The Postman's Fiancée

by Denis Theriault; Translated by John Cullen

  Tania opened her mouth, on the point of reminding him who she was and how she’d saved his life... but no word passed her lips. She kept silent, suddenly aware of the potential implications of the situation: if Bilodo didn’t remember her, the odds were excellent that he’d forgotten Ségolène as well.

  Then an idea germinated inside Tania. It was a frighteningly bold idea, at once brilliant and demented, which proliferated at lightning speed and ignited the fires of her imagination; it was the opportunity she’d long been waiting for, the perfect solution to her quandary. Seizing her chance, she replied to Bilodo: ‘Of course we know each other. I’m your fiancée.’

  10

  Bilodo needed to be told what year it was. He had no recollection whatsoever of his near-fatal accident. When Tania described how she had kept him alive until help came, he expressed his profound gratitude. Although surprised to find himself equipped with a fiancée, he hadn’t disputed the notion and in fact seemed to accept it, even though it caused him a certain embarrassment. What troubled him most was the unfathomable void into which the most recent years of his life had fallen. Bilodo remembered that he was a postman, but he’d forgotten that he worked and lived in the Saint-Janvier-des-mes district. Questioning him warily, Tania determined that he conserved no memory of the Madelinot or of the Depot. He recalled the old neighbourhood where he’d once lived and delivered the post, but nothing after that; it had all been erased. While examining Bilodo’s personal documents, Tania discovered that this snip in his temporal thread corresponded to the time six years previously when Canada Post had transferred him to Saint-Janvier, a reassignment that had surely represented a major change for him: new environment...new postal route...new existence...It was no accident that the caesura in his memory was placed at just that moment of great upheaval.

  The first living creature Bilodo asked about was Bill, his goldfish, who’d been sharing his world long enough to pre-date the forgotten years. Tania assured him that his little finny friend was doing fine. Checking Bilodo’s current status with the Post, she was able to confirm that everything was in order; he was on official sick leave for a period of time to be determined by the doctor treating him, who decreed that Bilodo’s convalescence would require six months.

  Eager to learn more about himself, Bilodo bombarded Tania with questions. She answered them as thoroughly as she could, taking care to avoid saying anything that might remind him of Ségolène or Grandpré. She had worked out appropriate responses to all the queries she thought Bilodo likely to come up with. Having painstakingly accumulated every scrap of information about him she could find, she believed she was in a position to provide him with any biographical detail that ought to be known by a fiancée genuinely worthy of the name.

  Too preoccupied with his memory problems, or maybe too bashful, Bilodo had at first skirted the delicate subject of their romantic relationship. It wasn’t until the second day after his awakening that he dared to inquire about what had gone on between them: ‘How did we...meet?’ he stammered.

  ‘Here we go,’ Tania thought, having waited apprehensively for this sensitive topic to come up. As part of her meticulous preparation, she’d invented a mutual past for them, tailor-made and woven out of tender remembrances. ‘I hope I haven’t left anything out,’ she thought, nervous – now that the moment had come – about submitting her fable to Bilodo. Mixing certain elements of reality into her fiction to give it more verisimilitude, Tania told him they’d met during the previous winter, in a restaurant where she worked as a waitress, and they’d liked each other at first sight. As Bilodo was greedy for details, Tania described their first exchanges, all ogling and smiling, discreet harbingers of their ensuing courtship, which had soon become urgent on both sides. One morning, arriving to open the restaurant, Tania had found a mysterious package in front of the door, and in it a single red rose, romantically wrapped in black silk paper. A charming gesture, to which she’d responded later that same day, after Bilodo had finished his lunch, by drawing an arrow-pierced heart on his bill. The following morning, a florist had come to the restaurant and buried Tania under twelve dozen roses. Not long after noon, Bilodo was served a cottage pie lovingly cut into the shape of a heart. He’d invited Tania to go out with him. She’d suggested ice-skating, and one January evening, in the middle of the frozen pond in Bonsecours Basin Park, they’d kissed for the first time.

  ‘I see,’ said Bilodo, flabbergasted.

  ‘We quickly became inseparable. We used to say we couldn’t live without each other,’ declared Tania, lying with a self-assurance that impressed even her, and which she justified by persuading herself that it was only a question of slightly dressing up the truth in order to repair a sort of technical error.

  For that was the way she saw the matter: a case of confusion on the part of Destiny. In Tania’s eyes, she and Bilodo had been fated to meet and fall in love, and their botched romantic union stemmed from a karmic dysfunction which she felt it her legitimate right to remedy. She would force the future, whose course had inadvertently shifted, back into its natural channel, and thus she would restore the proper order of the universe. Her plan was perfectly laid out. She would erase all trace of Ségolène and Grandpré from Bilodo’s past. She’d burn all the haiku. She’d buy Bilodo a new telephone, whose number she alone would know. Later, when he was released from the hospital, she’d take him to live with her in her home by making him believe it was ‘their place’. Then all that would remain for her to do would be to cultivate Bilodo’s feelings so adroitly that in the end he would fall into her arms, and the initial lie would be transformed into a glorious truth. Such was Tania’s project.

  The next day, Bilodo was joyfully surprised when Tania placed on his bedside table a fishbowl in which his goldfish was swimming about blithely. ‘Bill!’ exclaimed the delighted Bilodo.

  ‘I thought you’d be happy to see him,’ said Tania, glad to afford him this pleasure.

  She’d decanted Bill into a bowl equipped with a lid and come to the hospital in a taxi in order to maximize the fish’s comfort. She would have to take him with her when she left, for the rules strictly prohibited the introduction of companion animals into the patients’ rooms; nevertheless, Tania was proud of having been able to obtain this special permission by negotiating with the nursing staff.

  Seeming to recognize Bilodo, who was leaning over his bowl, Bill shuddered and started going round in frenetic circles. ‘I think he missed you,’ Tania said, offering her interpretation of the fish’s natatorial language.

  ‘So do I,’ Bilodo declared. ‘I can’t wait to recover. I want my memory back, most of all.’

  ‘There’s no reason to rush things. First you have to take enough time to get really well,’ Tania hastened to reply. She had some very different priorities.

  Bilodo didn’t think of letting his parents know what had happened to him until two days later. Because he had no relatives better qualified to carry out the lugubrious task, Tania took it upon herself to inform him that his progenitors were no longer of this world, having been the victims of a funicular accident – a piece of news to which Bilodo reacted with remarkable composure. Tania inferred from this that his familial relations must never have been very warm-hearted.

  ‘I remember that funicular,’ Bilodo confided. ‘I was scared of it when I was little. After our Sunday stroll through the Basse-Ville, my parents loved to take the cable car back up, but I refused to get in. I’d take the stairs and wait for them at the top, on the Terrasse Dufferin. I loved those stairs. I’d count them. There were two hundred and twenty-six...’

  Tania liked to imagine little Bilodo light-footedly climbing the steps in Vieux-Québec while counting them aloud. Then another image imposed itself on her mind: the adult Bilodo, now a postman, bounding athletically up the exterior staircases along rue des Hêtres, counting the stairs in a low voice. At the Madelinot, his colleagues showed that they were quite familiar with this idiosyncrasy: ‘How many steps this morning, Bil
odo?’ they’d call out to him as soon as he walked through the door. ‘One thousand four hundred and fifteen,’ he would reply, without hesitation. And the postal workers would burst into guffaws, considering this odd habit just another sign of Bilodo’s eccentricity. They didn’t know that what looked to them like an absurd quirk had its origin in obscure childhood dread, in a child’s prescient fear of a terrifying machine and the fatal premonition it inspired in him.

  ‘Montmartre!’ Tania said, falling into a dream. Paris and Montmartre and its famous stairs, so romantic: that’s where she would take Bilodo one day. Yes, Montmartre to start with, because that would be only the beginning; the world abounded in stairs just waiting to be taken by a couple of true lovers. ‘When your legs get strong again, we’ll climb the stairs of a new life together, and I’ll count every step with you,’ she promised Bilodo silently.

  11

  An MRI scan revealed a benign lesion on Bilodo’s prefrontal cortex. However, the neurologist doubted that this lesion was the cause of Bilodo’s amnesia, and a psychiatrist was called in as a back-up. A short woman of ineffable age, Justine Tao had minuscule dreamcatchers adorned with pink feathers dangling from her ears; she seemed incapable of harming a fly without having first analysed it. Tania, not authorized to be present at Dr Tao’s interview with Bilodo, went to the waiting room, where she sat biting her nails and dreading the shrink’s conclusions. Justine Tao joined her there an hour later, and she confirmed what Tania had hoped: Bilodo’s memory remained sequestered. Tao suspected the activation of a psychological defence mechanism by which Bilodo could unconsciously avoid remembering some unbearably traumatic event. ‘Had he seemed stressed of late?’ she asked. ‘Any abnormal behaviour?’

  ‘Apart from reading other people’s post, falling in love with a total stranger, taking a dead man’s place and throwing himself under a truck, you mean?’ Tania was tempted to reply sarcastically. But she contented herself with asserting that she hadn’t noticed anything in particular.

  ‘You and he are engaged, isn’t that so? This amnesia must be an awful experience for you,’ Tao said sympathetically. ‘You must feel terribly helpless...’

  Treading carefully, Tania acknowledged that it was indeed difficult, but she was bearing up. Tao assured her that she could play an active role in unlocking Bilodo’s memory and recommended that Tania put him in contact with what his existence had been over the course of recent years: ‘As soon as he’s sufficiently recovered, have him meet people he knows, his old friends. Take him to the places he used to frequent, remind him of what his habits were. And be on the lookout for possible flashbacks,’ she concluded, using the English word.

  ‘Flashbacks?’ asked Tania, puzzled.

  ‘Bits of memory that arise unexpectedly, out of the blue. Were they to appear in Bilodo’s case, they would be an indication that things were starting to come back to him. And the best way to provoke flashbacks is to stimulate his senses.’

  ‘His senses?’

  ‘Sensory memory is an excellent psychological trigger. Have Bilodo taste flavours you know he likes, have him listen to things and smell things. Sometimes all it takes is a familiar sound or smell, and then something clicks. If Bilodo ever has a flashback, encourage him to untangle the images and explore the memory.’

  Tania promised to follow these recommendations, but refrained from saying that she’d do so in reverse. The shrink’s advice actually seemed quite useful to Tania, as long as she did exactly the opposite: she would strive to remove from Bilodo’s environment anything at all that risked evoking his past.

  Ignorant of what his ‘fiancée’ was plotting, Bilodo asked her, as soon as she went back to his room, to describe to him again the way they were before his accident. Tania complied with this request by shamelessly filching inspiration from certain touching scenes in her favourite romantic comedies and portraying the two of them bathed in heavenly light, a pair of blissful lovebirds. Bilodo took all this in without discussion – as far as Tania could tell, he believed it.

  ‘I see,’ he said, even though his blindness was evident. ‘And when did we plan to get married?’

  ‘We hadn’t fixed a definite date yet,’ Tania ventured. ‘In any case, we have to wait until you’re well.’

  ‘Of course. Let’s wait a bit,’ Bilodo agreed, looking pensive.

  ‘What were you on, some kind of drug cocktail?’ Noémie exclaimed.

  ‘You’re the one who wanted me to do something. I followed your advice.’

  ‘All right, fine, but this is insane. And it will never work.’

  ‘Oh yes it will, it’s going to work!’ Tania replied, a little regretful for having confided in her friend. ‘Bilodo’s not questioning our engagement. He’s getting used to the idea.’

  ‘The idea won’t ever go the distance. He’ll end up finding out the truth,’ Noémie prophesized.

  ‘There is a risk,’ Tania admitted, ‘but it’s very small. He has no parents and no relatives who could undeceive him or give me away.’

  ‘What about the Guadeloupian woman? What will you do if she won’t let go?’

  ‘If she’s stupid enough to show up here, I’ll sort her out,’ Tania said trenchantly.

  ‘Have you gone completely nuts?’ Noémie replied, amazed at this hitherto unseen, fearsome Tania. ‘Your Bilodo isn’t some computer hard disk you can simply reformat the way you want. Even if you manage to reprogram his emotions, what will you do the day his memory returns?’

  ‘That will probably never happen,’ Tania maintained stubbornly.

  ‘Rubbish! Sooner or later, he’ll remember. For sure!’

  Tania took refuge in silence, unable to deny the existence of an uncomfortably uncertain factor. That was the weak point in her plan, and she knew it. How long would Bilodo remain an amnesiac? What would she do if he recovered his memory? What could she say in her defence, except that she’d believed she was acting for his own good?

  When she entered Bilodo’s room, she found him watching television: a documentary about the South Pole and penguin migration.

  He was crying.

  When he saw Tania, Bilodo removed his earphones and tried his best to suppress his sobs.

  ‘Why are you crying?’ she dared to whisper.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ Bilodo said desolately.

  ‘That’s normal. The doctor said it would take time.’

  ‘I can’t remember us, I can’t remember our love. I’m sorry,’ he said, sounding lost.

  ‘It’s not your fault...’

  ‘I feel empty. I’m afraid I don’t know how to love you any more,’ Bilodo said in despair.

  Pained to see him in such distress, Tania wondered whether Noémie might not be right about her: hadn’t she gone too far in so inconsiderately proclaiming herself to be Bilodo’s fiancée? Wasn’t she wrong to interfere with his mind that way, and by so doing wasn’t she committing some kind of mental rape?

  Nevertheless, Bilodo seized her hands and pressed them between his. ‘I don’t remember loving you,’ he said, ‘but I understand very well why I did: you’re adorable, Tania.’

  ‘No,’ she protested. That compliment, which in other circumstances would have propelled her into the seventh heaven, sounded bitter now.

  ‘Let’s start again,’ Bilodo proposed. ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to love you as well as before, but I’m going to try. Will you help me?’

  ‘Of course,’ replied Tania in an irresolute voice.

  ‘I know I can count on you.’

  Tania found the strength to smile, but only in order to hide her shame at being so undeserving of Bilodo’s trust. ‘It’s now or never, Tania Schumpf!’ her little inner voice said. ‘If you must set the record straight, now’s the time to do it, before you cause any more damage.’ And Tania knew that this was indeed the moment. After all, there was nothing obliging her to mention Ségolène. She’d limit herself to confessing that she’d exaggerated a little in telling the story of their engagement,
that she’d let herself get carried away by her feelings. It was no doubt better for Bilodo to learn the truth from her lips, while he still had no memory of the Guadeloupian woman, rather than from some other, uncontrollable source when Tania least expected it.

  ‘Bilodo, I’m not the perfect girl you think I am,’ she began.

  ‘I love you,’ Bilodo solemnly declared.

  His voice was firm, his eyes candid. He wanted what he’d said to be true, he was doing everything he could to convince himself it was. Tania’s throat tightened. Incapable of continuing her confession, she fell silent, terribly aware that her silence was tantamount to passing a point of no return, beyond which honesty would no longer be possible. From now on, Tania would have no other choice but to make that enormous lie work, to go all the way. Needless to say, sooner or later Bilodo would have to learn the truth. On some future day, when time had given their love solid enough roots, when she felt that Bilodo was strong enough to understand and forgive, on that day, yes, Tania would speak. But not now, when everything was still hanging by a thread, and when the slightest false move could precipitate them into the abyss. Not today.

  On the television, two penguins were pressing themselves together, surrounded by frozen infinitude, sheltering each other from the cold Antarctic wind.

  12

  They didn’t go out very often. Sometimes they went to the cinema, the restaurant, or the health spa, but they preferred to remain in their apartment and surrender themselves to the tranquil stay-at-home pleasures of ‘cocooning’: thus Tania presented their former manner of life to Bilodo, who was always eager to learn more about the way they were. She took advantage of his curiosity to give him a detailed description of ‘their’ apartment. Casually, as though in passing, Tania was preparing Bilodo to move in with her.