The Loneliness of the Long Distance Book Runner

by Bill Rees

  Leaving 44 rue de l’Universite, 1998

  I am on the phone to Eddy, moaning. In the morning, there’s a Mary Celeste feel to the place. Afternoons at least bring in more punters. I estimate that 75 per cent of the books are sold after 3 p.m. ‘Why not open the shop then?’ Eddy suggests. I laugh, tempted and Eddy goes on: ‘They say the Christmas period for Harrods represents 70 per cent of its annual turnover. Maybe they should open only for those few weeks. You might start a revolution in the retail trade.’

  It might be the routine, but the shop is now energy sapping; I’m reading less too. I start to covet customers’ occupations, which is always a bad sign. I meet an Englishman who assembles cranes for a living in Southern France. As if erecting towering structures of metal was not difficult enough, he’s chosen to exercise his trade over here. My first thoughts are of how he managed to acquire the scores of certificates that French bureaucracy would demand. By good fortune, it turns out he met an employer prepared to take his word on previous assignments and a joint effort was made to translate the relevant qualifications. Crane assembling isn’t the sort of job in which you can easily bluff it as an experienced hand. He leaves the shop with a copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

  The itinerant bookseller John Edwards turns up, with his adorable dog, in his big red transit van. He’s come from selling Wordsworth Classics and remainders to shops in Paris. In comparison, he sells little to me but doesn’t take umbrage at the paucity of my orders. After a cup of tea and chat, he sets off for Barcelona, anticipating a swim en route in the sea at Sète. It’s enough to bring on a strong dose of wanderlust.

  It’s no contest; football wins over shop management. I’m on the road, albeit until England are knocked out. A friend, working as a translator for the England Supporters Club, has got me complimentary tickets for all of England’s World Cup matches. There are vast swathes of England shirts, bands playing the Great Escape theme tune and thousands of supporters milling about the stadiums without tickets; their dedication humbling. The games go by in a blur: a Scholes cracker in Marseille, disappointment in Toulouse (no second-hand bookshops either), more hurt in Saint Etienne. Thousands make do with TVs in the French bars in order to witness Owen’s legendary goal before the inevitable let down. I return to Montpellier, deflated and once more shop bound.

  There is, however, an escape route, one that biker Pete has helped to provide. Thanks to this maverick software designer, I am given an early introduction to the web’s book selling potential. Receiving the first order (for a 1938 Penguin Gulliver’s Travels illustrated throughout with wood-engravings by Theodore Naish) from my website was akin to an epiphany of sorts; I could trade without a retail premises in bricks and mortar.

  The geography of the road was against us all along. Even friends have confessed that they can’t face climbing the hill into the city’s centre. And the promise of human traffic from the new tram stop proves illusory. With heavy hearts and an unacknowledged relief, we close the shop, placing a sign in the window: ‘Words failed me.’

  Catalogue Gazing, Bangor, 2009

  For O-Level we studied Lord of the Flies whose author, William Golding, had taught our English teacher, and I used to wonder if Mr Whiteside was privy to the allegorical novel’s finer interpretations. Whenever the book comes up at auctions, as one did last year at the Dominic Winters Auction House near Cirencester, I do a double take. I was, though, and remain more appreciative of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the other major work of literature that Mr Whiteside selected for study. Especially that revelatory passage when Huck rejects the advice of his ‘conscience’, which continues to tell him that in helping Jim escape to freedom, he is stealing Miss Watson’s property. Telling himself ‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell!’, Huck, listening to a deeper ‘conscience’, resolves to free Jim.

  I am gazing at a first edition of this book, or rather a photograph of it in the pages of a Dominic Winter Catalogue for an auction in 2008. The book is bound in green cloth which bears a picture of Huck on the cover, standing in a field of corn, blocked in gold. (1st American Edition, mixed issue, Charles L. Webster, New York, 1885, wood eng. frontis and numerous letterpress vigns., heliotype port. title-page with copyright notice on verso dated 1884, occn. creasing to corners, and pp. 163/4 with piece missing from upper outer blank corner, some light soiling, modern bookplate, orig. pictorial green cloth gilt, spine ends frayed with sl. loss, corners showing, 8vo)

  I try to interpret what the book’s image in the catalogue means to me. It’s a false dichotomy; the book as a physical object and the story within. For they become intertwined. Mark Twain’s book, commonly recognised as one of the great American novels, inspired us to ‘play hookey’ and smoke cigars on the banks of the Thames. But more importantly it made us realise that stories are not the possession of any elite. When it came to respective social backgrounds, I was Tom to Eddy’s Huck. Eddy said recently himself that for his mother ‘scrawling a note to the milkman was breaking new literary ground’.

  From the photograph in the catalogue you can clearly make out the novel’s title. Bundles of sticks, also blocked in gold, depict the first letters of Huckleberry Finn’s name, H and F. And the full title is Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade). Upon completion, the novel’s title closely paralleled its predecessor’s. Unlike The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn does not have the definite article as a part of its proper title. Essayist and critic Philip Young states that this absence represents the ‘never fulfilled anticipations’ of Huck’s adventures – while Tom’s adventures were completed by the end of his novel, Huck’s narrative ends with his stated intention to head West.

  If I had £3000 to spare, I’d be tempted to invest in such a book. Not that it’s the pinnacle for Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) collectors. *A blue cloth edition, which is more scarce than the green cloth edition, was issued in a smaller quantity. A three-quarter morocco leather edition was also issued. It is extremely scarce. There were only five hundred of the leather bound copies issued.

  Paris 1991, Second Stint

  The bank is expressing its mounting frustration in the letters sent to my parents’ address.

  Unwittingly, I have discovered that an overdrawn account cannot prevent the holder from cashing in travellers’ cheques, regardless of when they were issued. I have used the money to pay two months’ rent in advance. Delgado insisted.

  This enigmatic Spaniard is sub-letting only the bedroom of a council flat on the seventh floor of a tower block near Belleville. The flat has little going for it except for a wonderful view of the Eiffel Tower. The sitting room is Delgado’s living quarters. Not that he lives here much. He’s out all day, returning only late at night to the flat before rising early to beat me out in the mornings. Despite making rare appearances, Delgado is obsessed by the flat’s appearance and isn’t impressed when Eddy stays over. Empty beer cans and uncleaned ashtrays leave him foul tempered for days and I’m very much in his bad books after last Saturday night. The lock jammed in the toilet door with me on the wrong side. Luckily, Eddy was in the flat and the fire brigade could be called to rescue me. An axe produced a gaping hole in the door where the lock had once been and I was able to emerge with profuse gratitude. ‘Merci millefois. Voulez vous une tasse du thé.’ The firemen decline politely and wonder what the hell are two English lads doing in an HLM flat in the eastern suburbs of Paris. The captain made a cursory request for our IDs before leaving. Delgado still will not accept an apology or my explanation of what happened. He is, for once, spending Saturday morning in his room. So I take to the streets even though I’m not meeting up with Eddy and his girlfriend for several hours.

  I wander along the Seine’s embankments, checking out the bouquinists. Anatole France knew of ‘no sweeter, gentler pleasure than to go a book hunting’ here. I have two travellers’ cheques left but these are for real emergencies. The overdraft does register on my conscience though, and so ef
fectively prevents me from serious perusal. And I don’t need anything else to read. Phil has lent me a book written by Joris-Karl Huysmans called A Rebours which is translated into English as Against Nature.

  A wildly original fin-de-siècle novel, Against Nature follows its sole character, Des Esseintes, an aristocrat who retreats to an isolated villa where he indulges his taste for luxury and excess. The book exhibits anxiety about preserving a sense of self in the face of cultural change. To combat this anxiety, the decadent hero of the novel embraces a melancholic identity. I have developed a sneaking regard for Des Esseintes who is very much a book obsessive. ‘Des Esseintes was morbid devotee of the unique, and he was rich enough to print his favourite books in editions of one copy. He had Poe’s Arthur Gordon Pym thus specially printed for him on pure linen-laid paper, hand picked, bearing a sea-gull for water mark, and bound in sea-green morocco; his copy of the Diaboliques of Barbeyd’Aurvilly was specially printed for him on an authentic vellum blessed by the Church.’

  I go in search of his creator and find rue Suger where he lived, and a confirmatory plaque: Ici est né, le 5 février 1848, J.-K. HUYSMANS, Ecrivain français.

  Later, he had a road in the sixth arrondissement in Paris named after him. My legs feel tired and I become aware of the time. From starting out hours in advance, I now risk turning up late. Eddy won’t mind but Sylvia might.

  Eddy met Sylvia at the language school where they both now work. Sylvia started to teach English as a foreign language after an aborted career in marine biology. In Thailand, she’d worked on prawn farms but, overnight, the bottom fell out of that market when the Japanese Emperor Hirohito died; his people forsaking the crustaceans as a mark of respect.

  Today I’m introducing them to an oasis of peace in this busy city, intending to drag them around the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise. Statues, tombstones and crypts dominate the landscape but also lend a romantic atmosphere to the cobbled avenues that run amid trees on the uneven ground. Ostentatiousness abounds but there remains something affecting in these funeral monuments, many of which are in an advanced state of dilapidation. Eddy and Sylvia, upon arriving, both agree. Below is what Flaubert thought:

  ‘The tombs stood among the trees: broken columns, pyramids, temples, dolmens, obelisks, and Etruscan vaults with doors of bronze. In some of them might be seen funereal boudoirs, so to speak, with rustic arm-chairs and folding-stools. Spiders’ webs hung like rags from the little chains of the urns; and the bouquets of satin ribbons and the crucifixes were covered with dust. Everywhere, between the balusters on the tombstones, were crowns of immortals and chandeliers, vases, flowers, black discs set off with gold letters, and plaster statuettes of little boys or little girls or angels suspended in the air by brass wires; several of them having even a roof of zinc overhead.’

  Famous people are buried here including Musset, Chopin, Molière, Modigliani, Balzac, Colette, Oscar Wilde, Delacroix, Balzac and Jim Morrison in whom Sylvia, being a Doors fan, has expressed interest. A local florist sells us a leaflet that is unashamedly a map of the famous dead with co-ordinates of where to find their tombs, e.g. Edith Piaf Chanteuse 97 e Div n-4.

  Some visitors to the cemetery are ticking off the names like seasoned gravestone hunters. Simone Signoret’s grave is conspicuously festooned with flowers. We seek out Oscar Wilde’s tomb; a sphinx-inspired angel sculpted by Jacob Epstein. On one side of the memorial are tributes to Wilde’s art and achievements. Cited is Oxford’s esteemed Classics prize and his epitaph is a quote from The Ballad of Reading Gaol:

  ‘And alien tears will fill for him

  Pity’s long broken urn,

  For his mourners will be outcast men,

  And outcasts always mourn.’

  The monument is covered with lipstick kisses. Would Wildean gifts of lyricism be imparted to the kisser like the legend of the Blarney Stone? Kiss the stone of eloquence and you’ll never again be lost for words.

  Sylvia is impatient to get going. Arrows chalked on gravestones point the way to the Morrison mourners. A German youth is drinking beer while listening to The River on his cassette player. A stout Australian woman is translating the lyrics of the same song for the benefit of a French schoolboy. A group of hippie girls with long, unkempt hair sit around a Primus stove boiling water to make tea. There are a few punks and the denim jacket brigade is also represented. A man sporting a hat of green feathers obscures Morrison’s actual grave, it being of modest proportions. He moves and we can then read: JAMES DOUGLAS MORRISON 1943–1977 KATA (Greek with a multitude of interpretations (To the divine spirit within himself, He caused his own demons, True to his own spirit).

  In front of the grave are three joints; cannabis deemed more appropriate than a bouquet of flowers. We loiter, not knowing quite what is expected of us. Some people stoop to partake in a ceremonial toke before quickly extinguishing the joint or passing it on with an embarrassed air. Death has failed to grant Jim Morrison the anonymity he was said to have craved; an escape from idolatry. Eddy is disconcerted to see that most tombstones within a ten metre radius of Jim Morrison’s are covered in graffiti, much of it being The Doors’ lyrics. Sylvia and I also question this spray can adulation. In making their shrine to Jim Morrison, the mourners have desecrated the tombs of others.

  After several weeks of unemployment, I became maniacally jealous of other people engaged in ordinary and seemingly mundane activities. Couriers, roadside labourers, just about anyone having a job upon which to focus. I look forward with exaggerated relish to dish-washing in Montparnasse. The night before I’m due to start, I cash a travellers’ cheque in spite of Eddy’s protestations.

  He and I are both in drunken awe of La Notre Dame which, viewed from Le Pont Tourbelle, appears to me as a huge, deformed heart, the exterior of the apse bursting out with arteries. Earlier in the evening we attended a book signing in the Village Voice bookshop. We went along to listen to Don DeLillo’s pre-signing spiel about Mao II which is his tenth novel. His intellectual earnestness made an impression on us. But now all we can recall is the sentence: ‘The future belongs to crowds.’ After the talk we crawled into and out of various Irish pubs, finishing up in The Oscar Wilde. In the years to come, will Parisians be drinking in The Seamus Heaney? The alcohol makes Eddy maudlin. He is a little fed up with the teaching. I empathise, remembering Madrid when I sometimes felt like an impostor, asking colleagues what a gerund was. My experiences weren’t like anything out of The Education Of Hyman Kaplan. ‘I’ve got to get out before we started on the past perfect continuous,’ declares Eddy.

  Irish pubs and Breton creperies; one chain importing Guinness with bonhomie while the other specialises in cider with Breton dairy products. There are, however, similarities: the franchised decor of uniformity and the businesses’ lucrativeness.

  I have no difficulty in locating ‘Mont St Michel’ in Montparnasse. At 11.15 a.m., as arranged, I walk into the creperie and make for the bar, squeezing myself past tables and chairs. Up from behind the bar pops the smiling face of a man with a viciously receding hairline. His expansive smile conveys the warmest of greeting. But before either of us can speak, an emaciated individual appears with a cigarette poking out of his sullen face.

  ‘Luc?’ I ask. He nods and makes it obvious I am expected to follow as he descends a spiral staircase. The cavernous cellar turns out to be the kitchen and where the restaurant’s dishes are cleaned.

  On trolleys and shelves is piled a mountain range of food-stained plates. Stack upon stack of crockery. There are also smaller piles of white bowls on a table amid the cutlery and glasses that bear the remnants of last night’s wine and cider. Luc doesn’t trouble himself to speak – perhaps distrustful of my French. Body language is used to explain what is required. A preliminary clean to remove most of the food and the cigarettes butts; a knife used to scrape the debris into a bin liner. The plates are then to be placed (with loving care if his gesture, made in slow motion, is anything to go by) into an industrial cleaner. A green butt
on is pressed and the machine makes a rumbling sound for the three minutes it functions on a timer. Hey presto. The plates are removed in a puff of steam to be neatly stacked on a trolley.

  Luc leaves without a word and I surmise that I am to get on with it. The cable operating the dumb waiter makes a creaking noise under the strain. A stockily built Indian about my age is filling it with crates of Perrier. Having sent it heavenwards into the eating arena he comes over and is delighted to find that I’m English. ‘It good job. Easy work,’ he says. He wants to talk but has to react to instructions that are being barked down the intercom. More cider needed. Singh complies before efficiently preparing the salads.

  After several hours of tedium, I can just about see the end in sight but then Singh carries over more plates from the lunchtime service.

  We eventually emerge from the kitchen. The boss isn’t about so Santos, who is Portuguese, can speak freely behind the counter. ‘Engine off,’ he says before treating us each to a fabulous banana and chocolate crepe.

  Another man in his forties turns out to be the real boss. Singh explains that that he owns four creperies in the district, two in the same road. Luc is second in command.

  After eating, I get ready to leave. Singh will hang around as he also works the night shift. He matter-of-factly tells me that afterwards he’ll visit a brothel. ‘I’ve been going there for three years.’ Five minutes earlier he had been describing to me the beauty of the Mahabharata, a celebrated and sacred epic poem of the Hindus, written in Sanskrit.

  Days pass. Dishes are washed. In the bowels of the creperie, I try to calculate how many dishes I’ve washed in my lifetime, my current job boosting significantly my daily average. I imagine a dishwashing day of reckoning whereby a mighty column of plates reaches high like Jacob’s ladder into the clouds of God’s kingdom.