Time Was Soft There

by Jeremy Mercer

  After we talked a little longer, Sylvia, though she wasn’t sure what her mother would think, decided she wanted to see her father again.

  It was a Friday night and I was scheduled to leave the following day. Sylvia was acting at the time, having already had roles in school productions of Tom Stoppard, Oscar Wilde, and Shakespeare. At the moment, she was rehearsing Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, but she said she would try to juggle her schedule and visit in the coming weeks. Worried she might change her mind or be delayed further, I suggested she return with me for at least a day or two. She flipped through her agenda and finally agreed it would be possible to leave for Paris on Monday and stay at the store a few days. I wanted to buy her a train ticket right then, but she had a rehearsal, so we made plans to meet the next morning at the train station.

  As we left the bar, I asked her permission to take a few photographs. The most recent pictures George had were of Sylvia as a young girl and I wanted to take him something to prepare him for his daughter’s visit. In the dim evening light, she laughed while I took out the disposable camera bought expressly for this purpose and snapped away. With a wave, she told me she’d see me in the morning.

  That night, I was torn between the joy of meeting Sylvia and the deep fear she’d change her mind and skip our meeting. I slept a few hours at the hostel and then made my way to the train station. To my surprise, Sylvia got there before I did. I bought her a Eurostar ticket, carefully noted the hour of arrival in Paris, and then said good-bye.

  39.

  I arrived back in Paris late that Saturday afternoon and when I got to the bookstore, George was so sick, he’d gone to bed hours before. I returned to the store early the next morning and, forgetting it was a Sunday, I walked into a pancake breakfast. George thrust a plate in my hand and I sat at a table of groggy residents. I didn’t recognize anyone and listened to familiar comments about the quality of the pancakes and the bizarreness of the Shakespeare and Company experience. The photographs of Sylvia were in my pocket and I just wanted everybody to leave so I could tell George the news. I was eager for his affirmation, like a boy waiting for his mother to come home so he could show off his straight-A report card.

  There was a young man who sat removed from the table and ate his pancakes in begrudging silence. I couldn’t help but take note of him, due to his unusual appearance. He was gaunt, about my height with a pale complexion and black-rimmed glasses. The most striking feature was his hair: shoulder-length, like mine, and of an orange-red hue, also like mine. His name was Adrian and he’d just arrived at the bookstore. As I didn’t often see men who looked like me, I couldn’t help but think this was more than a coincidence.

  After an interminable breakfast, chores where divided and the residents scattered. I followed George to the back room and said I had something important to talk about. He looked exasperated and sat on the bed.

  “I saw Sylvia. She’s going to come to Paris tomorrow.”

  George winced. “I knew you’d do something stupid like that. I don’t want her to come here. I don’t want her to see me like this. I’m sick. It’s too late.”

  He stood up and began straightening books in his bedroom. “The store is a mess, it’s a disgrace. She can’t see it in this state.”

  I noted she wouldn’t be arriving until the next night, which would give us a day and a half to clean. He sputtered something about being disappointed in me and my having ruined everything. I gave him the pictures and he sat back down to go through them, smiling despite his efforts to remain angry. I said he could keep them and he thanked me and put one especially beautiful photograph of Sylvia on the night table beside the bed. I asked if I could do anything to help clean up and he waved me off again.

  “You’ve done enough,” he said, keeping a cantankerous edge to his voice. But as I got up to leave, George grabbed me by the arm.

  “Come back tomorrow. You need to meet her at the station with me.”

  I could see the happiness somewhere in the back of his pale eyes.

  When I returned to the bookstore the next day, it was obvious George had been working the residents. The floor shone and the front window display was an elaborate mixture of flowers and glossy art books. The organization of the shelves was even more impressive. It turned out Adrian was a cunningly efficient character who’d studied literature at Oxford and was unnaturally adept at sorting out the chaos of books.

  Upstairs, the apartment where Sylvia would be sleeping was vacuumed and polished and the refrigerator stocked with an amazing collection of food. George was looking his best in the pinstriped blue seersucker suit Tom had given him in the spring. He hurried about in a panic and pulled me along with him on his inspection.

  “I’ve told everyone it’s my daughter’s friend who’s coming. Her name is Emily. Everyone has to call her Emily.”

  I suggested Sylvia might be disturbed if everyone at the bookstore called her by the wrong name, but he insisted it was necessary to protect her from the attention her arrival would bring.

  “It’ll be a fun game,” he said, rushing upstairs with an armload of clean sheets for Sylvia’s bed. “She’s an actress, isn’t she?”

  That night, we took the metro up to the Gare du Nord to meet the Eurostar. The train was running late and George insisted she probably wouldn’t come, wondering for the fifth time if I had the arrival time right. I was terrified that something would go wrong at the last minute and that I’d raised George’s hopes for nothing.

  The train finally pulled in and George craned his neck to find his daughter. When they saw each other, Sylvia ran forward to give her father a hug. Train station reunions and partings are the stuff of lore for good reason; amid the sound and fury of the Gare du Nord, their embrace resounded.

  It was late and the occasion special enough that I asked George if maybe we shouldn’t splurge for a taxi. Before he could say anything, Sylvia answered for him, proving to be every bit his daughter.

  “A taxi? Why would we go to that expense when we can take the metro. That’s silly.”

  George just beamed.

  As we rode back to the store, we talked of the Eurostar and the weather. Sylvia gasped when she saw the warning sign for children to be careful of the automatic doors. It was a pink cartoon rabbit nursing a throbbing hand and she traced its ears with her finger.

  “I remember that from when I was a little girl.”

  We arrived at the bookstore near eleven and though George was exhausted, he put out plates of food and glasses of beer and we had a light dinner to welcome Sylvia. She was introduced to everyone as Emily, and though most people were confused that George would devote so much attention to an unknown acting student from London, nobody suspected the truth. As it neared midnight, dinner ended and I excused myself to let George and Sylvia negotiate the end of their night in peace.

  The next evening, I returned for another dinner George had planned. By now, word had leaked out that Emily the Actress was really Sylvia the Daughter, but he didn’t seem to mind. Sylvia was glowing and George floated around her, trying his best not to be too happy but failing miserably at the task. During a pause before coffee, they sat close beside each other and Sylvia let her head rest on her father’s shoulder.

  It was my task to accompany Sylvia back to the train station the following afternoon. “I’ll be back,” she said as we arrived at the Gare du Nord. “Maybe next month—as soon as my rehearsal schedule lightens and I have time away from classes.”

  There was a full silence between us as I walked her to the train, as if we both knew there was so much to say, it was pointless to begin. She hugged me and then returned to London.

  I suddenly felt very tired. I actually dozed off on the train back to the bookstore and missed my stop, so I had to walk back to Shakespeare and Company from the Jardin du Luxembourg. When I arrived at the bookstore, I found George in his office. He pretended to be angry with Sylvia. He wanted her to commit to coming back the next summer to manage the bookstore. She
hadn’t agreed to any of this yet and it was a disaster and … and even he couldn’t keep up the charade of disappointment for long and chuckled happily when I told him how happy Sylvia was to be returning next month.

  He had two Tsingtao beers chilling in the fridge and we drank them together in the third-floor apartment while watching the setting sun change colors on Notre Dame. He had a faraway look in his eye, an expression that I remembered from the first time I saw him and I said again how lucky I’d been to find Shakespeare and Company that rainy Sunday in January. George stopped me from saying anything else.

  “You know, that’s what I’ve always wanted this place to be,” he said. “I look across at Notre Dame and I sometimes think the bookstore is an annex of the church. A place for the people who don’t quite fit in over there.”

  I understood. We sipped our beer until the sun set and then sat awhile longer. When George’s head became heavy with sleep, I promised to see him again soon and then left the bookstore.

  Author’s Note

  What follows is the story of how I found refuge at a peculiar old bookstore in Paris and the remarkable events that occurred there during my stay.

  In writing a memoir such as this, the truth becomes liquid. The true volume of all that brought me to France and all that happened at this bookstore would require a far greater capacity than these pages allow. Thus, the events have been distilled and condensed and then distilled again. Minor liberties have been taken with chronology; select incidents have been omitted or amended; and the name of one person has been changed at that person’s request.

  Otherwise, this is as true a story as can be told at this time.

  Jeremy Mercer was formerly a journalist for the Ottawa Citizen. He is the author of two crime books and founder of Kilometer Zero, a cult literary magazine currently being published out of Shakespeare & Co.

  Afterword

  I am writing this from Marseilles. It is the second-largest city in France, a roiling Mediterranean port in the south, and about as far from Paris as you can get while staying in the country. I came down here for love and it is a decision I shall never regret. There isn’t the gloss that comes with the museums and monuments and tourist dollars of the capital, but among these twisting hill streets, I sometimes think I get a truer scent of the human spirit.

  It has been four years since I left Shakespeare and Company and I am only now coming to terms with what that time meant to me. The things I learned from George will likely keep me from ever returning to the sort of life I knew before. I still read the books he sends me, and though I’m not a sworn Communist by any means, he’s shown me a path I’d never before contemplated.

  George is ninety years old now, still dreaming of utopias. He continues on his quest to buy the apartment, hoping the hotel baron will come to realize Shakespeare and Company will never be dislodged. A foundation is, as always, in the works, and the legacy seems to have no end. I take hope from George’s optimism. He continues to house wayward visitors, he continues to host tea parties, he continues to dole out radical books for his guests to read. A walk through the bookstore sees new Kurts, new Nadias, new Jeremys. It is a walk through hopeful eyes.

  I remember that, but barely. I had gone to Paris from such dark things, I was ready for anything, ready to believe in anything. I found Shakespeare and Company and embraced it with everything I had.

  Shortly after returning from London, I ran out of money and moved into Luke’s apartment. It was under renovation, so there was no rent, but also no water or electricity for long stretches of time, and I slept on a dusty floor. Still, after the bookstore, I could cope with anything.

  Luke and I ended up with our little publishing house and the foolishness bubbled and grew. We left his apartment for offices in an art squat, a year passed, then two, and the Paris dreams continued. Luke eventually quit his job at the bookstore and then, tired and burned-out, he moved to Italy, where he now teaches English and writes. Kurt went back to Shakespeare and Company after his father recovered from the heart attack, but as hard as he tried, he couldn’t re-create what once was. He circulated Videowrangler and received a heap of rejections but wasn’t dissuaded, and he still counts on being published. Ablimit is in Toronto now and routinely sends me E-mails with snide comments about Canadian politics and glowing references to his Christian faith.

  The last time I saw Simon, he’d come from the aisles of Dolce and Gabanna. He had a pair of pants, a shirt, and a jacket, all of which had cost more than he used to spend in three months at the bookstore. His mother had died and the inheritance allowed him to finally move out of Shakespeare and Company. He’s thinking of buying an apartment now, maybe in Lisbon, maybe even getting into the book business himself.

  And just the other night, I was on the telephone with the man who threatened to kill me. We laugh about it now. I admit I overreacted a little; he admits he did get pretty angry with me on the phone and visited my apartment unannounced, hoping to surprise me. We thanked each other again when we talked. That blowout sent him to the woman who is now his wife and together they have a child and a beautiful home. Without that phone call, I might have never been dislodged from my city and I certainly wouldn’t have found Shakespeare and Company.

  I probably sound sentimental, but the bookstore neighborhood just isn’t the same. Amos, the dog at Café Panis, died and then they replaced the luxurious toilet with a model that has no seat. I rarely recognize anybody if I sit at the bar for a coffee these days. Around the corner on rue St. Jacques, Polly Magoo’s closed, as the building that housed it was turned into a three-star hotel. There were many rumored last nights, but one evening it was actually true and the next day the bar was gutted and the building cordoned off. Worse, a new Polly Magoo’s opened half a block away, all clean and proper, but soulless, oh so soulless.

  As for Shakespeare and Company itself, things go well there now. My instinct about the red-haired Adrian proved correct. He became day manager of the store and his rabid work habits hoisted much of the weight from George’s shoulders. He, too, ended up leaving, but only after Sylvia came to live at the bookstore.

  And maybe this is the best part of this whole story. As promised, Sylvia returned to Paris for a week that fall and then made another visit in the spring. She passed an entire summer at the store, as George had wanted, and each day she worked the desk between four and eight, learning a little bit more about the bookstore. She adapted well to the life and even found time to organize a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the esplanade in front of the store.

  Now, she’s graduated and taken over managing the bookstore full-time. George is still there, of course, overseeing everything his daughter does, complaining that he did it better in his day. This isn’t my story to tell, but I can say things are good. The shelves are full and clean, the bookstore is organized, and George seems generally happier. It is with mixed feelings, however, that I report that the store now has a telephone and takes credit cards. Not a bad thing, I guess, just not the Shakespeare and Company I knew.

  When I’m in Paris, I see George for a meal and to catch up. Once, about two years after I left the store, we had an interesting afternoon. George and I received subpoenas from the police. They had reopened the murder case and we were the only two people who were still in Paris. The suspects had never been found and the victim’s family was loudly wondering why the case had been dropped. The police were reinterviewing as a formality.

  There are few men I admire more than George. Though far from perfect and rife with idiosyncrasies, George, with all the hope and optimism of a child, still believes he can change the world and change the people he takes in at his store. In an age when it is so tempting to be cynical, this is enough to make him a hero in my eyes.

  Looking back at those months, I realize everyone living at the bookstore had a ghost lurking somewhere not very far behind them. Probably that’s why we all stayed at the bookstore together for so long. I think back to what George said about the bo
okstore being an annex to Notre Dame and I think it is very true. In the end, yes, it is a famous bookstore and, yes, it is of no small literary importance. But more than anything, Shakespeare and Company is a refuge, like the church across the river. A place where the owner allows everyone to take what they need and give what they can.

  Living with George at Shakespeare and Company has changed me, made me wonder about the life I left and the life I want to live. For now, I sit, I type, I try to be a better man. Life is a work in progress.

  Acknowledgments

  Few things can be as alarming for a parent as a child’s declaration that he or she intends to write for a living. Trapeze artist or treehouse designer must seem more stable career options. Nonetheless, my parents, Ross and Patricia Mercer, have always supported and loved me, and for this I thank them no end. As for Sonia and Jean Michel de Robillard, who treated me like a son during that long and impoverished year in Marseilles, they hold a special place in my heart.

  While the task of writing is daunting, more daunting still is the business of publishing. I offer fathomless gratitude to my agent, Kristin Lindstrom, for selling this book, and equally fathomless gratitude to my editor, Michael Flamini, for buying it. The meticulous Carol Edwards, who ferreted out a gaggle of typos and errors, deserves high praise and a place in the Face-Saving Hall of Fame.