The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman Read online

  In the ocean depths

  gloom is a meaningless word

  Down there the light kills

  Ribcage perfectly

  picked clean, the march of

  necrophagous centuries

  To break through the horizon

  look behind the set

  meet and embrace Death

  Rejoice, mermaids and mermen,

  the Prince of the Deep

  has returned to you

  Dark and yet luminous, the haiku followed one another, a procession of pelagic fish exuding their own phosphorescence. The collection’s title puzzled Bilodo; he looked up the word Enso in the dictionary but couldn’t find it. Falling back on the Internet, he had the satisfaction of seeing many references displayed on the screen, all showing circles similar to the one on the cover page, and discovered this to be a traditional symbol in Zen Buddhism. The Enso circle represented the emptiness of the mind allowing one to attain enlightenment (satori). Having been painted by Zen masters for thousands of years, it prompted a spiritual exercise in meditation on nothingness. The circle, drawn with a single continuous brushstroke – without hesitating, without thinking – was believed to reveal the artist’s state of mind: one could only trace a powerful, well-balanced Enso when one’s mind was clear, free of all thought or intention.

  As he tried to find out more, Bilodo learnt that the Zen circle could be interpreted in numerous ways: it could represent just as well perfection, truth, or infinity, simplicity, the cycle of the seasons, or the turning wheel. On the whole, Enso symbolized the loop, the cyclical nature of the universe, history always repeating itself, the perpetual return to the starting point. It was similar in that sense to the Greek Ouroboros symbol, depicting a serpent biting its own tail.

  Enso, a rich and diverse symbol, and a title that took on its full, definitive meaning when one reached the manuscript’s last page, which contained the same haiku as the collection’s first page:

  Swirling like water

  against rugged rocks,

  time goes around and around

  The repetition couldn’t possibly be accidental. Grandpré had meant it this way; he had given his collection the shape of a loop. The return to the opening poem, which itself evoked the loop, was Enso, the Zen circle, the book perpetually repeating itself.

  Lost in thought, Bilodo closed the manuscript. He regretted it had been rejected by the publisher. The work brought together Grandpré’s best poems, his most accomplished ones, and it being turned down like this seemed unfair: the guys at that publishing house were obviously asleep at the wheel. But they weren’t the only publishers in the world after all. Checking the Web once more, Bilodo got a list of the leading publishers of Quebec poetry and made a decision: he was going to submit the manuscript elsewhere. Someone somewhere was sure to see the light.

  He would get the collection published. It was a posthumous duty he felt entrusted with. Wasn’t it the least he could do to honour the memory of Grandpré – the pioneer who had blazed a trail for him that led to Ségolène?

  14

  On the canoe floor

  a suffocating trunkfish,

  drowning in the air

  Being a frog and

  breathing through the skin,

  truly the best of both worlds

  Raindrop on the leaf,

  for a ladybug

  a natural disaster

  The faithful master

  leans over and scoops

  Who is really on the leash?

  La Désirade’s waves

  clear and luminous

  like a tanka by Bashō

  * * *

  Bilodo had grown somewhat familiar with Bashō, that fine haiku poet of the seventeenth century, but just what was a tanka again? He knew the word. He remembered coming across it during his literary explorations the previous autumn.

  It didn’t take him long to track it down in Grandpré’s books. The tanka was the oldest, most elevated classical Japanese verse form; its art had been practised exclusively at the Imperial Court. It was the haiku’s ancestor, the venerable forefather the haiku descended from. It was a more extensive poem, having five lines rather than three, and consisted of two parts: the first one, a tercet of seventeen syllables, was simply that good old haiku, while the second, an added-on distich made up of two lines of seven syllables each, responded in some way to the first and gave the stanza a new direction. Bilodo learnt that either form had its own, particular subject area. Unlike the haiku – a brief poem speaking to the senses and tending to involve the observation of nature – the tanka was meant to be lyrical, exquisite, refined. Its practitioners strove to explore noble themes and sentiments such as love, loneliness, death. The poem was devoted to the expression of complex emotions.

  Bilodo shivered. What did that allusion by Ségolène to the tanka mean? Was it a subtle message, an invitation?

  A form favouring the expression of feelings. Wasn’t that precisely what Bilodo longed for? Hadn’t he felt constricted at times by the limitations the haiku imposed on him? Wasn’t he tired, quite frankly, of evoking weather reports, clothes lines, and little birds? Hadn’t the time come to contemplate grander, more beautiful things and break out of the tight, binding garment? Didn’t he feel the desire to go further, to finally lay bare his heart?

  Bilodo slipped on his kimono, then started writing, eager to experiment with the unfamiliar form, and was surprised to find he had no trouble coming to grips with it. The stanza materialized all by itself, dropped into his hands like a ripe fruit:

  Some flowers, it seems,

  take seven years to open

  For a long, long time

  I have wanted to tell you

  how intensely I love you

  Proud of his first tanka, euphoric, Bilodo rushed out to post it. It wasn’t until later, once his adrenalin level had gone back to normal, that he began to reflect on what he’d done and doubt crept into his mind.

  * * *

  Was it wise – if you really thought about it – to send Ségolène a poem so different from the ones she usually received? It wasn’t the form he worried about but the content: how would the young woman react to the explicit declaration, this sudden intrusion in the formerly reserved sphere of feelings? Might it not alienate her? Would the sweet, subtle bond between them not suffer by it? Hadn’t Bilodo been too bold?

  He now regretted acting so impetuously, but the harm was done: the tanka lay at the bottom of the postbox on the other side of the street, irretrievable. In theory, at least. Wasn’t Robert, whose duties included collecting the post, supposed to show up towards noon?

  Not long before that time, Bilodo went out to wait for Robert, walking up and down past the postbox like a neurotic sentry, deaf to the warbling of birds another April brought back from the south. Finally, after half an hour, the van appeared. It drew up alongside the pavement and Robert got out with loud whoops of delight at finding his old pal Libido there. Cutting the outpouring short, Bilodo explained the favour he expected from his friend. Robert appeared reluctant at first, arguing that what Bilodo asked of him was highly irregular, but it was just to keep him in suspense for a bit – how much weight did a few stupid regulations really carry compared with the unbreakable brotherly bond uniting them?

  Once he’d relieved the postbox of its contents, the postal clerk had Bilodo get into the van with him, and there, safe from the rabble’s prying eyes, he emptied his bag, invited Bilodo to fish out that famous letter he said he’d posted by mistake. While mumbling incoherently from sheer gratitude, Bilodo spread about the various parcels, envelopes, used syringes, stolen hockey jumpers, and other vile things the box had excreted, and found his letter. All danger was passed now, and Bilodo felt relieved, although vaguely disappointed, without quite knowing why. Robert’s snooping eyes had nevertheless deciphered the address on the envelope. Since the clerk hadn’t believed Bilodo’s lame excuse for a minute and sensed there might be a woman behind all this, he demand
ed to know who that Ségolène was Bilodo was writing to in Guadeloupe. Bilodo instinctively concealed the letter in his jacket. Grateful as he might be to Robert, he refused to talk, stated it was strictly confidential. Contrary to expectation, Robert didn’t push the matter, but warned his friend he wouldn’t be let off the hook without at least going for a drink with him after work, to celebrate. Bilodo hesitated, knowing how easily an invitation of this sort could lead to things getting out of control, but after what Robert had just done for him, how could he refuse?

  15

  Bilodo dreamt he heard someone laughing. As he woke up, it took him a minute to realise he was lying fully dressed on the futon with the blinds open and the morning sun stamped right onto his face. He tried to get up, then abandoned the idea, floored by a throbbing ache boring into his skull. The memory of last night’s excesses came back to him in snatches. There was that pub on rue Ontario where the night out began, those glasses of Scotch appearing one after the other at the bar. What came next was already a bit blurred: there was that club with female dancers on the rue Stanley, also a cubicle where sensual beauties swayed their hips in close-up, then the massage parlour Robert had dragged him off to against his will, then that Hawaiian pizza ingested on a banquette in a glaringly bright restaurant, then yet another place – a bar? a club? – but he had absolutely no recollection of what came after.

  And there were those questions. Those indiscreet questions from Robert who quizzed him again and again about the letter, about Ségolène, and relentlessly returned to the charge as the night wore on, as things got more and more out of hand. The clerk had obviously meant to take advantage of his alcoholic stupor to get the full lowdown. What had Bilodo let slip? He had to admit he had no idea. What did he tell Robert? What had happened during those black bits that hatched the mental film of the night?

  The laugh he’d heard in his dream rang out again, except that Bilodo was wide awake this time. It came from the next room. Someone was laughing in the living room. With a shock Bilodo recognised Robert’s distinctive braying and realised the clerk was right there, in the adjoining room. A squirt of fresh memory data splashed onto his mind: he suddenly remembered that after the wild spree, in the small hours of the morning, he had stupidly let his friend drive him home. His new home! His secret refuge!

  He recalled Robert’s drunken amazement when he found out the little sneak had moved without telling anyone, and then his surprise when he discovered the Japanese décor of Bilodo’s new lair. He recalled how his friend had explored the premises, looking for a geisha, drained a bottle of sake, pissed in the bathtub, knocked over the little tea table, then collapsed on the tatami and snored like a B-52 in search of a city to drop an atom bomb on. Bilodo’s migraine flared up. What an unforgivable blunder! Now the secret of his private fortress was out. Robert knew. He was right there, in the living room, and he was laughing. What could he be finding so funny?

  Bilodo managed to get up in spite of his seasickness and navigated his way into the corridor. Another burst of laughter from Robert. Bilodo held on to the wall and reached the doorway to the living room, where he found Robert in his boxer shorts and undershirt slouched in the armchair at the desk. He was reading something he obviously thought highly comical. And that thing was a haiku by Ségolène.

  The drawer was open. The young woman’s poems were scattered about on the desk and Robert had a few of them in his hand, defiling them with his sacrilegious gaze while he scratched his scrotum and even had the gall to recite them in his croaking Pithecanthropus voice.

  ‘“They act tough, flaunting / their avalanche clothes / but they are tender-hearted,”’ Robert said, guffawing. ‘In those clothes I guess they’d call a blow job a snow job.’

  At the sight of the clerk in his underwear holding Ségolène’s refined poems between his fat, disgusting fingers, sullying them with his glowering stare and coarse laugh, Bilodo felt his blood turning to ice in his veins. In the toneless voice of a robot about to break the First Law, he ordered Robert to give the sheets back to him, but Robert seemed in no hurry to comply.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, flipping through the poems. ‘The other ones are even lousier.’

  And the clerk did it again, read another haiku in a ridiculous falsetto voice. Bilodo moved towards him. Robert had expected that. He jumped out of the chair and ran to the other end of the room. Bilodo pursued him, determined to get the precious poems back no matter what. He finally outwitted the miserable clown’s manoeuvrings and managed to catch hold of them, but that idiot wouldn’t let go, so the inevitable happened… Bilodo stared, bewildered, at the fragments of the torn sheets Robert still clutched, and then at the ones in his own hand.

  ‘Oops!’ said Robert, roaring with laughter.

  ‘Get out,’ Bilodo ordered in a monotone.

  ‘Relax,’ the clerk shot back defiantly. ‘Let’s not get all worked up about three or four shitty poems!’

  Did he really say ‘shitty’? As swiftly as it had solidified, Bilodo’s blood liquefied, instantly reaching the boiling point. His fist clenched, lashed out, punched Robert on the nose. The clerk was hurled through the cherry trees on the folding screen and crashed down on the low table behind it. Bilodo snatched the shreds of paper from between his fingers. Dazed, holding his bloody nose, the clerk picked himself up as best he could and had the nerve to take it badly. He swore, flailed his arms, tried to strike back, but his blow only grazed his co-worker’s ear. Bilodo retaliated by planting a hefty right in his belly. Robert deflated, all the aggressiveness draining out of him along with the air in his lungs. Bilodo took advantage of it to pick him up by his vest, and dragged him to the hallway, just barely taking time to open the door before heaving him out. Robert, flung out onto the staircase, bounced down three steps on his backside. Bilodo threw his clothes at him and bolted the door.

  He couldn’t believe it. He who had never hurt a fly without regretting that he couldn’t give it an anaesthetic first had just hit his best friend. His ex-friend, that is. But he had a more pressing concern right now. It was a serious moment: some of Ségolène’s loveliest haiku were in shreds. Indifferent to the insults and dire warnings Robert was uttering outside, as well as his violent banging on the door, Bilodo got out a roll of sellotape and applied himself to piecing the treasured sheets together again. Behind the door Robert had begun to make threats, swearing he wasn’t going to get away with it, he’d get his own back sooner or later, but Bilodo didn’t hear a thing, engrossed as he was in the delicate surgical operation of mending the mutilated verse.

  It wasn’t until later – long after Robert’s shouts had died away, once Ségolène’s poetry had been fully restored – that Bilodo realised, as he searched in his jacket pocket for the unsent letter he’d slipped into it the previous day, that it wasn’t there any more. It had vanished along with the tanka it contained.

  He had no recollection of what he might have done with it. Had he foolishly mislaid it during last night’s cavorting, or had that scumbag Robert swiped it?

  16

  When Bilodo walked into the Madelinot at lunchtime, he noticed Robert sitting with the inevitable band of colleagues in the postal workers’ spot. The swelling and abnormal hues of his nose were hard to miss. Bilodo felt a volley of hostile looks focusing on him; Robert had obviously circulated a highly biased version of the nasal attack. Bilodo tried to ignore the prevailing animosity. He took a seat at the counter. Tania came over to put a bowl of soup down before him and, as he began spooning it up, he pondered how to tackle the tricky business of the filched tanka. Did Robert actually have it in his possession? Putting the question to him point-blank was unthinkable, especially in front of the others. How could he find out, he wondered, without compromising himself, or running the risk the clerk might somehow take advantage of the situation? And, should it be necessary, how could he get the letter back without being forced to eat humble pie and apologise to him, or even worse, depending on how foul his mood was? Bilodo absently chew
ed his shepherd’s pie, hoping Robert would clarify things himself by coming over and naming the amount of the ransom, but it didn’t happen: there was nothing in the clerk’s attitude that led one to believe he might have any other intention towards Bilodo than to hate him until the end of time.

  After lunch, as he stepped out of the men’s toilets, he almost collided with Tania, who stood right there, beside the door, waiting for him. Beaming, the young woman said she wanted to thank him. For the poem, of course. And Bilodo saw she had a sheet of paper in her hand. The tanka!

  Her eyes moist with happiness, Tania explained how pleasantly surprised she’d been to find the poem on the counter, along with the bill and the money owing. She confessed she was deeply touched by it, and modestly lowered her gaze before adding with a blush that she felt the same way. Bilodo, dumbfounded, finally understood: she thought the tanka was for her, that he’d written it for her as promised, and that… This was so horrific it took his breath away. He couldn’t string two coherent words together, and even less shatter Tania’s illusions; all he could manage was an inane smile. The young woman, who must have put his confusion down to shyness, was tactful enough to drop the subject, and merely looked at him one last time with shining eyes before going back to work.

  Bilodo breathed again. The situation hadn’t only overtaken him – it now had a one-lap lead. No need to look too far for the perpetrator of this vile plot: down at the other end of the restaurant, Robert’s fiendish smile was explanation enough. How the son of a bitch gloated over his revenge! Bilodo grabbed his jacket and slipped out, but not without answering Tania’s little wave full of thrilling hidden meanings. Enraged, he went to wait for Robert near his van.