Read The Reader on the 6.27 Online
Authors: Jean-Paul Didierlaurent
The Reader on the 6.27 (13 page)
‘Peeing is no laughing matter! How many times do you have to tell those little brats?’ The words rang out harshly against the tiled walls.
Peeing is no laughing matter
– Auntologism number 5, Julie’s favourite. A second voice, much softer, echoed the words. Even with the interference of all the sounds of flushing, taps and hand-driers, Guylain said to himself that it was the most beautiful voice he had ever heard.
‘Peeing is no laughing matter. Sorry I took so long, Aunty, but you know what it’s like when Josy cuts my hair. Half an hour for the trim, an hour for a natter.’
Guylain extricated himself from the cubicle and dragged himself over to the washbasins. Turn on the tap, squirt of soap, rub the palms together, lather. His body felt as if it no longer belonged to him. The mirror reflected the face of someone who looked as if they’d seen a ghost. He didn’t dare look round at the form on his right, on the periphery of his field of vision. After filling the sink with a mountain of lather, he gave his hands a brief shake, took a deep breath and headed for the exit. Julie was sitting on her chair again and, her head tilted slightly forward, was covering the page of her notebook in her rounded handwriting. Of her face, Guylain only managed to glimpse the regular bridge of her nose, the soft, rounded form of her cheekbones and the slightly fleshy bulge of her lips. The curtain of eyelashes revealed nothing of her eyes. With her free hand, a hand with short, but delicate fingers, she stroked the back of her bare neck. Her hair was the colour of honey, one of those mountain honeys with dark, shimmering glints. She looked up for a second, her gaze focused on the wall opposite, and sucked the tip of her pen before resuming her writing. The sarcastic ‘Thank you anyway’ that she shouted after him as he left pierced his heart. The only change he’d had on him on arrival at the shopping centre had been lying for nearly ten minutes in the fountain’s circular basin beneath fifty centimetres of water. In his head, there was no room for anything other than this revelation: Julie wasn’t beautiful, she was sublime.
Outside, the loudspeakers announced between jingles that spring was around the corner. Tuesday 20 March, this coming Tuesday. Guylain smiled. He knew at once what he had to do.
26
When the delivery man turned up, I thought at first that it was a mistake. That the guy had come in the wrong door or that he was just popping into my toilets to relieve an urgent need that wouldn’t wait till later. But when he plonked himself in front of me and asked me, chomping away on his chewing gum, if I was Julie, I had no alternative but to stammer a guarded yes. Two seconds later, I found myself holding this crazy thing. I couldn’t believe my eyes. A bouquet, here, for me. And what a bouquet! A cascade of fresh flowers that filled almost the entire surface of the table, one of those enormous arrangements with the stems immersed in a big transparent sachet of water. I immediately called Josy, who ditched her customer in the middle of colouring her hair to whizz down and admire the thing. When she saw it, she exclaimed that any guy capable of sending flowers like that could only be either a nutter or the most extraordinary guy on earth. ‘Looks like you’ve hit the jackpot,’ she said, her eyes full of envy, before going back to finish her customer’s colour and making me promise to tell her everything. This had never happened to me before, such an incredible gesture in such an inappropriate place, nor had it ever happened to my aunt either, in her career spanning nearly forty years. Except the time when, she told me after the event, a gentleman had given her a rose one Valentine’s Day, because his girlfriend had just dumped him and he didn’t know what to do with the thorny stem that was a nuisance. Stapled to the cellophane around the flowers was this fat brown envelope with the words ‘For Julie’ written in black ink. My hands were trembling a little when I opened it. The earthenware tile it contained was strangely like my tiles. Same size, same slightly milky colour. Utterly baffled, I turned the tile over and over until I read the handwritten letter that went with it:
Dear Ms Julie,
I am not exactly what one might call a Prince Charming. For what it’s worth, I find that Prince Charmings all tend to be rather smug, which annoys me and does not particularly endear them to me. I am no Prince Charming, and I have no white steed either. I too sometimes throw coins into fountains when the opportunity arises. I don’t have an unsightly wart on my chin, nor do I lisp, but I do have a really stupid name which alone is equal to all the warts and lisps of the world. I love books, even though I spend most of my waking hours destroying them. My worldly goods amount to a goldfish called Rouget de Lisle, and my only friends are a legless cripple who spends his time searching for his limbs, and a versifier who only speaks in alexandrines. I should add that a little while ago, I discovered that in this world there was a person who had the power of making colours brighter, things less serious, winter less harsh, the unbearable more bearable, the beautiful more beautiful, the ugly less ugly . . . in other words, the power to make my life more beautiful. That person, Julie, is you. So even though I’m no fan of speed dating, I am asking you – no, imploring you – to please grant me eight minutes of your life (I find that seven isn’t a very attractive number, especially for a date).
So now I must plead guilty. Guilty of having entered your life via this memory stick which I found on the train three weeks ago. But know that if I entered your life in this way, initially it was with the sole intention of finding you so I could return the stick and the writings it contained, even though that intention gradually turned into a profound desire to meet you. So to earn your forgiveness, allow me to give you this additional tile to add to your inventory tomorrow. For, whatever you may think, nothing in life is ever written in stone. Even a number as ugly as 14,717 can one day be transformed into a beautiful number with a little bit of help. I shall end with this expression which, I admit, is a bit pompous but I fear I’ll never have the opportunity or the desire to say it to anyone else but you: My fate is in your hands.
It was signed Guylain Vignolles, and underneath was a simple phone number. Maybe this guy was crazy, but he had made me feel very churned up. I shook the envelope and the memory stick fell onto the table. The dark red one. I’d been hunting everywhere for it for three weeks, since the day I took the train to go to Josy’s place. I reread the letter once, then twice. I think I spent the entire day rereading that wretched letter. Returning to it constantly, dipping into it at the slightest opportunity, between wiping down the surfaces and squirts of bleach. Savouring every word, trying to put a face, a voice, to this guy and his stupid name, as he calls it. Today, curiously, the tinkle of the coins in my china saucer sounded different, the hours sped by, the neon light was warmer, and even the people seemed nicer than usual. In the evening, snuggled under my duvet, I read it again from beginning to end, until I knew every word by heart. Before I fell asleep, I knew that I was going to call Guylain Vignolles. I believe I had actually made up my mind before I’d finished reading the letter for the second time. Call him to tell him that it wasn’t eight pathetic minutes that I would grant him, but three hours, the time it took me to get to sleep. Three hours to tell me about himself, to tell each other about ourselves, and venture perhaps where our words have never been.
This morning, the spring equinox, I hummed as I counted my tiles. Guylain Vignolles’s tile, tucked in the pocket of my overalls, knocked pleasantly against my hip. When I came to the final totting up, I set it gently down on the table and included it at the bottom of the sheet before adding up the numbers. Even though I was expecting it, I couldn’t help being amazed when I saw the total. Then I picked up the phone, thinking that 14,718 was a really beautiful number on which to begin a love affair.
With thanks to Ruth Diver
for translating the alexandrines.
First published 2015 by Mantle
This electronic edition published 2015 by Mantle
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-4472-7650-0
Copyright © Éditions Au diable vauvert, 2014
Translation copyright © Ros Schwartz 2015
Jacket illustration © Jonny Hannah
Originally published in French 2014 as
Le Liseur du 6h27
by Au diable vauvert, 2014
The right of Jean-Paul Didierlaurent to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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