Huddled inside a telephone booth, Noah watches the mist rise from his mouth. The temperature is barely 5 degrees below zero, but never in his life has he felt this cold, except perhaps in a truck stop in southern Alberta on Christmas Night 1979, when the trailer’s radiator gave up the ghost. He presses the frozen plastic of the receiver against his left ear. At the other end, he hears nothing but metallic clicks and crackling, and he begins to wonder whether he has dialed the wrong number. After a while the international operator’s voice faintly pierces the interference.
“Hi-bonsoir-comment-puis-je-vous-aider-how-can-I-help-you?”
For a few seconds Noah is thrown off balance. The accent seems to be neither Québécois nor American nor Latin American, but a sort of amalgam originating in every place and no place at the same time, as if the voice did not really belong to a human being but to a spurt of DNA designed to meet a specific need and then injected into the circuits of the telephone system. An entity with no accent, no nationality and no trade-union demands.
“I’d like to make a collect call to Venezuela,” Noah declares after a moment’s hesitation.
“What is the number?”
He gives the regional code of Nueva Esparta and the number of the Burgos residence, while restlessly surveying the area around the phone booth. No visible movement, aside from the blowing snow and the flickering salmon at Shanahan’s fish store. An agitated, diligent silence hovers at the other end of the line. One can just make out, in the background, the inconspicuous tapping of a keyboard, most likely a recording from which one is supposed to gather that international operators do indeed have fingers, and therefore bodies.
“I’m sorry,” she finally says. “The line is down.”
“You mean the person’s telephone line has been cut?”
“No, service seems to have been disrupted throughout the whole region. Weather conditions are bad in Venezuela. The infrastructures may have been damaged. I advise you to call back a little later.”
Noah says thank you and hangs up. He cautiously opens the door of the phone booth a crack, and adjusts his too-thin coat and his too-short scarf.
“Carajo,” he swears, mechanically.
He turns his head in response to a rumbling noise. An unfriendly-looking snowplough is approaching from the intersection. It roars past him, comes to a halt amid a blast of salt and gravel and laboriously starts away again. Noah jumps over the ridge of snow and follows in the plough’s wake.
When he arrives at the apartment, Maelo is watching the televised news bulletin. Set out on the table, so they cannot be missed, are a bottle of mamajuana and two small glasses. Noah shakes the snow from his coat and hangs it on the coat rack.
“Well?” Maelo asks as he opens the bottle.
Noah drops onto the couch and wriggles his toes to try to get the blood flowing again.
“No news. The lines are down. I’ll go out to call again later.”
On the screen, Hugo Chávez is declaring a state of emergency in the states of Vargas, Miranda, Zulia, Falcón, Yaracuy, Nueva Esparta and Carabobo, and in the federal district of Caracas. This is the most devastating flood to hit South America in decades.
“Are you worried about her?” Maelo asks Noah, as he proffers a glass of mamajuana.
Noah dreamily whiffs the contents of the glass and shrugs. Images flash randomly across the screen. A river of mud flowing through a slum area. A small red car wedged into a concrete wall. A man thigh-deep in brownish water, holding a child in his arms. Helicopters, fire trucks, ambulances.
“No,” Noah finally replies. “There’s no reason to worry. It would take a volcanic eruption to budge the Burgos house. It’s gigantic, with walls this thick. And built on the highest point in the city, near the Santa Rosa fort. It’s the safest place on Margarita Island.”
The General Assembly of the UN has replaced the turmoil of the floods on the television screen. They are deliberating on disarming Iraq, inspection teams, the demands of the United States.
The telephone rings. Maelo reaches for it and, without lowering the volume of the TV, answers a cautious “Hello?” A smile of relief spreads across his face. “Finally! I’ve been waiting to hear from you since this afternoon … Yes … What? Four hours at Newark airport?”
“Yeah, it was nuts in Newark,” Noah puts in.
He uncaps the bottle of mamajuana and pours himself a good-sized glass. On the TV, the local weather forecast for the next few days is snow and sleet in abundance. He takes the remote control and switches channels. On every station, there is nothing but mudslides, refugees and antitartar toothpaste.
“Yes,” Maelo continues. “They came to the fish shop. Asked me tons of questions. I told them I didn’t know anything … No idea. They emptied out the apartment. It took them nearly the whole day. Did you ever happen to do any cleaning from time to time? … ¡Chistosa! … Hey, I have to let you go. I’ve got guests … Yes … Fine. Let me hear from you when you have a minute. And don’t let Grandmother Úrsula make life too hard for you!”
He hangs up and grabs his glass of mamajuana.
“It’s the season of hurried departures,” he explains between two sips. “A friend of mine needed to take an emergency vacation. I sent her to get some sun at my grandmother’s place.”
Noah nods absent-mindedly. He drains his glass in one go and yawns slowly.
“Well, I’m going to bed. I’m wasted.”
“Sweet dreams.”
Noah totters over to the bedroom and opens the door very gently. The beam of light sweeps across the room and illuminates the capelins swimming on the wall. He shuts the door behind him, muffling the sound of the television.
“Noah?” a small voice whispers in the dark.
He sits down on the edge of the mattress and strokes Simón’s forehead.
“What is it?”
“Can you tell me a story?”
“I already told you one earlier. Now it’s time to sleep. Come on, shove over a bit.”
A series of waves ripples through the sheets when Simón crawls over to the other side of the mattress. Noah shivers as he undresses, pulls on a dry pair of woollen socks and slides under the starfish. It’s strange to be able to recognize the least little bump in the mattress, and to find the discomfort both familiar and reassuring.
“Good night,” he mutters in Simón’s direction.
“Good night.”
He sinks his head into the pillow, closes his eyes and exhales blissfully. The room goes quiet. The sports news can be heard indistinctly through the wall.
“Is it true you lived here before?” Simón asks.
“Hmmm,” Noah confirms. “I lived with Maelo for four years.”
He lets out a long yawn. On the other side of the wall, a sports analyst discusses injuries, power plays and penalties.
“And this was your room?” Simón insists.
“This was my room,” Noah sighs, trying very hard to hold on to sleep.
“So this, this is the bed you slept in!”
“This is the bed I slept in …”
… back when I was allowed to sleep, he thinks, unfairly. In reality, there were many more reasons for insomnia back then, and Noah can easily recall all the wakeful nights he spent inside these walls: the nights he spent studying, the heat-wave nights, the jututo nights that went on until the neighbours called the police, the nights he wrote letters to his mother, the nights spent with road maps trying to guess where his mother was, the nights he doubted his mother existed, the end-of-term nights (dark and dreamless), the anxious nights, the epidemic nights, the nights thinking about his father, the nights when he tried to picture Nikolski, the nights spent wearing a bathrobe and lying in bed with a bottle of acetaminophen and a glass of water, the novel-reading nights, not to mention the nights with Arizna, those fleeting episodes that disrupted forever the peaceful course of his life.
Simón does not ask any more questions. He stares at the ceiling and says nothing, as if he too w
ere pondering those long-ago nights, the distant echo from before his birth. How can so many memories be contained in such a cramped room? He raises his arm and traces a little circle, as though wanting to circumscribe his father’s whole life.
“But it really is so small,” he breathes into Noah’s ear, his voice full of wonder.
Noah sits up halfway. It takes a few seconds for him to realize that Simón is referring to the bedroom. He smiles and kisses his forehead.
“You’ll see. You’ll get used to it before long.”
Clearance
ONLY TWO DAYS LEFT BEFORE CHRISTMAS, and eight before the end of the world.
The bookstore has been almost deserted for a week. People are scurrying around elsewhere—anywhere it glitters, in the mazes of plastic and stainless steel, the china shops, the Pac-Man outlets, the luxury perfume stores, the poultry slaughterhouses. The used-book market is nosediving in the city and, frankly, I don’t care very much. I’ve just finished making a sign, which I’ve placed on the counter right next to the cash register:
S.W. GAM BOOKSHOP
SEEKS
EXPERIENCED CLERK
FULL OR PART-TIME
NOMADS NEED NOT APPLY.
I rub my hands as I examine the sign. Well, that’s done. Mme Dubeau, my esteemed proprietor, has been urging me for several days to prepare the job offer and put it up. She seems to be afraid I’ll leave without warning, and let the bookstore fall entirely on her shoulders.
The truth is, I’ve been preoccupied of late.
All my free time (including a significant portion of my daily schedule normally earmarked for sleep) has been devoted to clearing out my apartment. I’ve been sorting old, inert objects, dusting them off one by one and propelling them into a new life. Furniture and dishes to the Salvation Army. Idiotic knick-knacks to the antique dealers. Assorted articles—sound system, bead curtains, desk lamp, floor lamp, chandeliers, pétanque balls, artificial Christmas tree, ladder—to the flea market. I’m entrusting the bamboo plants, spider plant and papyrus to my neighbour. The old income tax reports and government papers to the recycling bin. The rest—unclassifiable and unsalvageable—I unceremoniously cram into ultrastrong plastic bags for the garbagemen’s enjoyment.
My books are naturally entitled to special treatment. I’ve hermetically wrapped the most valuable ones and stored them in the basement, in the notorious urchin-ridden locker, and I’ve brought the others here to be sold off at a dollar a piece.
Because of all this upheaval I make stupid errors. I make mistakes when totalling up prices, I completely mix up the titles when classifying books, and I neglect to watch for shoplifters, feeling that, in any case, the only book thief worth anyone’s attention won’t be back here again. Truth to tell, it did take me a few days to arrive at that conclusion. It didn’t matter that I had come upon two RCMP squads in the process of searching her apartment—I still held on to the slim hope that Joyce would not leave Montreal. I scrutinized the newspapers, trying to learn the reasons for the search, but there was no mention of it. The deskmen apparently did not think it warranted a headline, no doubt because the protagonist was still on the lam. As for me, I waited for her to show up at the bookstore sporting sunglasses and a blue wig.
The days went by. Hemmed in by the December frost, I quickly came back to the only scenario that made any sense. Joyce, evidently, was sitting pretty under a coconut tree, with her feet in the warm sand and a glass of añejo rum in her hand.
I’ve therefore decided to do something with my life. It’s high time to escape from the gravitational pull of books. I will go without a guidebook, without an encyclopedia, without a leaflet, without a phrasebook, without a schedule and without a road map. Occasionally I look at the shelves and sigh. I’ll of course miss the bookstore a little, but it’s more important for me to find my own road, my own little providence.
Jangle of the doorbell and icy gust of wind. A man and a child come into the bookstore. The man is wearing a plaid fall jacket and his teeth are chattering, and the child is swathed in three layers of wool and scarves. They shake the snow from their shoes and unbutton their coats. They are enveloped in a delicate aroma of charcoal, caramelized meat and cloves. They’ve undoubtedly just come out of Dunkel’s, the Jewish delicatessen across the street.
While the little boy ventures toward the bookshelves as cautiously as a Sioux hunter, the man steps up to the counter. I notice him eyeing our job offer in a peculiar way.
“Interested?” I ask.
He shakes his head, but I feel inclined not to let the matter drop, as if, for some mysterious reason, I were convinced this man would be perfect for the position.
“You’re wrong, you know. It’s an ideal job: low wages but lots of time to read.”
“I’ll think about it,” he answers with a smile. “In the meantime, do you have any books on dinosaurs?”
“A whole collection! Look at the end of the third row, under the blinking fluorescent light.”
No need to repeat the information—the child has already scampered over to the third row. The man, meanwhile, lingers at the front of the shop. He scans the shelves, hovers for a moment over the “New Arrivals” table, glances at the Mickey Spillane shelf, and finally leans down to examine the cardboard boxes holding books I’m selling off for a dollar each. Most of what’s jammed in those boxes is worth far more. One immediately discovers, for instance, three relatively recent travel guides (Indonesia, Iceland, Hawaii), an almost spotless copy of a Tintin book (The Red Sea Sharks), the Ashley Book of Knots (in good condition despite its missing cover) and a special edition of Georges Perec’s La Vie mode d’emploi (luxury binding).
Squatting by the boxes, the man examines the books, turns them over, pushes them aside to see what’s underneath. All at once I see him stiffen, as though he’d just stumbled upon a large, shrivelled-up tarantula at the bottom of the box. I quietly step closer. He is holding the old Three-Headed Book.
“Don’t be fooled by appearances—what you have there is a unicum.”
“Excuse me?” he says, as though emerging from a dream.
“A unicum. A book of which there is only a single known copy in the whole world.”
“Really? How can you be so sure?”
“Look at it closely. It’s made up of fragments of three books. The first third is from a study on treasure hunting. The second comes from a historical treatise on the pirates of the Caribbean. The final third is taken from a biography of Alexander Selkirk, who was shipwrecked on a Pacific island.”
“So it’s an anthology.”
“No. These are fragments—literally. Debris. Flotsam and jetsam. The bookbinder salvaged the wreckage of three books and sewed them together. It’s a piece of craftsmanship, not a mass-printed object.”
The man turns the book over and over in his hands, like a Rubik’s cube.
“That’s weird. I don’t understand why a bookbinder would have done that.”
“Hard to tell. A passion for puzzles, maybe … Look, I’ll let you have it for fifty cents, employee discount.”
Before he has time to respond, the child bursts out of the third row, his arms overflowing with treasures. The man lays the Three-Headed Book on the counter so that he can look at what the youngster has selected. I expect him to drastically reduce this copious selection, but no. He is content to read off the titles, approving each one with a satisfied nod of the head.
“The Extinction of the Dinosaurs, The Time of the Saurians, The Great Fossil Guide, Giant Gallinaceans of the Jurassic Period and The Cretaceous Period As If You Were There. Not bad at all. Nothing on hummingbirds?”
“Nothing on hummingbirds,” the child answers, spreading his arms.
“Oh well, too bad.”
He pushes the books toward me, puts two twenty-dollar bills on top of them and starts to button up the child’s coat. I add up the price, discreetly giving him a 15 per cent discount, and wrap the purchase in an old plastic bag. When I hand him his c
hange, the man smiles mysteriously.
“You know, your unicum. There’s something missing.”
I raise a quizzical eyebrow. By way of reply, he takes out of his wallet a small sheet of paper folded twice over and places it delicately on the Three-Headed Book. His forefinger stays on the paper for a moment, wavering. Then everything happens very quickly. He collects his bag, straightens his tuque and pushes the child toward the door, while wishing me Merry Christmas.
“¡Feliz Navidad!” the child adds, waving his mittens.
Jangle of the doorbell and a brief gust of frozen air. They’ve fled like two saboteurs who’ve just planted a time bomb.
Intrigued, I unfold the little sheet of paper. It’s a map of the Caribbean, rectangular, about twenty centimetres long, bearing no date, no specific information. Nothing on the reverse side either. But there are various clues suggesting that it was made some time ago: the brittle grain of the paper, the yellowish oxidation, the tiny marks caused by fungus, the faded ink and the use of an archaic place name—British Honduras instead of Belize.
One of the sides of the map is roughly torn, as though it has been ripped out of an atlas.
I look toward the exit. The bell is still swaying back and forth over the door. Why did the man rush off like that? Was there some dark secret he was afraid would be brought to light? His words come back to me: … your unicum. There’s something missing.
I bring the map closer to the Three-Headed Book, like the last remaining piece of a puzzle. My hunch is correct. The tear fits the binding exactly! This map, then, was torn out of the book some years ago … I stand there open-mouthed, contemplating the implications of this strange puzzle. Here is a discovery that clouds the issue rather than clarifying it.
Nothing is perfect.
Nikolski Page 18
