Time Was Soft There

by Jeremy Mercer

  I screamed like a little girl.

  And then I ran.

  “Luke! Luke! LUKE! There’s a knife in the store,” I hollered, sprinting back to the German section.

  But in what I mark as one of the great acts of courage in my life, I stopped and decided I should try to protect the register. As I turned back toward the front of the store, I noticed that a writer who’d recently shaved his head was browsing through the art books. It made the man look like a death-squad agent, so, in a moment of inspiration, I dragged him with me to the front of the store, where the young men were prying at the till with the knife.

  “Get back!” I screamed, this time with considerably less little girl in my voice.

  Whether it was my sudden reappearance or the ghoulish face of the bald writer, the young men actually stepped back. As they stood there unsure of what to do, Luke burst through the front doorway, having raced down the main stairway to trap the intruders inside the store. He was brandishing a very large plank of wood.

  “Where’s the knife?” he scowled.

  The men quickly decided this wasn’t the store to rob and fled into the night. Though we were a little shaken, we all puffed out our chests and complimented one another on our manliness.

  When George returned from London, things actually got worse. One afternoon after lunching with Eve, he approached me in a fit of rage.

  “Why did you tell her the bookstore was almost robbed?” he demanded.

  Because it was a good story, because it was exciting, because I thought the fact that I went back to confront the thieves made me look like a pretty courageous guy.

  “That was stupid. Stupid! Now she’ll be too scared to come live here,” he yelled, and then went stalking off.

  A few days later, George caught me writing to friends back in Canada. I was using his Shakespeare and Company postcards and by chance I’d misspelled a few words and torn up one effort. George, who despised all waste, found the pieces and became furious.

  “Don’t you know we don’t have many postcards left? Don’t you respect anything?”

  But the worst was the morning when I was shelving an order of poetry books. Scott was at the desk and had already been given a cup of steaming coffee and an almost-fresh doughnut, while I’d been entirely neglected. When George finally remembered I was working in the bookstore, too, it was only to come examine my work.

  “You’ve put things all in the wrong order,” he said. “You’re messing it all up.”

  I tried to tell him that the job was only half-done, that Blake and Browning were next to the two Hugheses only because Eliot and Frost hadn’t been shelved yet, but George refused to listen.

  “You don’t care about this place. You’re trying to ruin me.”

  I think most people have a threshold where they can no longer manage their anger, and perhaps mine is unusually low, for I exploded. For the first and only time, I yelled at George.

  “Why don’t you show some patience?” I shouted. “If you don’t like my work, do it yourself.”

  Slamming the door of the bookstore behind me, I walked around Ile de la Cité three times, cursing George and his bookstore. My anger eventually subsided, only to be replaced by a sickening sense of crisis. I was in such a precarious position that if I lost my place at Shakespeare and Company, I would have only three choices: sleep on the street, go to a shelter, or phone home and ask for money. I couldn’t decide which was worse.

  In such a state, I left on George’s desk a slice of his favorite lemon meringue pie as a peace offering and went to consult Ablimit. Amazingly, he laughed when I told him what was troubling me. George, he explained, always preferred new faces to old friends. Their inevitable infatuation with Shakespeare and Company, the enthusiasm and energy they brought to the store, the tantalizing blank canvas of an unknown person. It wasn’t that the permanent residents of the bookstore fell out of favor; it was just that they were less shiny than the bright new arrivals. George was a man who liked a little shine.

  It had even happened to Ablimit. When he’d first arrived at the bookstore more than twelve months before, George had treated him like a prince, regularly cooking his meals and letting him sleep upstairs in the third-floor apartment. For eight weeks, Ablimit had lived in perfect accord with George, but one day, Ablimit sensed a note of disapproval on his brow and a sharp edge to his voice. Without being asked, he moved downstairs, kept out of George’s way, and resigned himself to eating at the student cafeteria.

  “George, he doesn’t say anything. You just have to know,” Ablimit advised. “The new people always get the best of him, but old friends like us, we get to really know George.”

  They were comforting words, but my sense of security had already slipped.

  30.

  Redemption began with a visit from an Irishwoman. It was a chilly evening in early April and I was writing at the desk in the antiquarian room. Since my falling-out with George, I’d been racing to finish my little novel, thinking that if I could sell it for a few thousand dollars, I would have enough money to escape George’s manic mood swings. It was in the middle of such reverie that there was an urgent tap on the window.

  Opening the door, I discovered a short woman who claimed to be an attaché for the Irish embassy in Paris. In her hand was an extremely important message for Simon. Was this where the poet lived?

  Inviting the woman in to sit, I learned some most wonderful news. Simon was being invited to read at a literary festival in Dingle, a small town in southern Ireland. In fact, the festival was to begin in less than two weeks time and the organizing committee, having already publicized that Shakespeare and Company’s poet in residence would appear, was frantically trying to reach him. Three invitations had been sent by post, but what the organizers didn’t know was that mailing a letter to the bookstore was only barely more effective than putting a note in a bottle and flinging it into the Irish Sea. At the store, letters got misplaced or forgotten or even waylaid by George’s curious eyes.

  According to the Irishwoman, there would be a travel subsidy as well as room and board in Dingle if Simon agreed to read. She admitted it was terribly late notice but hoped the poet could accept. Dingle would be most fortunate to have a man so talented, she said before disappearing out the door.

  “I can’t believe it,” Simon beamed. “The land of the poets! I’ve never even been to Ireland, I’ve never had the courage after all the horrors we English inflicted on those long-suffering people.”

  The invitation was the work of another poet, a man who’d passed through the bookstore the year before and had appreciated Simon’s work. Though confident in his poetry, Simon had until now been convinced he would get his rightful due only after he died. But with an offer to read at the Dingle festival, where guests would include both the Irish chair of poetry and the man who published Samuel Beckett and Henry Miller in England, the possibility of a living reputation dangled before him. Suitably elated, Simon cracked open the codeine and alcohol-free beer to celebrate.

  This good mood lasted almost a full day before the pressure began to gnaw. Simon had never before given such an august reading and his nerve faltered. Was he ready for Ireland? The land of Oscar Wilde and William Trevor? The country that had a portrait of James Joyce on its ten-pound note and didn’t make poets pay income tax?

  To complicate matters, Simon wasn’t at all sure how he was going to make the journey. Dingle, whose population numbered fewer than two thousand people, lay on the raw southwest corner of Ireland and was mostly known for a friendly dolphin that swam in its bay. The cheapest plane ticket to the area was more than twice Simon’s travel allowance and he started using this as a possible excuse for not attending. And once Simon was besieged by the full fury of angst, he even decided he should refuse the invitation as a safeguard against his tumbling back into the bottle.

  “All those drinkers in Ireland, it’s practically a nation of alcoholics,” he said. “I can just imagine being with all the other poets whi
le they belly up to the bar. How will I make it?”

  It was then that we realized a whole flock of birds might be felled with this one poetic stone. I needed time away from George, I yearned for a literary escapade like Kurt was having in Morocco, I was once again in great need of money, I wanted to help Simon seize this grand stage that had been offered him. Despite my murky departure from my newspaper, I still had some good relations with certain editors, so I proposed an article about Simon’s odyssey for the weekend magazine. The money I’d earn could help subsidize Simon’s trip and I would be by his side to defend against Irish temptations.

  When we told George we would be leaving for a week, he was taken aback. No matter how gruffly he might treat his guests, George never likes to see friends leave. In the past, he had actually confiscated plane tickets and passports to prevent departures. With Kurt already gone, the prospect of losing two more familiar faces, even for a week, didn’t sit well.

  “Layabouts,” he grumbled. “Off to Ireland on a junket. That’s writers for you.”

  But deep down, George was thrilled by his obscure in-house poet’s sudden rise to fame. George was fastidious in tracking the success of those he had taken under his wing and kept a file of all the newspaper and magazine articles that celebrated his store. With the prospect of Simon’s acclaim and my article chronicling it, George took to calling Simon the Literary Colossus of the Latin Quarter.

  Before we left, George gave me a brief lesson on packing. He’d traveled the world with only a change of shirt, a toothbrush, and a book in his pocket. What more did you need other than the coat on your back?

  “That’s the way Ferlinghetti does it, too,” he told me as he removed such unnecessary items as spare socks and a bottle of shampoo from my travel bag.

  The date of our departure was Easter Sunday and Simon was awed by its potential significance. Perhaps, Christ-like, he would rise from the ranks of the literary dead. Before we left to catch our train, George treated us like soldiers going to war. Along with a markedly tastier version of the regular Sunday-morning pancakes, there were eggs, bacon, sausages, potatoes, and fresh juice. To end the meal, George proposed a toast to Simon and we all raised our glasses high. Then, with the Easter bells pealing across the river at Notre Dame, I received a sweet good-bye kiss from Nadia and then Simon and I tramped off to the metro to begin our journey.

  We were getting to the festival by the elliptical combination of a train to Cherbourg, in the north of France, an overnight ferry from France to Rosslare Harbour in Ireland, a bus to Cork, and then a second bus to Dingle itself. The entire trip, though almost forty hours each way, would cost only a hundred francs more than Simon’s travel grant.

  Things began well enough, with the metro to Gare St. Lazare peaceful in the early Easter Sunday hours and the seats on the train easy to find. As we rolled north, Simon was transfixed by the fields of yellow flowers. “Those are van Gogh colors,” he said. “You know, in a way, I’m a little like van Gogh—miserably poor, unappreciated in my lifetime.”

  When we got to Cherbourg, there was a three-hour wait for our ferry and Simon paced impatiently in the terminal. After staring out into the gray waters of the English Channel, he spun around and began digging in his travel bag.

  “I need a drink,” he declared.

  Simon withdrew an alcohol-free beer from among the six-packs and codeine bottles he’d crammed into his luggage. Clearly, George hadn’t reviewed the poet’s packing technique. As he gulped back the beer, I noted with some alarm that it was still before noon on the first day of our journey.

  The Normandy pulled into dock and it was a massive vessel. Eleven decks, twenty-eight thousand tons, room for a thousand passengers. Simon and I had booked the cheapest cabin and found it on the seventh deck, just above the cars and well below sea level. Simon looked around at the cramped room with its narrow bunk bed and opened another can of alcohol-free.

  The next morning, we arrived at Rosslare Harbour, a rut along the cliffs, to catch the bus west. The company had given Christian names to each of its buses and ours was called Simon. “This must be a cosmic joke,” Simon muttered as we boarded.

  Westward we rolled, amazed by the infinite greens of the countryside. After changing buses again in Cork that afternoon, the hills became more rugged, and even though we had been on the road for more than thirty-five hours at this point, we both actually wanted the bus to go slower so we could better savor scenery. Shortly after eleven that night, more than thirty-nine hours after leaving the bookstore, we arrived at the Dingle bus station.

  Our room overlooked the bay and from our window we could watch the fishing boats come in with their nets each morning. The town was small enough that one could walk from one end to the other in less than a half hour, never ascending more than three or five blocks from the bay. I mostly wandered the hills or sat in pubs with Guinness pints and seafood chowder while Simon spent his time worrying about the reading. His codeine supply ran short, so, claiming a toothache, he went to the festival organizer. An ever-efficient host, the man saw that all was quietly arranged with a local pharmacist.

  Alone in our room, we talked late into the night and I learned more about Simon’s life, his broken loves, his family regrets. I also heard of his alcoholism. Not a bad drunk, but self-destructive. Once, in Spain, he’d stumbled off a cliff in the dead of night and lay broken on the rocks for twelve hours. It was a questionable accident.

  I tried to take note. I’d had my troubles with alcohol, my brushes with police, my desperate arrival at Shakespeare and Company. Listening to Simon, I wondered if he wasn’t something of a Ghost of Christmas Future.

  The festival began with suitable flourish. A blind poet of Irish renown performed. Jigs were played. There were ample trays of wine and beer. Throughout, Simon kept his resolve, drinking deeply from his private supply of alcohol-free.

  The night before Simon’s reading, he pent himself up in the hotel room and brooded about the task before him. He opened and closed the window, he gulped his beer, he flicked incessantly with the television remote. He even twice called back to France to ask a former girlfriend which scarf he should wear for his performance.

  Looking through a copy of the festival brochure, Simon realized there were three other poets on the same slate as he was. Scanning their biographies, he became unnerved.

  “They have books; they have names. I have nothing.”

  Then, a surge of confidence. “No, I have my work.”

  The reading was scheduled for two in the afternoon and it was on the other side of town, which meant the shortest of walks. Still, twice along the path, Simon ducked into pubs and downed alcohol-frees. He’d discovered a Guinness brand with the frisky name Kaliber which was only a hair away from being 1 percent alcohol. In the last pub before his reading, he held the bottle to the shaft of light that crept in through the window.

  “I’m going to pretend this one is fourteen percent.”

  As we approached the bookstore where the reading was to be held, Simon picked up his pace and steamed directly past the front entrance. I caught up to him and pulled him to a stop. He was whispering distractedly to himself.

  “Help me, Jesus, in my hour of need … .”

  “Simon, are you praying?”

  “The religion in me comes out at times like this,” he said with a shake of his head.

  About sixty people were waiting to hear Simon read. There were mothers with babies on their laps, a cluster of high school students, other writers from the festival, and, in the back corner, a handful of publishers and journalists.

  Simon took his place at the front of the room. Someone familiar with the wonts of writers had left a tall glass of wine for him at the podium. He looked at it for an extended moment and then waved to the bookstore’s owner.

  “Can you get this away from me, please?”

  And so he read. His deep English accent massaged his words and drew the audience into him. He chose four short poems, and there was a m
urmur of disappointment when he announced he would read one last poem. He ended with a piece he’d written about the cherry trees, which had started to blossom in front of Shakespeare and Company before we had left.

  Smelling faintly of woodscent

  outside my door all through the long winter

  two country girls in bark and brown kimonos

  arms raised ready to dance

  In one more day not even one more week

  they will become rich geishas

  flicking open their fans of white and pink

  cherry blossom while my eyes are elsewhere

  First the last winds of March will blow

  then I shall turn around astonished

  Am I seeing snowfall in Spring?

  Or did they throw

  their fans on the ground?

  When he finished, there was thunderous applause. The other writers nodded their approval. The Irish chair of poetry clapped him soundly on the back. A journal editor approached and asked to review his work. A correspondent from Irish radio wanted to talk to him. Everyone had a kind word.

  Simon’s smile engulfed him. His face radiant, he removed his glasses to wipe away a tear. Then, disappearing amid the crowd, he was swept out into the streets of Dingle.

  31.

  As shameful as it is to admit, the thing that made me the happiest upon my return from Ireland was to find that Scott had fallen from favor.

  I immediately noticed a coldness between Scott and George, and this was soon confirmed when Scott confided that they had stopped talking altogether. Fearing eviction, Scott asked me to find out what was going on.