The Little Paris Bookshop

by Nina George

  ‘Remain silent about the dead, and they’ll never leave you in peace.’

  Second, that he thought the area around Bonnieux was extremely beautiful and he was going to stay in the dovecote and write. Jean Perdu guessed that a certain red tractor had played a part in this decision.

  But what did it mean – that one had to tell the story of the dead?

  Perdu cleared his throat and announced to the empty car: ‘Her words were so natural. Manon showed her feelings, always. She loved the tango. She drank from life as if it were champagne and faced it in the same spirit: she knew that life is special.’

  He felt a deep sorrow welling up inside him.

  He had wept more in the last two weeks than in the previous twenty years. But the tears were all for Manon, every last one, and he was no longer ashamed of them.

  Perdu had raced up the steep streets of Cassis. He left Cap Canaille and its spectacular red cliffs behind to his left, and drove on through small hills and pine forests along the old, windy coastal road from Marseilles to Cannes. Villages merged into one another, rows of houses blurred across town boundaries, palms alternated with pines, flowers and rocks. La Ciotat. Le Liouquet. And then Les Lecques.

  Spotting a car park beside a path down to the beach, Jean swung spontaneously out of the smooth stream of vehicles. He was hungry.

  The little town’s sweeping waterfront, comprising weather-beaten old villas and pragmatic new hotel complexes, was bustling with families. They were strolling on the beach and the promenade, and eating in restaurants and bistros that had opened their sliding windows wide onto the sea view. A few well-tanned boys were playing Frisbee in the surf, and a flotilla of white one-man training dinghies bobbed up and down beyond the line of yellow marker buoys and the lighthouse.

  Jean found a seat at the counter of the L’Équateur beach bar, which was two yards back from the sand and ten yards from the gentle breakers. Large blue parasols fluttered in the wind over shiny tables, which were tightly clustered, as was the case all over Provence in the high season, when restaurants packed diners in like sardines. Perdu enjoyed an unrivalled view from the bar.

  He kept his eyes on the sea as he ate mussels in a rich herb and cream sauce from a deep black pot, and washed them down with some mineral water and a glass of dry white Bandol wine. The water was light blue in the late sunshine.

  At sunset it elected to turn dark turquoise. The sand went from light blonde to dark flax and then slate grey. The women walking past became more excitable, their skirts shorter, their laughter more expectant. An open-air disco had been set up on the breakwater, and it was there that mixed groups of three or four girls, dressed in skimpy dresses or jean shorts, and guys wearing shirts that rippled on their shiny, tanned shoulders, were heading.

  Perdu gazed after the young women and men. In their impatient, hurrying gait he recognised the young’s unbridled lust for new experience, their striving towards places with the whiff of adventure about them. Erotic adventures! Laughter, freedom, dancing into the early hours, barefoot in the cool sand, heat in their loins. And kisses, forever engraved on the memory.

  At sunset Saint-Cyr and Les Lecques were transformed into one big party area. Summer life in the south. These were the hours carried over from the hot afternoon, when the blood stood weary and thick in the veins.

  The steep tongue of land dotted with houses and pines to Jean’s left gleamed a rusty gold colour; the horizon was delineated in orange-blue, and the sea swelled sweet and salty.

  For a few minutes, as he reached the bottom of his pot of mussels, and sifted idly through the remnants of briny cream sauce and blue-black shimmering shards of mussel shell, sea, sky and land took on the same shade of blue: a cool grey-blue that tinted the air, his wine glass, the white walls and the promenade, and briefly turned people into chattering stone sculptures.

  A blond surfer dude cleared away Perdu’s pot and plate of shells, and smoothly set down a bowl of warm water for Perdu to wash his hands in.

  ‘Would you like dessert?’ It sounded friendly, but there was a hint of ‘if you don’t, then please leave, because we can get another two sittings in.’

  It had felt good, nonetheless. He had eaten the sea and drunk it in with his eyes. He had yearned for this, and the trembling inside him had subsided a little.

  Perdu left the rest of his wine, tossed a banknote onto the plate with the bill and walked to his patchwork Renault 5. He drove on along the coast road with the taste of creamy salt on his lips.

  When he lost sight of the sea, he took the next right off the main road. He soon spotted the water again, a glinting ribbon in the bright moonlight among the pines, cypresses, windswept evergreens and houses, hotels and villas. He drove along empty lanes through a pretty residential area. Colourful, stately villas. He didn’t know where he was, but he knew that this was where he wanted to wake up the next morning and swim. It was time to look for a guesthouse, or a stretch of sand where he could make a campfire and sleep under the stars.

  As Perdu was rolling down the Boulevard Frédéric Mistral, the Renault started to make a whistling woooeeeh sound. This ended in a hissing bang, and the engine spluttered and died. Channelling the last momentum from the descent, Perdu steered the car to the edge of the road, where the Renault issued its final breath. There was not so much as an electronic click as Jean turned the key in the ignition. The car obviously wanted to stay here too.

  Monsieur Perdu got out and looked around.

  Below him he spied a small bathing beach and above it villas and blocks of flats, which appeared to condense into a town half a mile from where he stood. Over this scene flickered a friendly peach-coloured glow. He fetched his small bag out of the car and marched off.

  There was a soothing peacefulness in the air. No open-air disco. No traffic. Yes, even the sea swell was quieter here.

  After a ten-minute walk he reached an odd square tower, around which someone had built a hotel more than a hundred years ago – and he realised where he was.

  Of all places! How fitting.

  He stepped reverently onto the quayside and closed his eyes to take in the smell. Salt. Open spaces. Freshness.

  He opened his eyes again. The old fishing port. Dozens of coloured boats rocking on the glossy blue water. Sparkling white yachts further out. The houses – none higher than four storeys, their façades painted in pastel shades.

  This charming old seafarers’ village: daylight made the colours blossom; by night it was lit by the wide starry sky, and in the evening by the soft rosy light of old-fashioned lanterns. Over there the market with its yellow-and-red awnings under lush plane trees. Around them, soothed by the sun and the sea, people reclined dreamily in their chairs at countless tables in old bars and new cafés.

  This town had seen and harboured many a fugitive before him.

  Sanary-sur-Mer.

  37

  To: Catherine [surname of the famous Le P.-You-Know-Who],

  27 Rue Montagnard, 75011 Paris

  Sanary-sur-Mer, August

  Faraway Catherine,

  The sea has sparkled in twenty-seven colours so far. Today, a mix of blue and green: petrol, the women in the shops call it. They should know, but I call it wet turquoise.

  The sea can cry out to you, Catherine. It can scratch at you with catlike swipes. It can snuggle up to you and stroke you; it can be as smooth as a mirror, and the next moment it rages, luring surfers into its crashing waves. It is different every day, and the gulls screech like little kids on stormy days and like heralds of glory on sunny ones. ‘Fine! Fine! Fine!’ they call. Sanary’s beauty could kill you, and you wouldn’t go willingly.

  My bachelor days in the belle bleue – my blue room in André’s Beau Séjour guesthouse – ended soon after 14 July. I no longer need to stuff my clothes inside my bed linen and visit Madame Pauline wearing the expression of a pleading son-in-law, or haul my bundle to the launderette behind the shopping centre in Six-Fours-les-Plages; I have a washing machine n
ow. It was payday at the bookshop. MM – Madame Minou Monfrère, the owner and doyenne of the town’s booksellers – is happy with me; I don’t get in the way, she says. Fair enough. The first boss I’ve ever had put me in charge of children’s books, encyclopedias and the classics, and asked me to stock up on books by writers who fled the Nazis to live here in exile. I do everything she says, and it feels strangely good not to have to bear any responsibility.

  I’ve found a home too – for my washing machine and me.

  It’s up on a hill above the harbour, behind the Notre-Dame-de-la-Pitié chapel, but overlooking Portissol, the tiny bathing beach where the holidaymakers lie towel to towel. Some old Parisian flats are bigger than this house – but not as nice.

  Its colour varies from flamingo red to curry-powder yellow. From one of the bedrooms all you can see is a palm, a pine tree, a lot of flowers and the back of the little chapel, and further along, beyond the hibiscus, the sea. Gauguin would have adored the colour combination: pink and petrol, rose and wet turquoise. I’m starting to learn to stand on my own two feet here, Catherine.

  In lieu of rent I’ve been renovating the flamingo-curry house since I moved; it too belongs to André and his wife, Pauline. They don’t have the time to work on it themselves or any children of their own they could cajole into doing it. Their nine-room guesthouse, the Beau Séjour, is booked all summer.

  I miss the blue room, number three on the first floor, and André’s raucous voice, his breakfasts and his quiet garden with its roof of green leaves. There’s a touch of my father about André. He cooks for his half-board guests, Pauline plays solitaire, or tarot if the occasional old lady requests her to, and she makes sure that there’s always a good atmosphere. I generally see her smoking and tutting as she lays down the cards on the plastic table. She has offered to tell my fortune. Should I take her up on it?

  Their cleaning ladies – Aimée, blond, fat, very loud and very funny, and Sülüm, tiny, thin, hard, a shrivelled olive, discordant laughter pouring from her toothless mouth – carry their buckets of washing water with the handles slung over their arms, as Parisian women do their Vuitton and Chanel bags. I often see Aimée in church, the one by the harbour. She sings and she has tears in her eyes as she does so. The services here are very human. The altar boys are young, wear those white nightshirts and have winning smiles. Sanary shows few signs of the general phoniness of many tourist destinations in the south.

  Everyone should sing like Aimée: weeping with happiness. I’ve started to belt out some tunes in the shower again while pretending to hop about to the rhythm of the faulty showerhead’s jets. Yet sometimes it still feels as if I’m sewed up in my own skin, as if I’m living in an invisible box that keeps me in and everyone else out. In such moments even my own voice strikes me as superfluous.

  I’m building a shade roof over the terrace, for however reliable the sun is here, it is like an aristocrat’s drawing room: warm and safe, cosseting and luxurious; and yet when the heat continues for too long, it can become oppressive, threatening and suffocating. Between two and five in the afternoon, sometimes until seven, nobody in Sanary ventures outdoors. They prefer to retreat to the coolest part of the house, lie naked on the cellar tiles and wait for the beauty and the furnace outside finally to take pity on them. I put damp towels around my head and on my back.

  From the kitchen terrace that I am building, you can see the bright house fronts between the ship’s masts in the harbour, but the main features are the gleaming white yachts and the lighthouse at the end of the breakwater, from where the fire service shoot their thundering pyrotechnics into the sky on Bastille Day. You can see the sweeping hills and mountains opposite, with Toulon and Hyères beyond. Lots of little white houses scattered along the rocky outcrops.

  Only if you stand on tiptoes can you see old Saint-Nazaire’s square watchtower. The Hôtel de la Tour is built around it, a plain cube in which several exiled German writers survived the terrors of the war years. The Manns, the Feuchtwangers, Brecht. The Bondys, Toller. One Zweig, and the other too. Wolff, Seghers and Massary. Fritzi – what a wonderful name for a woman.

  (I’m sorry, Catherine, this has turned into a bit of a lecture! Paper is patient; authors never are.)

  At the end of July, when my pétanque game had finally progressed beyond that of an unwelcome novice, a small, rotund Neapolitan appeared around the corner of Quai Wilson near the old harbour, panama on his head, whiskers quivering like the cat that got the cream, and a woman on his arm, the warmth of whose heart shone in her expression. Cuneo and Samy! They stayed for a week, having left the barge in the custody of the Cuisery council. Book-crazed Lulu in her rightful place – among her own kind.

  Where from, why, how come? Effusive greetings.

  ‘Why do you never turn your mobile on, you paper ass?’ roared Samy. Well, they had found me, even without it. Via Max, and then Madame Rosalette, of course, as unselfish as ever with the results of her espionage. She had analysed the postmarks on the letters that I sent you and located me in Sanary long ago. How would friends and lovers get by without the concierges of this world? Who knows, maybe each of us has a specific role in the great book of life. Some of us love particularly well; others look after lovers particularly well.

  Of course, I know why I’d forgotten all about my phone: I’ve spent too long living in a world of paper. I’m feeling my way with these gadgets.

  Cuneo gave me a hand with the masonry for four days and tried to teach me to regard cooking as being similar to lovemaking. His extraordinary lessons – master classes, really – began at the market, where the saleswomen are surrounded by head-high piles of tomatoes, beans, melons, fruit, garlic, three types of radishes, raspberries, potatoes and onions. We ate salted caramel ice cream in the ice-cream parlour by the children’s merry-go-round. Lightly salted, burned and sweet, creamy and cold. I’ve never eaten more perfect ice cream, and now I eat it every day (and sometimes even at night).

  Cuneo taught me to see with my hands. He showed me how to recognise what needs to be handled how. He taught me to smell and to tell which ingredients were good together and what I could cook with them by their aromas. He put a cup of ground coffee in my fridge to absorb all the odours that didn’t belong there. We braised, steamed, fried and grilled fish.

  If you ask me to cook for you again, I’ll charm you with all the tricks I’ve picked up.

  My little big friend Samy left me with one final scrap of wisdom. For once she didn’t shout – she tends to shout. She gave me a hug as I sat there, staring at the sea and counting the colours, and whispered very quietly to me: ‘Do you know that there’s a halfway world between each ending and each new beginning? It’s called the hurting time, Jean Perdu. It’s a bog; it’s where your dreams and worries and forgotten plans gather. Your steps are heavier during that time. Don’t underestimate the transition, Jeanno, between farewell and new departure. Give yourself the time you need. Some thresholds are too wide to be taken in one stride.’

  Since then I have often thought about what Samy called the hurting time and the halfway world, about the threshold that you have to cross between farewell and new departure. I wonder whether my threshold starts here … or whether it began twenty years ago.

  Have you experienced that hurting time too? Is being lovelorn like mourning someone? Do you mind my asking these questions?

  Sanary must be one of the only places in France where the locals smile when I recommend a German author. In a way they are proud that they provided a safe haven to various prominent German writers under the dictatorship. However, too few of the exiles’ houses have been preserved. Only six or seven; the Manns’ house was rebuilt. The bookshops seldom stock their works, even though dozens of them sought refuge here. I’m expanding that section in our shop, and MM has given me free rein.

  She has also recommended me to the town dignitaries – imagine that. Monsieur Bernhard, the mayor, a tall, well-groomed silver fox, loves leading the parade of fire engines on B
astille Day. They show off every piece of equipment they’ve got, Catherine: tankers, jeeps, even a bicycle and some boats on trailers. A splendid display, and the youngsters march along behind, proud and relaxed. On the other hand, the mayor’s library is a miserable medicine cabinet. Sonorous names including Camus, Baudelaire and Balzac, all leather-bound, so visitors think: ‘Oh! Montesquieu! And Proust! How dull.’

  I’ve suggested to the mayor that he read what he wants to read rather than what he thinks will impress people, and that he give up arranging his books according to the colour of the binding, or in alphabetical order or by genre. He should group them by theme instead. Everything about Italy in one corner: cookbooks, whodunnits by Donna Leon, novels, illustrated books, essays on Leonardo, religious treatises by Assisi, anything. Everything about the sea in another corner – from Hemingway to sharks, fish poems and fish recipes.

  He thinks I’m smarter than I really am.

  There’s one spot I really love in MM’s bookshop. Right next to the encyclopedias, a quiet spot where only the occasional little girl will peek in and furtively look something up because her parents have fobbed her off by saying, ‘You’re too young for that. I’ll explain it to you when you’re older.’ Personally, I don’t believe that any question is too big; you simply have to tailor your answers.

  I install myself in this corner on the step-ladder, put on an intelligent face and simply sit and breathe. That’s all.