The Little Paris Bookshop

by Nina George

  And took a spoonful of soup.

  And another spoonful.

  And … yes … another spoonful.

  They waited spellbound for the punch line.

  ‘I want to kiss a man again, and this time do it properly,’ said the woman after she had scraped the very last spoonful out of the pot. Then she gave a belch of pleasure, reached for Cuneo’s hand, laid it under her cheek and closed her eyes. ‘After I’ve had some sleep,’ she managed to mumble.

  ‘At your service,’ whispered Cuneo with a slightly glazed expression.

  No answer. A smile, that was all. She was soon asleep and snoring like a snuffly little terrier. The three perplexed men looked on. Max laughed to himself and gave a double thumbs-up. Cuneo tried to find a more comfortable sitting position so as not to disturb the stranger’s dreams; her head lay on his large hand like a cat on a cushion.

  30

  While the storm raged over the town of books and the Seille, cutting swaths through the woods, flipping cars onto their roofs and sending farmhouses up in flames, the male trio did their best to play it cool.

  ‘So why is Cuisery paradise, as you said about three thousand years ago?’ Max asked Jean quietly.

  ‘Oh, Cuisery! An avid reader will lose his heart here. The whole village is crazy about books – or crazy full stop – but that’s not unusual. Virtually every shop is a bookshop, a printer’s, a bookbinder’s, a publisher’s, and many of the houses are artists’ workshops. The place is buzzing with creativity and imagination.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think so right now,’ Max commented. The wind was whistling around the barge, rattling anything that wasn’t nailed down. The cats had bedded down on top of Samantha. Lindgren was nestling by her neck, and Kafka was lying in the hollow between her thighs. Their poses said ‘She belongs to us now.’

  ‘Every bookseller in Cuisery specialises in something. You can find everything here – and when I say everything, I mean everything,’ explained Perdu.

  In a previous life, when he was still a Parisian bookseller, he had contacted some of the rare book dealers – for example when a wealthy customer from Hong Kong, London or Washington decided he had to own a Hemingway first edition worth a hundred thousand euros, complete with buckskin binding and an inscription from Hemingway to his dear old friend Otto ‘Toby’ Bruce. Or a book from Salvador Dalí’s personal library – one the master had supposedly read before having his surrealist melting-clock dreams.

  ‘So do they have palm leaves too?’ asked Cuneo. He was still kneeling beside Samantha, supporting her face.

  ‘No. There’s science fiction, the fantastic and fantasy – yes, specialists do make a distinction – as well as—’

  ‘Palm leaves? What’s that supposed to mean?’ Max wanted to know.

  Perdu groaned. ‘Nothing,’ he said hurriedly.

  ‘Never heard of the library of destiny? Of,’ the Italian was whispering now, ‘the book of life?’

  ‘Nyom, nyom,’ Samantha murmured.

  Jean Perdu knew the legend too. The magical Book of Books, the great memory of mankind, which had been written by seven supernatural, all-seeing wise men five thousand years earlier. Legend had it that those seven Rishis had discovered these ethereal books, which described the entire past and future of the world, the script for all life, drawn up by beings that existed beyond such constraints as time and space. The Rishis supposedly interpreted the destinies of several million people and far-reaching historical events from those supernatural books and transcribed them onto marble or stone tablets, or even palm leaves.

  Salvo Cuneo’s eyes lit up. ‘Imagine, Massimo. Your life is described in that palm-leaf library, on your own slender frond; every single detail of your birth, your death and everything in between: whom you’ll love, whom you’ll marry, your career; absolutely everything – even your past life.’

  ‘Pfff … king of the road,’ escaped from Samantha’s lips.

  ‘Your whole life and past life on a beer mat. Very plausible,’ muttered Perdu.

  During his life as a bookseller, Jean Perdu had been forced to chase away several collectors who had wished to acquire these so-called Akashic Records, whatever the price.

  ‘Really?’ said Max. ‘Hey, guys, maybe I was Balzac.’

  ‘Maybe you were a tiny cannelloni too.’

  ‘And you can find out about your death as well. Not the exact day, but the month and the year. And it doesn’t hide how you’ll die either,’ added Cuneo.

  ‘No, I think I’ll do without,’ Max said doubtfully. ‘What’s the point of knowing the date of your own death? I’d spend the rest of my life out of my mind with fear. No thanks. What I’d like is some hope that eternity’s on my side.’

  Perdu cleared his throat. ‘To return to Cuisery: most of the 1,641 inhabitants do something involving the printed word; the others take care of the visitors. They say the booksellers’ fraternities and sororities have woven a dense web of international contacts based on a parallel communications network. They don’t even use the internet – the book elders guard their knowledge so closely it would be lost when one of their members died.’

  ‘Mmm,’ sighed Samantha.

  ‘To ensure that doesn’t happen, each of them selects at least one successor, into whose ear he will pour his vast knowledge of books. They know mystical tales about the writing of famous works, secret editions, original manuscripts, the Women’s Bible …’

  ‘Cool,’ said Max.

  ‘… . or books that tell a very different story between the lines,’ Perdu continued in a low, conspiratorial tone of voice. ‘They say there’s a woman in Cuisery who knows the real endings of many famous works because she collects their final drafts and the drafts before that. She knows the original ending of Romeo and Juliet, the one where they both survive, marry and have children.’

  ‘Yuck.’ Max was appalled. ‘Romeo and Juliet survive and have kids? That ruins all the drama.’

  ‘I like it,’ said Cuneo. ‘I’ve always felt sorry for little Julia.’

  ‘And does any of them know who Sanary is?’ asked Max.

  Jean Perdu certainly hoped so. He had written a postcard from Digoin to the president of Cuisery’s book guild, Samy Le Trequesser, to say that he was on his way.

  At two in the morning, utterly spent, they fell asleep to the rocking of the waves that had grown gentler as the storm subsided.

  When they awoke, the new day glittered with harmless, freshly rinsed sunshine, as though the previous night had never happened. The storm was gone – and so was Samantha.

  Cuneo looked down, nonplussed, at his empty hand, then waved it at the other two.

  ‘Is it happening all over again? Why do I only find women on the waterways?’ he complained. ‘I’ve barely recovered from the last one.’

  ‘Oh right. You’ve only had fifteen years,’ grinned Max.

  ‘Women,’ grumbled Cuneo. ‘Couldn’t she at least write her number on the mirror in lipstick!’

  ‘I’ll fetch some croissants,’ Max announced.

  ‘I’ll come with you, amico, to look for the sleep singer,’ said Cuneo.

  ‘What? Neither of you knows his way around. I’ll go,’ Perdu butted in.

  In the end all three of them went.

  As they made their way from the small marina across the campsite and through the town gate to the bakery, an orc came towards them carrying an armful of baguettes. It was accompanied by an elf dressed up as Legolas, its eyes glued to its iPhone.

  Perdu encountered a group of Harry Potters arguing at the top of their voices with a troop of Night’s Watch members outside the blue-painted front of La Découverte bookshop. Two ladies in vampire costumes rode towards them on mountain bikes, shooting Max hungry looks, and two Douglas Adams fans were emerging from the church in dressing gowns with towels slung over their shoulders.

  ‘A convention!’ cried Max.

  ‘A what?’ asked Cuneo, staring after the orc.

  ‘A fantasy conven
tion. The village is packed with people dressed up as their favourite author or character. Wicked.’

  ‘Like – Moby Dick, the whale?’ asked Cuneo.

  Perdu and Cuneo gaped at creatures that seemed to have sprung from Middle Earth or Winterfell. Such is the power of books.

  Cuneo asked which book each costumed figure came from, and Max gave him the lowdown, glowing with excitement. Yet even he had to pass when a woman in a scarlet leather coat and white bucket-top boots came walking towards them.

  Perdu explained, ‘Gentlemen, that lady isn’t in fancy dress; she’s the medium who speaks to Colette and George Sand. How she does it, she doesn’t say. She claims to meet them in time-travel dreams.’

  There was room in Cuisery for anything remotely associated with literature. There was a doctor who specialised in literary schizophrenia. He was consulted by people whose alter ego was a reincarnation of Dostoyevsky or the German mystic Hildegard von Bingen. Some of his patients had become entangled in their many pseudonyms.

  Perdu directed his steps towards the home of Samy Le Trequesser, the chairman of the Cuisery guild and supporters’ association. A word from Le Trequesser would open doors so that he might talk to booksellers about Sanary. Le Trequesser lived above the old printer’s shop.

  ‘Will the book boss give us a password or something?’ asked Max. He could hardly tear himself away from the book displays outside every other shop.

  ‘More like “something”.’

  Cuneo kept stopping to read the bistro menus and jot the details down in his recipe book. They were in the Bresse region, which boasted that it was the cradle of innovative French cuisine.

  They gave their names at the printer’s shop and, after waiting awhile in the chairman’s office, they got a real surprise: Samy Le Trequesser was not a chairman – she was a chairwoman.

  31

  Facing them across a desk that appeared to have been assembled from driftwood sat the woman Salvo had fished out of the Seille the previous evening.

  Samy was Samantha. She was wearing a white linen dress. She also had on hobbit feet, huge and extremely hairy ones.

  ‘So,’ asked Samy, crossing her shapely legs and giving one hobbit foot a delightful waggle, ‘how can I help you?’

  ‘Um, yes. I’m looking for the author of a specific book. The name’s a pseudonym, a cryptic one, and—’

  ‘Are you better now?’ Cuneo interrupted.

  ‘Yes, fine.’ Samy flashed Salvo a smile. ‘And thank you, Salvo, for saying that I can kiss you before I grow old. I haven’t been able to get it off my mind since.’

  ‘Can you buy those furry feet in Cuisery?’ Max wanted to know.

  ‘Anyway, getting back to the book Southern Lights—’

  ‘Yes, at Eden. It’s a leisure cum info cum tourist cum rip-off centre, and it sells hobbit feet, orc ears, slit stomachs …’

  ‘The author might be a woman—’

  ‘I want to cook for you, Signora Samantha. And it’s no trouble if you feel like taking a swim first.’

  ‘I think I’ll get myself some hobbit feet too. As slippers. Wow, that would really freak out Kafka.’

  Perdu looked out the window, struggling to keep his composure.

  ‘Will you all shut up? Sanary! Southern Lights! I want to know who the real author is! Please!’

  It had come out louder than he’d intended. Max and Cuneo looked at Jean in surprise, but Samy had leaned back in her seat as though she were beginning to enjoy this.

  ‘I’ve spent twenty years looking for him. Or her. The book … it’s …’ Jean Perdu was trying his best to find the right words, but all he could see was light sparkling on a river. ‘That book is like the woman I used to love. It leads to her. It’s liquid love. It’s the dose of love I could more or less bear, and yet nevertheless feel. It’s like a straw I’ve been breathing through for the last twenty years.’

  Jean ran his hand over his face.

  But that wasn’t the whole truth; no longer the only truth.

  ‘It helped me to survive. I don’t need the book any more, because now I can … breathe on my own again. But I would like to say thank you.’

  Max looked at him with great respect and astonishment.

  Samy’s face had broken into a broad grin.

  ‘A book for catching your breath. I understand.’

  She looked out the window. More and more fictional characters were gathering in the streets outside.

  ‘I didn’t expect someone like you to ever come along,’ she said with a sigh.

  Jean sensed his back muscles tensing.

  ‘Of course you’re not the first, but there haven’t been many of you. The others all left with the riddle unsolved; none of them asked the right questions. Asking questions is an art.’

  Samy did not avert her eyes from the window, along whose frame short lengths of driftwood dangled from fine threads. If one looked at the flotsam for a while it coalesced into a leaping fish. Or a face, an angel with one wing …

  ‘Most people only ask questions so they can listen to themselves talk. Or hear something they are able to cope with, but please, nothing that might get the better of them. “Do you love me?” is one of those questions. There should be a total ban on it.’

  She tapped her hobbit feet together.

  ‘Ask your question,’ she ordered.

  ‘Do I … do I get only one?’ asked Perdu.

  Samy smiled warmly.

  ‘Of course not. You don’t get just one, you get as many as you like. But you have to phrase them so that you receive a yes-or-no answer.’

  ‘So you know him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The right question means every word has to be right,’ Max emphasized and elbowed Jean excitedly in the ribs.

  Perdu corrected himself: ‘So you know her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Samy looked kindly at Max. ‘I see, Monsieur Jordan, that you have grasped the art of questioning. The right questions can make a person very happy. How’s your next book coming along? Your second, isn’t it? The curse of the second book, all that expectation. You should leave yourself a good twenty years. The best time would be when everyone’s forgotten about you for a while, then you’ll be free.’

  Max’s ears burned red.

  ‘Next question, soul reader.’

  ‘Is it Brigitte Caron?’

  ‘Heavens no!’

  ‘But Sanary is alive?’

  Samy smiled. ‘Oh yes!’

  ‘Can you … introduce me to her?’

  Samy thought this over.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘That wasn’t a yes-no question,’ Max reminded him.

  ‘Well, I’m cooking bouillabaisse today,’ Cuneo broke in. ‘I’ll pick you up at half past seven. That way you and Capitano Perduto can carry on playing “yes-no-don’t know”. Si? You’re not engaged, by some bad luck? Fancy coming on a little boat trip?’

  Samy looked from one man to the next.

  ‘Yes and no and yes,’ she said decisively. ‘So, that’s everything cleared up. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go out and greet those wonderful creatures and say a few nice words in a language invented by Tolkien. I’ve practised, but I sound like Chewbacca making a New Year’s speech.’

  Samy stood up, and they all took another good look at her superlative hobbit-foot slippers.

  She turned to face them one last time as she reached the door.

  ‘Max, did you know that when a star is born, it takes a year for it to reach its full size? Then it spends millions of years busily burning up. Strange, eh? Have you ever tried to invent a new language? Or a few new words? I’d be delighted if France’s most famous living author under thirty were to offer me a new word this evening. Deal?’

  Her dark-blue eyes sparkled.

  And a little bomb exploded in Max’s imagination, showering his secret inner garden with seeds.

  When Salvo Cuneo, dressed in his finest checked shirt, j
eans and patent-leather shoes, arrived to pick Samy up from the printer’s that evening, she was standing by the door with three suitcases, a potted fern and her rain cape draped over her arm.

  ‘I really hope you’re going to take me with you, Salvo, although of course your invitation meant something different. I’ve lived here long enough,’ she said by way of greeting. ‘Nearly ten years. One whole stage, as Hesse says. Now it’s time to head south to learn to breathe anew, to see the sea and to kiss a man again. Goodness, I’m approaching my late fifties. I’m entering the prime of my life.’