Damn. An old rule of bookselling: never talk to authors about books by other writers.
‘No. Books are like people, and people are like books. I’ll tell you how I go about it. I ask myself: Is he or she the main character in his or her life? What is her motive? Or is she a secondary character in her own tale? Is she in the process of editing herself out of her story, because her husband, her career, her children or her job are consuming her entire text?’
Max Jordan’s eyes widened.
‘I’ve got about thirty thousand stories in my head, which isn’t very many, you know, given that there are over a million titles available in France alone. I’ve got the most useful eight thousand works here, as a first-aid kit, but I also compile courses of treatment. I prepare a medicine made of letters: a cookbook with recipes that read like a wonderful family Sunday. A novel whose hero resembles the reader; poetry to make tears flow that would otherwise be poisonous if swallowed. I listen with …’
Perdu pointed to his solar plexus.
‘And I listen to this too.’ He rubbed the back of his head. ‘And to this.’ Now he pointed to the soft spot above his upper lip. ‘If it tingles here …’
‘Come on, that can’t be …’
‘You bet it can.’ He could do it for about 99.99 per cent of people.
However, there were some people that Perdu could not transperceive.
Himself, for example.
But Monsieur Jordan doesn’t need to know that right now.
While Perdu had been reasoning with Jordan, a dangerous thought had casually drifted into his mind.
I’d have liked to have had a boy. With—. I’d have liked to have had everything with her.
Perdu gasped for air.
Something had been out of kilter since he had opened the forbidden room. There was a crack in his bulletproof glass – several hairline cracks – and everything would be smashed to pieces if he didn’t regain control of himself.
‘Right now, you look very … underoxygenated,’ Perdu heard Max Jordan’s voice say. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you. I merely wanted to know how people react when you tell them, “I’m not selling you this – you don’t go together.”’
‘Those ones? They walk out. What about you? How’s your next manuscript coming on, Monsieur Jordan?’
The young author sank down, with his melons, into one of the armchairs surrounded by piles of books.
‘Nothing. Not a line.’
‘Oh. When do you have to hand it in?’
‘Six months ago.’
‘Oh. And what does the publisher think of that?’
‘My publisher has no idea where I am. Nobody does. Nobody must find out. I can’t cope any more. I can’t write any more.’
‘Oh.’
Jordan slumped forward and laid his forehead against the melons.
‘What do you do when you can’t go on, Monsieur Perdu?’ he asked wearily.
‘Me? Nothing.’
Next to nothing.
I take night walks through Paris until I’m tired. I clean Lulu’s engine, the hull and the windows, and I keep the boat ready to go, right down to the last screw, even though it hasn’t gone anywhere in two decades.
I read books – twenty at a time. Everywhere: on the toilet, in the kitchen, in cafés, in the metro. I do jigsaw puzzles that take up the whole floor, destroy them when I’ve finished and then start all over again. I feed stray cats. I arrange my groceries in alphabetical order. I sometimes take sleeping tablets. I take a dose of Rilke to wake up. I don’t read any books in which women like — crop up. I gradually turn to stone. I carry on. The same every day. That’s the only way I can survive. But other than that, no, I do nothing.
Perdu made a conscious effort. The boy had asked for help; he didn’t want to know how Perdu was. So give it.
The bookseller fetched his treasure out of the small, old-fashioned safe behind the counter.
Sanary’s Southern Lights.
The only book Sanary had written – under that name, at any rate. ‘Sanary’ – after the erstwhile town of refuge for exiled writers, Sanary-sur-Mer on the south coast of Provence – was an impenetrable pseudonym.
His – or her – publisher, Duprés, was in an old people’s home out in ?le-de-France enduring Alzheimer’s with good cheer. During Perdu’s visits, the elderly Duprés had served him up a couple of dozen versions of who Sanary was and how the manuscript had come into his possession.
So Monsieur Perdu kept on searching.
For two decades he had been analysing the rhythms of the language, the choice of words and the cadence of the sentences, comparing the style and the subject matter with other authors’. Perdu had narrowed it down to eleven possible names: seven women and four men.