I install myself in this corner on the step-ladder, put on an intelligent face and simply sit and breathe. That’s all.
From my hideaway I can see, mirrored in the open glass door, the sky and a strip of sea in the distance. This view makes everything appear lovelier and softer, even though it’s almost inconceivable that anything here could be more beautiful than it already is. Sanary is the last place on the coast between Marseilles and Toulon, among all the towns made up of little white boxes, where life continues even when there are no more tourists. Naturally, everything is geared towards them from June to August, and it’s impossible to get a table for dinner if you haven’t reserved. When the guests have gone home, they don’t leave empty, draughty houses and deserted supermarket car parks behind them. Life always goes on here. The lanes are narrow, the houses are colourful and small. The residents stick together, and the fishermen sell gigantic fish from their boats at daybreak. This little town could be in the Luberon; it is neighbourly, peculiar and proud. But the Luberon has become the 21st arrondissement of Paris. Sanary is a nostalgic place.
I play pétanque every night, not at the boulodrome, but on Quai Wilson. They leave the floodlights on until an hour before midnight. It’s where the sedate (some would say old) men play, and there’s not a lot of conversation.
It’s the prettiest spot in Sanary. You can see the sea, the town, the lights, the boules, the boats. You’re in the thick of things, yet it’s peaceful. No applause, just the occasional low ‘Aah!’; the click of boule on boule; and when the striker, who is also my new dentist, hits, a cry of ‘Peng!’ My father would love it.
Lately I’ve often pictured myself playing with my father. And talking. Laughing. Oh, Catherine, there is so much more for us to discuss and laugh about.
Where did the last twenty years go?
The south is a vivid blue, Catherine.
Your colour is missing here. It would make everything shine all the more brightly.
Jean
38
Perdu went swimming every morning before the heat set in, and every evening shortly before sunset. He had discovered that this was the only way he could flush the sorrow out of his system and let it flow away, bit by bit.
He had tried praying in church, of course. Singing too. He had hiked through Sanary’s hilly hinterland. He had recited Manon’s story loudly, in the kitchen and on his dawn walks; he had shouted her name to the gulls and the buzzards. But only occasionally did it help.
Hurting time.
The sorrow often arrived and took hold of him as he was falling asleep. Just when he was relaxed and drifting off – it came. He lay in the dark and wept bitterly; and at that moment the world felt reduced to the size of his bedroom, lonely and devoid of all comfort. In those instants he was afraid that he would never be able to smile again and that his pain would never, ever cease. In those gloomy hours a thousand different ‘what ifs’ swirled around in his head and his heart. That his father might die while he was playing boules. That his mother would start to squabble with the television set and waste away with grief. He was afraid that Catherine was reading his letters to her girlfriends and that they were laughing at them together. He was afraid that he was destined to mourn over and over for people he loved.
How should he endure that for the rest of his life? How could anyone endure it?
He wished he could prop his fearful self up in a corner like a broom and walk away.
The sea was the first thing he had found that was large enough to absorb his sorrow.
After a serious workout, Perdu would drift on his back, his feet pointing towards the beach. There, on the waves, with the water spilling through his outspread fingers, he drew up from the depths of his memory every hour he had spent with Manon. He examined each one until he no longer felt any regret that it was past, then he let it go.
So Jean let the waves rock him, raise him up and pass him on. And slowly, infinitely slowly, he began to trust. Not the sea, far from it; no one should make that mistake! Jean Perdu trusted himself again. He wouldn’t go under; he wouldn’t drown in his emotions.
And each time he abandoned himself to the sea another small grain of fear trickled out of him. It was his way of praying.
The whole of July, the whole of August.
One morning the sea was gentle and calm. Jean swam out further than ever before. Finally, a long way from the shore, he surrendered to the delicious sensation of being able to relax after his exertions. He felt warm and serene inside.
Maybe he fell asleep. Maybe he was daydreaming. The water drew back as he sank, and the sea turned to warm air and soft grass. He caught the scent of a fresh, velvety breeze, of cherries and May weather. Sparrows hopped about on the arms of a deckchair.
She was sitting there. Manon. She smiled tenderly at Jean.