressed into a mould, then skilfully turned out onto a plate and drizzled with the finest olive oil. It was accompanied by lamb cutlets, which Cuneo had passed three times over the open flame, and a snow-white, melt-in-the-mouth garlic flan.

  Something strange happened when Perdu took his first bite. Images seemed to explode inside his head.

  ‘This is unbelievable, Salvatore. You cook the way Marcel Pagnol writes.’

  ‘Ah, Pagnol. A good man. He knew that you can only really see with your tongue. And your nose and your stomach,’ said Cuneo with an appreciative sigh. Then, between two mouthfuls, he added, ‘Capitano Perduto, I’m a firm believer that you have to taste a country’s soul to understand it and to grasp its people. And by soul I mean what grows there, what its people see and smell and touch every day, what travels through them and shapes them from the inside out.’

  ‘Like pasta shapes the Italians?’ Max asked as he chewed.

  ‘Watch what you say, Massimo. Pasta makes women bellissima!’ said Cuneo, enthusiastically tracing a voluptuous female figure in the air with his hands.

  They ate and they laughed. The sun went down to their right, the moon came up to their left; they were enfolded in the luxurious scent of the harbour flowers. The cats explored the surrounding area, and later they kept the men company from their vantage point on top of an overturned book crate.

  Jean Perdu was overcome by an unfamiliar sense of tranquillity.

  Can eating heal you?

  With every bite of food steeped in the herbs and oils of Provence he seemed to absorb a little more of the land that lay ahead; it was as if he were eating the surrounding countryside. Already he could taste the wild banks of the Loire, covered in forests and vineyards.

  He slept peacefully that night. Kafka and Lindgren watched over his sleep, the tomcat stretched out by the door, Lindgren by his shoulder. Occasionally Jean would feel paws patting his cheek, as if to check that he was still alive.

  The next morning they decided to stay a little longer in Briare. It was a popular base and meeting point, and the houseboating season had begun. New canal boats arrived almost every hour, bringing potential book buyers.

  Max offered to share his few remaining clothes with Jean, who had set out with only the shirt, grey trousers, jacket and jumper he was wearing. For the time being, clothing was not high on their list of essential purchases.

  Perdu found himself wearing jeans and a faded shirt for the first time in what felt like centuries. He barely recognised the man he glimpsed in the mirror. The three-day beard, the slight tan he had caught at the wheel, the airy clothes … He no longer looked so uptight or older than his years, though not exactly much younger either.

  Max had started to draw an ironic pencil moustache on his upper lip and combed his hair back to cultivate a gleaming, black pirate ponytail. Every morning he practised kung fu and tai chi out on the rear deck in only a light pair of trousers. At lunchtime and in the evening he read aloud to Cuneo while the latter prepared the meals. Cuneo would often request stories by women authors.

  ‘Women tell you more about the world. Men only tell you about themselves.’

  They were now keeping the Literary Ap
othecary open late into the night. The days were getting warmer.

  Children from the nearby villages and the other boats would hang out for hours in Lulu’s belly, reading the adventures of Harry Potter, Kalle Blomquist, the Famous Five and the Warrior Cats, or Greg’s diary. Perdu frequently had to suppress a smile at the sight of Max sitting on the floor in the middle of a circle of children, his long legs folded and a book on his lap. His reading aloud was constantly improving, and his stories were more like radio plays. Perdu suspected that these small children, listening with eyes wide and in rapt concentration, would one day grow up to need reading, with its accompanying sense of wonder and the feeling of having a film running inside your head, as much as they needed air to breathe.

  He sold books by weight to anyone under fourteen: two kilos for ten euros.

  ‘Aren’t we running at a loss?’ asked Max.

  Perdu shrugged his shoulders. ‘Financially speaking, yes. But it’s well known that reading makes people impudent, and tomorrow’s world is going to need some people who aren’t shy to speak their minds, don’t you think?’

  Giggling teenagers would crowd into the erotica corner and then fall suspiciously silent. Perdu made sure to approach noisily so that they had time to pry their lips from each other’s and hide their flushed faces behind a harmless book.

  Max often lured customers aboard by playing the piano.

  Perdu got into the habit of posting a card to Catherine every day, and collecting new entries for his encyclopedia of minor and moderate emotions in a notebook, for the benefit of the next generation of literary pharmacists.

  Each evening he would sit down in the stern and look up at the sky. The Milky Way was always there, and every now and then a shooting star would race past. The frogs gave a cappella concerts and the crickets joined in with a chirp, all to the background beat of lines slapping softly against masts and the occasional chime of a ship’s bell.

  New feelings surged through his body. It was only fair that Catherine should hear about them, for she was the one who had set everything in motion. He was still waiting to see what kind of man this would make him.

  Catherine, today Max understood that a novel is like a garden where the reader must spend time in order to bloom. I feel strangely paternal when I look at Max. Regards, Perduto.

  Catherine, for three seconds when I woke up this morning I had the insight that you are a sculptor of souls, a woman who tames fear. Your hands are turning a stone back into a man. John Lost, menhir.

  Catherine, rivers are not like the sea. The sea demands, while rivers give. Here we are, stocking up on contentment, peace, melancholia and the glass-smooth calm of evening that rounds off the day in grey-blue tones. I have kept the sea horse you fashioned out of bread, the one with the peppercorn eyes. It desperately needs a companion. In the humble opinion of Jeanno P.

  Catherine, river people only really arrive when they’re afloat. They love books about desert islands. River people would feel nauseated if they knew where they were going to moor the next day. Someone who understands them is J. P. from P., currently of no fixed address.

  Perdu had discovered another thing above the rivers – stars that breathed. One day they shone brightly, the next they were pale, then bright again. And this had nothing to do with the haze or with his reading glasses, but with the fact that he no longer simply stared at his own feet.

  It looked as though they were breathing to some never-ending slow, deep rhythm. They breathed and watched as the world came and went. Some stars had seen the dinosaurs and the Neanderthals; they had seen the pyramids rise and Columbus discover America. For them, the earth was one more island world in the immeasurable ocean of outer space, its inhabitants microscopically small.

  25

  At the end of their first week in Briare, a man from the council told them on the quiet that they’d either have to register as a seasonal trader or move on. He happened to be addicted to American thrillers.

  ‘But from now on, watch out where you moor – by definition French bureaucracy has no blind spots.’

  Equipped with food, power, water and the names and mobile numbers of a handful of friendly people living along the waterways, they swung out of the marina and into a side canal of the Loire. Soon they were passing châteaux, dense woods redolent with the scent of resin, and vineyards growing Sauvignon and Pinot Noir grapes to make Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé wines.

  The further south they went, the warmer the summer weather. From time to time they would meet a boat with women in bikinis stretched out on deck.

  In the river meadows, alders, brambles and wild vines formed a magical jungle, dappled with shimmering, greenish light and spangled with twirling forest particles. Marshy pools lay sparkling among the elderberries and leaning beeches.

  Cuneo pulled one fish after another from the murmuring waters, and they sighted herons, ospreys and swifts on the long, shallow, sandy shoals. Here and there, beavers peeked out of the bushes as they hunted for river rats. An ancient and lush France unfolded before their eyes, luxuriant, grand, leafy and remote.

  One night they tied up beside an overgrown pasture. It was silent. There was not even the burbling of water, and no sound of traffic was to be heard. They were completely alone, aside from a few owls that sent the occasional call scooting over the water.

  After a candlelit dinner they dragged blankets and cushions out onto the deck and lay there – three men, head to head, in a three-pointed star.

  The Milky Way was a streak of light, a vapour trail of planets overhead. The silence was almost overpowering, and the blue depths of the night sky seemed to suck them in.

  Max conjured forth a thin joint.

  ‘I protest in the strongest terms,’ said Jean in a relaxed drawl.

  ‘Aye aye, skipper. Message received. A Dutch guy gave it to me because he didn’t have any money to buy the Houellebecq.’

  Max lit the reefer.

  Cuneo sniffed. ‘Smells like burned sage.’

  He accepted the joint clumsily and took a short, cautious toke.

  ‘Ugh. Like licking a Christmas tree.’

  ‘You have to draw it into your lungs and hold it there for as long as possible,’ Max advised him. Cuneo followed his instructions.

  ‘Holy balsamico!’ He coughed.

  Jean took one gentle drag and let the smoke roll around his palate. Part of him was afraid of losing control; part of him longed for exactly that. Even now it seemed as though a dam of time, habit and petrified fear were preventing his grief from gushing forth. He felt as if there were stone tears inside him that left no room for anything else.

  He had not yet confessed to Max or Cuneo that the woman for whom he had cast off from Paris had long since turned to dust. Nor had he confessed that he was ashamed, and that it was shame driving him on. But he had no idea what he was supposed to do when he reached Bonnieux or what he hoped to find there.

  Inner peace? He had a long way to go to even merit it.

  Oh well, a second drag couldn’t do any harm.

  The smoke was searingly hot. This time he sucked it in deep. Jean felt as though an ocean of heavy air were pressing down on him. It was as silent as the marine depths. Even the owls made no sound.

  ‘Super starry,’ mumbled Cuneo, tripping over his tongue.

  ‘We must be flying above the sky. The earth is a discus, yeah that’s what it is,’ said Max by way of explanation.

  ‘Or a platter of cold meats,’ hiccupped Cuneo.

  Max and he snorted. They laughed, and their voices echoed across the river and frightened the baby hares in the undergrowth into pressing themselves, hearts thumping, deeper into their sleepy hollows.

  The night dew settled on Jean’s eyelids. He didn’t laugh.

  ‘So, Cuneo, this woman you’re looking for: what was she like?’ asked Max when their laughter had subsided.

  ‘Beautiful. Young. And extremely brown from all the sun,’ answered Cuneo.

  He paused. ‘Apart from
you-know-where. There she was as white as cream.’ He sighed. ‘And tasted every bit as sweet.’

  They saw shooting stars flare up here and there, flash across their field of vision, and fade away.

  ‘Love’s follies are the sweetest. But you pay most dearly for them,’ Cuneo whispered and pulled his blanket up to his chin. ‘Little ones and big ones alike.’ He sighed again. ‘It was only one night. Vivette was engaged at the time, but all that meant was that no man should touch her, especially not a man like me.’

  ‘What, a foreigner?’ asked Max.

  ‘No, Massimo, that wasn’t the problem. A river man – we were taboo.’