A Very Special Year

by Thomas Montasser

  FIFTEEN

  On the very anniversary of the elderly bookseller’s disappearance a letter came in the post, written on paper from the Albergo d’Angelini in Florence and sealed in one of the hotel’s envelopes. In the shaky hand of an old lady, but penned with great care to produce a charming script, the following words had been written:

  Dear Valerie,

  I hope my letter arrives punctually and that you’re well. It’s now time for me finally to take back the burden I placed on you. I wonder whether much has changed. I’m looking forward to seeing you. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to meet me at the station. I’m arriving on Tuesday at 11.50 on platform 7.

  Love,

  Charlotte

  That was it. Nothing else. Confused, Valerie looked at the calendar: Tuesday. And the time: just after eleven. Did Aunt Charlotte mean this Tuesday: today?

  If the old lady had possessed a mobile it would have been simple to clear up the matter. But even if she did have one (which Valerie doubted) Valerie didn’t have the number. And actually, she could have telephoned Valerie herself at some point, just as she could have let her family know for certain that nothing bad had happened to her when she vanished into thin air, that she was keeping well and ultimately had just been following a crazy whim, or at least fulfilling an obligation that Valerie might have understood had she explained. But nothing of the sort had happened. She had simply absconded in the dead of night, leaving behind no more than a few dry words which were all that suggested her disappearance might at least have been intentional. And now she was announcing her return with a few similarly dry words – and it was imminent.

  Valerie scrunched up both letter and envelope, and tossed them in the direction of the waste-paper basket. She was disappointed. She was resentful. And no, she wasn’t going to pick up the old lady from the station. Anyway, even if she’d wanted to, she’d barely have made it. She’d have had to leave straightaway. She’d have needed a taxi. She’d barely have had time to put on her coat, throw money, mobile, keys into her bag and lock the door behind her. She’d barely have been able to glance at Grisaille, who gave her a look of astonishment, and whose whiskers seemed to be swirling around a smile.

  It was pure coincidence that a taxi stopped on the other side of the road at that very moment. Or a sign. More automatically than intentionally, Valerie waved from the door. The driver had a trained eye. He flashed his lights and turned round. Valerie grabbed her things, locked up behind her and got in. She was no longer surprised to find that the taxi was quicker than she’d expected (and more expensive). But perhaps it only seemed like that because on the way she absolutely had to finish reading Balzac’s The Wild Ass’s Skin. At any rate she found herself so suddenly at the main entrance to the station that she first had to get her bearings.

  Platform 7. To her surprise the train was already there. A glance at her watch told her that it was only a quarter to twelve. The first passengers were alighting. Trolleys were pushed past, couples embraced, a stubborn child howled while its mother grumbled as she looked around. A line of chained-up baggage trolleys stood in the way, a man walked past Valerie and offered her a James Bond smile. An elderly lady stood slightly to one side. Valerie trotted a few paces up to her, but then realized that it wasn’t Aunt Charlotte. She moved slowly forwards so as not to miss her. She noticed as she walked past it that the first carriage was already empty. Soon afterwards, the entire train appeared to have been vacated; no one else was coming out. Valerie stopped and looked at the huge vehicle. All the passengers had been disgorged. All of them? Valerie got on and walked along the empty rows of a carriage, then the next one and the one after that, all the while keeping an eye on the windows facing the platform, so that the old lady didn’t slip past her outside in the opposite direction. But that didn’t happen.

  Valerie had reached the first-class compartments that made up the end of the train. Nothing. This carriage was abandoned too. She was about to turn around and get off when she caught sight of a small book that had been left on one of the tables. It looked familiar so she stepped closer. A hunch crept over her. She picked the book up and stroked the front cover. It was beautifully bound in half linen, with an embossed title and even a ribbon marker in hopeful green.

  She instinctively looked up at the seat numbers: 13. A glance at the end of the carriage confirmed it was number 12. Baffled, Valerie sank into the seat and opened the book with her trembling fingers. It came as no surprise to be greeted by the words:

  There had been no forewarning of the sudden change in weather

  Nor did it come as a surprise to find an envelope in the book. No address, no writing at all on it. The envelope was unsealed. Lifting the flap, Valerie took out the contents: two train tickets that had remained passably dry. First class, Valerie noted. They were for today. Two tickets to Paris. Seat 13 and – seat 13. Puzzled, she looked at the numbers above the seats. Two tickets for seat 13? Impossible. And yet there it was on the ticket in black and white: Carriage 12, Seat 13, both times. Until she realized what she’d realized when reading that same book before tossing it into the recycling: only the first ticket was for Paris. The second was from Paris to…

  Maybe everything would have turned out differently if at that moment Valerie hadn’t looked out and spied Aunt Charlotte, sitting on a bench with her hands on an umbrella, smiling at her. The old woman nodded and with her head indicated the display above the platform, which now, enticingly, bore the destination Paris-Est. Maybe everything really would have turned out differently had not a young man appeared next to her – as if from nowhere – wearing an elegant, if somewhat old-fashioned between-seasons coat, from the pocket of which the headlines of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung poked out nosily; a rather creased shirt, with spectacles in the breast pocket; and Italian shoes, which may no longer have been brand new, but were well looked after.

  ‘You have your own copy,’ he said, gesturing to the book in Valerie’s hands. ‘A Very Special Year.’

  Valerie nodded. ‘The book you spent so long hunting for in vain because only a few copies of it exist,’ she said, opening it and turning two, three pages. All of a sudden she knew what would happen if she turned the page again. She glanced at the two tickets in her hand. Paris. And…

  ‘Stockholm?’ the young man asked.

  Valerie looked outside, where the bench stood empty.

  ‘Wherever!’ the young man exclaimed. ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’ He didn’t wait for her answer. ‘A magic book in the truest sense of the word. I remember you thought it was a defective copy. Didn’t you know it was your own book?’

  ‘And yet you took it with you.’

  ‘The fact that I found it at your shop meant above all that it found me there,’ he said softly. ‘And you hadn’t even discovered the tickets.’

  Valerie nodded. ‘Yes, I really did think the whole thing had been misprinted. I mean only a few pages had text on them.’ Of course she had realized some time ago what the book signified.

  The young man shrugged his shoulders. ‘It simply wasn’t the right time for you to continue reading. But now things seem to be different, otherwise you wouldn’t be on this train. Otherwise Destiny would not have gifted you another copy.’

  ‘Quite clearly so. Do you think the book’s magic will reveal itself to me?’

  ‘I’m sure it will.’

  At that moment she heard the guard’s whistle. She looked up. The young man’s dark eyes were staring mysteriously at her.

  ‘Don’t you have to get out?’ she asked.

  ‘What, now that our stories have brought us together? Send me word that you permit me to come and offer to you my servitude: for if you do not, and that quickly, you’ll be accused of having inhumanely killed without a cause of all your servants the most passionate, the most humble, and the most obedient servant.’

  Valerie gave him a smile. ‘Cyrano?’

  The young man nodded. And in a flash she made a decision: she would go. To Paris and
thence to… She turned the page and…yes, it was no longer blank – the book told a story. The story of a very special year. A year such as the old woman had lived and as the young man had lived, albeit in a very different way. She would likewise experience her very own story.

  ‘London,’ she read and nodded dreamily. ‘A book that tells each person their own story?’

  ‘At any rate a book that each person reads and understands differently,’ the young man replied. ‘It really is a magical book.’

  Looking up at him she saw that he was gazing at her with curiosity in his eyes. Of course he couldn’t know this, but she did: she’d already lived through her very special year. In that tiny bookshop, but especially in the numerous books and stories that she’d read since taking over her unexpected duty. There was one book she hadn’t read. The most mysterious of all. Well, now it lay before her. And as the train rolled slowly out of the station, she placed her hand on that of the young man and finally started to read her story. At the end of the year would she, like Aunt Charlotte, return to this same place? She didn’t know. But she did know for whom she’d put two tickets into the book, one to Prague, perhaps, and one to Tehran.

  Yes, maybe everything would have turned out differently on that winter’s day if literature hadn’t given a young lady wings. But in this way Valerie made a decision that would change everything, not least – in fact this most of all – her whole life.

  EPILOGUE

  I’m sure you’d like to know how the story ends. Well, the elderly lady who once upon a time founded a business with her budding dreams, only to lead it into ruin, lovingly and with unswerving effort, is back. Meanwhile, the young, hopeful, business economist, who has discovered her love for literature over the year, ditched a useless boyfriend and sparked a passion in a number of new readers, has departed the stage and – who knows? – maybe will never return… But we need not worry about Valerie; quite clearly she hasn’t found love in only the world of books. Of course, the old bookshop might up sticks to a new location where people have a greater appreciation of culture and are also prepared to spend a bit of money on it from time to time. It is also highly possible that one of the large chains of bookshops will take the little business under its wing and under the group’s name lead it to new revenue. Another possibility, however, is that in the not-too-distant future the last of the money will run out and thus what was looming at the beginning of our short story, the liquidation of Ringelnatz & Co., will finally occur after all. There aren’t many other options, although there’s definitely one. But ultimately it depends on you. Because, of course, there is such a nursery for budding dreams near you too. Or, to finish on a truism: Ringelnatz & Co. is everywhere.