The air in the shop retained a whiff of the night before, the reading leaving an invisible but perceptible mark. The tables replaced the chairs, and were once again piled high with books. A tiny vase of daffodils adorned Sylvia’s desk. Lily browsed the displays and came upon a stack of James Joyce’s Ulysses. She knew how important this book was for Sylvia. She had made a lot of sacrifices to publish it, pushing her business toward bankruptcy. Lily also remembered the paltry gratitude Joyce had shown Sylvia afterward. She opened to a random page but couldn’t concentrate on the text.
Instead, she fantasized about a future at Sylvia’s side. In this other reality, she managed to make her way through the entire book, and to her surprise, she not only understood it, she liked the modernist masterpiece. She and Sylvia had long discussions about the text, about the choices Joyce had made with language. Sylvia showed her some of the printer’s proofs, where Joyce had blacked out certain lines and scribbled new ones in. Lily gleaned some ideas for her own stories and jotted them down in her notebook, the ink flowing magically over the page.
The women’s conversation broke into Lily’s daydream. Sylvia’s customer reported that she and her husband were going back to New York.
“Our banker told us it would be best to leave Europe now, before things get worse,” she continued. “With the strikes at Le Havre, we’re afraid we won’t be able to leave at all.”
“Hmm,” Sylvia said, writing down the woman’s book titles in her ledger.
“Are you going to leave?”
Sylvia laughed. “And go where?”
“Back to the States. Back to your family.”
Sylvia frowned and kept writing. Lily perused a copy of Transatlantic, its blocky, deco font and contemporary short stories emphasizing the era she had slipped into. The paper, rough and thick, was nothing like the glossy, sleek magazines back home. She thought about buying a copy. When she traveled, she always wanted something to take home. But would she ever go back home? She replaced the magazine and tuned back into the conversation.
“Constance, my world is here.” Sylvia spread her arms to encompass the shop. Lily ducked her head toward the magazine rack, not wanting to be caught eavesdropping. “I can’t leave my life!”
“But how will you survive?”
Sylvia laughed. “I guess as I always have.”
Constance intimated that Sylvia belonged back in the States with her family. But Sylvia shook that off.
“Paris is my home. I’ve been here for twenty years and honestly, Constance, I have nowhere else to go. When I die, I want to be buried here, near my friends.”
Tears welled up in Lily’s eyes. She’d been to Sylvia’s grave, in Princeton, and had been sad that Sylvia hadn’t been interred in her beloved Paris. Constance handed Sylvia some francs.
“You’re a braver woman than I,” Constance said. She gathered the books in a leather strap, pulled it tight, and paused at the door, giving Sylvia a last plaintive gaze. Teddy, from his spot on the rug by the desk, whined, his puffy tail beating against the floor. Lily wanted to assure Constance that Sylvia would be okay, that she would survive the war, that she would close down the shop herself in a few years, before the Nazis had a chance to. But she couldn’t say anything. Part of her liked thinking that she had information others did not. Of course she had read some science fiction, and she knew about time travel and the noninterfering rules. But that was just fiction; maybe now that it had really happened to her, there were no rules. Maybe she could do what she wanted.
Standing in the middle of the shop, surrounded by books, Sylvia became a real person for Lily, with a real life and real challenges, and not just a story she had read about in the comfort of a book. Caveat lector, Lily thought. Beware of reading books that suck you in and spit you out in a whole other world. She imagined Sylvia moving through the war years, surviving by a thread, made old less by deprivations than by seeing her city overtaken by invaders. And Lily might be there to witness it all.
Constance left and Sylvia sat down, bending her head as if trying to get her bearings.
“Do you get that often?” Lily approached the desk.
“Get what?”
“People telling you to leave Paris.”
“I do. There’s the assumption that I am as rootless as the rest of the Americans who parade through here like it’s a playground. But Paris is my home and really now, there is nowhere else I would want to live.” She paused. “But thank you for coming. I’m sure you have other things to do in Paris.”
“I don’t consider Paris a playground. But I like it here, at the shop. I work in a bookstore back home, so this feels comfortable for me.”
Sylvia pulled a cigarette out and held the pack toward Lily, who shook her head. Sylvia lit the cigarette, clicked the lighter shut, and tossed it on the desk.
“I would like to thank you for last night. You ended up proving quite useful.”
“I was glad to be here, to be part of it.”
“Well, I was a nervous Nellie. That’s the last one of those I want to do.” She blew smoke into an arabesque that twirled up toward the ceiling. Sylvia asked Lily how long she planned to be in Paris. Lily hedged and gave a vague answer. But Sylvia was tenaciously curious about why Lily was in Paris. Lily hesitated, then spoke without thinking.
“I’m here to help with my aunt’s move. She lived in Paris and I’m helping her pack up to return to the States.”
“What’s her name? Maybe I know her.”
Lily could feel the hole she was digging getting deeper and deeper. “Mary Stone. She lives in the 13th. You wouldn’t know her. She’s not—”
“Not what, not a reader?”
“No, not really. I’m the only one with the reading gene in my family,” Lily said.
“Reading gene?” Sylvia laughed. “That’s funny. I’ve never heard of the reading gene.” She stubbed her cigarette.
Lily gripped the back of a chair near the desk. Behind a smile she urged herself to pay more attention to her speech.
“Well, if you’re helping your aunt, you probably don’t have much time for fun. Or anything else.” Sylvia, too, wore a tight smile.
“Anything else?” Like what?”
“Have you read Ulysses?”
Lily shook her head at the non sequitur. She wished she could say, “Of course I’ve read it. Twice, in fact. I wrote my college thesis on it and it is being considered by a publisher.” But she told the truth. “Not yet. I’m waiting until I am laid up in bed for months with nothing else to do.”
“Well, don’t wait. It’s a masterpiece and will last long after those piddly paperbacks become rags.”
Lily promised to read it and Sylvia grasped a stack of papers and struck the edge of them against the desk to neaten them. “Much as I’d like to chat about books, I have something else in mind for you.”
Lily leaned forward. “Do you think you can spare some time to help me here? I need someone in the shop while I set up at the Expo this week. Do you think you can mind the books while I deal with that?”
Lily thought about the hours she had put in at Capitol Books and the trade shows she’d been to with Valerie. Hauling boxes of books, long hours in fluorescent-lit convention halls, eating tasteless food during brief breaks from the booth.
“I’m a fast learner. I’m good with people, too.” Lily knew that everyone said that when they were desperate for a job. But to tell the truth, she was desperate, for the first time in her life. She needed to find Louise, she needed something to do in Paris other than wander around worrying. And who knew how long the money from the ring would hold out.
Sylvia sized her up with a dry regard. Teddy stretched out, his black nubby legs reaching in front of him, and Lily bent down to rub his belly. Teddy kept his eyes closed and rolled onto his back.
“Wel
l, Teddy appears to trust you. I don’t know how picky I can get,” Sylvia said. “The Expo is slated to start next week. Though they’ve been putting it off for years. Terribly embarrassing for the French.”
She went on to explain what she’d need from Lily: answering the phone, taking deliveries, preparing books for shipping, and being useful in the rare event that someone came in. It was true. The shop was nearly deserted. No one had come in since Constance had left.
Lily could scarcely believe that Sylvia was offering her a job. To be a girl Friday, to work side by side with Sylvia, might make this whole weird experience worth it.
“I can’t wait!” Lily burst out.
“Reserve your enthusiasm. You’ll see, I’m very demanding and, honestly, I’ve sent many an assistant home in tears. And I can’t pay you a lot,” she said.
“That’s okay,” Lily said. “A little money is always better than none.”
Sylvia invited Lily to put her bag behind the front desk, then gave her a tour of the shop. At Capitol Books, Valerie asked new employees to draw a map of the various sections in order to learn them better. Lily had made funny drawings next to each section: her philosophy section showed a group of stick figures with extra-large heads; her cooking section had a man jiggling a frying pan over a flaming burner; and her sports section showed a man crouching behind home plate while a barrage of sporting gear was thrown at him.
Sylvia escorted her around the shop. The photo gallery of writers on the walls—Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, and D.H. Lawrence—all seemed to welcome Lily. Teddy followed patiently, standing behind Sylvia as she explained the order of things. The books, arranged in alphabetical order, of course: essays, fiction, history. There weren’t nearly as many categories as at Capitol Books. The books were mostly hardcover, and some didn’t have dust jackets. No colorful paperbacks with catchy blurbs on the back. No remaindered books or oversized coffee-table books full of splashy pictures. Sylvia showed her a sideboard where she kept the first editions locked up. Lily could tell that Sylvia knew every title in the shop. She also saw the opportunity to sell the more expensive books if Sylvia didn’t have to be the gatekeeper. She nodded when Sylvia showed her how she preferred the books to be shelved—pulled to the edge of the shelves in a neat line. She claimed to be fastidious, yet there were stacks of books on the floor by every section. At Lily’s shop, the extra books were stored neatly in the basement, and replacements for sold books were brought up each morning.
“How do you keep track of which books are sold and which are loaned?” Lily asked.
“I write them down in the ledger at the front desk,” Sylvia said. “I’ll show you.”
Lily chafed at the inefficiency of it. At Capitol Books they processed every sale through the computer database. That made it easy to track everything, and to even sell books online. Still, Sylvia was quite modern, selling and sending books to readers around the world. She showed Lily the back room, where a cot sat next to a vintage black typewriter on a metal cart. Sylvia passed the communal WC, a tiny closet with a Turkish toilet. A sheaf of newsprint hung from a chain affixed to the wall. A black cat that Sylvia introduced as Lucky lounged on a mossy cobblestone in the dim courtyard. Back inside, a wide, dark staircase led upstairs.
“That’s where I stay,” Sylvia gestured. She made no move to show Lily her private quarters.
Back in the shop, the two women sat together near the barely warm stove, working out the details of their arrangement. Lily would come in a few hours a day and help Sylvia with shipping, other errands, and minding the shop while Sylvia was at the Expo. After agreeing to return the following afternoon, Lily left and headed down the street, giddy with her luck. Strolling along, she felt the urge to write. She wanted to chronicle what she’d seen.
The clouds had drifted away, leaving a bright afternoon that lured Parisians outside. The Boulevard Raspail was particularly animated with pedestrians enjoying the spring day. Lily moved with the crowd, energized by her conversation with Sylvia. The terrace of La Rotonde was alive with people, conversation buzzing from all sides. Lily spied an empty table near a giant potted plant at the side. After settling in and ordering a coffee, Lily dove into her notebook, scribbling again and again. She worked on a piece about the Hemingway reading, wanting to document the details of the evening before she forgot them. A well of inspiration sprang free from deep inside her. She was charged up, as she had been in her high school journalism class. She had written a feature on the physics teacher who bungee jumped for kicks. Her journalism teacher nodded his approval, but Lily overheard him in the hallway telling another teacher that he hoped Lily didn’t start snooping around other teachers’ private lives. Lily scooted past, her head down. She began limiting her writing to the strict assignments, not wanting to expose anyone, not wanting to stand out. She got a B–, a grade that brought down her GPA along with her interest in journalism. She focused instead on history, becoming engrossed in the stories of people in the past, histories already written, decisions already made. What good was being able to write if you couldn’t tell the truth?
She went back to her notebook.
And what about the beauty products aisle, where you spend a full two hours trying to discover yourself as a woman in the thirties? You’re struck by the parsimony of it all, no fifty shampoos for all types of hair, colored, dry, flyaway, dandruffy. And deodorant? Forget it. Now you understand—it’s the soap that does the job, sturdy lumps of lye. Where’s the lavender French milled soap? No, it’s serious here, no plastic push-up pumps of white chalk to swivel under your pits. No real hope of preventing a stink, because stink you do, your armpits a constant dank dampness signaling your distress in every situation. You swish feebly at the water basin, standing in your ivory slip, the water trickling down your side, the gesture of the raised arm, the view out the window past the heavy gray shutters, a collection of walls, buildings angled to keep you from a long view. If you hold this, hold this pose, hold it long enough, you can pause between time and not be that girl from the future or that ill-fitted girl from the past; you can become a model out of time, an essential part of a painting, girl at bath, trickling girl, girl outside herself.
For a second, you’re perfect, until the trickle chills you and you grab the scratchy hand towel and scour your side dry. This is preferred to the shower/bath you tried to take down the hall, the communal bathing room ringed with the dirt of many men and few women—because what kind of woman, really, takes up residence in a hotel in 1937? You’re a woman of dubious morals, and there are no concessions in the bathroom: no tiny unwrapped bars of soap or plush stacks of towels, no, not even a bath mat, just an enormous porcelain tub with a mallet of a shower head, heavy silver coils, large holes spitting out lukewarm water.
Lily didn’t want to stop writing. She wanted to put black on white all this lunacy. Maybe she could make a story of it someday. She recorded everything, pulling in the sounds of the waiters calling out to each other, the clack of plates and clink of glasses, the faint whoosh of the espresso machine inside the café. When she relaxed her focus, only the din of voices, devoid of meaning, flowed around her. French sounded like a river, rushing and certain, always in a hurry to get somewhere important. Parisian conversation was heavy with emphasis, couples overriding each other’s statements, voices rising, smacking against each other like water against rocks.
She breathed in the aroma of bread baking next door at the boulangerie, a hefty, yeasty smell. Hemingway could be around the corner, writing. Her pen flew and she hummed along with the rhythm of the ink on the page.
THE NEXT DAY, Sylvia put Lily to work at the shipping desk, showing her the labels, packing string, and paper. A stack of books sat nearby, ready to be packaged. Lily perched on the stool at the tiny table, feeling like a third grader prepared for an arts and crafts project. She picked up the first book, a heavy tome. Turning it over, she read the title on the spine—Moby Dick
. She pulled a sheet of manila paper off the rack and wrapped the book. Writing out the label, she wondered about a person who would willingly read this monster of a book. She had never forgotten the shame of being caught cheating on the Moby Dick quiz in her honors class. It marred her grade and squelched her confidence.
As she wrapped the next book, she eavesdropped on Sylvia discussing printing fliers for the Exposition. Lily slipped back into her own memories, lulled into a daze by Sylvia’s steady murmur. At Capitol Books, orders could be placed online. Lily communicated with people all around the world, finding the books they wanted and shipping them off. The store survived because of this service, where other secondhand bookstores had closed. The additional work from the Internet was almost more rewarding than the regular customers who frequented the store.
She unscrewed the cap on the glue pot, a squat bottle with a fancy blue label. The bristles of the brush, viscous with glue, were splayed in several directions. Oh, the joy of self-adhesive labels, self-adhesive stamps, and all the other little conveniences that made life easy. Sylvia again picked up the phone, her finger in the holes of the dial, circling again and again. Lily thought of caller ID, touch-tone phones, cell phones, and all the gadgets that saved time and money. Things moved much more slowly here and held their value. The postage scale seemed antique, as if Sylvia had been using it for decades. In Lily’s era, if something stopped working, it was thrown out and replaced immediately. Here, you could spend a week’s wages on a dinner in a restaurant. It was all so absurd, compared with the difficulties of the Depression and coming war. Lily wanted her easy life back home as much as she had wanted to inhabit Sylvia’s Paris. Sighing, she set the book on the copper balance, adding a few small weights to the other side. Thinking about the conveniences of home wasn’t helping, so she concentrated on calculating the postage. Sylvia was talking about the magazines she would feature in her booth at the Expo. She needed extra copies of Life and Letters Today from England. It didn’t sound like things were going well; her brusque voice rose as the conversation went on, something about having to pay for extra shipping.
Chasing Sylvia Beach Page 15
