The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman (9 page)

Bilodo gazed in disbelief at the face that couldn’t be there, that
shouldn’t
be there in the mirror instead of his own because it belonged to a dead man. He tried to chase it away by blinking hard, then gave his head a stinging slap, but Grandpré remained stubbornly stuck in the glass, mimicking each of his gestures, watching him with a stupefaction no less than his own. Bilodo came to the obvious conclusion that he had gone mad. Soon after, certain facial details of the mirror’s occupant aroused his attention and led him to reconsider this perhaps too-hasty judgement. It wasn’t quite Grandpré. Those green eyes were Bilodo’s,
not
the deceased’s blue ones, as were those eyebrows – finer, less bushy than Grandpré’s – and that slightly flat nose, and the much less fleshy bottom lip… As he slowly recognised himself deep within the other man’s face, Bilodo acknowledged he wasn’t dreaming, and hadn’t slipped into psychosis, and that the guy opposite was really
him
, though altered in an almost unbelievable way.

Struggling to find a rational explanation, he understood that what he was observing in the glass was the result of a several months’ lapse in personal hygiene. He had been so wrapped up in his poetic adventure that he’d completely forgotten to look after himself, neglecting the most basic body care, not even bothering to look at himself in the mirror, so that it had finally come to this: to this visual shock, this decadent image of himself. But – Bilodo wondered – could chance alone account for the extraordinary resemblance to Grandpré? Wasn’t it due, rather, to an unconscious wish to identify with his predecessor? Perhaps Bilodo had been so eager to mistake himself for Grandpré he’d ended up looking like him to the point that one could be mistaken for the other. In any case, the illusion was startling: with his several months’ growth of beard and his shaggy mane that hadn’t seen a comb for just as long, and
wrapped in Grandpré’s kimono, he bore a striking resemblance to the deceased. No wonder Tania seemed so surprised when she caught sight of him looking like this: for a moment she must have thought she was seeing Grandpré’s ghost.

Bilodo decided to tackle the thick beard covering his cheeks right away; he ran the hot water and got out his razor, but stopped in mid-gesture. An idea had just sprung into his mind: since Tania was fooled, even though she’d known the deceased well, and since Bilodo himself had been taken in for a short while, then why couldn’t someone who’d only ever seen Grandpré in a photograph be fooled as well?

Transfigured, Bilodo put down his razor. The autumn rendezvous was suddenly becoming possible, wasn’t it?

Why not seize this unique chance of welcoming Ségolène to his place? He longed to commune with her through the flesh as much as through words, didn’t he? He yearned to love her in another way than in a dream, even though his body would take the place of Grandpré’s, to truly love her as she deserved, as they both deserved, and finally start living for real.

Could he ignore such a wonderful opportunity to reverse fate? Did he even have the right?

So why was he still hesitating? What was keeping him from asking her to come and spend the autumn, the glorious Canadian autumn she had been dreaming about, in his company?

In his euphoria, Bilodo already pictured himself at the airport, welcoming the Guadeloupean woman as she timidly appeared
at the arrivals gate, and imagined himself driving along with her through a magnificent, postcard autumn landscape, their hair streaming in the wind. Already he savoured their first kiss, anticipated the fiery first embrace, lost his way in Ségolène’s morning hair spilled across the pillow. But for these wonderful visions to become reality, his haiku needed to be posted.

Bilodo had just put a stamp on the envelope when the sky rumbled outside. Thunder. Having threatened all morning, the storm was finally breaking; its first heavy drops crashed against the window glass in the living room. Bilodo refused to let the bad weather stop the poem being sent, so he grabbed an umbrella and went out. While he was still on the landing, a flash of lightning illuminated the street, followed instantly by a loud cracking noise, and suddenly the shower looked like a monsoon. On the other side of the street, through the sheet of rain, he glimpsed a postal van. Post collection time already? It must be, since Robert was there, in the downpour, hurriedly transferring the contents of the box to a sack. Bilodo hesitated. The clerk’s presence bothered him. He hadn’t spoken to Robert since the spring incidents and had no desire to be subjected to his taunts. Besides, Robert wasn’t alone; there was a postman with him, most likely the one substituting for Bilodo in the area, a guy he didn’t know, had never even seen, but whom he’d lately grown distrustful of, for he suspected him of trying to open some of Ségolène’s letters.

The rain now came down in buckets. Robert, rushing to get out of the storm, closed the postbox again and chucked the sack into the van. He’d be leaving any minute now. Bilodo’s wish to post the haiku prevailed over any other consideration: he resigned himself to swallowing his pride and let out a great shout to draw the clerk’s attention. Robert turned around, spotted him. Brandishing his letter, Bilodo tore down the stairs and dashed out onto the flooded road. The other guy, the postman, started motioning with his arms, called out something
indistinct to him. The blast of a horn pierced the air. Then there was a crash.

The world spun around Bilodo, in slow motion, as in a dream. He whirled around in space, wondering what was happening to him, then there was another crash, and the world became steady again, heavy, and hard beneath his back. The sky flashed and thundered, pelted his eyes with rain. He tried to move, but found he couldn’t, and noticed he was in terrible pain. A figure placed itself between the storm and him. A familiar face, Robert’s. Then another face appeared, the postman’s, familiar too, but for a completely different reason: it was his own. The postman’s face was that of the old Bilodo, Bilodo before the metamorphosis, the clean-shaven, clear-eyed Bilodo he had once been.

It was he himself, his former self, looking down at him from up there.

How could he find himself lying on the wet asphalt and be at the same time up there, watching himself? By what magic? Bilodo tried desperately to understand before it was too late, and the answer came to him, it seemed, through an inner voice whispering the words of the opening and closing haiku of Grandpré’s collection:

This was exactly what was happening. The past repeating itself. Time playing a nasty trick on him. As it swirled against the rock – set in the current – that was the moment of Grandpré’s death-struggle, time had been caught in a kind of eddy, forming a loop trapping Bilodo.

Had Grandpré sensed this? As he wrote his haiku, had he known it was prophetic?

A life in the shape of a loop. Bilodo had run aground on the shoals of time. This was so unbelievably, so magnificently absurd that in spite of the excruciating pain he could only laugh about it. He laughed, swallowing rainwater, and the more he laughed, the funnier it all seemed to him. Then a lump came into his throat and his laughter ceased. There really wasn’t anything amusing about it. In fact, it was tragic: he was dying after all, without any consolation, without the comfort even of knowing his death would be a release, because he only needed to look at the other Bilodo, look at the eager way he eyed the letter between his fingers, to understand that the film wouldn’t end here, that his turn would come and the loop would continue, carrying him, too, to his death, and then the one who came after, and the one who followed him as well, and so on forever. It was
as cruel as that: Bilodo was condemned to an endlessly recurring death, and nothing could ward off this curse. Except perhaps…

Holding the letter back… preventing it from slipping into the gutter… hanging on to it long enough for the other Bilodo to grab it, maybe read it, and perhaps decide to post it, thus steering his life into a different time stream… and then who knew? The loop might be undone and damnation averted. Mustering whatever strength he had left, he directed it towards the fingers of his right hand, which tightened on the letter. He closed his eyes the better to focus his willpower, and an unusual image appeared on the screen of his closed eyelids: a red circle or, rather, a revolving wheel of fire.

Still the cursed loop. The serpent bit its tail. Time cannibalized itself.

Suddenly, in Bilodo’s mind, the memory resurfaced of those obscure syllables, those final words Grandpré had murmured just before he expired: ‘in-sole’, he thought he heard. He hadn’t understood at the time what it was about, but now he knew with dazzling certainty.

‘
Enso
,’ he moaned as the last breath of life abandoned him.

Denis Thériault’s first novel,
L’iguane
(
The Iguana
), was published to great critical acclaim and won three major literary prizes. His second novel,
Le facteur émotif
(
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman
) won the Japan-Canada Literary Award in 2006. Born on the north shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence, near Sept-Îles, Quebec, Denis Thériault has a degree in psychology and is an award-winning screenwriter who lives with his family in Montreal. His work has been translated into many languages.

Liedewy Hawke has won the Canada Council Prize for Translation and the John Glassco Translation Prize. She has been nominated four times for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation. She translates French-language as well as Dutch-language literary works. She lives in Toronto.

What inspired you to write
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman
?

Often the inspiration for what I write comes from my dreams, but in this case it was different: the original idea for
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman
came to me from a very concrete incident. A few years ago, while I was checking the day’s post after the postman had been, I noticed an envelope whose corner seemed partially unsealed, as if somebody had tried to open it, and that was what started the creative process. I immediately imagined an indiscreet postman who kept certain personal letters for himself and brought them back home, steamed them open and read them with curiosity: Bilodo was born, and his story rapidly took form in my mind.

What made you choose to focus on Japanese culture and the art of haiku and tanka writing?

It was not there at first. This immersion in the universe of haiku and Japanese culture was not part of the original plan of the novel. It is a discovery that I made when the manuscript was already well advanced. In the first version, the letters from Ségolène that Bilodo intercepted were written in prose, but I was not satisfied with the effect it produced – I thought it was not special or ‘magic’ enough to really impassion Bilodo. I sought another solution, a better idea, and it is in a book of haiku, opened a little by chance, that I found it. I knew immediately that it was what I needed: haiku, these small moments of eternity in seventeen syllables, could really fascinate Bilodo to the point of falling in love with a woman that he did not know. I thus made the decision to rewrite the whole manuscript, integrating this new poetic dimension, and all the rest, the evocation of the Japanese culture and the focus on Zen philosophy, followed naturally, giving the novel a depth which was missing until then.

Are you a fan of poetry?

I like poetry but I am certainly not an expert. I know the French and Canadian classical poets quite well, but there are gigantic holes in my lyric culture. I write little poetry myself; perhaps I would never have thought of creating haiku if it had not proven to be essential for the writing of
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman
. In fact, I learned how to write haiku specifically for this novel. One could say that I reproduced the behaviour of my hero Bilodo: I researched and read the Japanese masters, then I tried to write some haiku, and learned little by little. For approximately four months, I wrote nothing but haiku day after day, by the hundred, until I acquired a certain knowledge of this simple yet complex art. Then, I realised I had to face a second challenge: for the story to function well, Bilodo’s first poetic attempts necessarily had to be awkward; we had to feel a progression in his apprenticeship of the art of haiku. After having learned how to write ‘good’ haiku, I needed to learn how to write some ‘bad’ ones, then ‘less bad’, and then ‘not that bad’, ‘almost good’, etc. It was a most instructive exercise, which I recommend without hesitation to anyone who nourishes poetic ambitions.

Would you describe the book as a love story, a tragedy or something else entirely?

It certainly is a love story, but also a psychological novel that flirts with the fantastic. In my view, it is an intimist tale on the themes of loneliness, dreams and imagination. It is the story of an overly curious postman whose love for an unknown woman leads him to question his own identity, and finally fall into some kind of cosmic trap… the nature of which we will not reveal out of respect for the future readers of the book.

When creating the character of Bilodo did you intend for readers to sympathise with or pity him?

I was a little concerned about the way Bilodo would be perceived. I feared he would be found distant, antipathetic, seen perhaps as a sociopath. Personally, I feel quite close to him. In my view, Bilodo is an eminently modern character: he is isolated in his personal bubble, takes refuge in the small virtual universe, so comfortable, which he created for himself; in this twenty-first century, I believe that many of us resemble him. Bilodo fears peoples, and love frightens him – he prefers to live in the wonderful imaginary world that he has invented around Ségolène. He’s a paradoxical being, pitiful and admirable at the same time. Bilodo is a dreamer, but an active one, a kind of poetic warrior who will fight until death to preserve his ideal.

Did you know what the end of the book would be when you started writing?

Yes, but it was another ending, because the initial plan of the novel evolved during the process. As I explained previously, the idea of including haiku changed everything, and forced me to rewrite the novel from the beginning, to imagine a new ending. Which confirms this eternal truth, always new for me: when you write, the best part is never what you had planned but what you discover on your path.

How did you first get into writing?

I started very young. I learned to read before going to school, and soon became a voracious reader of anything that fell under my hand, including books that were quite ahead of my age and often beyond my comprehension. By eight or nine, I was writing little stories, little poems, and some short plays which I forced my friends to act out. I was very interested in theatre. I wanted to become an actor, a director, a playwright. So I studied theatre, and did all these things in my twenties. Then
I became a screenwriter, a profession that I still practise today. The idea of becoming a novelist came to me quite late, in my mid-thirties, when I realised that the ultimate freedom for a writer was to create novels. I could say that I came to it by process of elimination, after having turned my hand to many trades: it was in the end the only job that was really appropriate for me. And I know I will never stop doing that even if it drives me mad sometimes: a small price to pay for living in a passionnate way.

How does it feel to have won three prestigious literary prizes? (The Prix Anne-Hébert, the Prix France-Québec / Jean Hamelin, and the Prix Odyssée)

I won these three prizes for another novel which I wrote, entitled
The Iguana
(
L’iguane
).
With The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman
, I won the Canada-Japan Literary Prize. Winning a prize is a marvellous thing; it is like a gift offered by destiny. Personally, I do not see it as the crowning of a work but rather an encouragement to continue, to go further. And it is my sincere ambition to write better novels. Although I am currently finishing my fourth novel, I have the feeling that I have hardly begun my writing career. I have plans for writing projects for the rest of my days, and several future lives.

Do you have a writing routine?

I am a disciplined person, but I do not have an immutable routine. I work six to eight hours each day, but it could also be the middle of the night sometimes. I always put some music on, mostly films soundtracks because of the variety of emotions and dramatic climates which they induce. In the middle of the afternoon, I usually walk to a little restaurant near my office, where I have a coffee. And at night, after work, I like to prepare supper and drink a bottle of good wine with my wife.

How much are novel writing and screenwriting interchangeable for you?

These are very different writing techniques which are not interchangeable, but they can influence each other. Very consciously, I write my novels on the classical structure of a film. The screenwriter is never very far behind the novelist, but he stays in the shadow; it is necessary to make good literature. Writing for theatre, TV, film or a novel is always writing, but the technique differs very much, as to the point of view, I would say. The focus is not the same. When you write a play, essentially, you write dialogues, you tell the story of people who talk to each other. At the other end of the spectrum, there is cinema, which is a medium of image and sound; when you write for cinema, you must think in terms of images, music and action; dialogues are important but not essential – you could very well have a film without a single spoken word. Writing for TV falls somewhere between these two. But writing a novel is a different experience. I consider it ‘total writing’. At the same time, you are the playwright, the actors, the director, the composer and the cameraman. And you must mix all these elements in a literary way, with a style that has to be yours and nobody else. For me, novel writing is the ultimate form of storytelling.

The book has been compared to Julian Barnes and Haruki Murakami, so how does this make you feel?

Flattered, of course, to find myself in such an excellent company. And slightly embarrassed too; I must confess I have never read yet anything from Murakami, whom I know only by reputation – a gap which I intend to fill very soon. I have the highest esteem for Julian Barnes, this Master of contemporary literature. I am not sure that my style resembles his, but I certainly feel some kind of philosophical bond with this exceptional author. The reasons which make us compare an author with another always seemed strange to me. In some cases, there is obviously
a common inspiration, but sometimes it is purely instinctive: a detail, a sentence, a simple word, and an association is created. Anyway, I will take these comparisons like a compliment that is perhaps a little too flattering.

The book was originally published in 2008 by a Canadian publisher – how do you feel about it now getting a new life through UK publisher Hesperus Press and do you like the repackage and new title?

The market for Canadian books is quite limited because of the crushing presence of our gigantic American neighbour. I was happy to learn that the novel would be published in the UK by Hesperus Press, and could thus join more readers. And I am delighted that we decided to keep the excellent English translation of Liedewij Hawke, a woman of talent, and also a friend. I do not want to compare the two books, but the new Hesperus version looks very attractive to me: the book is beautiful. If I were not the author, I would desire very much to read it.

Which other writers inspire you?

Hergé, Homer, Jules Verne, Edgar Poe, Maupassant, G.G. Marquez, Kafka, Boris Vian, François Villon. If I was asked to choose my favourite novel or work of fiction of all times, I would hesitate between
Perfume
(Süskind),
Alice in Wonderland
(Lewis Carroll),
Malpertuis
(Jean Ray), and
Les chants de Maldoror
(Lautréamont).

The book is very cinematic, in your mind, who would play Bilodo and Ségolène in the film?

While I wrote the novel, I imagined Bilodo as a young Adrian Brody, and Ségolène as a young Halle Berry. Of course, these excellent actors aren’t appropriate ages for the roles. It would be necessary to choose actors of the same ‘type’ in a younger generation.

Are you working on anything new at the moment?

I am currently finishing a new manuscript. It is a novel which I started to write last year, not knowing at that point that
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman
would be published at Hesperus Press: in fact, it is volume two of this story. It is the continuation of Bilodo’s adventures, and more precisely those of Tania, the young waitress from the restaurant Madelinot in the first novel, who secretly loves our postman… Please, permit me to stay discreet about this for now.