Pisstory Pt. 02: Sur la route

Before I could say anything else he made me sit and gave me beer, coffee, and a dish of salted peanuts. Only then would he let me explain my presence back in the village.

"Yanni doesn't come by very often" he said. "I'm told he's busy becoming a serious businessman. His dad never really approved of me, so I don't see much of the family any more. How's that sister of his?"

"Beautiful" I said, surprised to hear myself admit it.

"Ah, like that, is it? Well, don't elope with her yet. Old man Morvan's a decent type, but I'm sure he's still got a shotgun stashed somewhere in his barn."

I laughed nervously.

I told him the purpose of my expedition into town and he immediately produced writing paper, an envelope, and a postage stamp.

"It's a good thing to write to your ma" he said. "I miss mine every day."

As I scrawled a suitably bland account of my adventures so far he put the record on again.

"Jacques Brel" he said. "He may have been a Belgian, but I think we can forgive him that. What a poet!"

Brel's lyrics were dense and allusive, and I could only follow maybe one third of their sense. The final song, though, about the port of Amsterdam, was riveting, from the opening accordion note to the final, almost shouted verse, the singer's voice cracking with emotion at several points between. This was real, a fugue of rising desperation and terror, a tale of being lost, drunk, elated, angry, sad, lustful, betrayed, hopeless, transfigured, in the voices and characters of sailors miles from any home, immersed in the slick moonlit dark of a foreign port city. It was one of the most amazing things I'd ever heard. It still is. I was speechless when it had finished. Henri looked down at me, his own eyes brimming with tears.

"Ah, you get it" he said.

He played it through another four times while we listened in wonder and awe.

I got back to the farmhouse a couple of hours later, left the bread in the kitchen, and went to my room, attempting to read Kerouac's 'On the Road' for a while. A book I'd reacted to with almost religious fervour when I first encountered it, as a kind of gospel of youthful restlessness and desire for physical and spiritual enlightenment, felt strangely bleak. It was almost as though its author was trying to convince himself of something he no longer felt so sure about. I hated the thought that I was becoming jaded, but Jacques Brel seemed to have compressed more stark emotion into that one three-minute song than I could detect, at the moment, in the other Jack's entire novel.

I wondered later if this weren't some kind of premonition of what was about to befall me. I have moments like that. If Saint Alana's Fountain could, in a certain superstitious sense, be said to have healed me as it appeared to have done -- I hadn't thought about Emma all day -- then perhaps I was also being granted a degree of foresight about what the price was going to be.

Either way, I grew tired of Kerouac and went to the main house again to where I'd noticed a bookcase in a corner of the living room. There was a Livre de Poche copy of Francois Rabelais' 'Gargantua' among its various contents. As I've said elsewhere, Rabelais later came up in my own writing as a reference point for one of my critical books, and as TS Eliot once wrote, time tends to echo backwards and forwards, the future contained in the past and vice-versa. I'd heard of Rabelais, no more than that, and although I had to reread him completely all those years later, this was my first encounter with his bizarre, knotty, rich and outrageous prose.

Berthe had reappeared in the kitchen as I carried the book through.

"Thanks for the bread" she said. "My God, you've set yourself a task. Most French people can't understand Rabelais."

"I probably won't either. But I like to try everything."

That night, without actually discussing it, Alana and I followed the same plan that had won us time together the previous evening while avoiding, so we thought, any suspicion on her parents' part. She declared herself tired immediately after dinner and went off, so she said, to sleep. I feigned interest in what Yvon was saying about his meeting with the land agent, took a couple of thimbles of rocket fuel, and asked Yann if he'd ever read Rabelais. He hadn't. When I asked whose copy of 'Gargantua' I'd borrowed from the bookcase nobody knew.

The subject of books, though, seemed to inspire him.

"I've something to show you" he said, as Yvon and Berthe agreed that they too should make their way to bed.

He led me to his room and handed me the remainder of his five-pack of condoms, one of which Alana had already purloined.

"These'll be more use to you than me" he said. "Be kind to Alana. She's very happy. I had no idea she thought so much of you."

I could have kissed him, electing instead to give him a firm, manly handshake while half-embracing him with the other arm.

"Don't you have a girlfriend?" I said, now confidences appeared to be in order.

"At the hotel. She's a bit older than me, and on the Pill, so no need for these primitive things."

I slipped the rubbers into my pocket, grinning.

"And in case my parents want to know what I wanted to show you..."

He reached up to a shelf and pulled down a Folio paperback: Jack Kerouac's 'Sur la route.'

"Present" he said.

I was so jubilant when I got to Alana's room I didn't even pretend to go to bed. I knocked on her door, then pushed it open to, as I had expected, her sitting naked on the edge of her bed by candlelight.

"My darling" I said, wondering where that word had come from "Yann just gave me this as a gift."

I brandished the box of condoms, elated, like a fool. Her face broke into a smile like the sun coming out on a cloudy day.

"I got your present too."

I almost threw myself at her, planting my mouth over hers, fumbling with the buttons of my shirt, steering her hand toward the fly of my jeans, wanting her more than anything I'd ever wanted before.

"Which one?" I gasped.

"My knickers. Full of your cum. I've already had to give myself one orgasm tonight when I found them."

"How about this?" I flipped the pillow over, to where the white stains had hardened and crisped on the surface of the fabric.

She leaned over and sniffed it.

"I can't imagine anywhere I'd rather sleep. Oh my God!"

My fingers were deep in her cunt again.

"I think I really do want to make love to you" I heard myself saying, as though from a great distance, as I stood and stripped off the rest of my clothes.

"Love?" she said, ripping open a condom packet and grabbing my stiff penis.

"Love." She rolled the condom ever me and I pushed her back on the bed.

It may have been vanilla sex -- me lying on top of her, splayed, with her legs wrapped round me, thrusting as fast and hard as I could into her as I sucked at her mouth and drank her furiously reciprocating tongue -- but it was fresh Madagascan vanilla, full fat milk, the tactful admixture of nutmeg, and we came simultaneously, breathlessly, and with declarations of everlasting affection and devotion, of a kind I'd certainly never heard myself make before. I remembered Yann's admonition to be kind to her, and that's all I wanted to do, for ever and ever.

We sat up in bed, arms round each other, kissing and running astonished fingers over small areas of each other's skin. I licked her still-unshaven armpits and inhaled her sweat.

"You're perfect" I said.

"You love me."

I didn't want to leave her that night, but we agreed once more that it was advisable given Yvon's crepuscular morning habits. Once again, I slept solidly. I had a vague recollection of hearing someone in my room just as it was getting light but didn't surface far enough to check whether or not I was dreaming. When I eventually came to I opened the shutters again, and found, on my bedside table, a pair of white cotton knickers with a note:

'Use these well and give them back to me. I love you.'

I didn't know whether to be consumed by lust and masturbate over them there and then, or to cry with tenderness.

I'd promised I'd go back to see Henri that morning, to listen to more Jacques Brel and find out whether he'd managed to get hold of his sister on the phone. Since I was travelling around France with no overall plan, he'd suggested I might as well go to Paris and, if I did, drop in to see Mimi, Doudou and Zaza. In fact, my first language exchange partner, Eric, lived somewhere in one of the Parisian suburbs, and although he was the only one I hadn't stayed in contact with I was already intending to look him up. Reacquainting myself with the girls would be another reason to spend some time in the capital.

But now I didn't want to leave the Morvans' place, ever, even though I knew I'd have to. I hadn't expected to fall for Alana, never mind so suddenly or violently. The important thing was to decide in concrete terms what would happen next, and plan in such a way that could bring me back to her as soon as possible.

'Mann tracht, und Gott lacht', as the old Yiddish saying goes. 'Man plans, and God laughs.'

I ate breakfast in the kitchen with Berthe again, undertaking once more to fetch the day's bread back from the village.

"Wait a minute before you go" she said, and disappeared into an adjacent room, returning a few minutes later with a rectangular object in her hand, from which she was wiping dust with the sleeve of her housecoat. She placed in front of me a brown leather-bound hardbacked notebook.

"If you want to be a writer you must write, every day" she said. "This is to help you get started. A small present for my son's friend."

It was a time for gifts, then. I opened the notebook, onto thick creamy blank pages, simultaneously beautiful in texture and terrifying in their emptiness.

"I don't know what to say" I said. "That is, thank you. Thank you very much."

"No need to say anything. Just write. Oh, and I'm doing some laundry today. Do you have anything that needs washing?"

I didn't, as one of the first things I'd done on arrival was wash the shirt and underclothes I'd been wearing in the bedroom basin. I felt like I had everything under control. And now I could write.

I tucked the notebook under my arm and walked to the village, bypassing Henri's place at first so I could sit in the church square for a few minutes to begin. First I transcribed, from memory, the poem I'd written for Alana that morning and left under her pillow with her knickers that I'd signed with fresh semen:

'I drink from St Alana's living fountain.

Her healing waters splash my face.

My nostrils fill with holy incense.

My staff flowers inside her mouth.'

Then I began the first version of this story, which as yet had no ending.

Henri handed me a slip of paper with a Paris phone number on it.

"My sister Marie-France says the girls would love to see you. Mimi's working in the South, but Doudou and Zaza are still at home. She says they often talk about you and Yanni -- that holiday was the first time they'd ever been out of the city. Just phone to give them some notice when you get there."

I left the bread and a small packet of cakes I'd bought as a thank-you for Berthe in the kitchen and went to my room. I continued writing, wondering with a faint pang of guilt what Yann's mother -- or indeed Yann himself -- would think of the lurid and intoxicating detail I was setting down of my two nights with Alana.

Only two nights! I'd started out a depressed virgin chasing a vague dream of independence and adventure, and now I was utterly and unexpectedly in love with a girl whose whole being -- her voice, words, desires, limbs, mouth, cunt, hands -- was wrapped tightly round me like my own skin.

I stopped writing when the daylight started to fade, and waited. I wanted to be there when Alana found her poem. I listened, leafing through a couple of books as I did so, the evening arriving in silence punctuated by the ingenious obscenities of Rabelais and the transposed French jazz prose of the North American beat novelist with the Breton name.

I began to worry once it was properly dark and still completely silent. The family normally ate at about six o'clock, and it had got to five forty-five before there was any sound at all. Then the door opened and I relaxed.

"Hi!" I called, springing to my feet, intending to get down the stairs, wrap her in my aching arms and kiss her while her lips were cool from the winter air outside.

Still silence. Then someone started climbing the stairs.

It was Yann. He was carrying a tray of food. He looked terrified.

"What's happening? Where's Alana?"

"I'm sorry" said Yann, looking round for somewhere to put down the tray. Absurdly, I took it carefully from him and deposited it on the chair.

"Alana's staying with our aunt in Nantes tonight. My father's driving her there now. She's not happy. My parents want you to go tomorrow morning. I'm really sorry."

Then it hit me. The laundry. Berthe must have changed Alana's bedcovers this morning and... Well, erotic pseudo-medieval poem and sperm-soaked knickers were pretty damning evidence.

"I'm an arsehole" I said. "What a fucking arsehole!"

"I don't know what happened" Yann said "But I encouraged you. My friend and my sister. I wanted you both to be happy."

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

"She's not underage, though" I said, crashing into the denial stage of mourning. "She was -- she is -- in love with me. And I love her. Shit!"

"Our parents are very old-fashioned. They've got plans for her. She's young. You both are. You've both got university to go to."

"Shit!" I said again. I was beginning to sound monotonous even to myself. "I can't stay here tonight. Can you take me somewhere?"

"I can drive you to Rennes or Laval. Have you got enough money for a hotel?"

"I'm taking a train to Paris."

Was I? It was the first thing I could think of. I didn't want to go to Paris, or to see anyone any more. I couldn't go home. Everything was fucked.

Yann drove me and my canvas bag to the railway station at Laval.

"Write to me" I said as we hugged in the car park. "Ask Alana to write too. In fact, give her my home phone number... I scrabbled in my coat pocket for paper.

"I've got your number" he said. "Good luck."

"I love her" I said.

Of course, I didn't have enough French money for a ticket to Paris. There was no Bureau de Change on the station, but I didn't want to go there anyway. I wanted to be nowhere. I found a corner shop and bought a plastic litre bottle of cheap red wine, and the most ridiculous tourist picture postcard I could find, showing a severe looking old woman in traditional local dress. I went back to the empty station waiting room, drank half the wine, and wrote the card to Charlie: 'Kerouac said The Road Is Life. Yeah, hard, dirty, overcrowded and ultimately going nowhere. Bastard!' I posted it, finished the plonk, and eventually went to sleep on the bench.

As it started getting light outside and people began arriving on early commuter trains I turned up my collar, picked up my bag, gritted my teeth and walked across town to where the D21 local road joined the N162 highway toward the Loire valley. I stood by the slip road and stuck out my thumb.