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:
Dear J.,
Please come around for dinner this evening. You will read the letter. You must promise me that or else I won’t give it to you. Not sorry.
Catherine
PS: Bring a plate. Can you cook? I can’t.
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—’