Such desolate vastness, such distant quietness.
‘Do you remember, Jean? You and me. Adam and Eve at the end of the world?’
How laughter-filled Manon’s voice could be. Laughter-filled, melting chocolate.
Yes, it was as though they had discovered an alien world at the end of their own, which for the last two thousand years had remained unbeset by man and his mania for transforming the countryside into cities, streets and supermarkets.
Not a single tall tree, no hills, no houses. Only sky, and beneath that one’s own skull as the sole boundary. They saw wild horses passing in herds. Herons and wild geese angled for fish, and snakes pursued green lizards. They sensed all the prayers of thousands of walkers, which the Rh?ne had carried down from its source under the glacier into this vast delta, and which now flitted about between the broom, the willows and scrubby trees.
The mornings were so fresh and innocent that they rendered him speechless with gratitude to be alive. Every day he had swum in the Mediterranean by the light of the setting sun; he had run, naked and howling, up and down the fine, white sand beaches; and had felt at one with himself and with this natural emptiness – so full of strength.
Manon had been full of genuine admiration for how he had swum and grasped for fish and caught some. They had begun to cast off civilization. Jean let his beard grow, and Manon’s hair dangled over her breasts as she rode naked on her good-natured, sensible mount with its small ears. They were both baked brown as chestnuts, and Jean enjoyed the sweet-and-sour tang on her skin when they made love in the evenings in the still-warm sand beside the crackling driftwood fire. He tasted the salt of the sea, the salt of her sweat, the salt of the delta meadows, where river and sea flowed together like lovers.
When he approached the black fuzz between her thighs, Jean was met by the hypnotic aroma of femininity and life. Manon smelled of the mare she was riding so tightly and masterfully – it was the aroma of freedom. She bore the scent of a mixture of oriental spices and the sweetness of flowers and honey; she smelled of woman!
She had whispered and sighed his name unremittingly; she had wrapped the letters in a stream of breath wreathed in lust.
‘Jean! Jean!’
In those nights he had been more of a man than ever before. She had opened up completely for him, pressed herself against him, his mouth, his being, his cock. And in her open eyes, which held his gaze, there was always the reflection of the moon – first a crescent, then a semicircle and finally a full, red disc.
They had spent half a lunar journey in the Camargue; they had gone wild, turned into Adam and Eve in the hut of reeds. They were refugees and explorers, and he had never asked whom Manon had had to deceive in order to dream their dreams there at the end of the earth among the bulls, flamingos and horses.
At night only her breathing had saturated the absolute silence beneath the starry sky. Manon’s sweet, regular, deep breathing.
She was the world breathing.
It was only when Monsieur Perdu had let go of this image of Manon sleeping and breathing at the wild, foreign, southern frontier – let go as slowly as one might release a paper boat onto water – that he noticed he had been staring ahead with wide-open eyes the whole time – and that he could remember his lover without breaking down.
16
‘Oh, will you please take those earmuffs off, Jordan. Listen to how quiet it is.’
‘Shh! Not so loud! And don’t call me Jordan – it’d be better if I gave myself a code name.’
‘Oh yes. What?’
‘I am now Jean, Jean Perdu.’
‘With all due respect: I am Jean Perdu.’
‘Yeah, brilliant, wasn’t it? Shouldn’t we be on first-name terms?’
‘No, we shouldn’t.’
Jordan pushed his earmuffs back, then sniffed.
‘It smells of fish spawn here.’
‘Can you smell it with your ears?’
‘What happens if I fall into the fish spawn and get eaten up by a horde of underdeveloped catfish?’
‘Monsieur Jordan, most people only fall overboard if they try to pee over the railing when drunk. Use the toilet and you’ll survive. And anyway, catfish don’t eat people.’
‘Oh yeah? Where does it say that? In another book? You know as well as I do that what people write in books is only the truth they’ve discovered at their desks. I mean, the earth used to be a disc that hung around in space like a forgotten dining-hall tray.’ Max Jordan stretched, and his stomach rumbled loudly and reproachfully. ‘We should get something to eat.’
‘In the fridge you’ll find—’