The Little Paris Bookshop

by Nina George

  Cuneo took another toke and passed the joint on.

  ‘Vivette came over me like a fever – and I’ve still got it today. My blood boils at the thought of her. Her face stares out at me from every shadow and from every ray of sun on the water. I dream about her, but each night reduces the number of days we might spend together.’

  ‘I feel somehow terribly old and parched,’ Max said. ‘All these passions you two feel! One of you has been searching for his one-night stand for twenty years, and the other sets off at a moment’s notice to …’ Max broke off.

  In the pause after these words Jean felt a jolt at the very edges of his grass-clouded consciousness. What was it that Max had just stopped himself from saying? But Max carried on talking, and Jean let it go.

  ‘I don’t even know what I ought to want. I’ve never been that deeply in love with a woman. I’ve always focused on what … what she is not. One was pretty, but a snob about people who earned less than her father. Another was nice, but took forever to get a joke. And another girl was unbelievably beautiful, but she started weeping when she took her clothes off – I’ve no idea why – so I preferred not to sleep with her. I wrapped her up in my biggest jumper instead and hugged her all night long. I tell you, women love to snuggle and spoon, but all the man gets is a dead arm and a bursting bladder.’

  Perdu took another drag.

  ‘Your princess is somewhere too, Massimo,’ said Cuneo with conviction.

  ‘So where is she?’ asked Max.

  ‘Maybe you’re searching for her already and you simply don’t know that you’re on your way to finding her,’ whispered Jean.

  That was how it had been with him and Manon. He had got on the train from Marseilles that morning with no idea that half an hour later he would find the woman who would shake his life to its foundations and topple all the pillars holding it up. He had been twenty-four, barely older than Max was now. He had had only five years of stolen hours with Manon, but he had paid for what amounted to those few days with two decades of pain, longing and loneliness.

  ‘But I’ll be damned if those few hours weren’t worth it.’

  ‘What did you say, Capitano?’

  ‘Nothing, I was merely thinking. Can you hear my thoughts now? You’ll both walk the plank.’

  His travelling companions chuckled.

  The silence of the country night seemed to grow increasingly surreal, drawing the men away from the present.

  ‘What about your love, Capitano?’ asked Cuneo. ‘What’s her name?’

  Jean said nothing for a long time.

  ‘Scusami, I didn’t mean to …’

  ‘Manon. Her name is Manon.’

  ‘She must be beautiful.’

  ‘As beautiful as a cherry tree in spring.’

  It was so easy to close his eyes and answer the difficult questions Cuneo asked in his mellow, kindly voice.

  ‘And clever, si?’

  ‘She knows me better than I know myself. She … taught me to feel. And to dance. And loving her was easy.’

  ‘Was?’ a voice asked, yet so softly that Perdu was unsure whether it came from Max, Salvatore or his own inner censor.

  ‘She’s my home. And she’s my laughter. She’s …’

  He fell silent. Dead. He couldn’t say it. He was so scared of the grief that lurked behind the word.

  ‘And what will you say to her when you meet?’

  Jean wrestled with himself, then opted for the only truth that concurred with his silence about Manon’s death.

  ‘Forgive me.’

  Cuneo ceased his questions.

  ‘I envy you so much,’ said Max. ‘You live out your love and your longings, however crazy they may be. I, on the other hand, feel like a waste. I breathe, my heart beats, the blood pumps through my veins. But my writing’s going nowhere. The world is falling to pieces, and I’m whining like a pair of punctured bellows. Life’s not fair.’

  ‘Death alone awaits us all,’ said Perdu coolly.

  ‘That’s true democracy,’ added Cuneo.

  ‘Well, I think death’s politically overrated,’ said Max. He handed the end of the joint to Jean.

  ‘Is it really the case that men choose their beloved according to whether she looks like their mother?’ asked Cuneo.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Perdu and thought of Lirabelle Bernier.

  ‘Si, certo! In that case I’d have to look for someone who’s always calling me an imposition and slaps me when I’m reading or use words she doesn’t understand,’ said Cuneo with a bittersweet laugh.

  ‘And I’d have one who only in her mid-fifties learns to say no and to eat something she actually likes rather than whatever’s cheapest,’ Max admitted.

  Cuneo stubbed out the roll-up.

  ‘Hey, Salvo,’ asked Max when they had almost fallen asleep. ‘May I write your story?’

  ‘Don’t you dare, amico,’ was Salvatore’s reply. ‘Kindly come up with your own storia, young Massimo. If you take mine, I’ll have none left of my own.’

  Max gave a deep sigh. ‘Oh, okay,’ he muttered drowsily. ‘Do the two of you at least have a couple of words for me? You know, a favourite word or two? To send me to sleep?’

  Cuneo smacked his lips. ‘Like milk soufflé? Pasta kiss?’

  ‘I like words that sound like the things they describe,’ whispered Perdu. His eyes were closed. ‘Evening breeze. Night runner. Summer child. Defiance: I see a little girl in pretend armour, fighting off all the things she doesn’t want to be. Well behaved and thin and quiet – no way! Lady Defiance, a lone knight against the dark forces of reason.’

  ‘Some words can cut you,’ mumbled Cuneo, ‘like razor blades in your ear and on your tongue. Discipline. Drill. Or reason.’

  ‘ “Reason”  is the word on everyone’s lips, so it’s no wonder others can hardly make it through,’ Max complained. Then he laughed: ‘Imagine if you had to buy beautiful words before you could use them.’

  ‘Some people with verbal diarrhoea would soon be broke.’

  ‘And the rich would call the shots because they’d buy up all the important words.’

  ‘And “I love you” would cost the most.’

  ‘And twice as much if it’s not used sincerely.’

  ‘The poor would have to steal words. Or play charades rather than speak.’

  ‘We should all do that anyway. Loving is a verb, so … do it. Less talk and more action. Right?’

  Crikey, dope does amazing things.

  Not long afterwards Salvo and Max rolled themselves out of their blankets and slipped away to their berths belowdecks.

  Before Max Jordan disappeared, he glanced back at Perdu one last time.

  ‘What is it, Monsieur?’ Perdu asked sleepily. ‘Want another word to take to bed with you?’

  ‘Me? … No. I just wanted to say … I really like you. Whatever …’

  Max looked as if he wanted to add something, but didn’t know how.

  ‘I like you too, Monsieur Jordan. A lot, in fact. I’d be delighted to be your friend. Monsieur Max.’

  The two men looked at each other. The only light on their faces came from the moon; Max’s eyes were in darkness.

  ‘Yes,’ whispered the young man. ‘Yes … Jean. I’ll gladly be your friend. I’ll try to be a good one.’

  Perdu didn’t understand the last bit, but put it down to the grass.

  When Perdu was alone, he simply lay there. The fragrance of the night was beginning to change. From somewhere a scent wafted over to him … was it lavender?

  Something quaked inside him.

  He remembered that he had felt the same about the scent of lavender as a young man, even before he had met Manon. A shock wave. As though his heart knew even then that at some point far in the future this scent would be associated with longing. With pain. With love. With a woman.

  He took a deep breath and let this memory sweep through him from head to toe. Yes, maybe he had sensed long ago, at Max’s age, the shock wave Manon woul
d soon send through his life.

  Jean Perdu took the flag that Manon had sewn down from the prow and smoothed it out. Then he kneeled and laid his eye on the book bird’s eye, on the spot where the drop of Manon’s blood had dried into a dark stain.

  We’re nights apart, Manon.

  As he kneeled there with his head tilted, he whispered:

  Nights and days and countries and oceans. Thousands of lives have come and gone, and you are waiting for me.

  In a room somewhere, next door.

  Knowing and loving me.

  In my mind you still love me.

  You are the fear that cuts stone inside me.

  You are the life that awaits expectantly inside me.

  You are the death I fear.

  You happened to me, and I withheld my words from you. My sorrow. My memories.

  Your place inside me and all our time together.

  I lost our star.

  Do you forgive me?

  Manon?

  26

  ‘Max! Another chamber of horrors ahead!’

  Jordan dragged himself out on deck. ‘Want to bet that the lock-keeper’s mutt pees on my hand again, like the ones at the last thousand locks or so? My fingers are all bloody from winding these damn handles and opening the lock paddles. Will these gentle hands ever be able to caress another vowel?’ Reproachfully, Max held out red hands dotted with tiny suppurating blisters.

  Having passed countless pastures from which cattle descended into the shallow waters to cool off, and the imposing castles of former royal mistresses, they were now approaching the La Grange lock shortly before Sancerre.

  The wine-growing village sat on top of a hill that was visible from afar and signalled the southern limit of the twenty-kilometre-long Loire Valley nature reserve.

  Weeping willows trailed their branches in the water like playful fingers. The book barge entered the embrace of shifting green walls that seemed to close in around them.

  It was true that a jittery dog had barked at them at every lock that day. And every yapping dog had peed unerringly on the precise bollard to which Max tied the two ropes that held the book barge steady in the lock while the water flowed in and drained out again. This time Max let the two lines slide from his fingertips onto the deck.

  ‘Don’t worry, Capitano! Cuneo will take care of the lock.’

  The short-legged Italian set the ingredients for the evening meal to one side, clambered up the ladder in his flowery apron, pulling on his brightly coloured oven gloves when he reached the top, and swung the mooring line back and forth like a snake. The dog retreated in the face of this rope boa constrictor and trotted sullenly away.

  Cuneo then twisted the iron rod with one hand to open the paddle regulating the inflow; his tensed muscles bulged under his striped short-sleeved shirt. He sang ‘Que Sera, Sera’ in a gondolier’s tenor as he worked, and winked at the delighted lock-keeper’s wife while her husband wasn’t looking. He handed the man a can of beer as they sailed past. This earned Salvatore a smile and the tip-off that there was a dance at Sancerre that evening, and that the harbourmaster at the next harbour had run out of diesel. He also replied in the negative to Cuneo’s most important question: the cargo boat Moonlight had not passed this way in a long time. Last seen towards the end of Mitterrand’s lifetime, or thereabouts.

  Perdu watched Cuneo’s reaction as he received this news.

  The guy had been hearing the same word for a week now: ‘No no no.’ They had asked lock-keepers, harbourmasters, skippers, even customers who beckoned to the Literary Apothecary from the bank. The Italian would thank them, his face impassive. He must have an unquenchable flame of hope burning inside him. Or did he simply keep on looking out of habit?

  Habit is a vain and treacherous goddess. She lets nothing disrupt her rule. She smothers one desire after another: the desire to travel, the desire for a better job or a new love. She stops us from living as we would like, because habit prevents us from asking ourselves whether we continue to enjoy doing what we do.

  Cuneo joined Perdu at the wheel.

  ‘Aye, Capitano. I lost my love. What about the boy?’ he asked. ‘What has he lost?’

  The two men looked over at Max, who was leaning on the railing and staring at the water, his thoughts apparently far, far away.

  Max was talking less and had given up playing the piano.

  I’ll try to be a good friend, he had said to Perdu. What had he meant by ‘try’?

  ‘He’s lost his muse, Signor Salvatore. Max made a pact with her and gave up his normal life. But his muse has gone. Now he doesn’t have a life – either a normal one or an artistic one. And so he’s on a quest to find her.’

  ‘Si, capisco. Maybe he didn’t love his muse enough? If so, he’ll have to ask for her hand all over again.’

  Could writers marry their muses afresh? Should Max, Cuneo and he dance naked and chanting around a fire of vine twigs in the middle of a wildflower meadow?

  ‘What are muses like? Are they like kitty cats?’ asked Cuneo. ‘They don’t like people grovelling for their love. Or are they like dogs? Can he make the muse jealous by making love with another girl?’

  Before Jean Perdu could reply that muses were like horses, they heard Max yell something.

  ‘A deer! There. In the water!’

  It was true: ahead of them, an utterly exhausted young doe was flailing in the middle of the canal. It panicked when it caught sight of the péniche looming up behind it.

  It tried again and again to find a foothold on the bank, but the smooth, vertical walls of the man-made canal made escape from the lethal waters impossible.

  Max was already hanging out over the railing, trying to rescue the exhausted animal with the life buoy.

  ‘Leave it, Massimo. You’ll fall in.’

  ‘We have to help it! It won’t make it out on its own – it’s drowning!’

  Max now formed a lasso with one of the mooring lines and threw it repeatedly in the direction of the deer. But the animal panicked and writhed even more, disappeared underwater and then resurfaced.

  The complete fear in the deer’s eyes touched off something inside Perdu.

  ‘Keep calm,’ he beseeched the animal. ‘Keep calm, trust us, trust us … Trust us.’ He throttled back Lulu’s engine and threw the barge into reverse, though it would continue to glide for another dozen metres.

  The deer was already level with the middle of the boat.

  It struggled more and more desperately with each splash of the rope and the life buoy on the water. The animal twisted its slight young head towards them, its brown eyes wide with panic and dread.

  And then it screamed, making a sound somewhere between a hoarse whimper and a plaintive cry.

  Cuneo was whipping off his shoes and shirt, readying himself to dive into the canal.

  The deer screamed and screamed.

  Perdu feverishly assessed the options. Should they tie up? Perhaps they could grab hold of it from the land and pull it out of the water.

  He steered the boat towards the bank and heard the side scrape along the canal wall.

  The deer kept on screaming the same shrill, desperate call. Its movements were growing ever wearier, and its efforts to gain a grip on the bank with its front legs were flagging. It couldn’t find one.

  Cuneo stood by the railing in his underpants. He must have realised that he wouldn’t be able to help the little doe if he was unable to climb out of the canal himself. And Lulu’s hull was too high to heave the struggling deer aboard or to clamber up the emergency ladder with it in his arms.

  When they finally managed to moor, Max and Jean leaped onto the bank and raced back through the undergrowth towards the deer. In the meantime, it had pushed away from their bank and was attempting to reach the far side.

  ‘Why won’t it let us help it?’ whispered Max, tears running down his cheeks. ‘Come here!’ he croaked. ‘Come here, you stupid bloody animal!’

  All they could do was watch.r />
  The deer mewled and whimpered as it tried to scale the far bank. Then it even stopped doing that. It slid back into the water.

  The men watched in silence as the deer struggled merely to keep its head above water. Again and again it glanced at them and tried to paddle away from them. Its fearful gaze, full of distrust and defiance, pierced Perdu to the bone.

  The deer gave one final desperate, lingering scream. Then the screaming ceased.

  It went under.