I know all about men, but nothing about man. What is a man like when he’s with a woman? Does he know at twenty how he wants to love her at sixty, because he knows exactly how he’s going to think and act and live career-wise at sixty?
I’ll come back in a year’s time, and Luc and I will get married, like the birds. And then we’ll make wine and children, year after year. I’m free this year and in the future too. Luc won’t ask questions if I come home late from time to time, and if, in the years that follow, I go off to Paris or somewhere else on my own. That was his gift to me when we got engaged: a free marriage. That’s how he is.
Papa wouldn’t understand him – freedom from faithfulness, for love’s sake? ‘Rain isn’t enough for all the land either,’ he would say; love is the rain, man is the land. And what are we women? ‘You cultivate the man and he flourishes in your hands; that’s the power of women.’
I don’t yet know whether I want Luc’s gift of rain. It’s big; maybe I’m too small for it.
And do I want to reciprocate? Luc said he didn’t insist on that, nor was it a condition.
I am the daughter of a tall, strong tree. My timber forms a ship, but it is anchorless, flagless. I set sail for the shade and the light; I drink the wind and forget all ports. To hell with freedom, gifted or seized; if in doubt, always endure alone.
Oh, and I should mention one last thing before my inner Marianne rips off her tunic again and roars more words of freedom. I did indeed get to know the man who saw me crying and writing my travel diary. In the train compartment. He saw my tears, and I hid them and the babyish ‘I-want-it-back’ feeling that overcomes me as soon as I leave my little valley behind …
He asked whether I was badly homesick.
‘It could be lovesickness, couldn’t it?’ I asked him.
‘Homesickness is lovesickness, only worse.’
He’s tall for a Frenchman. A bookseller. His teeth are white and his smile friendly; his eyes are green – the green of herbs. They’re almost the same colour as the cedar outside my bedroom in Bonnieux. Grape-red mouth, hair as thick and strong as sprigs of rosemary.
His name’s Jean. He’s in the process of converting a Flemish working barge; he wants to plant books on it, he says, ‘paper boats for the soul’. He explained that he wants to make it into an apothecary, a pharmacie littéraire, to treat all the emotions for which no other remedy exists.
Homesickness, for example. In his opinion there are various kinds: a desire for shelter, family nostalgia, a fear of separation or a yearning for love.
‘The yearning to have something good to love soon: a place, a person, a particular bed.’
He says it in such a way that it doesn’t sound silly; it sounds logical.
Jean promised to give me books that would alleviate my homesickness. He said it as though he were talking about a half-magical, yet nonetheless official form of medicine.
He seems like a white raven, clever and strong and floating above reality. He is like some great proud bird watching over the world.
No, I wasn’t precise enough. He didn’t promise to give me books – he says he cannot stand promises. He suggested it. ‘I can help you. If you want to cry some more or stop, or laugh so you cry less; I will help you.’
I feel like kissing him to see whether he can do more than talk and know things; whether he can feel and believe as well.
And how high it can fly, this white raven that sees everything inside me.
15
‘I’m hungry,’ said Max.
‘Have we got enough fresh water?’ asked Max.
‘I want to have a go at steering!’ demanded Max.
‘Haven’t we got any fishing rods on board?’ grizzled Max.
‘I feel somehow castrated without a telephone and credit cards. Don’t you?’ sighed Max.
‘No. You can clean the boat,’ replied Perdu. ‘It’s meditation in motion.’
‘Cleaning? Really? Look, here come some more Swedish sailors,’ said the writer. ‘They always cruise down the middle of the river as though they invented it. The English are different; they give the impression of being the only ones who belong here and everyone else should really be applauding them and waving little flags on the banks. You know, Napoléon’s plans to invade their island still rankle with them.’
He lowered the binoculars. ‘Have we got a national ensign on our rear?’
‘Stern, Max. A ship’s back side is called the stern.’
The further they had ploughed their way up the winding Seine, the more excited Max had grown – and the calmer Jean Perdu had become.
The river wound its way in stately loops through woods and parks. The banks were lined with grand, rambling grounds surrounding houses that hinted at old money and family secrets.
‘Have a look in the trunk near the tools for an ensign and a French tricolore pennant,’ Perdu instructed Jordan. ‘And dig out the pegs and the mallet, because we’ll need them to moor if we don’t find a harbour.’
‘Oh, I see. And how am I supposed to know how to moor?’
‘Um, it’s explained in a book about houseboat holidays.’
‘Fishing too?’