In the bookshop

A man needs to borrow $1.30, he’s had some issue with the train ticket machine, he gets paid for gardening work on the weekend, he gets his dole cheque next week. He wants the UFO books in the window. The man says I have two pieces of rhubarb pie I baked this morning you can have. Brian agrees that they are yummy books, and that they will sell soon, he’s not so sure about holding any till next week. He needs cash. Like everyone he supposes. The man says which ones he doesn’t need (his head in the shop window) which ones he already has. Brian talks away to himself, remarking that it’s very interesting isn’t it, which ones you already have and don’t need, which I gradually realise is sarcasm, with a cultured white eyebrow and his fingerless gloves making him look part Cambridge Don, part crazy cat man. Brain lends him $5, the man says I still owe you one dollar from last week, from those books I bought, Brian laughs and shakes his head like it’s all baffling to him, like another dollar added to the tab, this windy and unforeseeable situation, these strange people and moments blown in the door of his shop, him, a genteel older gentleman trying to read in peace. The man is grateful and gets out a thick insulated container which has in it slices of pie wrapped neatly in paper, he is saying here they are, oh I suppose you can just hang onto the container too, keeps them cool, and I can pick it up next week, next week when I come in for the book. Brian takes the thing as it is passed to him and half unscrews it, looks at it baffled, looks at me, looks at the man, like this is some new arrangement, some complex and unwarranted turn of events involving insulated containers, and he can’t quite understand how this figures in with the train money and the book holding and the gardening money and the dole cheque, is a bit confused as to what he has now agreed to take or swap. I explain to him its to keep the pie cool. I explain that the man is giving him pie. The man says I only bought it last week, its handy for this sort of thing. Brian says he doesn’t really want… I explain that the man is not giving him the container, that he has not just bought this container off the man with his $5, that the pie is a gift, the container will keep it cool. The man says I still owe you the $6, and I’ll just collect the container next week. I am concerned that Brian will give back the pie in his confusion and devastating bookish frankness but something in my tone must have been firm enough, to make the pie exchange a fait accomplit, a done deal, the look on my face explaining that his acceptance of this gesture was a non-negotiable, he takes the container, saying oh, oh yes, I see.

The man is satisfied, and I continue with my purchase, but eyeing off another volume in the window before I do. I ask should I read the Odyssey, should I read the Iliad first, did it matter. Brain tells me he’s read both in Greek, he found the Odessy excellent, very funny. The first anti hero he supposes. He is teaching Greek classes now. I ask how many in the classes. He says well, one. He finds people have all different times that they are available, it becomes too hard. I ask is the Greek today very similar – does the Greek of Plato help you speak in Greece today, he tells me there are similarities, vocab, but it’s different. He teaches the old stuff. He can also teach me Latin. Arabic. Or Hebrew. He remembers each one and adds it as an afterthought. How much are the lessons I ask, he says $15 and winces a little, saying it is you know my profession, and I say fifteen or fifty? Repeating fifteen or fifty as he goes on to tell me about his current Greek scholar who is brilliant, hungry for knowledge, doing so well. I’m thinking $15 is cheaper than a piano lesson, fifty is still justifiable for a private lesson but a little steep. He says fifteen and I tell him he could charge more, but he says well, there are people who have learnt who otherwise wouldn’t have. It’s like the books I put out for free in the box out the front. Some people… Some people, and he looks sorrowful and the meaning is rich in the gaps of his sentence – the unspoken yearning for books, the hunger that people have to know, the tightness of incomes, the desperation of those on welfare who want books and otherwise would have to come in with pie and bus money and stories of dole cheques. I say, of course, yes of course. He tells me about a girl who was being home schooled, whose parents were quite hard up but could nevertheless afford the classes, she learnt Greek and Latin, she went on to… I say I’ll think about it. I wonder about moving away so soon when there are still all these things in this town that I had dreamt of doing and haven’t quite yet, in my 18 months, my scant two years, I will not leave with all the adventures and victories that I had hoped for on my heros journey, my fools time away from the hustle and bustle. He says yes you think about it, lets talk soon, we’ll make a date. He says, oh. I suppose I should choose another word for that. I say no Brian, that’s fine, I know exactly what you mean.