The Little Paris Bookshop (6 page)

Of course not.

Then he went back to his empty flat to wait.

Monsieur Perdu felt suddenly and truly alone, like a stupid little rowing boat on the mocking, scornful sea – without a sail, a rudder or a name.

As night took flight, abandoning Paris to a Saturday morning, Monsieur Perdu sat up, back aching, took off his reading glasses and rubbed the swollen bridge of his nose. He had knelt there for hours over the floor puzzle, noiselessly pushing the cardboard pieces into place so as not to miss the sound of Catherine moving about in the other flat. Yet it had remained completely silent over there.

Perdu’s chest, back and neck hurt as he took off his shirt. He took a cold shower until his skin went blue, then it turned lobster-red as he rinsed himself with hot water. Steam rose off him as he strode over to the kitchen window with one of his two towels slung around his hips. He did some press-ups and sit-ups as the coffee pot bubbled away on the stove. Perdu washed his only cup and poured himself some black coffee.

Summer had indeed descended on Paris overnight. The air was as warm as a brimming teacup.

Had she left the letter in his letterbox? After the way he had behaved, Catherine probably never wanted to set eyes on him again.

Clutching his towel by the knot, Perdu walked barefoot down the silent staircase to the letterboxes.

‘Now listen here, that’s no … Oh, is that you?’

Madame Rosalette, wearing a housecoat, peeked out of her lodge. He sensed her eyes running over his skin, his muscles and the towel, which felt as if it had somehow shrunk.

Perdu felt that Rosalette really did linger a bit too long. And was that a satisfied nod?

He hurried upstairs with burning cheeks.

As he approached his door, he spotted something that hadn’t been there before.

A note.

He unfolded the piece of paper in a rush. The knot gave way, and his towel fell to the floor. However, Monsieur Perdu was hardly aware of the bare backside he was parading to the staircase as he read, with increasing irritation:

As he worked himself into a rage, something incredible happened.

The left-hand corner of his mouth twitched.

And then … he laughed.

Half laughing, half stunned, he muttered, ‘Bring a plate. Read the letter. You never want anything, Perdu. Promise me. Die before me. Promise!’

Promises – women always wanted promises.

‘I’m never promising anything ever again!’ he called into the empty staircase, naked and all of a sudden furious.

The response was unfazed silence.

He slammed his door behind him and was delighted with the noise it made. He hoped that the huge bang had startled everyone from their beds.

Then he opened the door again and, slightly sheepishly, picked up his towel.

Wham!
a second slam of the door.

By now they must all be sitting bolt upright.

 

 

As Monsieur Perdu made his way along Rue Montagnard at a smart pace, he seemed to see through the fronts of the houses, as if they were open dollhouses.

He knew every library in every house. After all, he was the one who had compiled them over the years.

At number 14: Clarissa Menepeche. Such a delicate soul in a heavy body! She loved the warrior Brienne in
A Song of Ice and Fire
.

Behind the net curtains at number 2: Arnaud Silette, who would like to have been alive in the twenties. In Berlin. As an artist. And a woman.

And opposite, at number 5, sitting ramrod straight at her computer: the translator Nadira del Pappas. She loved historical novels in which women dressed as men and outgrew their limited opportunities.

And upstairs from her? No more books. All given away.

Perdu paused and looked up at the front of number 5.

Margot, the eighty-four-year-old widow. She’d been in love with a German soldier who was the same age she was – fifteen – when the war robbed them both of their youth. How he had wanted to make love to her before he returned to the front! He knew that he wouldn’t survive there. How ashamed she was to undress in front of him … and how she now wished she hadn’t been ashamed! Margot had been regretting the missed opportunity for the last sixty-nine years. The older she got, the more the memory waned of that afternoon when she and the boy had lain quivering alongside each other, holding hands.

I see that I have grown old without noticing. How time has passed. All that damn lost time. I’m scared I’ve done something terribly stupid, Manon.
 

I’ve grown so old in a single night, and I miss you.
 

I miss
myself
.

I no longer know who I am.
 

Monsieur Perdu ambled along. He stopped in front of Liona’s wine shop window. There, reflected in the glass. Was that him? The tall man in the conventional clothes with this unused, untouched body; stooping, as though he longed to be invisible?

When he saw Liona come forward from the back of the shop to give him the usual Saturday bag for his father, Perdu recalled the many times he had passed by and refused to step inside for a quick glass. For a chat with her or one of her customers – with friendly, normal people. How many times in the last almost twenty-one years had he chosen to walk on by, rather than stop, look for friends, approach a woman?

Half an hour later Perdu was at the Bassin de la Villette, standing at a table in the Bar Ourcq, even though the bar wasn’t technically open yet. This was where the
boules
players parked their water bottles and their cheese-and-ham baguettes. A short, thickset man looked up at him in surprise.

‘What are you doing here so early? Has something happened to Madame Bernier? Tell me, is Lirab—’

‘No, Maman’s fine. She’s ordering around a regiment of Germans who want to learn conversation from an authentic Parisian intellectual. Don’t worry about her.’

Father and son fell silent, united by the memory of how Lirabelle Bernier used to explain to Perdu as a schoolboy over breakfast the distancing elegance of the German subjunctive compared with the emotional nature of the French
subjonctif
. She spoke with a raised forefinger, whose gold-polished tip lent extra emphasis to her words.

‘The
subjonctif
is the heart speaking.’

Lirabelle Bernier. His father now addressed her by her maiden name, after having first called her Mrs Mischief and then Madame Perdu.

‘And what message did she send you with this time?’ Joaquin Perdu asked his son.

‘That you should go to see a urologist.’

‘Tell her I’m going. She doesn’t have to remind me every six months.’

They had married when they were twenty-one to annoy their parents. She, the intellectual from a household of philosophers and economists, who met an ironworker –
dégoûtant,
disgusting. He, the working-class son of a police constable father and a devout factory seamstress mother, getting together with an upper-class girl – class traitor.

‘Anything else?’ asked Joaquin, and took the bottle of muscatel wine from the bag Perdu had set down in front of him.

‘She needs a new second-hand car. She wants you to look for one, but not some weird colour like the last one.’

‘Weird? It was white. Your mother. I ask you—’

‘So will you?’

‘Of course. The car salesman wouldn’t speak to her again?’

‘No. He always asks for her husband. It drives her nuts.’

‘I know, Jeanno. Coco’s a good friend of mine. He plays in our three-man
pétanque
team – he throws well.’

Joaquin grinned.

‘Can your nice new girlfriend cook, Maman asks, or are you going to eat at hers on 14 July?’

‘You can tell your mother that my so-called nice new girlfriend is an excellent cook, but our minds are on other matters when we meet.’

‘I think you’d better tell Maman yourself, Papa.’

‘I can tell Mademoiselle Bernier on 14 July. She does cook well. Surely brains with tongue.’

Joaquin almost split his sides laughing.

Ever since his parents’ early divorce, Jean Perdu had visited his father every Saturday with some muscatel wine and various questions from his mother. Then every Sunday he would visit his mother to convey her ex-husband’s answers along with an edited report on his father’s health and relationship status.

‘My dear son, when you’re a woman and you get married, you enter irreversibly into a supervisory position. You have to keep an eye on everything – what your husband does and how he is. And later, when children arrive, on them too. You’re a watchdog, a servant and a diplomat rolled into one. And something as trivial as divorce doesn’t end that. Oh no – love may come and go, but the caring goes on.’

Perdu and his father strolled along the canal a little way. Joaquin, the shorter of the two, had an upright, broad-shouldered gait in his purple-and-white-checked shirt, and cast longing glances at every single girl they passed. The sun danced in the blond hairs on Joaquin’s ironworker’s arms. He was in his midseventies but acted as if he were in his mid-twenties, whistling hit tunes and drinking to his heart’s content.

Beside him, Monsieur Perdu stared at the ground.

‘So, Jeanno,’ his father said abruptly, ‘what’s her name?’

‘Sorry? What do you mean? Does it always have to be a woman, Papa?’

‘It’s always a woman, Jeanno. Nothing else can really knock a man out of sorts. And you look seriously out of sorts.’

‘In your case that might be down to a woman – and usually not just the one.’

Joaquin beamed. ‘I like women,’ he said and drew a cigarette packet from his shirt pocket. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Yes, I do, kind of …’

‘Kind of? Like elephants: nice to look at but you wouldn’t want to own one? Or are you a man’s man?’

‘Oh, come on. I’m not gay. Let’s talk about horses.’

‘All right, son, if you want to. Women and horses have a lot in common. Would you like to know what?’

‘No.’

‘Fine. Well, if a horse refuses, you’ve phrased your question wrongly. It’s the same with women. Don’t ask them: “Shall we go out to dinner?” Ask: “What can I cook for you?” Can she say no to that? No, she can’t.’

Perdu felt as if he were back in short trousers. His father was actually teaching him about women now.

So what shall I cook for Catherine this evening?
 

‘Instead of whispering instructions to them like you would to a horse – lie down, woman, put your harness on – you should listen to them. Listen to what they want. In fact, they want to be free and to sail across the sky.’

Catherine must have had enough of riders who want to train her and consign her to the cavalry reserves.
 

‘It takes only one word to hurt a woman, a matter of seconds, one stupid, impatient blow of the crop. But winning back her trust takes years. And sometimes there isn’t the time.’

It’s amazing how unimpressed people are by being loved when it doesn’t fit in with their plans. Love irks them so much that they change the locks or leave without warning.
 

‘And when a horse loves us, Jeanno, we deserve that love as little as when a woman does. They are superior beings to us men. When they love us, then they are being gracious, for only rarely do we give them reason to love us. I learned that from your mother, and she’s right. Sad to say, she’s right.’

And that’s why it hurts so much. When women stop loving, men fall into a void of their own making.
 

‘Jeanno, women can love so much more intelligently than us men! They never love a man for his body, even if they can enjoy that too – and how.’ Joaquin sighed with pleasure. ‘But women love you for your character, your strength, your intelligence. Or because you can protect a child. Because you’re a good person, you’re honourable and dignified. They never love you as stupidly as men love women. Not because you’ve got especially beautiful calves or look so good in a suit that their business partners look on jealously when they introduce you. Such women do exist, but only as a cautionary example to others.’