The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Thériault

took it out of the box, unfolded it. The fabric was silky, iridescent. A truly beautiful garment. Bilodo couldn’t resist putting it on. To his amazement he felt perfectly comfortable in it. He took a few steps and spun around and around to see how light the kimono was. He sent the flaps flying about him – he felt a bit like Lawrence of Arabia in his first emir costume – and admired himself in the mirror. The garment moulded itself completely to his body. It looked as though it were made for him. Bilodo felt electric. It was as if a mild current flowed through his nerves, causing him to tingle all over. On a sudden impulse he left the bedroom, headed into the living room, sat down at the desk, put a blank sheet of paper in front of him, picked up a pen, placed its point on the paper. Then the miracle happened. The tip of the ballpoint started rolling over the sheet, inscribed it with a seismographic string of words. Could Bilodo still be dreaming? Inspiration had suddenly struck. It was like a dam giving way inside him, like a stalled engine finally starting. He could barely keep up with the images as they crowded into his consciousness, knocked against one another like billiard balls.
    A minute later, it was finished: the mysterious force had abandoned Bilodo, leaving him haggard, worn out. Before himlay a haiku. It had written itself, in one go, without a single deletion, automatically, in handwriting one would have sworn was Grandpré’s:
    Perpetual snow
    on lofty heights, unchanging
    such is my friendship
    Bilodo tried to make sense of what just happened; he thought it might be a conditioning phenomenon of some kind, the catalyst of which had been the discovery of the kimono. Putting on the garment, slipping symbolically into Grandpré’s skin had probably triggered the creative process he’d been trying to start for days. Or was it spiritualism? Had Bilodo been briefly possessed? Had Grandpré’s spirit granted his wish so as to help him? Bilodo felt too shaken to decide. The important thing was the poem: whether under spiritual influence or not, Bilodo had just written what he thought was the first good haiku of his life. Would it succeed, though, in comforting Ségolène? Would it appeal to her?
    Bilodo folded the paper and slipped it into an envelope. But just as he was about to close it, he hesitated, tormented by one last dilemma: should he add that stylized O to the haiku – the one Grandpré used to draw on everything? Was it some kind of signature or graphic seal, the absence of which might arouse suspicion? To find out, he would have needed to examine the deceased’s previous mailings; once again the loss of Grandpré’s last letter made itself sorely felt. Bilodo finally chanced forgoing it. He sealed the envelope and hurried to post it before he changed his mind.
    It would take five or six days for the haiku to reach Ségolène and at least as many for her reply to get back to him – supposing that she replied, that she didn’t suspect the deception, that the ruse worked.
    * * *
    The letter arrived eleven days later. Bilodo had been hoping for it with all the passion he had inside him, praying for it constantly, no longer daring to touch his pen or put on the kimono for fear of jeopardizing fate’s delicate balance, but there it was at last, in his hand, as he stood transfixed at his counter in the Depot. Unable to wait, he rushed to the men’s room, locked himself in the last cubicle, tore open the envelope, and read:
    Sheer, towering peaks
    respectful regards from your
    humble mountaineer
    Bilodo was instantly transported into a Himalayan landscape worthy of
Tintin in Tibet
. Clinging to a rock, he stood halfway up a steep, downhill slope of virgin snow, dazzling in the harsh sunlight, while ahead of him rose the summit, far off and yet close by in the rarefied air, sharply outlined against the deep blue sky, moody, imperious in its rugged grandeur…
    When after all that time Bilodo finally