‘Don’t call me a legend, young man. It makes me sound like a corpse.’
Max said nothing, and Jean Perdu decided to follow his example.
As Olson preceded them through the village, his gait betraying a stroke sometime in the past, he said, ‘Look around! People here have been fighting for their homeland for centuries! Over there – do you see how the trees have been planted and the roofs tiled? See how the main roads give the village a wide berth? All part of a strategy that was centuries in the making. Nobody here thinks of the present.’
He greeted a man who came clattering past in a Renault with a goat in the passenger seat.
‘Here they work and think for the future, always for those who will come after them. And then their descendants do the same. This land will be destroyed only if one generation stops thinking of the next and tries to change everything now.’
They reached the bar tabac. Inside, a TV over the bar was showing a horse race. Olson ordered three small glasses of red wine.
‘A bet, the backwoods and a little booze. What more does a man need?’ he said with pleasure.
‘Anyway, we’ve got a question—’ Max began.
‘Easy, son,’ said Olson. ‘You smell of potpourri and look like a DJ with those earmuffs on. But I know you – you’ve written something. Dangerous truths. Not a bad start.’ He clinked glasses with Jordan.
Max glowed with pride. Perdu felt a stab of jealousy.
‘And you? Are you the literary apothecary?’ Olson said, turning to him. ‘What ailments do you prescribe my books for?’
‘For retired husband syndrome,’ Perdu answered, more pointedly than he had intended.
Olson stared at him. ‘Aha. And how does that work?’
‘When, after his retirement, a husband gets under a woman’s feet so much that she feels like killing him, she can read your books and she’ll feel like killing you instead. Your books are lightning conductors.’
Max looked perplexed. Olson pinned Perdu with his gaze – and erupted into gales of laughter.
‘God, that brings it all back! My father was always getting in my mother’s way and criticising her. Why do you have to peel the potatoes before cooking them? Welcome home, dear, I’ve done a little tidying in the fridge. Terrible. He’d been a workaholic and didn’t have any hobbies. Fairly soon the boredom and lost dignity made him want to die, but my mum wouldn’t let him. She kept sending him out with the grandchildren, to DIY courses and into the garden. I think she’d have ended up in jail for murder.’ Olson chuckled. ‘We men become a pain if our job’s the only thing we were ever good at.’ He drained his wine in three long swigs.
‘Okay, drink up,’ he said, leaving six euros on the counter. ‘We’re off.’
And because they hoped he would answer their question once he’d had a chance to listen, they, too, knocked back their wine and followed P.D. outside.
In a few minutes they reached the old schoolhouse. The playground was full of cars with registration numbers from all over the Loire region and from as far afield as Orléans and Chartres.
Olson marched purposefully towards the sports hall.
They entered and suddenly found themselves in central Buenos Aires.
Along the left-hand wall: the men. On the chairs to the right: the women. In the centre: the dance floor. At the front, where the climbing rings hung: a tango band. At the end where they were standing: a bar, behind which a short, very rotund man with bulging biceps and a bushy black moustache was serving drinks.
P. D. Olson turned and called over his shoulder, ‘Dance! Both of you. Afterwards I’ll answer whatever questions you like.’
A few seconds later, as the old man strode confidently across the dance floor towards a young woman with a severe ponytail and a slit skirt, he was utterly transformed into a lithe, ageless tanguero who pressed the young woman tightly to him and guided her gracefully around the hall.
While Max gawked at this unsuspected world, Monsieur Perdu grasped right away where he was. He had read about places like this in a book by Jac. Toes: secret tango milongas in school halls, gymnasiums or deserted barns. There dancers of all levels and ages and every nationality would meet up; some would drive hundreds of miles to savour these few hours. One thing united them: they had to keep their passion for the tango a secret from jealous partners and families who greeted these depraved, suggestive, frivolous moves with disgust and rigid, pinch-mouthed embarrassment. No one had a clue where the tangueras were at this time of the afternoon. They thought they were playing sport or attending a course, at a meeting or at the shops, in the sauna, out in the fields or at home. Yet they were dancing for their lives; they were dancing for life itself.
Few did it to meet their mistresses or lovers, for tango was not about that: it was about everything.
MANON’S TRAVEL DIARY
On the Way to Bonnieux