‘You do that, sonny. I’m on the internet every last Friday in the month, from eleven to three.’
‘You still owe us an answer,’ said Perdu. ‘After all, both of us danced. Well? And give us a straight answer – I can’t stand lies. Did you write Southern Lights? Are you Sanary?’
Olson turned his wrinkled face to the sun. He took off his ridiculous hat and swept his white hair back.
‘Me? Sanary? What makes you think that?’
‘Technique. The words.’
‘Ah, I know what you mean! “The great Mamapapa.” Wonderful. The personification of everybody’s longing for the ultimate caregiver, the mothering father. Or “rose love”, blooming and fragrant, but without thorns, which is to misconstrue the nature of the rose. Magnificent, every word of it. But not mine, sad to say. Sanary has no regard for conventions, but I consider him a great philanthropist. Which is not a claim I can make for myself. I don’t like people much, although I also get diarrhoea if I have to respect social etiquette. No, my dear John Lost – it’s not me. And that is the unfortunate truth.’
P. D. struggled out of the car and hobbled around to the other side.
‘Listen, Cuneo. I’ll look after your old jalopy until you come back. Or don’t come back, who knows.’
Cuneo was undecided, but when Max picked up his books and bottle carrier and hauled them over to the boat, Cuneo grabbed the toolbox and the leather suitcase too.
‘Capitano Perduto, may I come aboard?’
‘Please do. I would be honoured, Signor Cuneo.’
As Max prepared to cast off, the cat woman leaned on the Renault’s bonnet, her expression inscrutable, and Perdu shook P. D. Olson’s hand in farewell.
‘Did you really dream about me? Or was that idle talk?’ he asked.
Per David Olson gave a roguish smile. ‘A world of words is never real. I read that once in a book by a German called Gerlach, Gunter Gerlach. Not for dimwits.’ He thought for a second. ‘Head for Cuisery, on the Seille River. Maybe you’ll find Sanary there. If she’s alive.’
‘She?’ asked Perdu.
‘Hey, what do I know? I always imagine that anything interesting is female. Don’t you?’ Olson grinned and eased himself carefully into Cuneo’s old car. He waited there for the young woman to join him.
She, meanwhile, clasped Perdu in her arms.
‘You owe me something too,’ she said huskily and sealed Perdu’s lips with a kiss.
It was the first time a woman had kissed him in twenty years, and even in his wildest dreams Jean could not have imagined how intoxicating it was.
She sucked him in, and her tongue briefly met his. Then, eyes blazing, she thrust Jean away.
‘Even if I did desire you, what business is that of yours?’ said her angry, proud gaze.
Hallelujah. What did I do to earn that?
‘Cuisery?’ asked Max. ‘What’s that?’
‘Paradise,’ said Perdu.
24
Cuneo took up quarters in the second cabin, and then declared the galley his private territory. The burly man with the receding hairline extracted spices, oils and blends from his suitcase and bottle carrier, and arranged them alongside a formidable battery of home-made mixtures used to spice up dishes, to enhance dips or simply ‘to sniff and be happy’.
Noting Perdu’s sceptical expression, he asked: ‘Something wrong?’
‘No, Signor Cuneo. It’s just …’
It’s just that I’m not used to such nice aromas. They’re too good. Too unbearably good. And not ‘happy’.
‘I once knew a woman,’ Cuneo began, as he continued to order his things and carefully check his knives, ‘who wept when she smelled roses. Another woman found it incredibly erotic when I baked paté en cro?te. Aromas do funny things to the soul.’
Paté happiness, thought Perdu. Under P. Or under L for the Language of Aromas. Would he really include all this in his encyclopedia of emotions one day?
How about starting tomorrow? No – how about right now?!
All he needed was a pen and paper, and then someday, letter by letter, he would have achieved his dream. Would, should, could …
Now. It is only ever now. So do it, you coward. Breathe underwater at last.
‘For me it’s lavender,’ he admitted hesitantly.
‘Do you have to weep, or the opposite?’
‘Both. It’s the scent of my greatest failure – and happiness.’
Now Cuneo shook some pebbles out of a plastic bag and arranged them on the sideboard.
‘This is my failure and my happiness,’ he declared, unbidden. ‘Time. It rubs the rough edges that hurt us smooth. Because I tend to forget that, I’ve kept a pebble from every river I’ve ever travelled.’