Perdu let out a deep sigh. ‘Sure. My … son particularly likes doing the toilet.’
Jordan threw him a less-than-friendly look.
Jean looked after Max as he set off with the harbourmaster to connect the pipes to the waste tank. What a spring there was in young Jordan’s step! He had all his hair – and he could presumably eat vast quantities without worrying about his tummy or his hips. But did he realise that he still had a whole lifetime ahead of him to commit some monumental mistakes?
Oh no, I wouldn’t want to be twenty-one again, thought Jean – or only with the same knowledge he had today.
Oh, dammit. Nobody would ever wise up if they hadn’t at some stage been young and stupid.
Yet the more he thought about all the things he no longer possessed compared with Jordan, the more fretful he became. It was as if the years had trickled through his fingers like water – the older he got, the quicker it went. And before he knew it, he’d need tablets for high blood pressure and a flat on the ground floor.
Jean had to think of Vijaya, his childhood friend. His life had been very similar to Perdu’s – until he lost his love and the other found it.
In the summer month when Manon had left Perdu, Vijaya had found his future wife, Kiraii, in a car accident; he had driven around the Place de la Concorde for hours at walking pace, not daring to cross the lanes thick with traffic to exit the roundabout. Kiraii was a worldly wise, warmhearted and determined woman with firm ideas of how she wanted to live. Vijaya had found it easy to step into her life. The short space of time from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. sufficed for his own plans: he remained a director of scientific research, specialising in the structure and reactivity of human cells and their sensory receptors. He wanted to know why a person felt love when he or she ate something specific, why smells conjured up long-buried childhood memories, why one grew fearful of feelings, what made one feel disgust for slime and spiders, and how the body’s cells behaved when a human was human.
‘So you’re searching for the soul,’ Perdu had said during one of their nocturnal phone calls at the time.
‘No, sir. I’m searching for the mechanism. It’s all about action and reaction. Aging, fear and sex all govern your ability to feel. You drink a coffee, and I can explain why you like the taste. You fall in love, and I’ll tell you why your brain acts like an obsessional neurotic’s,’ Vijaya had explained to Perdu.
Kiraii had proposed to the shy biologist, and Perdu’s friend had mumbled yes, stunned to the core by his luck. He must surely have thought of his sensory receptors, spinning like disco balls. He moved to America with the pregnant Kiraii, and sent Perdu regular photos of his twin sons – first as prints, then as email attachments. They were sporty, candid-looking young men who smiled at the camera with a hint of mischief, and they resembled their mother, Kiraii. They were Max’s age.
How differently Vijaya had spent these twenty years!
Max, writer, earmuff wearer and future interpreter of dreams. My decreed ‘son.’ Am I so old I look like a father? And … what would be so bad about that?
Here, in the middle of the river marina, Monsieur Perdu felt an enormous longing for a family, for someone who would remember him with fondness, for a chance to go back to the moment he’d decided not to read the letter.
And you denied Manon exactly the thing you long for: you refused to remember her, to speak her name, to think of her every day with affection and love. Instead you banished her. Shame on you, Jean Perdu. Shame on you for choosing fear.
‘Fear transforms your body like an inept sculptor does a perfect block of stone,’ Perdu heard Vijaya’s voice say inside him. ‘It’s just that you’re chipped away at from within, and no one sees how many splinters and layers have been taken off you. You become ever thinner and more brittle inside, until even the slightest emotion bowls you over. One hug, and you think you’re going to shatter and be lost.’
If Jordan ever needed a piece of fatherly advice, Perdu would tell him: ‘Never listen to fear! Fear makes you stupid.’
19
‘What now?’ asked Max Jordan after they had done some reconnaissance.
Both the little food shop at the marina and the crêperie at the neighbouring campsite had refused to accept books as currency. Their suppliers worked; they didn’t read.
‘White beans with heart and chicken,’ Perdu said.
‘Oh no. I’d have to have a lobotomy to enjoy white beans.’
Max let his eyes wander over the marina. Everywhere people were sitting out on deck, eating, drinking and engaging in lively conversation.
‘We’ll have to crash someone’s party,’ he decided. ‘I’ll wangle us an invitation. Maybe that nice British gent?’
‘Certainly not. That’s sponging. That’s …’