Book Read Free

Time Was Soft There

Page 7

by Jeremy Mercer


  “I’m still the boss here,” he said. “You’d better learn that.”

  Despite my high spirits, I felt my hackles rise. I have a pet theory that all that is bad and good about men can be neatly divided into animal and human behaviors. The animal side represents the base instincts that make us want to strike out at strangers on our territory, mate with every female, and hoard food and belongings for ourselves. Our human side, the result of overdeveloped brains that allow us to predict the logical results of our actions, tells us peace with the stranger is a more efficient way to secure safety, a monogamous relationship better ensures healthy reproduction, and sharing resources among fellow members of a community protects individuals. As he stood before me, the Gaucho was nothing but a dog of a man eager to prove himself alpha male.

  “I’m watching you,” he warned. “Don’t think you can get away with anything.”

  Before anything else could be said, he turned his back and disappeared into the Paris night.

  10.

  Though ruffled by the Gaucho, there were more urgent concerns as I retraced my steps to Shakespeare and Company. George had entrusted me with a most formidable task and I was eager to prove my worth. I also suspected that two birds might be felled with this single stone: If I could please George by properly expelling the poet, surely the Gaucho would be forced to back down. Though there were no hydra to slay or stables to clean, I felt a little bit like Hercules.

  When I arrived at the store, the antiquarian room was empty. The shutters on the windows were open and the light was on inside, but the door was locked and there was no sign of my prey. Satisfied Simon hadn’t returned, I crossed back to the main bookstore with the intention of sitting near the window so I could monitor the entrance.

  At the desk was a dark-haired man with a pale face. He was meticulously dressed in a sharp black suit jacket, a blue shirt, and a black tie. His appearance reminded me of the mods of the eighties with their ankle-tight pants and thin ties, but this fellow looked far more sinister. As I went to say hello, the man recoiled to the back corner of the desk and raised an eyebrow suspiciously.

  Quickly introducing myself in hopes of relaxing the air, I explained I would be living at the bookstore for the foreseeable future. The man left my hand hanging a touch longer than was comfortable before tentatively accepting my greeting.

  “I’ve heard about you …” he began in an accent that had a strong dose of north London in it. He was still hunched defensively in the corner, but then, as if he just woke up and didn’t realize where he was, he examined his posture, shook his head, and sprang upward in his seat with a grin.

  “Oh, hello, old boy. I don’t know where my head is these days.” To emphasize his point, he violently whacked his left ear two times with his palm. “Something’s gone wrong with my ear. I think its been affecting my equilibrium.”

  Waving me gallantly into the green metal chair beside the desk, the man continued: “Make yourself comfortable. Sorry I was a bit off there. You see, strange people come in at night and I’m always a tad …” He put a finger to his chin, searching for the appropriate word. “ … apprehensive.”

  He then reached under the cash register and withdrew an enormous black flashlight with a menacingly long metal handle, the sort favored by security guards who don’t qualify to carry more lethal weapons.

  “I keep this just in case,” he smiled, caressing the flashlight with real tenderness.

  Well used to the inherent idiosyncrasy of everybody and everything associated with Shakespeare and Company, I merely said it sounded like a wise policy.

  This was Luke the Night Man. He’d been on a purposeful drift for years—around Spain and Greece playing harmonica in a blues band, from New York to Rio with an old-school word processor and notes for a novel weighing down his backpack, up and down India and Thailand. He’d once worked in a back-alley London jazz establishment, but his last real job was as a muppet, one of the techs who set up the sound equipment and scaffolding at stadium rock shows.

  “I quit when somebody dropped a wrench on my head,” he said, rubbing his skull in memory of the pain.

  Luke had arrived in Paris the previous April with three hundred dollars in his pocket and a vague idea of getting construction work. Instead, he happened past Shakespeare and Company on his second day in the city and decided to ask for a job. George gave him both the night shift and a bed in the store and he was set up.

  A while back, Luke had found an apartment in the north end of the city, not too far from my old hotel, but he’d continued working at the store from eight o’clock until midnight, Monday through Saturday. One of the disadvantages of keeping the bookstore open so late was the rather unpredictable crowds it attracted, so along with straightening the occasional shelf and selling books to the surprisingly frequent late-night customers, Luke’s major occupation was warding off the thieves, drunks, and raving madmen who began appearing at the store in increasing numbers the closer it got to midnight.

  “There’s one now!” Luke erupted, and sure enough, out front by the cherry trees, there was a lurching drunk screeching at the night skies and waving a near-empty bottle of cheap Bordeaux.

  Peering through the window, I watched as Luke took the drunk gently by the arm, spoke a few words into his ear, and then led him away from the shop. The drunk grinned wildly, like a child being taken to the circus, and Luke returned a minute later, making an exaggerated gesture of dusting off his hands. “I call that one Godzilla.”

  Sitting with Luke at the desk of Shakespeare and Company turned out to be terribly unsettling, like watching a man cursed to live a perpetual case of lady or the tiger. Anytime the door creaked open, he would flinch backward into defensive posture. If it was a friend, an interesting tourist, or, better yet, a cute young woman, he would smile and show utmost hospitality. If it was one of the army of freakish night visitors, he would leap to his feet, arm pointing back out the door, and holler, “Out! Out! OUT!”

  I genuinely liked this latest bookstore character. He had a subversive charm and was suave sitting there in his black suit. When Luke asked whom I was waiting for, I felt comfortable enough to confess my mission.

  “That sounds like George,” Luke said after digesting all I had told him. “He puts people in these awkward situations just to see what will happen. He’s an anarchist that way.”

  According to Luke, Simon had been an alcoholic tumbling toward destruction when he moved into Shakespeare and Company back in 1995. He’d pulled himself together under George’s watch, but it had been years since he’d finished with the drink and still he clung to the bookstore. It was a vicious circle: The longer Simon stayed, the more detached from society he became, while the more detached he became, the harder it was for him to leave.

  Kurt and the Gaucho, the young lions of the bookstore, were the ones who were rallying for Simon’s eviction. They neither liked nor trusted the poet. Simon was much older, mildly condescending, and massively eccentric. There was also something about his teeth; he was described as having a very English smile. It was the Gaucho who pestered George about Simon’s alleged theft of money and regularly pointed out examples of his sloth. Luke admitted that he, too, was suspicious and was convinced the poet needed a healthy shove to get out of his rut.

  “George never would have asked Simon to leave himself. It’s against his nature—he doesn’t like conflict,” concluded Luke. “It makes sense he would ask somebody like you.”

  It apparently wasn’t unusual for George to lay such responsibility at the foot of a stranger. Luke cited the case of one of George’s oldest friends in Paris. In the 1960s, this man walked into the bookstore while George was minding the desk. George asked a small favor: He was going to run out for a moment and he wanted this stranger to watch the store. Though his only intention had been to buy an English novel, the man agreed. Four hours later, George returned, having gone to a book warehouse in the suburbs to place an order. This random customer had watched the desk the e
ntire time and had accounted for every book sold and franc taken.

  “You’ll see with George. He gets a feel for people,” said Luke. “He’s not often wrong.”

  By this time, Luke and I had been speaking for more than an hour, so I decided to make sure this curious Simon hadn’t arrived without being noticed. When I got outside, I saw that the books and benches had disappeared from out front of the antiquarian room, the shutters on the windows had been closed, and there was even a heavy wooden guard on the window of the door. Inside, however, a light still burned.

  Astonished all this had been done without enough noise to rouse either Luke or myself, I knocked soundly on the door. Twice. The third time, there was a pained reply in a soaring English accent.

  “Wha-aat is it?”

  “Simon? I’ve just moved into the store, and George asked me to have a talk with you.”

  A long silence followed. “I’m really beat, okay?” he finally replied. “And I’m not feeling well. I had this terrible accident today. I’m just not up for it.”

  “Look, George was pretty insistent. Can’t we just talk for five minutes?”

  “Have a heart, won’t you? I’ve had a horrible day. Come back tomorrow morning. Okay, mate?”

  I slunk back to the main store, angry with myself for letting the poet slip so easily through my fingers. Luke just sat and nodded knowingly.

  “I thought he might sneak in. He’s been keeping a low profile since this all began. He’s a sly one.”

  Seeing my chest fall further, Luke laughed.

  “Don’t worry, old boy. You’ll have another chance tomorrow.”

  When midnight came, I helped Luke and the rest carry in boxes and close up the shop. Then, utterly exhausted by the day’s events, I climbed the stairs and collapsed into my strange new bed among the books.

  11.

  I woke up straight. The instant my eyes opened, everything felt sharp and clear, as if I’d finished a wind sprint or stepped from a frothing sea. I’d always been one to play with snooze buttons, lolling in bed and rationalizing being ten, twenty, thirty minutes late for work or school. But that first morning at the bookstore, there were no slow degrees of consciousness or seductive fingers of sleep. I was alive.

  In the gloom of the fiction room, it was impossible to tell the time of day. The bookstore was shivering, though, cold enough that my breath broke into fog. I dressed quickly, putting on an extra sweater and a toque I’d brought from home.

  Ablimit was sitting at the desk in the front room, working on grammar exercises. As I approached, he put a finger to his lips and pointed to where the Gaucho lay curled and sleeping. I noticed there was an E and a Chinese symbol inked onto the skin between the thumb and forefinger of Ablimit’s right hand. It was a ritual, he explained, to write either an F or E on his hand each morning to remind him what language to think in that day.

  “You must train your mind,” he said softly, tapping his finger against his temple.

  It wasn’t yet ten o’clock and George was still at the open-air vegetable market at place Maubert. Ablimit told me we’d open the store when he returned, so I went back to my room, found the light, and pulled a book from a shelf. It was Lolita, and the more I read, the more astounded I was that I hadn’t come across this novel before. Reporting gross acts of pedophilia are a must for any city newspaper, so I’d long been versed in nonfictional accounts of child sexual abuse. On dozens of occasions, I’d sat through an accused man’s courtroom testimony or interviewed the mother of the victim, but not until Nabakov had I heard the sickness described in such loving tones.

  Shortly before eleven, George appeared, wearing a smorgasbord of clothes—a faded blue baseball cap that sat unfastened atop his head like a limp rag, a red blazer that was missing buttons, a bright purple shirt, and pants that stopped well above his ankles, revealing unmatched socks. In his hand was a canvas grocery bag overflowing with leeks.

  “What are you reading?” he demanded, flicking at the cover of my book.

  When I showed him, he nodded approval. “I prefer Pale Fire, but there’s nothing like the great Russian novels,” he said. “My favorite is The Idiot. I think I’m a little bit like Prince Myshkin, bumbling along in this world of my dreams, trying to do my best without any grip on reality.”

  It was time to start work, so while George deposited the leeks in his office, I hurried downstairs. Kurt was in the bed across from the stained-glass alcove, and the store’s sixth and final resident, an Italian woman from Bologna, was asleep in the Russian section. I shook them both awake and told them Shakespeare and Company was opening for the day.

  Out front of the store, the Gaucho was explaining he had parcels to mail and couldn’t stay to help. Ablimit stood beside George, who was peering intently at the sky. It was the usual miserable gray.

  “Everything out,” barked George.

  “But sir, don’t you think it’s going to rain?”

  “Nonsense!” George jumped toward Ablimit and began slapping his back with the faded baseball cap. “What are you? A lunatic?”

  Before Ablimit could say anything else, George hustled inside the store. At night, all of the boxes of books from outside were piled around the cash desk, along with the wood and crates used for the sidewalk display tables. George grabbed a long plank and teetered out of the store with it. Worried about his eighty-six-year-old body, I lunged to help, but he just swung it at me in disgust.

  “What are you doing, you imbecile? Get the stools.”

  I found two battered stools inside and George placed the plank on top of them to form a shelf in front of the main window. Kurt, Ablimit, and the Italian woman were ferrying out boxes of cheap paperbacks, so I took the opportunity to check on the antiquarian room. The shutters were open and the wooden guard had been removed from the window of the door, but the room was empty. Simon had eluded me again.

  In the meantime, Kurt had begun carrying out a complete set of the 1967 Encyclopaedia Britannica, which George insisted was going to sell if he left it in front of the store long enough. Ablimit pointed at this and then muttered in my ear: “George, he crazy sometimes. Who wants old encyclopedia?”

  George, sensing dissent, bullied his way past and helped Kurt with the encyclopedia. On the way back, he made sure to bang volumes G through N into Ablimit’s abdomen and then went off cackling.

  Once the sidewalk display was in place and the store was swept and readied, the others dispersed. George sat at the desk, drinking coffee and reading the International Herald Tribune. He had long been a voracious consumer of the news and as a young man kept vast files of clippings regarding labor issues, poverty studies, and the political movements in the Soviet Union. Today, he only flicked at the newspaper and harrumphed that it was capitalist propaganda. It was quarter past eleven and as the bookstore didn’t officially open until noon, Pia hadn’t yet arrived for her shift.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  He grunted and waved me away, but eager to make a good impression, I pressed on. “Maybe I could put away these books?” I pointed to a precarious pile of paperbacks that sat on the desk’s edge. Not looking up, George made a motion with the back of his hand that suggested approval. I began to shelve the books but was almost immediately interrupted.

  “That doesn’t go there, you nincompoop!” He sent a hardcover whizzing into my chest. “Put this with the art books.”

  We worked like that for almost an hour, me shelving, George serving customers and yelling orders, until Pia arrived on her bicycle shortly past noon. She was wearing a pink silk scarf and her cheeks were flushed from her ride to the store. George grumbled about her being fifteen minutes late, but he was quickly mollified by a good-morning kiss on the cheek.

  “Will you do me one small favor?” Pia asked once George had gone upstairs. “I had the most horrendous evening. Will you watch the desk for five minutes?”

  Before I could answer, she was out the door.

  Sitting at the des
k of Shakespeare and Company is a bit like sitting at the prow of a large ship. The desk is at the front of the store and faces the window so the vast bulk of the store is behind you. This means that the customers flood past as they enter and then disappear into the rooms of books. The only way to monitor them is to twist painfully around in the seat and then lean awkwardly out over the desk. The upside to this arrangement is the view: From the desk, you can admire the passersby on the esplanade, the two cherry trees, and then, beyond that, the shadows of Ile de la Cité.

  As soon as Pia left, I realized I had no idea what I was doing. The cash register was crusty from various hot and cold spilled beverages and the money drawer hung crookedly out, exposing wrinkled fifty-and one-hundred-franc notes. Adding to this financial chaos, there were coins scattered across the desktop and two more fifty-franc notes crumpled on the floor. As I experimented with buttons on the register, none of which seemed to have any effect, a customer approached.

  “Can you tell me how much this is?”

  A stern-looking woman was holding a new paperback copy of A Moveable Feast. George kept dozens on hand because so many tourists wanted to read about Hemingway’s Paris. They also occasionally confused Sylvia Beach’s original Shakespeare and Company, which has an entire chapter devoted to it in Hemingway’s memoir, with its present-day incarnation. To George’s great irritation, they sometimes even asked him to autograph the book.

  After a thorough examination, all I could find was the American price. “It says twelve dollars,” I offered uselessly.

  The woman was digging into her purse for a calculator so we could determine the exact franc-dollar exchange when I noticed a square of white paper taped beside the register with the following equations: $ = 10, £ = 12. At this rate, the woman owed 120 francs, but she pointed out the official exchange rate was closer to seven francs to a dollar. I couldn’t help but agree, and after some quick arithmetic she presented her credit card to pay the eighty-four-franc sum.

 

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