Perdu missed Manon’s body. He missed Manon’s hand against his buttocks as he slept. He missed her breath; her childish grumbling when he woke her too early in the morning – always too early no matter how late it was.
Her eyes watching him lovingly, and her fine, soft, short, curly hair when she snuggled up to his neck. He missed all these things so much that his body would twitch as he lay in the empty bed. And every day when he awoke too.
He hated waking up to a life without her.
The bed was the first thing he smashed, then the shelves and the footstool; he cut up the carpet, burned the pictures, laid waste to the room. He got rid of every piece of clothing, gave away every record.
The only thing he kept were the books from which he had read to her. He had read aloud every evening – lots of verse, scenes, chapters, columns, short extracts from biographies and other nonfiction books, Ringelnatz’s Little Bedtime Prayers (oh, how she’d loved The Little Onion) – so that she could drop off to sleep in this strange, barren world, the chilly north with its frozen northern folk. He couldn’t bring himself to throw those books away.
He’d used them to wall up the Lavender Room.
But it wouldn’t go away. The damn missing simply wouldn’t go away.
He’d only been able to cope by starting to avoid life. He’d locked away the loving with the missing deep within. Yet now it swept through him with unbelievable force.
Monsieur Perdu staggered into the bathroom and held his head under a stream of ice-cold water.
He hated Catherine, and he hated her cursed, unfaithful, cruel husband.
Why did Le P.-Dipstick have to leave her now, without giving her so much as a kitchen table as a send-off? What an idiot!
He hated the concierge and Madame Bernard and Jordan, Madame Gulliver, everyone – yes, everyone.
He hated Manon.
He flung the door open, his hair soaking wet. If that’s how that Madame Catherine wanted things, then he would say: ‘Yes, dammit, that is my letter! I just didn’t want to open it at the time. Out of pride. Out of conviction.’
And any mistake was reasonable if backed up by conviction.
He had wanted to read the letter when he was ready. After a year. Or two. He hadn’t intended to wait for twenty years, and to become fifty years old and peculiar in the meantime.
At the time, not opening Manon’s letter had been the only safe option, refusing her justification the only weapon he had.
Definitely.
If someone left you, you had to answer with silence. You weren’t allowed to give the person leaving anything else; you had to shut yourself off, just as the other person had closed her mind to your future together. Yes, he had decided that was the way it was.
‘No no no!’ cried Perdu. There was something wrong with this; he sensed it, but didn’t know what. It was driving him mad.
Monsieur Perdu strode over to the opposite door.
And rang the bell.
And knocked and rang the bell again, after a suitable pause, for as long as it would take a normal person to emerge from the shower and shake the water out of her ears.
Why wasn’t Catherine there? She had been a minute earlier.
He rushed back to his flat, tore the first page out of the first book that came to hand on one of the stacks, and scribbled:
I’d like to ask you to bring the letter around, no matter how late. Please don’t read it. Sorry for the inconvenience. Regards, Perdu.
He stared at his signature and wondered whether he’d ever be able to think of his first name. Every time he thought of it, he heard Manon’s voice too. The way she sighed his name. And laughed. Whispering, oh, whispering.
He squeezed in his initial between ‘Regards’ and ‘Perdu’: J.
J for Jean.
He folded the piece of paper in half and stuck it to Catherine’s door at eye level with a bit of tape. The letter. Either way, it would be the kind of helpless explanation that women give their lovers when they’ve had enough. There was no need to get worked up.
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.
9
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.