Samy did not avert her eyes from the window, along whose frame short lengths of driftwood dangled from fine threads. If one looked at the flotsam for a while it coalesced into a leaping fish. Or a face, an angel with one wing …
‘Most people only ask questions so they can listen to themselves talk. Or hear something they are able to cope with, but please, nothing that might get the better of them. “Do you love me?” is one of those questions. There should be a total ban on it.’
She tapped her hobbit feet together.
‘Ask your question,’ she ordered.
‘Do I … do I get only one?’ asked Perdu.
Samy smiled warmly.
‘Of course not. You don’t get just one, you get as many as you like. But you have to phrase them so that you receive a yes-or-no answer.’
‘So you know him?’
‘No.’
‘The right question means every word has to be right,’ Max emphasized and elbowed Jean excitedly in the ribs.
Perdu corrected himself: ‘So you know her?’
‘Yes.’
Samy looked kindly at Max. ‘I see, Monsieur Jordan, that you have grasped the art of questioning. The right questions can make a person very happy. How’s your next book coming along? Your second, isn’t it? The curse of the second book, all that expectation. You should leave yourself a good twenty years. The best time would be when everyone’s forgotten about you for a while, then you’ll be free.’
Max’s ears burned red.
‘Next question, soul reader.’
‘Is it Brigitte Caron?’
‘Heavens no!’
‘But Sanary is alive?’
Samy smiled. ‘Oh yes!’
‘Can you … introduce me to her?’
Samy thought this over.
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
‘That wasn’t a yes-no question,’ Max reminded him.
‘Well, I’m cooking bouillabaisse today,’ Cuneo broke in. ‘I’ll pick you up at half past seven. That way you and Capitano Perduto can carry on playing “yes-no-don’t know”. Si? You’re not engaged, by some bad luck? Fancy coming on a little boat trip?’
Samy looked from one man to the next.
‘Yes and no and yes,’ she said decisively. ‘So, that’s everything cleared up. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go out and greet those wonderful creatures and say a few nice words in a language invented by Tolkien. I’ve practised, but I sound like Chewbacca making a New Year’s speech.’
Samy stood up, and they all took another good look at her superlative hobbit-foot slippers.
She turned to face them one last time as she reached the door.
‘Max, did you know that when a star is born, it takes a year for it to reach its full size? Then it spends millions of years busily burning up. Strange, eh? Have you ever tried to invent a new language? Or a few new words? I’d be delighted if France’s most famous living author under thirty were to offer me a new word this evening. Deal?’
Her dark-blue eyes sparkled.
And a little bomb exploded in Max’s imagination, showering his secret inner garden with seeds.
When Salvo Cuneo, dressed in his finest checked shirt, jeans and patent-leather shoes, arrived to pick Samy up from the printer’s that evening, she was standing by the door with three suitcases, a potted fern and her rain cape draped over her arm.
‘I really hope you’re going to take me with you, Salvo, although of course your invitation meant something different. I’ve lived here long enough,’ she said by way of greeting. ‘Nearly ten years. One whole stage, as Hesse says. Now it’s time to head south to learn to breathe anew, to see the sea and to kiss a man again. Goodness, I’m approaching my late fifties. I’m entering the prime of my life.’
Cuneo stared directly into the book woman’s dark-blue eyes.
‘The offer stands, Signora Samy Le Trequesser,’ he said. ‘I am at your service.’
‘I haven’t forgotten, Salvatore Cuneo from Naples.’
He called a car to transport her packed belongings to the boat.
‘Ahem … would I be right in thinking,’ asked a perplexed Perdu, as Salvo lugged the suitcases over the gangway a little later, ‘that you haven’t only come for dinner, but you’re moving in as well?’
‘You would, my dear. May I? For a little while? Until you cast off and toss me overboard?’
‘Of course. There’s a free sofa over by the children’s books,’ said Max.
‘May I have a say?’ asked Perdu.
‘Why? Are you going to say something other than yes?’
‘Um, no.’
‘Thank you.’ Samy was visibly moved. ‘You’ll hardly hear a peep from me. I honestly only sing in my sleep.’
On the postcard Perdu wrote Catherine that night were the phrases Max had invented that afternoon so he could present them to Samy at dinner.
Samy found them so beautiful that she kept repeating them to herself, rolling their sounds back and forth on her tongue like a crumb of cake.
Star salt (the stars’ reflection in a river) Sun cradle (the sea) Lemon kiss (everyone knew exactly what this meant!) Family anchor (the dinner table) Heart notcher (your first lover) Veil of time (you spin around in the sandpit to find you are old and wet your pants when you laugh) Dreamside
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