‘Come on,’ she said to Jean, opening her arms to him. He was glad he did not to have to confront these familiar tunes, and the many memories they evoked, on his own.
He remained bewildered that Manon was gone, while the songs, the books and life itself simply carried on.
How could they?
How could it all just … carry on?
How afraid he was of death – and life. Of all the days without Manon that lay ahead.
Every song conjured up images of Manon walking and lying and reading, dancing by herself, dancing for him. He saw her sleeping and dreaming and stealing his favourite cheese from his plate.
‘Is that why you wanted to spend the rest of your life without music? Oh, Jean! You loved music so much. You sang for me when I was scared of falling asleep and missing out on time with you. You composed songs on my fingers and toes and nose. You’re musical to the core, Jean – how could you kill yourself like this?’
Yes, how could he. Practice, that’s how.
Jean felt the wind’s caress and heard the women’s laughter. He was slightly tipsy – and overwhelmed with silent gratitude to Ida for holding him.
Manon loved me. And together we watched the stars above.
20
He dreamed he was awake.
He was on the book barge, but everything around him kept changing. The wheel shattered, the windows misted up, the rudders failed. The air was thick, as though he were wading through rice pudding. And Perdu again lost his way in the maze of watery tunnels. The boat creaked and ripped apart.
Manon was standing by his side.
‘But you’re dead,’ he groaned.
‘Am I really?’ she asked. ‘What a shame.’
The ship broke up, and he plunged into the water.
‘Manon!’ he screamed. She watched as he fought against the current, against a whirlpool that had formed in the black water. She watched him. She didn’t reach out to him, just watched him drown.
He sank and sank.
But he didn’t wake up.
Very deliberately, he breathed in and out – and in and out again.
I can breathe underwater!
Then he touched the bottom.
At that moment Monsieur Perdu woke up. He was lying on his side, and opening his eyes he saw a halo of light dancing over Lindgren’s red-and-white fur. The cat was lounging next to his feet. She got up, stretched and then, purring, meandered up to Jean’s face and tickled him with her whiskers. ‘So?’ her expression seemed to say. ‘What did I tell you?’ Her purring was as soft as the distant hum of a boat engine.
He remembered waking with this same anxious amazement once as a boy, the first time he had dreamed of flying. He had jumped off a rooftop and sailed with outspread arms into a castle courtyard. And he had found out that if he wanted to fly, he first had to jump.
He climbed out on deck. Mist drifted, as white as cobwebs, over the river, and steam rose from the nearby meadows. The light was still young, the day had just been born. He revelled in the sight of so much sky and in the huge variety of colours around him. The white mist, grey outlines, subtle pinks and milky orange.
A sleepy silence lay over the craft in the marina. Over on the Baloo all was quiet.
Jean Perdu crept down to check on Max. The author had bedded down among the books on one of the reading couches in the section that Perdu had christened How to Become a Real Person. One book was by the divorce therapist Sophie Marcelline, a colleague of his regular Friday customer, the therapist Eric Lanson. Sophie’s advice on relationship troubles was a month’s mourning for every year the couple had been together, and two months for each year of friendship when friends fell out. And for those who left us for good – the dead – ‘a lifetime, because our love for our dearly departed goes on forever. We miss them until the very last day of our lives.’
Beside the sleeping Max, who was curled up like a little boy, knees tucked into his chest, mouth pursed into a surprised pout, lay Sanary’s Southern Lights. Perdu picked up the slim volume. Max had underlined certain sentences in pencil and jotted some questions in the margins; he had read the book as a book ought to be read.
Reading – an endless journey; a long, indeed never-ending journey that made one more temperate as well as more loving and kind. Max had set out on that journey. With each book he would absorb more of the world, things and people.
Perdu began leafing through the book. He had loved this particular passage too: ‘Love is a house. Everything in a house should be used – nothing mothballed or “spared”. Only if we fully inhabit a house, shunning no room and no door, are we truly alive. Arguing and touching each other tenderly are both important; so are holding each other tight and pushing the other away. We must use absolutely every one of love’s rooms. If not, ghosts and rumours will thrive. Neglected rooms and houses can become treacherous and foul …’