Then the landscape changed. The canal was higher now, and they could look down into people’s gardens.
By the time they had entered the Champagne region with its many fisheries, Max was operating the locks almost like an old pro. An increasing number of side channels flowed off from the canal into lakes. Gulls rose shrieking from patches of reeds and clumps of bulrushes and wheeled inquisitively over the waterborne Literary Apothecary.
‘What’s the next major mooring place?’ asked Perdu.
‘Montargis. The canal flows right through the town centre.’ Max flicked through the houseboating book. ‘The flower-filled town where pralines were invented. We should look for a bank there. I’d kill for a piece of chocolate.’
And I’d do the same for some detergent and a fresh shirt.
Max had washed their shirts with liquid hand soap, so they both smelled of rose potpourri.
Then a thought struck Perdu. ‘Montargis? We should pay a visit to P. D. Olson first.’
‘Olson? The P. D. Olson? Do you know him too?’
‘Know’ was too strong a word. Jean Perdu had been a young bookseller when Per David Olson was being talked about as a potential Nobel laureate for literature – along with Philip Roth and Alice Munro.
How old would Olson be now? Eighty-two? He’d moved to France thirty years ago. La grande nation appealed to this descendant of a Viking clan a lot more than his American homeland did.
‘A nation that has less than a thousand years of culture to look back on, no myths, no superstition, no collective memories, values or sense of shame; nothing but pseudo-Christian warrior morals, deviant wheat, an amoral arms lobby, and rampant sexist racism’ – those were the words of a New York Times article in which he had laid into the United States before leaving the country.
However, the most interesting thing about P. D. Olson was that his was one of eleven names on Jean Perdu’s list of possible authors of Sanary’s Southern Lights. And P.D. lived in Cepoy, a village on the canal just this side of Montargis.
‘So what do we do? Ring his doorbell and say, “Hi, P.D., old buddy, did you write Southern Lights?”’
‘Exactly. What else?’
Max puffed out his cheeks. ‘Well, any normal person would write an email,’ he said.
Jean Perdu had to restrain himself from making a remark that smacked of ‘we had to walk to school uphill both ways, and things were still better than now.’
In place of a harbour, Cepoy had two large iron rings in the grass, through which they pulled the Literary Apothecary’s ropes taut.
Soon afterwards the owner of the waterside youth hostel – a sunburned man with a red bulge on the back of his neck – directed them to the old rectory where P. D. Olson lived.
They knocked on the door, and it was opened by a woman straight out of a Pieter Bruegel painting. A flat face, hair like coarse flax on the spindle, a white lace collar on a plain grey smock. She said neither ‘Hello’ nor ‘What do you want?’ nor even ‘We don’t buy from door-to-door salesmen’; she simply opened the door and waited in silence – a silence as hard as stone.
‘Bonjour, Madame. We’d like to see Monsieur Olson,’ said Perdu after a pause.
‘He doesn’t know we’re coming,’ added Max.
‘We’ve come by boat from Paris. Unfortunately, we don’t have a phone.’
‘Or any money.’
Perdu elbowed Max in the ribs. ‘But that’s not why we’ve come.’
‘Is he at home?’
‘I’m a bookseller and we met at a book fair once. In Frankfurt, in 1985.’
‘I’m an interpreter of dreams. And an author. Max Jordan. Pleased to meet you. You wouldn’t have any leftovers from yesterday’s casserole? All we have on our boat is a tin of white beans and some Whiskas.’
‘Plead all you like, gentlemen, but there’ll be no forgiveness and no casserole,’ they heard a voice say. ‘Margareta has been deaf since her fiancé threw himself off a church tower. She tried to save him and got caught up in the midday bell ringing. She lip-reads only with people she knows. Damn church! Heaps misery on any who haven’t already given up hope.’
Before them stood the notorious critic of America: P. D. Olson, a stunted Viking in a pair of rough cord trousers, a collarless shirt and a stripy waistcoat.
‘Monsieur Olson, we do apologise for ambushing you like this, but we have an urgent question we—’
‘Yes, yes. Of course, everything’s urgent in Paris, but it’s not the same here, gentlemen. Here time cuts its own cloth. Here the enemies of mankind toil in vain. Let’s have a little drink and make acquaintances first,’ he said, inviting in his two visitors.
‘The enemies of mankind?’ Max said under his breath. He was obviously concerned that they might have run into a madman.
‘You’re regarded as a legend,’ he tried by way of conversation when Olson had taken a hat from the coat-rack and they were striding along beside him towards the bar tabac.