‘A what?’ asked Cuneo, staring after the orc.
‘A fantasy convention. The village is packed with people dressed up as their favourite author or character. Wicked.’
‘Like – Moby Dick, the whale?’ asked Cuneo.
Perdu and Cuneo gaped at creatures that seemed to have sprung from Middle Earth or Winterfell. Such is the power of books.
Cuneo asked which book each costumed figure came from, and Max gave him the lowdown, glowing with excitement. Yet even he had to pass when a woman in a scarlet leather coat and white bucket-top boots came walking towards them.
Perdu explained, ‘Gentlemen, that lady isn’t in fancy dress; she’s the medium who speaks to Colette and George Sand. How she does it, she doesn’t say. She claims to meet them in time-travel dreams.’
There was room in Cuisery for anything remotely associated with literature. There was a doctor who specialised in literary schizophrenia. He was consulted by people whose alter ego was a reincarnation of Dostoyevsky or the German mystic Hildegard von Bingen. Some of his patients had become entangled in their many pseudonyms.
Perdu directed his steps towards the home of Samy Le Trequesser, the chairman of the Cuisery guild and supporters’ association. A word from Le Trequesser would open doors so that he might talk to booksellers about Sanary. Le Trequesser lived above the old printer’s shop.
‘Will the book boss give us a password or something?’ asked Max. He could hardly tear himself away from the book displays outside every other shop.
‘More like “something”.’
Cuneo kept stopping to read the bistro menus and jot the details down in his recipe book. They were in the Bresse region, which boasted that it was the cradle of innovative French cuisine.
They gave their names at the printer’s shop and, after waiting awhile in the chairman’s office, they got a real surprise: Samy Le Trequesser was not a chairman – she was a chairwoman.
31
Facing them across a desk that appeared to have been assembled from driftwood sat the woman Salvo had fished out of the Seille the previous evening.
Samy was Samantha. She was wearing a white linen dress. She also had on hobbit feet, huge and extremely hairy ones.
‘So,’ asked Samy, crossing her shapely legs and giving one hobbit foot a delightful waggle, ‘how can I help you?’
‘Um, yes. I’m looking for the author of a specific book. The name’s a pseudonym, a cryptic one, and—’
‘Are you better now?’ Cuneo interrupted.
‘Yes, fine.’ Samy flashed Salvo a smile. ‘And thank you, Salvo, for saying that I can kiss you before I grow old. I haven’t been able to get it off my mind since.’
‘Can you buy those furry feet in Cuisery?’ Max wanted to know.
‘Anyway, getting back to the book Southern Lights—’
‘Yes, at Eden. It’s a leisure cum info cum tourist cum rip-off centre, and it sells hobbit feet, orc ears, slit stomachs …’
‘The author might be a woman—’
‘I want to cook for you, Signora Samantha. And it’s no trouble if you feel like taking a swim first.’
‘I think I’ll get myself some hobbit feet too. As slippers. Wow, that would really freak out Kafka.’
Perdu looked out the window, struggling to keep his composure.
‘Will you all shut up? Sanary! Southern Lights! I want to know who the real author is! Please!’
It had come out louder than he’d intended. Max and Cuneo looked at Jean in surprise, but Samy had leaned back in her seat as though she were beginning to enjoy this.
‘I’ve spent twenty years looking for him. Or her. The book … it’s …’ Jean Perdu was trying his best to find the right words, but all he could see was light sparkling on a river. ‘That book is like the woman I used to love. It leads to her. It’s liquid love. It’s the dose of love I could more or less bear, and yet nevertheless feel. It’s like a straw I’ve been breathing through for the last twenty years.’
Jean ran his hand over his face.
But that wasn’t the whole truth; no longer the only truth.
‘It helped me to survive. I don’t need the book any more, because now I can … breathe on my own again. But I would like to say thank you.’
Max looked at him with great respect and astonishment.
Samy’s face had broken into a broad grin.
‘A book for catching your breath. I understand.’
She looked out the window. More and more fictional characters were gathering in the streets outside.
‘I didn’t expect someone like you to ever come along,’ she said with a sigh.
Jean sensed his back muscles tensing.
‘Of course you’re not the first, but there haven’t been many of you. The others all left with the riddle unsolved; none of them asked the right questions. Asking questions is an art.’