The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman Read online

  The clerk showed up ten minutes later. Still sporting that jubilant grin that was his odious speciality, Robert asked when the wedding would be. Bilodo bristled with anger as he reproached him for deceitfully involving Tania in a disagreement that concerned only them. Robert sardonically assured him he’d just wanted to make Tania happy, although he’d never understood why she was so crazy about a stupid bastard like him. Stupid, yes, Bilodo agreed he really must be pretty dense for not having noticed sooner what a filthy pig Robert was. The clerk snapped back that was still better than being a moronic asshole and warned Bilodo he had seen nothing yet, from now on it was open war between them. Following which he took off like a shot.

  Because Bilodo knew from having seen Robert in action how implacable he could be when he wanted to, he spent the rest of the day worrying about the various forms, each one more harrowing than the next, his threats were likely to take. With respect to Tania in any case, one thing was certain: no matter how disappointing this might be for her, he had to tell her the truth.

  * * *

  Robert’s threats didn’t take long to materialize. When Bilodo arrived at the Depot the next day, he spotted with utter dismay on the staff lounge notice board a photocopy of his tanka carrying his forged signature; it had been printed on pink paper for greater visual impact. Other copies had been distributed all through the centre, particularly in the sorting cubicles, from which peals of laughter rang out. The whole world seemed to have read his poem. It was the joke of the day: anyone running into Bilodo put in their two cents’ worth with some little allusion to love, to flowers, or to horticulture in general. Since there was nothing to be done about it, the postman took refuge in an aloof silence, stoically enduring the snub. When he could finally leave for his round, it felt like a release, but a fast three-hour walk was barely long enough to settle his nerves.

  Shortly before noon Bilodo headed towards the Madelinot, his mind firmly made up to speak to Tania, tell her the truth, but when he walked into the restaurant he realised Robert’s machinations had preceded him: no one would look at him and conversations died as he went past, except in the postal workers’ corner, where there was open sniggering around Robert, who had a malicious look in his eye and whose nose had turned purplish. When Tania saw him, she acted as if she didn’t know him and disappeared into the kitchen.

  ‘Ségolène! Ségolène!’ the buffoons wailed languorously at the other end.

  Bilodo blanched. Right then he would have given anything to be on the other side of the world. He almost turned on his heel, then remembered he must talk to Tania first, and courageously walked on. Braving the bleatings, puns and other subtle poetic allusions, he went to sit at the counter.

  ‘Ségolène! Take me in your sloop to Guadeloupe!’

  Bilodo clenched his fists, not sure how long he’d be able to bear it. Tania came out of the kitchen again with a tray of food. He signalled to her, but she ignored him completely, bringing the postal workers their meals instead. That group wasn’t going to let such a wonderful opportunity of teasing her slip by and asked her if she planned to spend her holidays in Guadeloupe this year, if she wasn’t too jealous of her rival, if she didn’t mind being part of a ménage à trois, and then pointed out that her fiancé, Libido, was waiting for her at the counter and if she hurried, she might end up with another wonderful love poem, just for her this time. Tania finished serving them without saying a word but was obviously fuming. Finally she seemed to think she’d let Bilodo stew long enough, and appeared on the other side of the counter to take his order, so icy she could have sunk a dozen Titanics. What could she get him? Duck – another sitting duck like her? Or a nice little goose, perhaps? A guinea pig to test a new poem on? Deeply apologetic, Bilodo replied she’d got it all wrong, he needed to talk to her in private, but the waitress answered there was no point to that, there was nothing more to say, and she threw a ball of crumpled paper on the counter.

  ‘Here’s your poem, Libido!’ she spat out.

  Clapping broke out in the postal workers’ corner and in the rest of the room as well, because Tania definitely had supporters: the entire lunch crowd was following the action with interest. Bilodo pursued the waitress all the way to the kitchen doors, swearing to her in a low voice that it wasn’t his fault, the poem hadn’t been written for her and should never have been given to her, but Tania, who exuded distrust, wanted to know why he hadn’t told her this the day before, instead of letting her make a fool of herself. She then put a stop to Bilodo’s mumblings by saying she didn’t want to hear about their sick little games any more: let him and Robert find another victim and leave her alone. Another round of applause backed up this rousing command.

  Bursting into tears, Tania took refuge in the kitchen, and was replaced in the doorway by Mr Martinez, the establishment’s cook, who weighed a good 130 hostile kilos, not counting his kitchen knife. Bilodo saw no option but to retreat, and he dashed out of the place where he was now nothing but an outcast. He wanted to flee as quickly as he could and go and hide at the ends of the earth, but the street swayed under his feet; his legs failed him, and he had to sit down on the steps of the first staircase he came across so as not to collapse.

  Five minutes later he was still there, struggling against a feeling of helplessness, doing his best to overcome it, to digest the acidic brew of shame and anger churning in his guts, when the postal workers emerged from the Madelinot, led by Robert. The clerk walked past him, visibly enjoying the sad sight of Bilodo’s downfall, and kept going, triumphantly escorted by his minions, who struck up a hymn dedicated to the exotic beauties of the Guadeloupean archipelago. Too weak to protest, Bilodo lowered his eyes and sat staring at the folds of the crumpled tanka he still held in his hand… Then he looked more closely and smoothed it out, noticing suddenly it wasn’t the original but another photocopy! Galvanized into action, he called Robert, who was already a hundred metres ahead with his henchmen. The clerk consented to wait for Bilodo as he ran to catch up with him. The time to be subtle being long past, Bilodo demanded Robert give him back his letter. The clerk appeared greatly amused by the request and replied he didn’t have his crappy poem any more, he’d simply posted it, then he walked off surrounded by his pack. Bilodo stood stock-still, paralyzed by what he’d just heard: the tanka was on its way.

  After all these tribulations, he was back at the starting point. Enso.

  17

  The tanka was travelling inexorably towards Ségolène, and all other concerns had been swept away. Robert’s schemes, Tania’s heartache, the Post Office, life, death – none of it mattered any more to Bilodo. Had she received the poem? Had she read it? Was she shaken, stunned? Bored, disappointed, scornful? Or quite the opposite: had it touched her, delighted her and was everything perfectly fine? Because Bilodo wanted to favour the second assumption, he found the memory of Tania’s initial reaction when she’d read the tanka reassuring: it augured well for Ségolène’s response, didn’t it? Then the judgement Robert had passed on the poem sprang into his mind and he wasn’t sure of anything any more. ‘Crappy!’ the clerk had said. Could he, by some terrible fluke, be right? Bilodo had nightmares about it. In his dreams he saw gigantic lips part and contemptuously utter the word: ‘Crappy.’

  And those lips were Ségolène’s – those ferociously red lips, those white predatory teeth, that pitiless mouth repeating the murderous word: ‘Crappy.’

  And each time it was like a dagger through his heart, because he knew it to be true, his poem was crappy, and she was absolutely right to say it again to punish him for his foolishness. And Ségolène’s teeth tore the tanka into a thousand pieces that flitted in all directions, scattering to the furthest reaches of cold nothingness, and on those bits of paper Bilodo could see his own face as though reflected by so many tiny mirrors, his anguish multiplied to infinity…

  That’s what he dreamt about, and when he woke, he really wasn’t sure of anything any more, and was off for another ride on the rollercoaster of fea
r. He began to ponder if, rather than wait, he should perhaps take preventive action, if he shouldn’t write Ségolène and own up to everything, let her know Grandpré was dead and he himself just a pathetic impersonator – at least he’d be easing his conscience – but then he’d change his mind and tell himself to be reasonable again, knowing full well such a confession was impossible, it would have meant giving himself away and ringing the knell of the precious correspondence that was still, and now more than ever, the spice of his life.

  Bilodo, as he veered back and forth like a weathercock between hope and resignation, could testify to it: there wasn’t anything worse than waiting when you were unsure of the outcome.

  * * *

  Ségolène’s reply finally came. Bilodo rushed out of his cubicle and barricaded himself in the men’s toilets. He held his breath, preparing himself to find out what his audacity had cost him, and unfolded the sheet. A five-line poem. She replied with a tanka:

  Steamy, sultry night

  The moist sheets’ soft embrace burns

  my thighs and my lips

  I search for you, lose my way

  I am that open flower

  Bilodo blinked, thinking he’d misread it, but no, he hadn’t. There was no mistake. Those words were really the words, the lines really those lines, and the poem was that poem.

  He had expected a disapproving letter, or perhaps a simple haiku of the kind they used to write to each other, or else, in the most favourable instance, a romantic tanka like his own, but surely not this, this surge of sensuality, this torrid poem. What had come over her? Bilodo felt a stirring in his pelvic region and realised he had an erection, an astonishing physiological occurrence that was all he needed to rattle him completely. Never had a letter from Ségolène provoked such a reaction. Not that it was the first time he had a hard-on in her honour, far from it – it happened all the time when he dreamt about her. But like this, in broad daylight, without the convenient excuse of being unconscious?

  It was obviously due to the tanka’s unusual content, its palpable eroticism. What he wished he knew was if Ségolène had foreseen the effect her poem might have. Was it accidental or deliberate? How was Bilodo supposed to respond? What could he possibly reply to something like that?

  * * *

  At night he dreamt about a snake slithering through ferns and crawling furtively among the smooth brown roots of a tree whose trunk was festooned with lianas. Except that the tree wasn’t a tree but a body, the naked body of Ségolène asleep with her flute beside her. Quietly, so as not to waken her, the snake crept onto her throat, coiled around her limbs, slid between her breasts, slunk down onto her belly, tasted the air with its bifid tongue, then ventured even further down, towards that dark valley, that bushy triangle between her thighs… Bilodo, enthralled by the serpentine dream, woke up more excited than ever, although this had practically been his normal state since the previous day: his erection persisted, urgent, only vanishing briefly when he managed to put Ségolène’s tanka out of his mind. As he reread the stanza, he wondered again if he perceived it correctly, if the sexual coloration he attributed to the poem wasn’t a figment of his own depraved imagination, but came to the conclusion it wasn’t. The tanka was raunchy, full stop. Whether Ségolène had meant it to be like this or had written it in all innocence, there was only one appropriate way to reply to it:

  You are not just the flower

  You’re the whole garden

  Your scents drive me wild

  I enter your corolla

  and I drink in your nectar

  18

  As the ocean licks the shore,

  its surf a salty

  kiss – so our lips lightly touch,

  retreat, draw close again,

  and lock at last

  Chocolate Easter egg

  trimmed with a yellow ribbon

  The strap of your dress

  has slipped down your bare shoulder

  which I’d love to nibble on

  Tender cannibal,

  if you nibble me

  you will have to eat me whole

  or else you will be the one

  who is gobbled up by me

  I will be the wind

  rippling through your hair

  stealing its enticing scent

  I will slip beneath your skirt

  inflaming your skin

  My toes are wriggling,

  coiling and curling,

  electrified with pleasure

  It’s because of my fingers

  I think too hard about you

  * * *

  It was a sweet intoxication, a voluptuous fever that made you live life twice as intensely, a turbulent current you had no desire to struggle against, a current you could only surrender to, and besides, that was all Bilodo wanted. His only ambition was to continue the sensual adventure, the bold detailing of the body, and experience the ecstasy to the fullest. This pursuit occupied him completely. He hardly ever put his nose outside the door any more and remained indifferent to the loveliness of May, even though he liked that month better than any other. He hadn’t gone back to the Madelinot; mortified that Tania could have thought he’d wanted to ridicule her, he daren’t show his face there again. Actually, he no longer went to work. The opprobrium he was a victim of at the Depot had become unbearable to him, so he’d asked for and obtained a six-month unpaid leave. Now that his time was his own, he devoted himself entirely to Ségolène.

  * * *

  Your breasts on the horizon

  a dune with satiny slopes

  I long to taste their honey

  to quench my thirst like

  a vampire in love

  Lost in the desert,

  my thirsting mouth crawls along

  At last the oasis, where

  I dip the tip of my tongue

  It is your navel

  Your smooth, slender legs

  catch the glow of a moonbeam

  The sculptor who modelled them

  availed himself of

  the finest mahogany

  Your hands lift me up

  bend me, enfold me

  fashion me, set me on fire

  They do with me what they want

  I’m a plaything in your hands

  Under the screen of your dress

  at the crossing of your thighs

  a hidden river

  secret Amazon

  Let me make my way upstream

  The cloth of your skin

  sliding over mine

  If only I could stitch them

  together so they would touch

  everywhere at the same time…

  * * *

  Was the tanka really the best tool when it came to chiselling desire? The form that had served Bilodo so well when it was a matter of putting feelings into words began to weigh him down, seemed too cerebral. Looking for a way to lighten his pen, he decided to go back to the basic simplicity of the haiku, more conducive, he felt, to the gushing forth of artesian urges.

  Your breasts – twin mountains

  Their proud erectile summits

  rise up beneath my fingers

  And Ségolène must have appreciated the initiative, since she lost no time in taking the same shortcut:

  Robust root throbbing

  in the palm of my hand,

  gorged with burning sap

  And so the history of the haiku’s birth repeated itself: stripped of superfluous words as though they were clothes dropped on the way to the bedroom, the naked essence of the poetry emerged. But Bilodo wasn’t satisfied: he couldn’t take the slowness of regular post any more, so he switched to express post. Ségolène followed suit; thus the waiting period was shortened. The exchange sped up, breathing turned into panting, but it still wasn’t fast enough for Bilodo, who began to post poems to the Guadeloupean woman without even waiting for her reply and was soon sending her a haiku a day. And Ségolène, too, began sending him haiku after haiku without bothering to
wait for his. Almost every morning another letter from her fell on the doormat. The poems flew back and forth, fast and furious, without any chronological continuity now, yet still responding to one another in a peculiar way:

  Flower of your flesh

  Within its tender petals

  lies a hidden pearl

  Venture into the

  Glowing warmth of me

  Lash your body onto mine

  I move towards you

  Now you let me in

  And all your mouths swallow me

  You travel in me

  you gaze upon my landscape

  you swim in my lake

  I travel in you

  I reach the very centre

  of your capital

  Seaquake. I explode

  deep inside of me

  an inner supernova

  Fiery tsunami

  great surge of lava

  I die everlastingly

  Carried by the wave

  I am nameless now

  I am only a colour

  Stars – shimmering spread of sails

  the solar wind blows

  to infinity

  19

  You can’t have your head in the clouds forever. As gravity eventually caught up with Bilodo, he came back down to earth, still stunned by the slow explosion of the poetic orgasm he’d just experienced. It was true, then, that love gave you wings. Never before had he embraced a woman the way he just did in the heavenly spheres. He’d felt Ségolène so close, sensed her to be all his, totally within him as he’d been totally within her, and knew she, too, had undergone that inner explosion. He was sure she had come at the same time he had. What more could you write after that? What poem could you possibly compose that wouldn’t disappoint after passion had been so completely satisfied? Something sweet whispered in the ear of the lover perhaps, before dropping off to sleep?