The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman (4 page)

While combing the Japanese Literature section of the Central Library, Bilodo hunted out a few highly instructive books, and it didn’t take him long to learn everything he’d always wanted to know about haiku but had been afraid to ask. The principle was actually quite simple: haiku sought to juxtapose the permanent and the ephemeral. A good haiku ideally contained a reference to nature (
kigo
) or to some reality not uniquely human. Sparing of words, precise, at once complex and subtle, it shunned literary artifice and customary poetic devices such as rhyme and metaphor. The art of haiku was the art of the snapshot, of the detail. It could be about an episode in someone’s life, a memory, a dream, but it was above all a concrete poem, appealing to the senses, not to ideas.

Bilodo was beginning to see the light. Even the epistolary haiku exchange Ségolène and Grandpré had practised took on a specific meaning: it was a
renku
or ‘linked verse’, a tradition going back to the literary contests held at the imperial court of medieval Japan.

Since Bilodo found all this fascinating and felt like talking about it, he told his friend Robert about his discoveries and read him a few haiku by Bashō, Buson, and Issa, classic masters of the genre, but the delicate balance between
fueki
– the permanent, eternity extending beyond us – and
ryuko
– the fleeting, the ephemeral that passes through us – seemed to be totally lost on the clerk, who regarded it as nothing but a sophisticated form of mental masturbation. Not that he had any prejudices against Japanese literature. On the contrary: Robert pointed out that he liked manga, those popular comic strips, but especially enjoyed
hentai
, their erotic variants, which he warmly recommended to Bilodo, whipping out a sample to back this up.

Bilodo, eager to talk to someone more capable of sharing his intellectual enthusiasm, turned to Tania. The young waitress
wasn’t particularly interested at first, because it was a busy time at the Madelinot. The twinkle he had expected did appear in her eyes, though, when he spread open for her the pages of a book called
Traditional Haiku of the Seventeenth Century
, a valuable publication he’d borrowed from the library, which allowed the reader to marvel at haiku calligraphed in old Japanese. Tania admitted it was very beautiful and very mysterious, very mystical. Bilodo couldn’t have agreed more: combining ideograms with a phonetic syllabary, the Japanese way of writing contributed to the haiku’s utter density, almost succeeded in expressing the indescribable.

Was that poetic? Bilodo had thought at first he’d hit the bull’s eye – could there be anything more Japanese than a goldfish? – but now wasn’t so sure any more.

Yet he had a feeling he was on the right track, for along with ‘lightness, sincerity, and objectivity’, ‘affection towards all living creatures’ ranked among the haiku’s noblest attributes. But didn’t the subject itself leave something to be desired? With all due respect to Bill, was a fish the most appropriate animal for expressing poetry? Casting about for a more suitable creature, Bilodo thought of a bird, which already had the virtue of embodying ‘lightness’:

Was that really any better than the fish? Bilodo, upset to be so mediocre, felt his new-found self-confidence ebbing away. Knowing theoretically what a haiku consisted of was one thing, being able to write one was quite another.

Also, the literary quality was only one aspect of the problem: regardless of their debatable artistic worth, neither the fish haiku nor the one about the bird was like a poem Grandpré might have written, and
that
was their basic flaw. Most important of all, he needed to write a poem that was ‘Grandpré-esque’. Bilodo had to succeed in worming his way so snugly into the deceased’s mind that Ségolène wouldn’t suspect anything.

It occurred to Bilodo he might do a graphological analysis of Grandpré’s writings; he therefore got a book dealing with that science. He soon realised it was a discipline based on experience, an art only mastered through intensive practice, so he wondered if he’d be able to define Grandpré’s personality in the short period of time available to him. In the evening, while he pored over the textbook in front of the TV, his attention was caught by comments from an actor who’d been invited to talk about his profession and explained how he’d gone about playing a famous head of state who had died a few years earlier. The performer mentioned he had begun by focusing on the great man’s small gestures, his mannerisms, his ways, his habits, and had worked at copying these until eventually this process of close identification revealed to him the character’s inner substance, his deepest truth. Fascinated, Bilodo closed his treatise on graphology. It struck him that what he’d just heard could be a promising lead.

At the Madelinot the next day, rather than sitting at the counter, Bilodo settled himself on the banquette Grandpré used to occupy and asked to be served what the deceased had been in the habit of ordering. Puzzled, Tania put down a tomato
sandwich in front of him, which he ate while enjoying the unfamiliar view his new vantage point afforded him, not just of the restaurant but of the street beyond as well.

After lunch, while continuing his round, Bilodo carried on with the exercise by trying to imagine he was Grandpré. He closely observed the world around him, noting any incident, any detail that could give him material for a haiku. The caterpillar crawling across the pavement, for example, that openwork archway formed by intertwining tree branches overhanging the street, those squirrels bickering between the legs of a park bench, and those pink panties on a clothes line blown about by the wind – could any of it perhaps be turned into a poem?

When Bilodo reached rue des Hêtres, he leisurely strolled down the street, doing his best to see with the eyes of Grandpré, to feel what the other would have felt, and that’s how it came about, when he arrived in front of the deserted apartment while trying to enter the inner world of the man who was no more, that the real way to gain access to it was suddenly revealed to him, in the form of a notice.

A red-and-black notice, sellotaped to the window, reading: ‘APARTMENT FOR RENT’.

Bilodo found the owner of the building in her minuscule vegetable garden. She was a well-groomed, distrustful lady who seemed to be reassured by Bilodo’s uniform. Abandoning her plants momentarily, Madame Brochu took him to the third floor and let him into the apartment which, for a change, he entered quite legally this time. How strange it was to visit that place in broad daylight after he’d slunk through it in the dark. Contrary to the sinister memory he had of it, the apartment turned out to be pleasant, well lit, remarkable mainly for its typically Japanese decoration. Bilodo couldn’t have been aware
of it at the time of his previous intrusion – because he had only dimly seen the premises by the glow of a torch and through the glaucous prism of stress – but the furniture, the blinds, the lamps, pretty well everything was of Japanese inspiration or style. You would almost think you had been whisked away to the land of the rising sun.

Wherever Bilodo’s gaze rested, it encountered the tortured shape of a bonsai, a print, a knickknack, a statuette representing a languid geisha or a shrewdly smiling podgy bonze, a touchy samurai brandishing his sword. Those padded carpets Bilodo had found it so curious to walk on were in fact tatami mats, fitted together on the floor like pieces of a gigantic puzzle. As for that thing, that peculiar object he’d knocked over as he fled, it was actually a beautiful little table made of precious wood, delicately sculpted in the shape of a leaf bending on its stem, probably used for serving tea. On either side of the writing desk, the only Western touch present, stood a tall rack stuffed with books. The living room’s second area, partitioned off by a folding paper screen painted with a mountainous landscape bright with cherry trees in blossom, must have served as a dining room. All it contained was a low table, surrounded by embroidered cushions, on which sat a tiny Zen garden.

The bedroom was plainly furnished with a futon and a wardrobe whose movable panels were fitted with tall mirrors that reflected you from head to toe. As for the bathroom, it contained a curious little wooden bath, a high, narrow vat of some sort, set right inside the regular tub, to make it easier to empty no doubt.

So Grandpré had been an enthusiast of the Japanese way of life. Not at all surprising in such an ardent devotee of haiku. That outlandish scarlet dressing gown he never took off was obviously a kimono, now probably lying in some grim cupboard at the morgue, unless it had been incinerated along with its owner.

The kitchen counter was spotless, the putrid smell no longer there – Madame Brochu had seen to it. The door’s broken windowpane had been replaced. Nothing hinted that the place had recently been the scene of a burglary. Somewhat flustered, Madame Brochu explained how surprised she’d been to learn that the late former tenant, who apparently had neither heirs nor close relatives, had bequeathed his furniture and all his personal belongings to her in his will. This was an inconvenience for the dear lady, who found herself forced to dispose of the articles at her own expense, but for Bilodo it represented an unexpected stroke of luck: he suggested he rent the apartment just as it was, with everything it contained – an arrangement Madame Brochu was only too happy to accept. A few minutes later Bilodo signed his lease and received the key to his new home.

Inwardly he jumped for joy, convinced he’d finally discovered how to overcome the poetic hurdle. What better way to penetrate the mystery of Grandpré’s soul than by exploring his natural habitat, by living as he himself had lived? Bilodo wandered from room to room, feeling shivers of excitement racing through him before that rich deposit of existence ready to be mined. He would go through everything, immerse himself in the premises’ atmosphere, breathe in their most subtle exhalation. He would vampirize the evanescent aura of the man who’d preceded him within these walls, find out everything about him, and eventually slip so deeply into his mind that he’d have no difficulty guessing, sensing, what Grandpré would have written.

Bilodo didn’t discover any skeletons in Grandpré’s closets or any suspicious items in his fridge, nor anything particularly noteworthy in the kitchen cupboards either, except a plentiful supply of tea and several bottles of sake. He did, however, find a phenomenal number of unmatched socks in the chest of drawers as well as in the laundry hamper, and wondered what light this odorous enigma shed on the deceased’s psychology. Did Grandpré steal socks from laundromats? Did he collect them? Did he turn into a centipede when the moon was full? Otherwise, the apartment contained nothing out of the ordinary.

What impressed Bilodo most was the sheer number of books on the shelves. The majority were by Japanese authors, of course. Hundreds of volumes were lined up there, bearing exotic titles and names. He opened at random a novel by a certain Mishima and came across a passage where a young woman squeezed a little mother’s milk from her breast, which she then put into her lover’s tea. Disturbed by such a strange gesture, Bilodo closed the book again and, deciding to complete his literary education at a later date, began to study those of Grandpré’s papers that he hadn’t been able to take with him the night of the break-in.

That’s how he discovered a letter from Ségolène, a conventional one, entirely in prose, dating back three years. Writing to Grandpré for the first time, the Guadeloupean woman introduced herself as a lover of Japanese poetry and commented favourably on an article by Grandpré about the art of haiku according to Kobayashi Issa that had appeared in a journal of literary studies. Other letters followed. They showed how quickly an intellectual closeness had developed between them and how after a while the
renku
project was born – an idea of Grandpré’s. So this was the way they became acquainted. A shared interest in Japanese literature had caused them to cross
paths and strike up a friendship. At least one mystery had been cleared up.

Encouraged by this first breakthrough, Bilodo decided to take another stab at writing poetry. He had a whole weekend, since it was Friday, so he locked the door, closed the blinds, and invoked the old masters, respectfully requesting their benevolence. Then, like someone fishing for pearl oysters, he dived into his inner self.

Because Bilodo believed his previous haiku suffered from a lack of
fueki
– the eternity element – he spent all night writing a poem he meant to be a celebration of the dazzling return of dawn, finishing it in the small hours:

It wasn’t too bad, Bilodo felt. It had plenty of
fueki
anyway. But wasn’t the
ryuko
content – the ephemeral or mundane element — insufficient, though? What Bilodo was aiming for was the delicate balance that characterized a good haiku, so he set to work again, making every effort to proportion these two contradictory constituents correctly.

Bilodo noticed his stomach grumbled. Not surprising, considering he hadn’t eaten anything since the day before, wrapped up as he’d been in his creative endeavour. Did one thing explain another, he wondered? Was poetry basically an affair of the stomach after all? Bilodo put the question on hold and went to have lunch at the Délicieux Orient, a local Japanese restaurant.

In the late afternoon he had a visit from Madame Brochu, who brought a fruit basket as a welcome gift. The lady noted the progress he’d made in settling in and insisted on making sure he had everything he needed. Grasping the opportunity to find out more about Grandpré, Bilodo invited her to stay for tea and served it on the pretty little leaf-shaped table. After they’d traded the usual polite remarks, Bilodo steered the conversation onto the former tenant. The dreadful circumstances of his death were recalled, commented on, deplored. Bilodo learned Grandpré had taught literature at the College nearby, but had retired the previous year although he was still quite young. Drawn out by Bilodo’s keen attention, the lady revealed the poor man had behaved strangely in the last months of his life – he hardly ever left his apartment and played the same recordings of Chinese music over and over. A breakdown of some kind, she assumed, just barely able to bring herself to whisper that word of doom.

After Madame Brochu left, Bilodo drained the teapot while thinking things over. In many respects his knowledge of Grandpré’s personality remained hazy, and the intricacies of his mind largely unexplored, but Bilodo was beginning to see daylight. The lady’s account had added a new element:
music. Would it contribute, Bilodo wondered, to a better understanding of the man? As soon as he started rummaging through Grandpré’s discs, he found the recordings of Chinese music the lady had mentioned – it was traditional Japanese music, actually. He chose one at random and put it on. The pleasing tones of a melancholy flute and chords plucked from a kind of lute filtered from the speakers, pervading the living room with a sweet recitative. Inspired all of a sudden, Bilodo grabbed his pen…

He wrote, putting on disc after disc, guzzling tea, while the shadowy hours slipped by. Arpeggios rippled from the
koto
, sometimes accompanied by a shrillish
samisen
, sometimes a
sho
, emphasizing the ethereal tone of a
hichiriki
or spellbinding nasal singing of a woman. Bilodo wrote as if in a trance, striving with his whole being towards
wabi
(sober beauty in harmony with nature), immersing himself in the age-old virtues of
sabi
(simplicity, serenity, solitude). He took an imaginary stroll through the autumnal blaze of Mount Royal and tried to render the contagious languor of the shameless trees, the rustle of leaves startled by the wind, the song of birds about to depart, and the last crunchings of insects.

He wrote, seeking the words’ cooperation, struggling to seize them in midair before they scattered, to capture them like butterflies in the page’s net and pin them to the paper. Every so often he achieved a line he considered tolerably good, only to decide five minutes later it rang hollow and feed it to the wastepaper basket. He’d start over, wading in a pond of crumpled cellulose, taking an occasional break to draw a hieroglyph in the sand of the tiny Zen garden or reread a certain haiku by Grandpré or Ségolène, reciting them out loud the better to admire their resonant spontaneity.

He had sushi delivered by the Délicieux Orient, which he took care to eat when Bill wasn’t looking, then continued all night covering the snowy white paper with his scribbles, and all day Sunday, living on sake now, and again all evening, until his head spun, he’d developed a squint, and the pen fell from his fingers. He flopped down on the futon and sank into a sleep haunted by living ideograms and dreamt that Ségolène opened her blouse and squeezed a little milk from her breast, which she let drip between his own lips…

When he woke up on Monday morning with his neurons in a jumble, he swallowed four aspirins, took an interminable shower, then sorted through the few sheets that deserved to escape destruction and ended up choosing a poem written at twilight:

The tercet gave off a whiff of poetry, Bilodo thought, and didn’t strike him as totally foreign to what Grandpé might have written. It was almost right. But almost wasn’t quite enough yet, and he methodically tore the sheet into infinitesimal pieces he sent whirling about like snowflakes. For the second time in two weeks he called the Post Office to say he wouldn’t be coming in to work, then heated water for his tea and started slogging away again, determined to sacrifice an entire forest if he had to.

It was almost noon when the banging of the letterbox made him jump. Bilodo noted with a slight pang of jealousy that replacing him didn’t appear to have been much of a problem and went to pick up Grandpré’s post. There were two advertising flyers, one bill, and a letter from Ségolène.

It took Bilodo a moment to get a grip on himself. This was totally unexpected. He never thought Ségolène would write before Grandpré had replied to her haiku about the baby otter. With the paper knife in his trembling hand, he slit open the envelope. It contained as always only a single sheet:

Bilodo felt strongly challenged by the haiku’s frank, direct tone and was alarmed by the almost palpable anxiety it conveyed. Used to more punctuality from her penfriend, Ségolène obviously worried about his silence; the poor woman was afraid she had offended him in some way. Bilodo imagined her uneasiness as she wrote the poem, anxiety spreading over her lovely face, attacking its sweet fullness. That vision of Ségolène falling prey to anguish was more than he could bear, and he felt an urgent need to act. He needed to reply very quickly to reassure her and bring back her smile. Bilodo must stop dragging his feet and finally deliver that blasted haiku!