Jordan looked as though he’d never considered this.
‘I rang my father the day before yesterday. He doesn’t read much, you know, only sports papers. I told him about the translations, the royalties and the fact that I’ve sold nearly half a million books. I told him I could help him because his pension isn’t so great. Do you know what my father asked?’
Monsieur Perdu waited.
‘If I was finally going to get a proper job. And he’d heard that I’d written a perverted story. Half the neighbourhood was casting aspersions on him under their breath. Did I have any idea of the harm I’d done him with my crazy ideas.’
Max looked tremendously hurt and lost.
Monsieur Perdu felt an unaccustomed urge to hold him close. When he went ahead and did just that, it took him two attempts before he worked out where to put his arms. He pulled Max Jordan cautiously against his shoulder. They stood there stiffly, leaning towards each other, their knees slightly bent.
Then Perdu whispered into Jordan’s ear: ‘Your father is a small-hearted ignoramus.’
Max flinched, but Perdu held him in an iron grip. He spoke quietly, as though he were confiding a secret in the young man: ‘He deserves to imagine people gossiping about him. Instead, they’re probably talking about you, and they’re wondering how someone like your father can have such an amazing, magnificent son – maybe his greatest achievement.’
Max swallowed hard.
His voice was reedy as he whispered back, ‘My mother said he didn’t mean it; he just couldn’t express his love. Every time he swore at me and beat me, he was showing his great love for me.’
Now Perdu seized his young companion by the shoulders, looked him in the eye and said more emphatically, ‘Monsieur Jordan. Max. Your mother lied because she wanted to console you, but it’s ridiculous to interpret abuse as love. Do you know what my mother used to say?’
‘Don’t play with those grubby kids?’
‘Oh no, she was never elitist. She said that far too many women are the accomplices of cruel, indifferent men. They lie for these men. They lie to their own children. Because their fathers treated them exactly the same way. These women always retain some hope that love is hiding behind the cruelty, so that the anguish doesn’t drive them mad. Truth is, though, Max, there’s no love there.’
Max wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.
‘Some fathers cannot love their children. They find them annoying. Or uninteresting. Or unsettling. They’re irritated by their children because they’ve turned out differently than they had expected. They’re irritated because the children were the wife’s wish to patch up the marriage when there was nothing left to patch up, her means of forcing a loving marriage where there was no love. And such fathers take it out on the children. Whatever they do, their fathers will be nasty and mean to them.’
‘Please stop.’
‘And the children, the delicate, little, yearning children,’ Perdu continued more softly, because he was terribly moved by Max’s inner turmoil, ‘do everything they can to be loved. Everything. They think that it must somehow be their fault that their father cannot love them. But Max,’ and here Perdu lifted Jordan’s chin, ‘it has nothing to do with them. You already discovered that in your wonderful novel. We cannot decide to love. We cannot compel anyone to love us. There’s no secret recipe, only love itself. And we are at its mercy – there’s nothing we can do.’
Max was crying now, sobbing uncontrollably, and he sank to his knees and put his arms around Monsieur Perdu’s legs.
‘Now, now,’ the latter murmured. ‘It’s okay. Want to have a go at steering?’
Max dug his fingers into his trouser legs. ‘No! I want to smoke! I want to get drunk! I want to find myself at last! I want to write! I want to decide who loves me and who doesn’t. I want to determine whether love hurts, I want to kiss women, I want—’
‘Yes, Max. Shh. It’s okay. We’ll tie up; we’ll get ourselves something to smoke and drink; and the other stuff with women – we’ll see about that other stuff.’
Perdu pulled the young man to his feet. Max leaned against him and soaked his ironed shirt with tears and saliva.
‘It makes you sick!’ he sobbed.
‘You’re right, it does. But please be sick into the water, Monsieur, and not on the deck; otherwise you’ll have to mop it clean again.’
Max Jordan’s sobs were interspersed with laughter. He cried and laughed as Perdu held him in his arms.
A tremor ran through the book barge and the rear deck hit the bank with a loud thump, throwing the men first against the piano and then to the floor. Books rained down from the shelves.
Max gave a ‘hmpf’ as a fat volume fell on his stomach.
‘Take ’our knee out o’ my ’outh,’ Perdu requested.
Then he looked out the window, and he didn’t like what he saw.
‘We’re drifting downstream!’
18