The Little Paris Bookshop

by Nina George

  The sun had turned his body a healthy, shimmering shade of brown, which made his green eyes all the more luminous. His boss MM thought he looked like a noble rogue with his three-day beard. Only his reading glasses detracted from this impression.

  MM had taken him aside one Saturday evening. Business was quiet. A fresh wave of holiday home renters had just arrived, and they were dazzled by late summer’s sweet delights; they had other things on their mind than to visit a bookshop. They would come in a week or two to buy the obligatory postcards before they left for home.

  ‘How about you?’ MM asked. ‘What does your favourite book taste of? Which book is your salvation in this evil world?’ She said it with a chuckle: her girlfriends found the book epicure fascinating and wanted to know more.

  He never had any trouble getting to sleep in Sanary. His favourite book would have to taste of new potatoes sprinkled with rosemary – his first meal with Catherine.

  But which is my salvation? He almost burst out laughing when he realised the answer.

  ‘Books can do many things, but not everything. We have to live the important things, not read them. I have to … experience my book.’

  MM gave him a broad, flashing smile.

  ‘It’s a shame that your heart is blind to women like me.’

  ‘And the others too, Madame.’

  ‘Yes, that’s some consolation,’ she said. ‘A small one.’

  In the afternoons, when the heat rose to dangerous levels, Perdu would lie motionless on his bed in nothing but a pair of shorts, with wet towels on his forehead, chest and feet. The terrace door was open, and the curtains swayed listlessly in the breeze. He let the warm wind caress his body as he dozed.

  It was good to be back in his body. To feel that his flesh was sensitive and alive again. Not numb, limp, unused – an adversary. Perdu had got used to thinking with his body, as though he could stroll around inside his soul and peer into every room.

  Yes, the grief lived on in his chest. When it came, it constricted his lungs, cut off his breathing and the universe faded to a narrow sliver. But he wasn’t scared of it any more. When it came, he let it flow through him.

  Fear occupied his throat too, but it took up less space if he breathed out slowly and calmly. With every breath he could make the fear smaller and crumple it up, and he imagined throwing it to Psst so that the cat could toy with the ball of anxiety and chase it out of the house.

  Joy danced in his solar plexus, and he let it dance. He thought of Samy and Cuneo, and of Max’s hilarious letters, in which one name cropped up more and more frequently: Vic. The tractor girl. In his mind he saw Max running around the Luberon after a wine-red tractor, and he couldn’t help laughing.

  Amazingly, love had settled on Jean’s tongue. It tasted of the hollow at the base of Catherine’s throat.

  Jean had to smile. Here, in the light and warmth of the south, something else had returned. Vitality. Sensation. Desire.

  Some days, as he sat looking out to sea or reading on a wall beside the harbour, the mere warmth of the sun was enough to fill him with a pleasant, urgent, restless tension. Down there too, his body was shaking off its sorrow.

  He hadn’t slept with a woman for two decades. Now he felt an intense yearning to do so.

  Jean let his thoughts wander to Catherine. He could still feel her under his hands – the familiar sensation of touching her hair, her skin, her muscles. He pictured what her thighs would feel like. Her breasts. How she would look at him, gasping. How their skin and their selves would meet, press belly against belly, joy to joy. He imagined every detail.

  ‘I’m back,’ he whispered.

  He went about his life, eating and swimming and selling books and spinning laundry in his new washing machine. Then, all of a sudden, something inside him took a step forward.

  Unexpectedly. At the end of the holidays, on 28 August.

  He was eating his lunchtime salad and wondering whether he should light a candle for Manon at the Notre-Dame-de-la-Pitié chapel, or swim out from Portissol as usual. But suddenly he noticed that his inner turmoil had ceased. So had the burning sensation, and everything else that brought tears of dismay and loss to his eyes.

  He stood up and went out anxiously onto the terrace. Was it possible? Was it really possible? Or was grief playing tricks on him and readying itself to rush in through the front door again?

  He had reached the bottom of his soul’s sour, sad tribulations. He had dug and dug and dug. And suddenly – there was a chink of light.

  He rushed inside to the sideboard, where he always kept a pen and paper. He scribbled:

  Catherine,

  I don’t know if it’ll work out or if we can avoid hurting each other. Probably not, because we’re human.

  However, what I do know now, now that this moment I have craved has arrived, is that it’s easier to fall asleep with you in my life. And to wake up. And to love.

  I want to cook for you when hunger has blackened your mood. Any kind of hunger: hunger for life, hunger for love, hunger for light, sea, travel, reading and sleep too.

  I want to rub cream into your hands when you’ve touched too many rough stones. In my dreams you are a rescuer of stones, capable of seeing through layers of stone and detecting the rivers of the heart that flow underneath.

  I want to watch you as you walk along a sandy path, turn and wait for me.

  I want all the little things and the big things too. I want to have arguments with you and explode into laughter halfway through; I want to pour cocoa into your favourite mug on a cold day; and after partying with wonderful friends I want to hold the passenger door open while you climb happily into the car.

  I want to hold you at night and feel you press your small bottom against my warm tummy.

  I want to do a thousand little and big things with you, with us – you, me, together, you as a part of me and me as a part of you.

  Catherine, please. Come! Come soon!

  Come to me!

  The reality of love is better than its reputation.

  Jean

  PS: Truthfully!

  40

  On 4 September Jean set off early so that his regular stroll along Rue de la Colline and around the fishing port would bring him to the bookshop on time.

  Autumn was on its way, bringing visitors who preferred to build castles out of books rather than sand. This had always been his favourite time of year: new publications spelled new friendships, new insights and new adventures.

  The blinding light of midsummer grew milder with the approach of autumn – mellower. Autumn shielded Sanary from its parched hinterland like a screen.

  He breakfasted alternately at the Lyon, the Nautique and the Marine on the harbour front. The resemblance to the town where Brecht had once performed his mocking songs about the Nazis had naturally faded. And yet he could still detect a whiff of exile. The cafés were welcome islets of entertainment in his solitary life with Psst; they were something of a surrogate family, a hint of Paris. They were a confessional box and a newsroom where you could find out what was going on behind the scenes in Sanary: how the fishing was holding up despite the algal bloom; how the boules players were building up to their autumn tournaments. The players on Quai Wilson had asked him to be a substitute ‘pointer’; it was an honour to be asked to step in for a tournament. In the cafés Perdu could be in the middle of town life without anyone caring if he didn’t talk or play an active role.

  Sometimes he would sit in the corner at the back and speak to his father, Joaquin, on the phone, as he was doing that morning. When Joaquin heard about the tournament in La Ciotat, he was raring to polish his boules and set off.

  ‘Please don’t,’ pleaded Perdu.

  ‘Don’t, eh? Well, then. What’s her name?’

  ‘Does it always have to be a woman?’

  ‘Same one as before?’

  Perdu laughed. Both Perdus laughed.

  ‘Were you keen on tractors when you were a kid?’ Jean asked nex
t.

  ‘Jeanno, my lad, I love tractors! Why are you asking?’

  ‘Max has met someone. A tractor girl.’

  ‘A tractor girl? Fantastic. When do we get to see Max again? You’re fond of him, aren’t you?’

  ‘Hold on, who’s we? That new girlfriend of yours who doesn’t like cooking?’

  ‘Oh, hobgoblins! Your mother. Madame Bernier and me. And? Speak now or forever hold your peace. I’m allowed to meet up with my ex-wife, aren’t I? Well, actually, since the fourteenth of July … we’ve done a bit more than meet up. Of course, she sees things differently. She says we simply had a fling and I shouldn’t get my hopes up.’ Joaquin Perdu’s smoker’s laugh descended into a jovial splutter.

  ‘So what?’ he said. ‘Lirabelle’s my best friend. I like the way she smells, and she’s never attempted to change me. She’s a marvellous cook too – I always feel so much happier with life when I’m there. And you know, Jeanno, the older you get the more you feel like being with someone you can talk to and laugh with.’

  His father would presumably have signed up without hesitation to the three things that made you really ‘happy’ according to Cuneo’s worldview.

  One: eat well. No junk food, because it only makes you unhappy, lazy and fat.

  Two: sleep through the night (thanks to more exercise, less alcohol and positive thoughts).

  Three: spend time with people who are friendly and seek to understand you in their own particular way.

  Four: have more sex – but that was Samy’s addition, and Perdu saw no real reason to tell his father that one.

  He often spoke to his mother on his way from a café to the bookshop. He always held the phone up to the wind so that she could hear the sound of the waves and the gulls. That September morning the sea was calm, and Jean asked her, ‘I hear Dad’s been eating at your place a lot recently.’

  ‘Well, yes. The man doesn’t know how to cook, so what am I supposed to do?’

  ‘Dinner and breakfast, though? Overnight too? Doesn’t the poor man have his own bed to go to?’

  ‘You say it as if we were up to something obscene.’

  ‘I’ve never told you I love you, Maman.’

  ‘Oh, my dear, dear child …’

  Perdu heard her open a box and close it again. He knew this noise, and the box too. It held the tissues. As stylish as ever, Madame Bernier, even when she came over all sentimental.

  ‘I love you too, Jean. I feel as if I’ve never told you that, only thought it. Is that true?’

  It was true, but he said, ‘I noticed all the same. You don’t have to tell me every few years.’

  She laughed and called him a cheeky so-and-so.

  Great. Nearly fifty-one, and still a kid.

  Lirabelle complained about her ex-husband a bit more, but her tone was affectionate. She grouched about the autumn book releases, but only out of habit.

  Everything was the same as ever – yet so very different.

  As Jean walked across the quayside towards the bookshop, MM was already rolling the postcard racks out into the open.

  ‘It’s going to be a beautiful day!’ his boss called to him. He handed Madame Monfrère a bag of croissants.

  ‘Yes, I think so too.’

  Shortly before sunset he retired to his favourite spot in the corner of the shop. The one from where he could observe the door, the reflected sky and a scrap of sea.

  And then, in the midst of his thoughts, he saw her. He watched her reflection. She looked as though she were stepping straight out of the clouds and the water. Unbridled joy surged through his veins.

  Jean Perdu stood up. His pulse was racing. He was readier than he’d ever been.

  Now! he thought. Now the times were converging. He was finally emerging from his period of numbness, of standing still, of hurting. Now.

  Catherine was wearing a bluish-grey dress that set off her eyes. She walked with a swing in her stride, upright, her tread firmer than before …

  Before?

  She has made it from the end to the beginning too.

  She paused for a second at the counter, as if to get her bearings.

  MM asked, ‘Are you looking for something in particular, Madame?’

  ‘Yes I am. I’ve been looking for a long time, but now I’ve found it. That particular something there,’ said Catherine and beamed across the room at Jean. She walked straight towards him, and, heart pounding, he went to meet her.

  ‘You cannot imagine how long I’ve been waiting for you to finally ask me to come to you.’

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘Oh yes. And I’m so hungry,’ said Catherine.

  Jean Perdu knew exactly what she meant.

  That evening they kissed for the first time – after they’d had dinner and enjoyed a wonderful long walk by the sea, long, relaxed chats in the hibiscus garden by the veranda, during which they drank a little wine and a lot of water, and above all enjoyed each other’s company.

  ‘This warm air is so comforting,’ Catherine said at one point.

  It was true: Sanary’s sun had sucked the cold out of him and dried all his tears.

  ‘And it gives you courage,’ he whispered. ‘It gives you the courage to trust.’

  In the evening breeze, confused and entranced by their bold faith in life, they kissed.

  Jean felt as though it were his very first kiss.

  Catherine’s lips were soft, and they moved with and fit his perfectly. It was so wonderful to eat, drink, feel and caress her at last … and so thrilling.

  He wrapped his arms around this woman and kissed and bit her mouth gently; he traced the corners of her mouth with his lips; he kissed his way up her cheeks to her fragrant, delicate temples. He pulled Catherine towards him; he was overflowing with tenderness and relief. Never again would he sleep badly as long as this woman was beside him – never. Never again would loneliness embitter him. He was saved. They stood and held each other.

  ‘Hey?’ she said eventually.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I looked it up, and the last time I slept with my ex-husband was in 2003. When I was thirty-eight. I think it was an accident.’

  ‘Great. That makes you the more experienced of the two of us.’

  They laughed.

  How strange, thought Perdu, that one laugh can wipe away so much hardship and suffering. A single laugh. And the years flow together and … away.

  ‘I do know one thing, though,’ he said. ‘Making love on the beach is overrated.’

  ‘Sand in all the places it shouldn’t get.’

  ‘Worst of all are the mosquitoes.’

  ‘You don’t get many on the beach, do you?’

  ‘You see, Catherine. I don’t have a clue.’

  ‘Then I’ll show you,’ she murmured. Her expression was youthful and reckless as she pulled Jean into the spare bedroom.

  He saw a four-legged shadow scuttle away through the moonlight. Psst sat down on the terrace and politely turned his ginger-and-white striped back to them.

  I hope she likes my body. I hope I haven’t lost my old vitality. I hope I touch her the way she likes, and I hope …

  ‘Stop thinking, Jean Perdu!’ Catherine ordered tenderly.

  ‘Can you tell?’

  ‘You’re easy to analyse, darling,’ she whispered. ‘My lover. Oh, I wanted you so … and you …’

  They continued in whispers, but their sentences had no beginning and no ending.

  Slowly he peeled off Catherine’s dress. Underneath she was naked apart from her plain white knickers.

  She unbuttoned his shirt, buried her face in his throat and chest, and drank in his scent. Her breath tickled him, and no, he didn’t need to worry about his vitality, because it was there when he saw the flash of the white, cotton triangle in the dark and felt her body move in his hands.

  They savoured the whole of September in Sanary-sur-Mer. Eventually Jean had drunk his fill of southern light. He had been lost and he had found himself again. The hu
rting time was over.

  Now he could go to Bonnieux and complete this stage.

  41

  By the time Catherine and Jean left Sanary, the fishing village had become their home away from home. Small enough to fit snugly into their hearts, big enough to protect them, beautiful enough to be a permanent touchstone as they got to know each other. Sanary stood for happiness, peace and quiet; it stood for the first stirrings of empathy with someone who was still a stranger, someone you loved without being able to say why. Who are you, how would you, how do you feel, and what is the arc of your moods over an hour, a day, a few weeks? These things they discovered with ease in their heart-sized home. It was during the quiet hours that Jean and Catherine grew close, and so they tended to avoid loud, busy places such as fairs, the market, the theatre and readings.