Some days, as he sat looking out to sea or reading on a wall beside the harbour, the mere warmth of the sun was enough to fill him with a pleasant, urgent, restless tension. Down there too, his body was shaking off its sorrow.
He hadn’t slept with a woman for two decades. Now he felt an intense yearning to do so.
Jean let his thoughts wander to Catherine. He could still feel her under his hands – the familiar sensation of touching her hair, her skin, her muscles. He pictured what her thighs would feel like. Her breasts. How she would look at him, gasping. How their skin and their selves would meet, press belly against belly, joy to joy. He imagined every detail.
‘I’m back,’ he whispered.
He went about his life, eating and swimming and selling books and spinning laundry in his new washing machine. Then, all of a sudden, something inside him took a step forward.
Unexpectedly. At the end of the holidays, on 28 August.
He was eating his lunchtime salad and wondering whether he should light a candle for Manon at the Notre-Dame-de-la-Pitié chapel, or swim out from Portissol as usual. But suddenly he noticed that his inner turmoil had ceased. So had the burning sensation, and everything else that brought tears of dismay and loss to his eyes.
He stood up and went out anxiously onto the terrace. Was it possible? Was it really possible? Or was grief playing tricks on him and readying itself to rush in through the front door again?
He had reached the bottom of his soul’s sour, sad tribulations. He had dug and dug and dug. And suddenly – there was a chink of light.
He rushed inside to the sideboard, where he always kept a pen and paper. He scribbled:
Catherine,
I don’t know if it’ll work out or if we can avoid hurting each other. Probably not, because we’re human.
However, what I do know now, now that this moment I have craved has arrived, is that it’s easier to fall asleep with you in my life. And to wake up. And to love.
I want to cook for you when hunger has blackened your mood. Any kind of hunger: hunger for life, hunger for love, hunger for light, sea, travel, reading and sleep too.
I want to rub cream into your hands when you’ve touched too many rough stones. In my dreams you are a rescuer of stones, capable of seeing through layers of stone and detecting the rivers of the heart that flow underneath.
I want to watch you as you walk along a sandy path, turn and wait for me.
I want all the little things and the big things too. I want to have arguments with you and explode into laughter halfway through; I want to pour cocoa into your favourite mug on a cold day; and after partying with wonderful friends I want to hold the passenger door open while you climb happily into the car.
I want to hold you at night and feel you press your small bottom against my warm tummy.
I want to do a thousand little and big things with you, with us – you, me, together, you as a part of me and me as a part of you.
Catherine, please. Come! Come soon!
Come to me!
The reality of love is better than its reputation.
Jean
PS: Truthfully!
40
On 4 September Jean set off early so that his regular stroll along Rue de la Colline and around the fishing port would bring him to the bookshop on time.
Autumn was on its way, bringing visitors who preferred to build castles out of books rather than sand. This had always been his favourite time of year: new publications spelled new friendships, new insights and new adventures.
The blinding light of midsummer grew milder with the approach of autumn – mellower. Autumn shielded Sanary from its parched hinterland like a screen.
He breakfasted alternately at the Lyon, the Nautique and the Marine on the harbour front. The resemblance to the town where Brecht had once performed his mocking songs about the Nazis had naturally faded. And yet he could still detect a whiff of exile. The cafés were welcome islets of entertainment in his solitary life with Psst; they were something of a surrogate family, a hint of Paris. They were a confessional box and a newsroom where you could find out what was going on behind the scenes in Sanary: how the fishing was holding up despite the algal bloom; how the boules players were building up to their autumn tournaments. The players on Quai Wilson had asked him to be a substitute ‘pointer’; it was an honour to be asked to step in for a tournament. In the cafés Perdu could be in the middle of town life without anyone caring if he didn’t talk or play an active role.
Sometimes he would sit in the corner at the back and speak to his father, Joaquin, on the phone, as he was doing that morning. When Joaquin heard about the tournament in La Ciotat, he was raring to polish his boules and set off.
‘Please don’t,’ pleaded Perdu.
‘Don’t, eh? Well, then. What’s her name?’
‘Does it always have to be a woman?’
‘Same one as before?’
Perdu laughed. Both Perdus laughed.
‘Were you keen on tractors when you were a kid?’ Jean asked next.
‘Jeanno, my lad, I love tractors! Why are you asking?’
‘Max has met someone. A tractor girl.’