The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman (2 page)

Ségolène lived at Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe and wrote regularly to a certain Gaston Grandpré, who rented an apartment on rue des Hêtres. Bilodo had been intercepting her letters for two years now, and whenever he spotted one while sorting his post, he always experienced the same shock, the same shiver of awe. He would quietly slip that letter inside his jacket and only allow himself to show any emotion once he was alone on the road, turning the envelope over and over, fingering the exciting promise. He could have opened it right away and revelled in the words it concealed, but he’d rather wait. All he granted himself was the fleeting pleasure of inhaling the fragrance of oranges wafting up from the letter before bravely putting it back in his pocket, and he kept it there all day, against his heart, resisting temptation, drawing out the pleasure until evening, until after the washing up was done. Then the time had come. He would burn a few drops of citrus oil, light a few candles, put on a disc of dreamy Norwegian jazz, and then, at last, he unsealed the envelope, gently reached into its inner fold, and read:

Bilodo could see it. He vividly saw that stark-naked baby in the aqueous luminescence of the postnatal swimming pool while it swam towards him as if he were its mother, as if it were swimming towards the outstretched arms of a mermaid who would be its mother and who was watching him with deep blue flabber-gasted-salamander eyes. It didn’t know it couldn’t swim, hadn’t forgotten how to yet. It had no idea water was dangerous, a foreign element, that it could drown in it. The baby was
ignorant of all this, it just moved about, followed its instinct, kept its mouth closed, and simply swam. Bilodo saw that young pinniped clearly – that funny underwater gnome with the crinkly features of infants and nostrils ringed with bubbles, as it glided through the voluptuous water, and Bilodo laughed because it was unexpected, because it was amusing, touching. And
he
thought he was floating too. He could hear the water buzzing against his eardrums. He felt as though he was in that swimming pool together with that baby. For such was the suggestive power of all those strange little poems Ségolène wrote: they made you feel things, made you see them.

The letters from the Guadeloupean woman contained nothing else. Always a single sheet of paper on which was written a single poem. It wasn’t much, yet it was generous, since those poems nourished you as much as a whole novel – they were long in your soul, where they echoed forever. Bilodo learned them by heart and recited them to himself on his morning round. He treasured them up in the top drawer of his bedside table and liked spreading them around him at night, constructing a kind of mystical circle, and rereading them one after the other…

Ségolène’s poems, as different as they were from each other, were all alike in their form, since they always consisted of three lines: two of five syllables and one of seven, adding up to seventeen syllables, no more, no less. Always that same mysterious structure, as though governed by a code. Because Bilodo sensed that this consistency had to have a specific purpose, he’d puzzled over it until the day when, after months of foggy surmising, he happened to discover what it was all about. It was on a Saturday morning. He was having breakfast at the Madelinot while reading the entertainment supplement of a newspaper. Suddenly the sight, at the top of a page, of three written lines that seemed to form a short poem made him choke on his coffee. The poem had two lines of five syllables and one of seven. The verse was disappointing in other respects; it simply gave an ironic commentary on current affairs. It was nothing like the living fragments of eternity created by Ségolène. But the column’s title was revealing: ‘THE SATURDAY HAIKU’. Bilodo rushed home, combed the dictionary and found the word:

So that was it. That’s what the Guadeloupean woman’s poems were. Since then, Bilodo had been able to consult numerous
books containing haiku at the library – books translated from the Japanese, grouping together well-known authors such as Matsuo Bashō, Taneda Santōka, Nagata Kōi and Kobayashi Issa, but none of the poems by these men produced the effect of Ségolène’s, none of them carried him off to as faraway a place or made him see things as clearly or feel them as acutely.

No doubt Ségolène’s penmanship contributed greatly to this exceptional magic, for she expressed herself in a more delicate, more graceful Italian hand than Bilodo had ever had the good fortune to admire. It was a rich, imaginative handwriting, with deep downstrokes and celestial upstrokes embellished with opulent loops and precise drops – a clean, flowing script, admirably well-proportioned with its perfect thirty-degree slant and flawless interletter spacing. Ségolène’s writing was a sweet scent for the eye, an elixir, an ode. It was a graphic symphony, an apotheosis. It was so beautiful it made you weep. Having read somewhere that handwriting was a reflection of a person’s soul, Bilodo readily concluded that Ségolène’s soul must be incomparably pure. If angels wrote, surely it was like this.

Bilodo knew that Ségolène was a primary school teacher at Pointe-à-Pitre, and he also knew she was beautiful. He’d seen this in a picture she’d posted to Grandpré, very likely in exchange for one of his own, since the back of the photo carried this handwritten line: ‘Delighted to have made your photographic acquaintance. Now it is my turn. Here I am with my pupils.’ The snap showed her in the middle of a group of smiling school-children, but only
her
smile mattered to Bilodo’s eyes, and her emerald gaze crashed deep into his own like a wave against a cliff, reverberating there like an echo. He had digitized and printed that photo, then put it, framed, on his bedside table above the drawer where he kept her haiku. Now he could contemplate Ségolène every night before going to sleep and soon afterward dream about her: her smile, her eyes, and all the other marvels of her appearance, about romantic seaside strolls in her company, with Marie-Galante looming in the twilight and torrents of orangey clouds scudding across the sky while the wind raked their hair – unless the world of haiku got involved in his oneiric fantasies, for then he dreamt instead that he was bungee jumping with her, that they fell together at the end of an extremely long elastic before diving into a fragrant ocean, slipping between corals among moonfish and baby amphibians, amid puzzled sharks.

Bilodo was in love as he’d never imagined one could possibly be. The hold Ségolène had gained over his soul was so enormous it sometimes worried him – he was afraid his life wasn’t his own any more. But the alchemical reading of a few haiku quickly transmuted his distress into bliss, and then he thanked his lucky star for favouring him like this, for having placed the Guadeloupean beauty in his path. The only shadow over his
happiness was the jealousy stirring within him when he remembered that Ségolène’s letters were really intended for someone else. Whenever he finished reading a new poem, he felt the sting of envy as he resealed the envelope and slipped it the next day into the slot at the apartment of that guy, Gaston Grandpré, his rival. How had he met Ségolène? What was he to her? The note on the back of the picture and the general tenor of the poems didn’t suggest anything more than friendship, which cheered Bilodo up somewhat, but even so it was for Grandpré, the lucky man, that the letters were meant. Bilodo occasionally caught a glimpse of him standing in his doorway. Bearded, messy-looking, his hair unkempt, always wearing an extravagant red dressing gown, he invariably gave the impression he’d been up all night. A grouch with the air of a mad scientist about him. A grungy oddball. How did he react, Bilodo wondered, when he found another letter from her on his doormat? Did he rush to quench his thirst at the oasis of her words? Did he feel the same thrill? Did Ségolène’s poems make him see things, too? The same things they conjured up for Bilodo? And what did he write in reply?

In the afternoon, when Bilodo walked past the Madelinot again on his way home, he sometimes spotted Grandpré inside, sipping a cup of coffee and scribbling in a notepad, looking inspired. Did he write poetry? Bilodo would have given anything to be able to do the same. He would have liked to reply to Ségolène’s letters, just as he did to those from his other unwitting pen pals, but felt incapable of doing so, since the only way one could possibly respond to her lovely haiku was with another, just as beautifully crafted. And how could Bilodo, whom the mere word
poetry
intimidated, have managed that? Could a humble postman become a poet overnight? Could an ostrich be expected to start playing the banjo? Did snails ride bicycles? He actually tried once or twice early on and turned out a few pitiful attempts at verse, but had been overcome with shame and had never dared do it again, because he feared he might strike a blow to the very
core of Poetry and indirectly tarnish Ségolène’s sacred creations. Did Grandpré have that rare gift? Did he write haiku?

Was he aware at least how fortunate he was? Did he feel even a quarter of what Bilodo felt for Ségolène? Or even one-tenth?

Linked to Bilodo’s worship of Ségolène was a strong fascination with the blessed land of her birth, the natural setting in the heart of which she shone. He often raided the travel shelves in bookstores and spent hours on the Internet filling his brain with anything relating to Guadeloupe: the archipelago’s geology; recipes of the local cuisine; the musical tradition; the manufacture of rum; the area’s history; fishing techniques; botany; architecture – he greedily lapped it all up. Little by little, Bilodo became a specialist where the ‘butterfly island’ was concerned, although he’d never set foot on it. He could of course have gone there, travelled there and seen Guadeloupe with his own eyes, but he had never seriously considered it because the idea unnerved him, incurable homebody that he was. Bilodo had no desire to physically visit Guadeloupe – he only wanted to get a detailed picture of it in his mind so as to feed his dreams and set them in a realistic landscape that would show Ségolène to advantage. That way he could fantasize about her in high definition, with all the necessary mental technology.

He dreamt of her cycling down the Allée Dumanoir between the royal palms that proudly lined the avenue. He dreamt of her strolling on La Darse in the afternoon when the lycée was out, or going shopping at the Marché Saint-Antoine, sauntering about in the large covered market among multicoloured stalls piled high with figues-pomme bananas and yams, sweet potatoes and chili peppers, pineapples, cherimoyas, malangas, and star fruit – not forgetting the spices, cinnamon, colombo powder, saffron, vanilla, bayberry, and curry, whose mingled aromas stirred the
senses, and next to these the punches and syrups, candy and basketwork, flowers, parakeets, and brooms, beside potions, brews that bring relief and fidelity, wealth or endless love, and other magic philtres intended to cure all the ills of the world.

He dreamt of her every night, and the setting of these ethereal films, in which Ségolène played the lead, was the whole island of Guadeloupe with its winding roads and sugar-cane fields, its steep paths cutting through orchid-studded jungles dense with giant ferns, its mist-crowned mountains with strings of cascades and waterfalls dangling down the mossy, green sides. And its towering La Soufrière, dormant but ever threatening, its luminous villages with red sheet-metal roofs and cemeteries filled with black-and-white-checkered graves decorated with seashells. Its carnival, music, gwoka players, she-devils dressed all in red and other dancers in many-hued costumes wriggling their hips to the beat of bola drums while the rum flowed freely.

Guadeloupe with its mangrove swamps and guava, islands and islets, manta rays gliding on the surface of the water, its lacy coral, mullet, grouper and flying fish, the fishermen of Les Saintes, their heads shaded by
salakos
, repairing their nets. The jagged, ocean-whipped, limestone coastline of the north of Basse-Terre. Then, suddenly, surprisingly tranquil coves, blond beaches, and Ségolène swimming in the rollers of a sea as turquoise as her eyes, and the sun hastening to win back that second Venus as soon as she emerged from the waves and returned to the beach, treading it gracefully – naked and yet modest with water clinging to her breasts in beads and streaming over the downy gold of her belly.

Bilodo dreamt, and wished for nothing else; he wanted only to continue on like this, to keep savouring the dazzling dreams and ecstatic visions Ségolène’s words conjured up for him. His only desire was that the pleasant status quo might endure, that nothing would disturb his quiet bliss. And nothing did, until the fateful day when the accident happened.

It was a stormy morning in late August. The sky hung heavy and thundered in the distance but couldn’t make up its mind to spill it all out, but this didn’t disturb Bilodo in the least since he had faith in the impermeability of the sturdy raincoat provided by the Post Office. At a determined pace no dreary skies could have slowed, he was making his way up and down rue des Hêtres, tackling one staircase after another, when he ran into his friend Robert, who was just transferring the contents of a postbox to his van.

They rarely met up like this, because the clearing of this particular box was generally done before Bilodo passed by, but Robert explained he had overslept after a wild night with a certain Brenda, a fantastic girl he’d met in a bar. After their hellos and some friendly banter, Bilodo wanted to get going again, but Robert held him back – he had much more to say on the subject of his brand new flame and suggested they double date that very evening with Brenda and a friend of hers, a girl with great erotic potential. Bilodo sighed. Robert’s relentless efforts to set him up with a girlfriend annoyed him. His co-worker disapproved of his endless bachelorhood, considered it unhygienic, and had ironically nicknamed him ‘Libido’. He’d taken it upon himself to act as a go-between and tried to mate Bilodo with anything that moved, registering him without his knowledge with online dating agencies and placing crude ads in his name along with his phone number in the sexy personal ads of trendy magazines.

All these initiatives annoyed Bilodo. He didn’t dare answer the phone any more, and his voicemail was constantly clogged. But he couldn’t hold it against Robert, because he knew he meant well. He was only going to all that trouble in order to help him, after all. Robert overdid it, as always, it was typical of him, but he was nevertheless the best friend he had in the
world, wasn’t he? Bilodo tried to appreciate him just the way he was – with his vulgarity, selfishness, hypocrisy, opportunism, compulsive exaggerating, and bad breath.

Although willing to forgive Robert for these trivial character flaws, he nonetheless hated the kind of random orgy he was being invited to. Since Robert wasn’t the sort to take no for an answer, he quickly needed to come up with some valid excuse, one that wouldn’t sound too lame, and that’s what he was busy doing when the storm broke.

There was a sudden clap of thunder as if a colossal bag of crisps had split open overhead, and the sky cracked. The rain came down in sheets, limiting visibility to a couple of metres. Robert hurriedly flung his bag into the van and invited Bilodo to hop in so he wouldn’t get soaked. The postman agreed that it would be better to let the storm blow over, so he accepted and walked around the vehicle. Just then a shout from the other side of the street drew his attention. Bilodo turned around and spotted Grandpré, Ségolène’s penfriend, the man with the perennial dressing gown, on his third-storey landing exactly opposite.

Opening his umbrella, Grandpré tore down the stairs, brandishing a letter he no doubt wanted to post before Robert drove off. Bilodo watched him stepping out carelessly onto the road, which had already turned into a rising river. Without bothering to check that the way was clear, Grandpré ran towards them, hailed them, asked them to wait, and didn’t see the truck coming, bearing down on them, ploughing through the downpour. Bilodo stretched out his arm, called out an inarticulate warning to Grandpré while the truck’s horn blared, but it was too late. The brakes screeched, the wheels skidded on the wet road, then there was a thud. The vehicle seemed to stop instantly, as though all its kinetic energy had been passed on to
Grandpré who was catapulted into the air like a big rag doll and then crashed down with a limp thwack close to the pavement, ten metres further on.

Cars came t rue des Hêtres o a halt. The world seemed to stand still. For a few moments, the only sounds were the hum of idling motors, the crackle of the rain beating down on the asphalt and drumming on the roofs of the cars. Grandpré was now just a formless heap one could have taken for an armful of laundry that had slipped from someone’s grip, if there hadn’t been those shudders and dreadful spasms rocking him. Robert, the first to react, moved forward. Bilodo followed him, and they knelt down next to Grandpré, who lay there helpless, broken, his limbs bent at preposterous angles, his bushy beard spattered with thick blood that the rain, however heavy, didn’t wash away. The poor guy was conscious. He stared at Robert, then at Bilodo, with a stunned look of disbelief, his eyelashes fluttering like the wings of twin butterflies, his gaze blurred by the downpour. His right hand still held the letter he’d been so eager to post, and Bilodo saw it was addressed to Ségolène.

A reddening stream rushed down the gutter. He wasn’t going to make it. He desperately struggled for breath and Bilodo thought this was it, he was dying, but Grandpré began to let out odd gasps. Dumbfounded, Bilodo realised the dying man was laughing. It was definitely laughter – raucous and hollow, colourless, ghostly. Bilodo shivered and noticed he wasn’t the only one: the other witnesses seemed just as disconcerted by the sinister laughter bursting forth from a dying throat. Grandpré went on laughing for a bit, as though at a painful joke. Then he stopped as he choked in a fit of coughing and spat out scarlet sputters.

Turning his head with great effort, he gazed at the bloody letter in his hand while his fingers tightened on the envelope. Grandpré closed his eyes, clenched his teeth; he looked as if he were focusing whatever strength he had left on that last expression of will, that final gesture of holding the letter. And suddenly
he spoke, uttered a few words, but so faintly that only Bilodo and Robert, bent over him, could catch them: he murmured something indistinct that sounded like ‘in-sole’. Then, all at once, it was the end. His eyelids opened wide and his pupils dilated, glazed over. Grandpré’s eyes filled with rain, formed tiny lakes, while his last, enigmatic word lingered in Bilodo’s head. What did that ‘in-sole’ signify? What had the dead man meant? For a fleeting moment Bilodo was tempted to look inside Grandpré’s shoes to check if something was hidden there, but then he wondered if he wasn’t misinterpreting the deceased’s utterance. Taking into account the harrowing groans accompanying it, shouldn’t one assume it to mean ‘an-swer’ instead – a reference to that final leap into the unknown, to that imminent dive into the mystery of the hereafter the dying man was knowingly getting ready for?

At that moment, Bilodo saw that the letter was no longer in the dead man’s hand. Grandpré must have let go of it at the moment of death, and the letter had slipped into the gutter where the swift current had immediately swept it away. Bilodo spotted it drifting downstream between the feet of gaping onlookers, sucked away from the funereal circle by the whirling water as it rushed towards a sewer-grate cascade. Galvanized, he dashed after it, jostling the witnesses to the tragedy. He knew he had to get that letter back at all costs. He ran, bent down, stretched out his hand to catch it. He felt his arm grow longer, his fingers extending inordinately, and reaching it… but a millisecond too late – the sewer swallowed the letter. Carried along by his momentum, Bilodo stumbled and landed flat on his back in the cold water. A flash of lightning streaked the sky at the very moment an equally blinding realisation illuminated Bilodo: with the disappearance of that letter, which the bowels of the earth had swallowed up, his only link with Ségolène had just been severed.