“Don’t lick the front.”
Camus was too late. The stamp depicting the sea had already stuck to my tongue. I spat it onto the table. Seawater immediately poured from its perforated edges, sweeping away two pens, a cup and the “It’s fine” I had just uttered.
Le Panelier, late autumn 1942. I had come through the wrong backstage door only to ask directions. Now Camus stood on a chair with his manuscript raised overhead, asking whether I could swim. A little, I said. How little? A small fish jumped out of my pocket and concluded my answer.
The sea reached the tabletop. Creases appeared in the walls. All four corners folded inward, and the room creaked into the shape of a paper boat. Camus drew his foot back just in time. The window became a porthole. My shoes remained on the floor, now more properly called the hull.
He found a broom and began rowing. I hung my coat from a chair back as a sail. A gust immediately drove us towards the stamp by the table’s edge. Its pictured waves were higher than the ones outside. It was supplying our shipwreck without interruption.
“Turn it over!” Camus shouted.
I lay across the bow and reached. A wave carried the stamp away. A manuscript sheet drifted past; I tried to rescue it. Camus told me to leave it. But there was writing on it, I said. It was a shopping list, he replied. I let go, only then noticing the last item: coffee.
The hull was absorbing water. My sail worked beautifully, but took us the wrong way. I removed my other shoe to paddle while Camus pushed the bow with his broom. With two competing transport policies, we spun three times in place. On the third turn I finally reached the stamp and trapped it under the drifting cup.
For half a second the world went quiet.
The sea spiralled beneath the cup. The paper boat unfolded, the walls stood upright and the chairs returned to their places. I was still lying across the table with both wet shoes in the air. Camus counted his pages, then his pens, then looked at me.
“You can ask directions now,” he said.
I climbed down and tried to empty the cup. He stopped my hand. Seagulls cried inside it. A small mail boat was approaching a distant shore.
“Keep it for now.”
He opened the sugar tin and dropped a lump into the sea. Someone aboard the boat immediately rang a bell.