He remembered that he had felt the same about the scent of lavender as a young man, even before he had met Manon. A shock wave. As though his heart knew even then that at some point far in the future this scent would be associated with longing. With pain. With love. With a woman.
He took a deep breath and let this memory sweep through him from head to toe. Yes, maybe he had sensed long ago, at Max’s age, the shock wave Manon would soon send through his life.
Jean Perdu took the flag that Manon had sewn down from the prow and smoothed it out. Then he kneeled and laid his eye on the book bird’s eye, on the spot where the drop of Manon’s blood had dried into a dark stain.
We’re nights apart, Manon.
As he kneeled there with his head tilted, he whispered:
Nights and days and countries and oceans. Thousands of lives have come and gone, and you are waiting for me.
In a room somewhere, next door.
Knowing and loving me.
In my mind you still love me.
You are the fear that cuts stone inside me.
You are the life that awaits expectantly inside me.
You are the death I fear.
You happened to me, and I withheld my words from you. My sorrow. My memories.
Your place inside me and all our time together.
I lost our star.
Do you forgive me?
Manon?
26
‘Max! Another chamber of horrors ahead!’
Jordan dragged himself out on deck. ‘Want to bet that the lock-keeper’s mutt pees on my hand again, like the ones at the last thousand locks or so? My fingers are all bloody from winding these damn handles and opening the lock paddles. Will these gentle hands ever be able to caress another vowel?’ Reproachfully, Max held out red hands dotted with tiny suppurating blisters.
Having passed countless pastures from which cattle descended into the shallow waters to cool off, and the imposing castles of former royal mistresses, they were now approaching the La Grange lock shortly before Sancerre.
The wine-growing village sat on top of a hill that was visible from afar and signalled the southern limit of the twenty-kilometre-long Loire Valley nature reserve.
Weeping willows trailed their branches in the water like playful fingers. The book barge entered the embrace of shifting green walls that seemed to close in around them.
It was true that a jittery dog had barked at them at every lock that day. And every yapping dog had peed unerringly on the precise bollard to which Max tied the two ropes that held the book barge steady in the lock while the water flowed in and drained out again. This time Max let the two lines slide from his fingertips onto the deck.
‘Don’t worry, Capitano! Cuneo will take care of the lock.’
The short-legged Italian set the ingredients for the evening meal to one side, clambered up the ladder in his flowery apron, pulling on his brightly coloured oven gloves when he reached the top, and swung the mooring line back and forth like a snake. The dog retreated in the face of this rope boa constrictor and trotted sullenly away.
Cuneo then twisted the iron rod with one hand to open the paddle regulating the inflow; his tensed muscles bulged under his striped short-sleeved shirt. He sang ‘Que Sera, Sera’ in a gondolier’s tenor as he worked, and winked at the delighted lock-keeper’s wife while her husband wasn’t looking. He handed the man a can of beer as they sailed past. This earned Salvatore a smile and the tip-off that there was a dance at Sancerre that evening, and that the harbourmaster at the next harbour had run out of diesel. He also replied in the negative to Cuneo’s most important question: the cargo boat Moonlight had not passed this way in a long time. Last seen towards the end of Mitterrand’s lifetime, or thereabouts.
Perdu watched Cuneo’s reaction as he received this news.
The guy had been hearing the same word for a week now: ‘No no no.’ They had asked lock-keepers, harbourmasters, skippers, even customers who beckoned to the Literary Apothecary from the bank. The Italian would thank them, his face impassive. He must have an unquenchable flame of hope burning inside him. Or did he simply keep on looking out of habit?
Habit is a vain and treacherous goddess. She lets nothing disrupt her rule. She smothers one desire after another: the desire to travel, the desire for a better job or a new love. She stops us from living as we would like, because habit prevents us from asking ourselves whether we continue to enjoy doing what we do.
Cuneo joined Perdu at the wheel.
‘Aye, Capitano. I lost my love. What about the boy?’ he asked. ‘What has he lost?’
The two men looked over at Max, who was leaning on the railing and staring at the water, his thoughts apparently far, far away.
Max was talking less and had given up playing the piano.
I’ll try to be a good friend, he had said to Perdu. What had he meant by ‘try’?
‘He’s lost his muse, Signor Salvatore. Max made a pact with her and gave up his normal life. But his muse has gone. Now he doesn’t have a life – either a normal one or an artistic one. And so he’s on a quest to find her.’