by David Mark
‘I know some of the stories,’ says Vernon, holding the book upon his palm as if weighing it. ‘Quite creepy, or so I remember. Beautiful illustrations. Worth every penny. You’re sure, yes?’
The customer looks at the book and gives the slightest smile. He nods, once. He has dealt with Mr Farkas before. The man does not give in to displays of exuberance. He is soft-spoken and reserved. Vernon understands that in this moment, his customer is lost in something close to fantasy, completing a purchase perhaps decades in the dreaming. Vernon’s own love of books is healthily zealous. He would not bankrupt himself or go hungry in pursuit of a rare first edition, but he would gladly walk to work for a month and forego the purchase of luxuries if it allowed him to buy a limited edition hardback signed and dated by one of his literary heroes. He has a withering contempt for the fly-by-night accumulators; those with a scattergun approach to amassing a collection of note. Nor does he admire the super-rich, who will buy limited edition Harry Potter prints and stick them on a shelf next to an original King James Bible so they have something to show off about over the sound of Emeli Sandé at dinner parties. He dislikes the majority of his customers, truth be told. He is not sure how he feels about Mr Farkas, other than quietly grateful that he chose today to wander in off the street and enquire about the artefact in the window. That’s what he had called it – an artefact. Not a book.
‘Do you think she will be afraid of it?’
It takes Vernon a moment to realize that Mr Farkas is asking him a question. He tries not to appear startled. He looks up and sees that Mr Farkas is staring at him, seemingly awaiting an answer. He feels unnerved by the gaze. He twitches his eyes towards the front window. Looks out through the golden lettering and rain-jewelled glass and into the little courtyard that has been home to booksellers for 300 years. Vernon has often fantasized that the shop is a portal; that if he just lets go of the present for long enough he could change the view beyond the glass and see men in top hats, pocket watches and splendid whiskers stalking by carrying the new Wordsworth for their betrothed. Mr Farkas, with his cape and hat and air of sculpted gloom, fits perfectly into the bleak picture.
‘Pouring down,’ says Vernon, feeling oddly uncomfortable. ‘I’ll double wrap it. Keep it safe. Is it cash or card?’
Mr Farkas hesitates and Vernon is struck by his stillness. He makes Vernon think of undisturbed water; a shimmering mirror reflecting back a thousand miles of sky.
‘I asked if she will be afraid,’ says Mr Farkas, again. ‘I do not wish her to be scared. As a child I loved these stories but I have learned as an adult that often my preferences were unusual.’
Vernon breathes out, face splitting in a relieved grin. He feels on safe ground with such queries. He has no children of his own, but he knows books.
‘Kids love the gruesome and the gory, don’t they?’ he says, nodding. ‘Disney is far too clean. I watched Anastasia with my niece and it had a happy ending for the Tsar’s family! I swear, if they ever make a Disney version of The Bible, Jesus will survive.’
Mr Farkas says nothing. Awaits a better answer.
‘How old is she?’
‘Eleven,’ says Mr Farkas, without pause.
Vernon considers the customer. He is in his early fifties. Slim and loose-limbed. Large nose, dark eyes and a thatch of greying black hair. He wears a burgundy jumper beneath a suit jacket and holds a canvas rucksack in a hand all but carpeted in thick, dark hair. He looks to Vernon like an author photograph taken in the 70s.
Vernon busies himself with the folds of paper, creasing the soft tissue with his thin fingers. He likes this part of his job. Takes comfort in it as he prattles his platitudes. ‘By eleven they’re all playing video games where you can shoot nuns and blow up orphanages. I’m sure she will love it. It’s a very generous gift.’
Mr Farkas blinks. He holds his eyes closed for a moment longer than Vernon would have expected, as if his eyelids are a mouth and he is swallowing what he sees.
‘Bluebeard is the one I remember,’ says Vernon, continuing to wrap the hefty pink volume in tissue paper. He remembers feeling similarly unsettled the last time Mr Farkas purchased something from him. There is an intensity to him, a lack of superficiality. He seems unnaturally desolate, even as he spends close to £900 on a book of fairy tales.
Mr Farkas subtly alters his position and stares past Vernon at the poster on the wall behind him. A children’s author is giving a talk in a week’s time to publicize the launch of their new guaranteed bestseller.
‘Does she like them, your daughter?’ asks Vernon, noticing the direction of his customer’s stare. ‘The series?’
‘She has not tried them,’ says Mr Farkas, and the ‘r’ in ‘tried’ sounds slightly accented.
‘Not my cup of tea but the kids love them. I guess if your daughter prefers the classics …’
‘Perhaps I will try them for her.’
‘Read them first, you mean? Maybe wise. Sometimes you just don’t know what they’re going to stumble upon, though with the internet it’s almost impossible to keep them innocent, isn’t it?’
Vernon becomes aware of the silence in the shop. The courtyard beyond the window is deserted. The rain has stopped its drumming upon the glass. The crepe paper beneath his fingers has settled into place and hushed its soft scrunching. He looks up to see Mr Farkas staring into him as if trying to calculate the weight of his organs.
‘Innocence?’ he asks, unblinking.
‘Pure,’ says Vernon, making light. ‘Hard to make sure they don’t know about the nasty stuff.’
Mr Farkas continues to examine him. There is a scent coming off him. Something like still water. It is not a freshness. Though it makes Vernon think of new sap and cut wood. If dead trees could bleed they would smell like this.
‘My daughter is pure,’ he says, quietly. ‘Truly innocent. She will always be so.’
Vernon nods, nervously. He wonders what it is about this man that so unnerves him. He flicks a glance at his eyes and has to suppress a shudder. They are black as Bible leather and they are boring into him.
‘Cash, was it?’ asks Vernon, smiling brightly. He feels oddly dizzy, as if he has stood up too quickly. The floor seems to be turning to sponge beneath his feet. ‘Sorry, did you already say? I feel a little odd today. Maybe I should have eaten.’
Mr Farkas hands over an inch of notes. None are machine-fresh.
‘Nineteen twenty-two,’ says Vernon, with a last look at the book before he seals it inside the plastic wallet and slides it into a dark green paper bag. ‘A different time. Different world. Lovely to think of your girl enjoying the same stories that kids did a century ago.’
Mr Farkas gives a swift, unexpected smile, like the slash of a blade in a darkened room.
‘I enjoy this thought also. The continuity. The sameness of things. It was my own grandmother who taught me the fairy tales. She told them in her own way, with different voices and perfect actions. She could have been an actress, my grandmother. I still hear her when I read these pages. I believed they were her stories. Hers and mine. It caused me pain to learn that the bedtime stories of my childhood were those of a Frenchman long dead. Charles Perrault. Creator of Red Riding Hood. Sleeping Beauty. Cinderella. They were stories that belonged to children the world over and eventually I learned to enjoy the fact that we were all connected by these stories. Perhaps things can be eternal if they are sufficiently beautiful. My daughter is connected by stories like these. She is linked to children four centuries dead. They laughed and squirmed and pulled up the covers upon hearing of Bluebeard’s hands upon the throats of his wives. The blood that pumped in them pumps in her. Do you understand? So many do not.’
Vernon’s eyes are wide. He has never heard Mr Farkas talk for so long. Their exchanges have always been brief. Within the ledger beneath the till are the names of the hundred or so customers that the shop staff contact when they are offered a particular rarity. Mr Farkas’s telephone number is inside. It is a landli
ne. There is no mobile or email address. No street name. He knows little about the man who is purchasing the illustrated first UK edition of this collection of grisly, fantastical yarns.
‘I’m sure she will enjoy it,’ says Vernon, ringing up the sale and putting the cash in the register. He writes out a receipt with his biro and imagines that Mr Farkas, if performing the same task, would use a fountain pen.
‘I read to her,’ says Mr Farkas, and his manner is warmer. ‘She is sick, you see. She is too tired to read. But I treasure the moments when we are together and I am able to fill her head with pictures of strange and wonderful and fabulous things. It puts light in her eyes.’
Vernon seems unsure what to say. He looks back into the street. A small woman in spectacles is looking at the display of Raymond Chandler books in the window. He doubts she will buy.
‘Do you do accents too?’ asks Vernon, grasping for something worth responding with.
‘I am shy,’ says Mr Farkas, self-effacingly. ‘My wife, God rest her – she say I would be good teacher if I had the courage. At first, my English wasn’t good enough. Later, it was too late.’
‘Your English is excellent …’
‘Better than your Hungarian,’ says Mr Farkas, and seems to find his joke tremendously funny. He gives a strange, close-mouthed titter of laughter – high and birdlike. Then it is gone. He reaches out and takes the parcel. ‘You are still looking, yes? For my other request?’
Vernon nods, breathing out through his nose and trying not to look too relieved that the exchange is at an end.
‘I have some good leads. I told you, it won’t be cheap. There might only be a few copies left and it’s not as if it’s a storybook. I can’t imagine this one’s for your daughter.’ Vernon glances at the pad in front of him, where he again scribbled down the name of the Victorian medical pamphlet for which Mr Farkas is willing to pay so handsomely.
‘All is for my daughter,’ says Mr Farkas, and he gives a tiny nod of dismissal. He turns away and crosses the wooden floor with barely a sound. Vernon watches as he opens his rucksack and pulls out the sodden tweed cloak that he had been wearing as he entered the shop. He shakes it out as if folding laundry and fastens it about his neck. It is an expensive-looking garment, with a crimson lining and fur collar. As he stalks away past the window in the direction of Covent Garden, Vernon is struck by the sensation he is again witnessing a person from a different time. He feels an overwhelming urge to bolt the door.
Ten minutes into Evensong and Mr Farkas is sitting on hard wood in damp clothes in this cathedral built of sugar and salt. The columns thrum like tuning forks, resonating with the high, bright voices of the children in their pure white cassocks and red cloaks. The harmonies are impossibly perfect. He sees the music rather than hears it. The treble clefs and semibreves, time signatures and codettas, forming into endless black strings in his vision, looping about the pews and columns, the other parishioners, the priest and acolytes; great black loops of inky hair twisting, binding, restraining. Mr Farkas thinks of rope-making. He sees cord being perfectly plaited. Interwoven. Pulled tight. Screws up his eyes and rubs at his forehead with his cold fingers. There is a pain in his chest, as though somebody is sitting upon him. The irony of the discomfort is not lost upon him. Before he stopped smoking he never had so much as a cold. Now he aches. The cold grey air of London seems to suffuse his bones. He feels as though his bones have become loose. Crumbly. He imagines his leg bones splintering like egg shells. Can see himself falling on to grotesque swan legs; bent at the shin; flapping as an injured bird upon the wet pavement as the pedestrians flow around this new obstruction as if he were a stone in a stream.
He swallows and it hurts him. He wonders whether he has eaten something he should not have. It feels as though he has vomited recently though he has no memory of it. He licks his teeth and tastes nothing. He checks again. The faintest trace of sugary cereal upon a back tooth. He must have had breakfast with Beatrix. Finished off whatever she did not eat. Her appetite has not been good in past days, despite his exhortations that she keep her strength up. Perhaps he will make something frivolous for tonight’s meal. It will be their secret. He has always insisted that she eat wholesome, real foods. Meats, pulses, vegetables. Fruit for afters. Hot water with lemon. But he has found wrappers from chocolate bars in her room. He has seen the cream of sticky cakes upon her lips. It has been hard to admonish her for such betrayals. She has always been able to undo his resolve. She is his everything. His whole heart; his reason and purpose. It has always been an act of masochism to beat her.
The choir has fallen silent. The priest is talking. It’s a bolstering drone, low lullaby of obscure promises and unquantifiable oaths. Mr Farkas is Catholic but does not believe in a creator. He does not have any sense of a heaven or hell. He believes the soul travels to the same place after death as it was before birth. He believes in the blackness. The nothing. The oblivion. That is why he has fought so hard to keep his daughter here. Sentient. Present. Within and beside him.
Beatrix would like it here. This church strikes him as motherly. The great façade of voluminous white stone is the skirt of a welcoming mother, held open to envelop all those willing to enter. Mr Farkas feels calmness descend upon him. This is a cool and peaceful place. The whiteness of it seems to have a cleansing quality. The dark wood of the stalls on the first floor is pleasingly black. The gold upon the high chandeliers is understatedly attractive. The bibles are neatly laid out. It is a gratifyingly exact space in which to spend a little time. Perhaps he should bring Beatrix. Would it be so impossible? There must be access for the crippled, must there not? He looks about and sees an elderly man in a blue raincoat with his legs in the aisle. He wears grey polyester slacks and has two sticks across his lap. He could not have managed the stairs. Would Beatrix feel comfortable using an entrance for the disabled? She is of that age. Easily embarrassed. Self-conscious. Before she got ill she was beginning to read magazines about make-up and fashion. She told him that the shoes he selected for her were ‘old-fashioned’. She laughed at things that he did not understand and rolled her eyes when he tried to laugh along. Such gestures irritated him. Pushed his buttons? Was that the phrase? Yes, she pushed his buttons with such actions. It took an effort to keep his temper. He had made mistakes with her older sister and paid heavily for them. His wife also. He wishes to be all things for Beatrix and yet there are times when he feels as though she is not even listening as he reads her bedtime stories and outlines his beautiful plans for the life they will lead when she is well. He would give anything for that. Give every drop of his blood to see her sit up and ask to be held. Such images sustain him. Have sustained him long past the point of hopelessness.
‘Will they sing again?’ comes a voice, nearby.
Mr Farkas looks into the face of a large brown man in a colourful coat. His face has the look of a plump cat and he is smiling as if they are two naughty boys sharing a secret. ‘I don’t want to hear much more of the talking but the singing was good.’
Mr Farkas swallows. It hurts afresh. Was he sick? Did he eat something sharp and scratchy? He cannot remember. His memory is a picture sewn in lace. More and more of his sense of reality is disappearing into such spaces and holes. His sense of self and place seems to be unravelling.
‘Sorry. You speak English?’
The man is American. Even whispering, his voice is gratingly loud. Mr Farkas is not given to displays of feeling but he allows his displeasure to show in his face.
‘It is a church,’ he says, primly. ‘The prayers are why we are here.’ He does not know why he adopts the character of a religious zealot. It is what his wife would have called ‘sheer contrariness’. It took him a long time to understand the exact translation of the phrase. There was little in Hungarian that covered such a characteristic. Such moments of cultural divide have been rare in their lives together but they have always wounded him deeply. At times he has felt like an outsider in his own home; one man among three women.
Him, the silly foreigner with his old-fashioned tastes and his peculiar ways and his sad little collections. Them, so sophisticated, stylish. So very much at home.
‘Hey, sorry man, I like prayers too. Just got a train to catch. My bad. Y’all have a good one, y’hear?’
Mr Farkas retches; a cat with a fur ball; a child with too much gristle in their gullet. His throat fills with acid and mucus. He coughs and pinkish sputum flecks his chin. The American recoils, appalled, and Mr Farkas drags himself upright. There is a pain in his chest and he is swallowing down acid and blood and he can sense people turning to look at him. Beatrix’s book feels heavy in the bag beneath his arm and his rucksack falls from his back on to the black-and-white tiles. It spills its contents: bottles of pills; vials of glass; great jars carrying ghoulish, lumped shapes …
‘Sir? Sir, are you ill?’
Mr Farkas is on his knees, pushing his possessions back into his bag. He remembers suddenly that he is ill. He must take his medicine or he will get worse and then Beatrix will be alone and scared and helpless in the dark. He grabs his possessions and pushes past the outstretched hand of the old man who has come to try and help him. He emerges into the blue-black cold; the roar and dazzling lights of Trafalgar Square. He half slips as he moves down the slick steps, clutching Beatrix’s gift as if it were a lifejacket. He needs to get home. Needs to take his medicine. The black cabs become killer whales as they surge forward on the dark road. He sees the great amber eyes and the glint of teeth and his blood seems to cry out within his veins as he staggers to the kerb and lurches into the back of the nearest vehicle. He can barely hear his own voice as he burbles out the address and he gulps and gasps as if drowning as more gorge rushes up his throat.