The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman (7 page)

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 chewed 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.

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
Titanic
s. 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
.

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 fear. 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:

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: