This last word was Samy’s new favourite.
‘We all live in wishableness,’ she said. ‘Each in a different kind.’
32
‘The Rh?ne is a nightmare, to put it mildly,’ said Max and pointed to the nuclear power station. It was the seventeenth one they’d passed since the point where the Sa?ne meets the Rh?ne near Lyons. Fast-breeder reactors alternated with vineyards and motorways. Cuneo had given up on fishing.
They had wandered around Cuisery and its literary catacombs for a further three days. Now they were approaching Provence; they recognised the chalky hills near Orange that reared up like the gateway to southern France.
The sky was in flux. It had begun to take on the deep-blue glow of the air above the Mediterranean at the height of summer, when the water and the heavens reflect and intensify each other.
‘Like layers of puff pastry, blue upon blue upon blue. The land of blue pastries,’ murmured Max.
He had discovered a delicious addiction to forming combinations of words and images; he would play tag with words.
Occasionally Max would get his word games all mixed up, and Samy would chortle lustily. Her laugh was like the honking of a flying crane, thought Jean.
Cuneo was absolutely besotted with Samy, even though she hadn’t yet taken him up on his offer. She wanted Perdu to solve the mystery first.
She would often sit in the wheelhouse, playing yes-no-don’t know with Perdu.
‘Does Sanary have kids?’
‘No.’
‘A husband?’
‘No.’
‘Two?’
She laughed like an entire flock of cranes.
‘Did she ever write a second book?’
‘Nooo,’ said Samy, drawing it out. ‘Unfortunately.’
‘Did she write Southern Lights when she was happy?’
A long silence.
Perdu let the landscape float past as Samy contemplated her answer.
After Orange, they quickly left Chateauneuf-du-Pape behind. They would be in Avignon in time for dinner, and from the ancient Papal City Jean could hire a car and within an hour be in the town of Bonnieux in the Luberon.
Too quick, he thought. Should I – to use Max’s words – ring Luc’s doorbell and say, ‘Hello, Basset, you old wine whisperer, I used to be your wife’s lover.’
‘Between yes and no,’ Samy answered. ‘Difficult question. We don’t generally lie around for days wallowing in our happiness like roast beef in gravy, do we? Happiness is so short-lived. How long have you ever been genuinely happy in one stretch?’
Jean considered this.
‘About four hours. I was driving from Paris to Mazan. I wanted to see my sweetheart, and we’d arranged to meet at a small hotel called Le Siècle, opposite the church. I was happy then. For the whole journey. I sang. I imagined her whole body and I sang to it.’
‘Four hours? That’s so terribly beautiful.’
‘Yes. I was happier in those four hours than during the four days that followed. But looking back I’m happy to have had those four days too.’ Jean faltered. ‘Do we only decide in retrospect that we’ve been happy? Don’t we notice when we’re happy, or do we realise only much later that we were?’
Samy sighed. ‘That really would be stupid.’
Musing over belatedly discovered happiness, Jean steered them swiftly and safely down the Rh?ne, which in these parts resembled a major maritime route. There was no one standing on the bank, waving to them to come and sell them books. The locks were fully automatic and handled dozens of ships at a time. Their languid canal days were well and truly over.
The closer Jean got to Manon country, the more his time with Manon occupied his thoughts. How it had felt to touch her.
As though she could read his mind, Samy mused aloud: ‘Isn’t it amazing how physical love is? Our body is better at recalling what it felt like to touch someone than our brain is at remembering the things that person said.’ She blew on the fine hairs on her lower arm. ‘I remember my father mainly in terms of his body. How he smelled and how he walked. How it felt to lay my head on his shoulder or put my hand in his. Almost the only thing I can recall of his voice is how he used to say, “My little Sasa”. I miss the warmth of his body and I’m still furious that he’ll never come to the telephone again, even though I’ve got important things to tell him. God, it makes me mad! But I miss his body most. Where he always used to sit in his armchair there’s nothing but air. Stupid, empty air.’