And there was the Milky Way. Perdu had first glimpsed this smeary veil of stars as a boy, bundled up warmly in a jacket and blanket in a buttercup meadow near the Brittany coast. He had stared up into the blue-black night sky for hours while his parents tried once more to save their marriage at a Breton fest-noz party in Pont-Aven. Every time there was a shooting star, Jean Perdu made a wish that Lirabelle Bernier and Joaquin Perdu might again laugh with each other rather than at each other, that they would dance a gavotte to the sound of the bagpipes, the violin and the bandoneon instead of standing stony-faced, arms crossed, on the edge of the dance floor.
Young Jean had gazed out into the depths of space, watching in raptures as the heavens continued to turn. He had felt safe, ensconced in the heart of that endless summer night. For those few hours Jean Perdu had grasped life’s secrets and purposes. He had been at peace with himself, everything in its rightful place. He had known that nothing ever ends, that everything in life flows into everything else and that he could do no wrong.
As a man, he had only once felt as intensely: with Manon.
Manon and he had sought out the stars, venturing further and further from the cities into the darkest corner of Provence. In the mountains around Sault they discovered remote farmsteads that were hidden away in stone sinkholes and rocky ravines bristling with thyme bushes. Only there did the summer night sky display itself in full clarity and depth.
‘Did you know we’re all children of the stars?’ Manon had asked, her warm lips snug to his ear so as not to break the mountain silence.
‘When the stars imploded billions of years ago, iron and silver, gold and carbon came raining down. And the iron from that stardust is in us today – in our mitochondria. Mothers pass on the stars and their iron to their children. Who knows, Jean, you and I might be made of the dust from one and the same star, and maybe we recognised each other by its light. We were searching for each other. We are star seekers.’
He had looked up and wondered if they could see the light of the dead star that lived on inside them.
Manon and he had chosen one twinkling celestial dot – a star that was still shining, although it had conceivably disappeared long ago.
‘Death means nothing, Jean. We’ll forever be what we once were for each other.’
The celestial pearls were reflected in the Yonne River. Dancing on the river, each star rocked alone, making gentle contact only when the waves met and, for the briefest instant, two dots of light came together.
Jean could no longer find their star.
When Perdu glanced at Ida and noticed that she was watching him, they were not man and woman but two travellers, each on a specific quest.
Perdu saw Ida’s pain flickering in her eyes, saw that the red-haired woman was struggling to embrace a new future that felt even now like a second choice. She had been abandoned, or had left before she was rejected. The presence of the person who had been her pole star, and for whom she’d presumably forsworn many things, lingered over her smile like a veil.
All of us preserve time. We preserve the old versions of the people who have left us. And under our skin, under the layer of wrinkles and experience and laughter, we, too, are old versions of ourselves. Directly below the surface, we are our former selves: the former child, the former lover, the former daughter.
Ida was not looking for comfort on these rivers; she was looking for herself, for her place in this new, unfamiliar, second-class future. On her own.
‘And you?’ her face asked. ‘And you, stranger?’
Perdu knew only that he wanted to reach Manon to ask her forgiveness for his vain and foolish act.
Then Ida suddenly said quietly, ‘I really didn’t want to be free. I didn’t want to have to build a new life; I was fine as I was. Maybe I didn’t love my husband the way people love in books. But it wasn’t bad. Not bad is good enough. It is enough to stay. Not to cheat. Not to have any regrets. No, I don’t regret the small love of my life.’
Anke and Corinna gazed tenderly at their friend, and Corinna asked, ‘Is that an answer to my question yesterday about why you hadn’t left him long ago if he wasn’t your big love?’
Small love. Big love. Wasn’t it terrible that love came in several sizes?
When Jean looked at Ida, who had no regrets about her previous life, he hesitated, but went ahead and asked: ‘And … what did he think of your time together?’
‘Our small love wasn’t enough for him after twenty-five years. He’s found his big love now. She’s seventeen years younger than me and very flexible: she can polish her toenails holding the brush in her mouth.’
Corinna and Anke snorted with laughter, and Ida joined in.
Later they had a game of cards. At midnight a radio station started to play swing: the Benny Goodman Sextet’s cheerful ‘Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen,’ dreamy ‘Cape Cod’ and then Louis Armstrong’s melancholy ‘We Have All the Time in the World’.
Max Jordan danced with Ida – or at least shuffled his feet – and Corinna and Anke danced with each other. Jean stuck to his chair.
The last time he had heard these songs Manon was still alive.
What a terrible thought: ‘She was still alive.’
When Ida noticed Perdu battling for composure, she whispered something to Max and stepped away from him.