The Reader on the 6.27 (5 page)

How the idea of contacting Jean-Eude Freyssinet had come to him, Guylain couldn’t say. On the other hand, it was strange that it hadn’t occurred to anyone else, not even to Giuseppe, to contact the author of
Gardens and Kitchen Gardens of Bygone Days
directly. He’d had no trouble tracking down the illustrious writer’s telephone number and Madame Freyssinet had answered on the fifth ring. She informed him in a quavering voice that her Jean-Eude had passed on a few years ago, halfway through writing his second book, an essay on
Cucurbitaceae
and other dicotyledons of central Europe. Without beating about the bush, Guylain had explained to the widow that within the unsold slurry-coloured copies that she had kept in memory of her departed there was something more than her husband’s spiritual legacy. She immediately suggested that she only needed to keep a few copies and offered to let him have the rest of her collection, which represented around a hundred pristine copies of
Gardens and Kitchen Gardens of Bygone Days
. Giving them to Giuseppe all at once would have been a grave mistake, Guylain knew. It was the search that mattered. The Freyssinet collection had to be distilled sparingly, at a rate of three or four a year, never more. Just enough to bring a glimmer to the old boy’s eyes and keep the hunter on the alert.

During the years of plenty, the famous Albert had become the self-appointed spokesman for the
bouquinistes
. His cheeky humour was a huge hit with the tourists he snared in his banter like a spider catching flies in its web. And it was naturally to him that Guylain turned to put his scheme into action. It worked like a dream. When he felt the time had come – in other words, when the old boy was showing fresh signs of losing hope and sinking into despondency – Guylain would give Albert the go-ahead. The bookseller would then call Giuseppe, who would immediately inform Guylain that a new copy had come to light. In three years, over a dozen Freyssinets had artificially appeared from out of the blue without the old boy suspecting a thing.

Guylain put the suitcase down on the bed and flicked open the two clasps with his thumbs to release the dusty lid. He contemplated the copies of
Gardens and Kitchen Gardens of Bygone Days
with a smile. Eighty-five – enough to keep going for a good twenty years, he thought. He grabbed the first copy that came to hand. Then, with the help of an oil-soaked paper towel, Guylain painstakingly smeared the right-hand corner of the back cover.

11

Giuseppe lived on the ground floor of a brand-new apartment block, less than ten minutes away. Guylain didn’t even need to ring the bell – Giuseppe yelled at him to come in from the kitchen where he had been watching out for him, his face pressed to the window. The place smelled clean. Guylain took his shoes off in the hall and, following an unchanging ritual, put on Giuseppe’s old slippers, two orphaned slippers which always seemed happy to feel two feet in them again. The bookshelves ate up an entire wall of the living room. The 758 copies of
Gardens and Kitchen Gardens of Bygone Days
by Jean-Eude Freyssinet sat cover to cover in neat rows on the mahogany planks, their slurry-green spines exposed. Giuseppe’s babies. He had a special way of caressing their edges with his fingertips as he passed them, and he took particular care to dust them regularly. They were the flesh of his flesh. He had given them his blood and more. And it mattered little that it happened to be the unimportant work of a Jean-Wotsit-Thingummyjig and not the winner of that year’s Goncourt. You can’t choose your children’s looks. The poignant emptiness of the shelves above them were a daily reminder of that part of himself that had not yet returned to the fold. Anxious and unable to contain himself a moment longer, Giuseppe gripped Guylain’s arm.

‘Well?’

Not wanting to prolong his agony, Guylain put the book in his hands. Giuseppe turned it over and over, examined it in the light, checked the ISBN, the dates and printing numbers, leafed through it, assessed the paper quality with his fingertips, sniffed it and caressed the pages with the palm of his hand. Only then did he hug it to his chest with a smile. Each time, Guylain marvelled at the moving sight of his tormented face bursting into a huge, radiant smile. Giuseppe would keep his Freyssinet with him all evening, nice and warm under his blanket, lying on what remained of his thighs, only putting it down when it was time to go to bed. From time to time he would pick one out at random and keep it with him all day. Guylain would lounge on the sofa while Giuseppe busied himself in the kitchen. He knew that his friend wouldn’t relax until he had drunk his glass of bubbly. No matter how often he told him not to bother, that champagne wasn’t necessary and that, even if it meant drinking alone, he’d be happy with any fortified wine, that even a beer would do, the old boy insisted on bringing him the glass and the half-bottle of vintage bubbly opened specially for the occasion. He, who in his former life had only ever drunk cheap plonk, unspeakable gut-rot, now only uncorked fine wines, priceless bottles, which he insisted on Guylain drinking. Giuseppe wheeled himself over to the coffee table, grinning all the while, and placed the champagne glass and half-bottle of Dom Perignon in front of Guylain. The first sip of champagne sent a pleasant chill down Guylain’s throat before settling in his stomach.

‘What did you eat at lunchtime?’ The question took him by surprise. He had eaten nothing at lunchtime. And Giuseppe knew him well enough to know that he had eaten nothing that day other than a handful of cereal washed down by a mug of scalding tea. The old boy’s beady little eyes read all that in his silence. ‘I’ve made some food for you.’ His peremptory tone left Guylain no option but to accept the invitation. When Giuseppe cooked, it was the whole of Italy that landed on your plate. After an anchovy paste with a bundle of cabled
grissini
, washed down with a glass of Prosecco, came a heaped plate of melon with
prosciutto crudo
accompanied by a red Lacryma Christi. Giuseppe loved reminding him that getting drunk on Christ’s tears was the best thing that could happen to a Christian. Guylain was surprised to find that for a while he was able to forget the flavour of boiled cardboard that coated his taste buds. The dessert, comprising a dish of crunchy almond
amaretti
with a glass of home-made
limoncello
, chilled to perfection, was sheer bliss. They chatted idly and solved all the world’s problems. The Thing had made them very close, a closeness that only trench warfare is capable of forging between soldiers who have shared the same shell hole. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning when Guylain took his leave of Giuseppe. The ten-minute walk through the freezing night was not enough to sober him up. He just took the time to remove his shoes and say goodnight to Rouget de Lisle before collapsing fully clothed on his bed, drunk with wine and exhaustion.

12

The mobile phone set to wake him at 5.30 vibrated on the bedside table. Beneath the water’s undulating surface, Rouget de Lisle’s protruding eyes stared at him from his bowl. Monday. Where had Sunday gone? Got up too late, went to bed too early. A day without. Without desire, without hunger, without thirst, without even a memory.

Rouget and he had spent their day going round in circles, the fish in his bowl, and he in his studio flat, already filled with dread at the thought of Monday. Guylain sprinkled a pinch of food on the water and forced himself to eat the handful of cereal he’d poured into his bowl. He brushed his teeth between two sips of tea, pulled on his clothes and grabbed the leather briefcase, then tore down the three flights of stairs into the cold outside, fully awake by now.

As he walked down the avenue to the station, Guylain counted the lamp posts. Counting was the best way he had found to stop himself from thinking about the rest. He counted anything and everything. One day the manholes, another the parked cars, the dustbins or entrances to buildings. The road had no more secrets from him. He sometimes even counted his own steps. Taking refuge in this pointless counting exercise stopped him thinking of those other numbers, all those tonnages that old Kowalski bawled from his watchtower on peak delivery days.

Every day at the same time, when Guylain reached house number 154, he saw the old-man-in-slippers-and-pyjamas-under-his-raincoat desperately trying to coax his dog, an anaemic poodle with a tatty coat, to pee. And as always, the old fellow, his rapt gaze riveted on his beloved, was urging the dog, whose name was Balthus, to empty his bladder against the semblance of a plane tree struggling to survive by the roadside. Guylain never failed to greet the old-man-in-slippers-and-pyjamas-under-his-raincoat and to egg on Balthus in his urinary peregrinations with a friendly pat. He counted another eighteen lamp posts before reaching the station.

Standing on the white line, Guylain was floating in a state of drowsiness when he felt someone tugging his sleeve. He turned round. They had crept up silently behind him. Two little old biddies who were literally devouring him with their eyes. Their permed hair had the same purplish hue as Giuseppe’s Butterfly 750. The mauve rinses were not unfamiliar to him. He had the feeling he had already seen these ladies on the train several times before. The one who was standing furthest back nudged the other: ‘Go on, Monique, you do the talking.’

Monique didn’t dare. She kneaded her hands, not knowing what to do with them, cleared her throat, kept saying, ‘Yes, yes’, ‘All right’, ‘Stop it, Josette’, or ‘I’m going to’. Guylain almost felt like reassuring Monique, telling her it was OK, that everything would be fine, that striking up a conversation was the hardest bit and afterwards the words would come all by themselves, that there was no need to be afraid. Except that he had no idea what these good ladies wanted from him, other than the obvious fact that they wanted to talk to him. Gripping her handbag as if it were a lifebelt, Monique finally took the plunge: ‘It’s that we wanted to tell you that we really like what you do.’

‘What do you mean, what I do?’ asked Guylain incredulously.

‘Well, when you read on the train in the morning and all that. We love it, and it does us no end of good.’

‘Thank you, that’s very kind of you, but you know, it’s not much, just a few odd pages.’

‘Exactly. So Josette and I would like to ask you something, if we may. Of course, we’d understand if you couldn’t, but we’d be so thrilled if you said yes. It would make us so happy, and it wouldn’t take up much of your time, and it would be whenever’s convenient for you, depending on when you’re free. We really don’t want to be a bother.’

Guylain almost wished the one called Monique would go back to silently kneading her hands.

‘I’m sorry, but what do you mean exactly by “make you so happy”?’

‘Well, actually, we’d like you to come to our home and read to us from time to time.’

She exhaled the end of her sentence in a sigh, which made the last words barely audible. Guylain couldn’t help staring blissfully at these two octogenarian fans who were demanding him exclusively for themselves. Touched by this unusual request, he stammered the beginnings of a reply: ‘Um, I mean . . .’

‘But,’ Monique broke in, ‘I should tell you that Thursday’s no good because there’s rummy, though any other day would be fine. Except Sundays, of course, because of the families.’

‘Hold on, I only read odd bits and pieces, random pages that have no connection with each other. I don’t read entire books.’

‘No, we know that! It doesn’t worry us. Quite the opposite! That’s even better – it’s less monotonous and then at least if the extract is boring, we know it won’t go on for more than a page. Josette and I have been coming to listen to you on the train every Monday and Thursday morning for nearly a year now. It’s a bit early for us but it doesn’t matter, it gets us out. And besides, as it’s market day, we kill two birds with one stone.’

They were sweet, these two little old dears muffled up in their beige coats, both hanging on to his every word. Guylain had a sudden urge to give in to their madness, to export his live skins to somewhere other than this gloomy carriage which he rode every day.

‘But where do you live?’

To their ears his question sounded like a firm and definite yes. Elated, the two women congratulated each other and jumped up and down on the spot. As the one called Monique put her card in Guylain’s hand, the other whispered in her ear, ‘I told you he was nice.’ The visiting card stated the name and address in the middle of a bed of pastel flowers. Mesdemoiselles Monique and Josette Delacôte, 7 bis, Impasse de la Butte, 93220 Gagny. A line had been neatly crossed out with a ballpoint pen. Guylain presumed that Monique and Josette were sisters. Impasse de la Butte – that was up the hill, a good half hour’s walk from his place.

‘We’ve already discussed it. If you agree to come, we’ll pay the return taxi fare. It’ll be easier for you and less tiring.’

Guylain told himself that the Delacôte sisters must have been plotting this for a good while before approaching him. ‘Look, I don’t mind giving it a go, but I don’t want you to consider this a long-term commitment. Let’s get that clear, shall we? I’m happy to give it a try, but I want to be able to stop at any time.’

‘Oh! Josette and I fully understand, don’t we, Josette? And which day could you come?’

What was he getting himself into? On weekday evenings, Guylain was too exhausted to be able to do anything. ‘I’m only free on Saturdays. Preferably late morning.’

‘OK for Saturdays, but at around ten thirty because we have lunch at half past eleven.’

As the train pulled into the station, they finalized arrangements for him to come at 10.30 the following Saturday. Sitting on his folding seat, Guylain began reading the first live skin of the day, a recipe for farmhouse vegetable soup, watched eagerly by the delighted Delacôte sisters, who had sat themselves on the nearest seat, better to drink in his words.

13