Max often lured customers aboard by playing the piano.
Perdu got into the habit of posting a card to Catherine every day, and collecting new entries for his encyclopedia of minor and moderate emotions in a notebook, for the benefit of the next generation of literary pharmacists.
Each evening he would sit down in the stern and look up at the sky. The Milky Way was always there, and every now and then a shooting star would race past. The frogs gave a cappella concerts and the crickets joined in with a chirp, all to the background beat of lines slapping softly against masts and the occasional chime of a ship’s bell.
New feelings surged through his body. It was only fair that Catherine should hear about them, for she was the one who had set everything in motion. He was still waiting to see what kind of man this would make him.
Catherine, today Max understood that a novel is like a garden where the reader must spend time in order to bloom. I feel strangely paternal when I look at Max. Regards, Perduto.
Catherine, for three seconds when I woke up this morning I had the insight that you are a sculptor of souls, a woman who tames fear. Your hands are turning a stone back into a man. John Lost, menhir.
Catherine, rivers are not like the sea. The sea demands, while rivers give. Here we are, stocking up on contentment, peace, melancholia and the glass-smooth calm of evening that rounds off the day in grey-blue tones. I have kept the sea horse you fashioned out of bread, the one with the peppercorn eyes. It desperately needs a companion. In the humble opinion of Jeanno P.
Catherine, river people only really arrive when they’re afloat. They love books about desert islands. River people would feel nauseated if they knew where they were going to moor the next day. Someone who understands them is J. P. from P., currently of no fixed address.
Perdu had discovered another thing above the rivers – stars that breathed. One day they shone brightly, the next they were pale, then bright again. And this had nothing to do with the haze or with his reading glasses, but with the fact that he no longer simply stared at his own feet.
It looked as though they were breathing to some never-ending slow, deep rhythm. They breathed and watched as the world came and went. Some stars had seen the dinosaurs and the Neanderthals; they had seen the pyramids rise and Columbus discover America. For them, the earth was one more island world in the immeasurable ocean of outer space, its inhabitants microscopically small.
25
At the end of their first week in Briare, a man from the council told them on the quiet that they’d either have to register as a seasonal trader or move on. He happened to be addicted to American thrillers.
‘But from now on, watch out where you moor – by definition French bureaucracy has no blind spots.’
Equipped with food, power, water and the names and mobile numbers of a handful of friendly people living along the waterways, they swung out of the marina and into a side canal of the Loire. Soon they were passing chateaux, dense woods redolent with the scent of resin, and vineyards growing Sauvignon and Pinot Noir grapes to make Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé wines.
The further south they went, the warmer the summer weather. From time to time they would meet a boat with women in bikinis stretched out on deck.
In the river meadows, alders, brambles and wild vines formed a magical jungle, dappled with shimmering, greenish light and spangled with twirling forest particles. Marshy pools lay sparkling among the elderberries and leaning beeches.
Cuneo pulled one fish after another from the murmuring waters, and they sighted herons, ospreys and swifts on the long, shallow, sandy shoals. Here and there, beavers peeked out of the bushes as they hunted for river rats. An ancient and lush France unfolded before their eyes, luxuriant, grand, leafy and remote.
One night they tied up beside an overgrown pasture. It was silent. There was not even the burbling of water, and no sound of traffic was to be heard. They were completely alone, aside from a few owls that sent the occasional call scooting over the water.
After a candlelit dinner they dragged blankets and cushions out onto the deck and lay there – three men, head to head, in a three-pointed star.
The Milky Way was a streak of light, a vapour trail of planets overhead. The silence was almost overpowering, and the blue depths of the night sky seemed to suck them in.
Max conjured forth a thin joint.
‘I protest in the strongest terms,’ said Jean in a relaxed drawl.
‘Aye aye, skipper. Message received. A Dutch guy gave it to me because he didn’t have any money to buy the Houellebecq.’
Max lit the reefer.
Cuneo sniffed. ‘Smells like burned sage.’
He accepted the joint clumsily and took a short, cautious toke.
‘Ugh. Like licking a Christmas tree.’
‘You have to draw it into your lungs and hold it there for as long as possible,’ Max advised him. Cuneo followed his instructions.