‘Dreamed of Dracula? Where are we – in Transylvania?’
‘On the Canal du Loing heading towards the Canal de Briare. We’re following the Bourbonnais route you chose, which will take us to the Mediterranean.’ Perdu sipped his coffee. ‘All because of some crab salad. Stoker had eaten some rotten crab and contracted food poisoning. Between bouts of sickness he had his first dreams about the lord of the vampires. They marked the end of his creative slump.’
‘Really? Well, I didn’t dream up a bestseller,’ mumbled Max, dunking his croissant in his coffee, making sure not to let a single crumb escape. ‘I wanted to read my book, but the letters kept sliding off the page.’ Then he perked up. ‘Do you think an attack of indigestion would help me come up with a story?’
‘Who knows?’
‘Don Quixote started out as a nightmare before it became a classic. Did you dream of anything useful?’
‘That I could breathe underwater.’
‘Wow. You know what that means?’
‘That I can breathe underwater in my dreams.’
Max curled his top lip into an Elvis smile, then said solemnly, ‘No. It means you’re no longer choked by your emotions. Especially not down there.’
‘“Down there”? Where’s that from? The 1905 Good Housewives calendar?’
‘Nope. From the 1992 Compendium of Dream Interpretation. That was my bible. My mother blacked out the bad words with a marker. I used it to interpret everyone’s dreams: my parents’, the neighbours’, my classmates’ – I knew Freud inside out.’
Jordan was doing a few stretches and tai chi exercises. ‘It got me into trouble, particularly when I interpreted the headmistress’s dream about horses. I’m telling you, women and horses are something else.’
‘That’s what my father always says.’
Perdu recalled that when he was getting to know Manon, he had had dreams in which she turned into a female eagle. He tried to catch and tame her. He would chase her into the water because when her wings were wet, she couldn’t escape.
We are immortal in the dreams of our loved ones. And our dead live on after their deaths in our dreams. Dreams are the interface between the worlds, between time and space.
As Max stuck his head out into the breeze to blow the sleep from his eyes, Perdu said, ‘Look, that’s our first lock up ahead.’
‘What? That baby’s bath next to the dollhouse all covered in flowers? We’ll never fit in there.’
‘Just you wait and see.’
‘We’re too long.’
‘This is a péniche and smaller than the Freycinet standard all French locks are built to.’
‘Not this one. It’s too narrow.’
‘We’re 5.04 metres wide, which leaves at least 6 centimetres, 3 to the right and 3 to the left.’
‘I feel sick.’
‘Imagine how I feel. Because you’re going to operate the locks.’
The two men looked at each other and burst out laughing.
The lock-keeper impatiently beckoned them forward. His dog planted its legs wide and snarled at the boat; meanwhile, the lock-keeper’s wife brought out some freshly baked plum tart and let them keep the plate in return for the latest John Irving.
‘And a kiss from the young writer there.’
‘Give her another book, Perdu, I beg you,’ Jordan hissed. ‘That woman’s got a beard.’
She insisted on a peck on the cheek.
The lock-keeper called his wife an ogress while their shaggy blond dog barked himself hoarse and peed on Max’s hand as he held on to the ladder. In return, the exasperated lock-keeper’s wife berated her husband for being a show-off and an amateur janitor. He irritably shouted, ‘Bring her in!’
Wind the left lock gate shut, walk around, wind the right lock gate shut. Walk forward, open the upper lock barriers on both sides – water runs in. Open the right lock gate, walk around, open the top left one.
‘Take her out now!’ The lock-keeper was stern and could probably bark this order in twelve different languages.
‘How many locks left before the Rh?ne?’
‘About a hundred and fifty. Why do you want to know, Jordan?’
‘We should take the canal between Champagne and Burgundy on the way back.’
Way back? thought Perdu. There is no way back.
21
The Loing Canal ran level with the surrounding countryside. They saw the occasional single-minded cyclist, dozing angler or lonely jogger on the towpath. Meadows where sturdy white Charolais cattle grazed and fields of sunflowers alternated with lush woodland. Sometimes a car driver would give them a friendly honk of his horn. The small villages they passed had good moorings, many of them free of charge and vying for boats to tie up so that the crew would spend their money in the local shops.