Books, by Harry Greenberg

I think I met him first on a 24 bus coming through the West End. ‘Look, look,’ he said, ‘all those marvellous bookshops, doesn’t it make your heart glad?’ I nodded and made a long erm sound. But the truth was I couldn’t care a toss about books. I’d just finished finals and had vowed never to read a book again, ever; except possibly for pleasure. The thought of never having to make another note again, of never to have to worry over plot, character, imagery – it had made me almost lightheaded. And, I should have read physics or maths, except I couldn’t tell one end of a battery from another and have been innumerate since before birth.

He stuck to me with the tenacity of a limpet and talked about books all the way to the terminus at South End Green. ‘You must come home for tea,’ he said, ‘or for coffee,’ he added, sensing some reluctance. ‘Well,’ I said. I never can think of a convincing excuse at the right time. ‘Come,’ he insisted, taking me by the arm. ‘It’s no trouble at all.’

The first thing I noticed when he opened the door was the smell. Of books that had once been new, had had that feel of newness, had dominated booksellers’ windows, but were now suffering some sort of terminal illness: incontinence, prostate trouble, emphysema, spondylitis; books manic and books depressive, books with a severe identity crisis, and many with no identity at all; suffering all the ills that books are heir to. There is nothing so pungent as a dying book. Except, perhaps, a badly written one.

He sat me in a decaying armchair. And went off to make the tea. The horsehair had burst through in several places like weeds between paving stones. I sat on the edge and looked around. There were bookshelves on three of the walls, reaching almost to the ceiling. There were books on the table, books on the floor, on top of the television, scattered, there were books tottering on the edge of a coffee table.

I got up to see what he might have in the shelves and fell over a pile of National Geographic magazines. There was no order in anything as far as I could see, not even shape or size. Romantic novels rubbed shoulders with philosophy, history with car mechanics; Fifty Things the First-time Bride Should Know leaned demurely against a Short History of Transportation in Medieval Times. If the books had been invited to a party, how many of them would have known what to say to each other, or where to put themselves, their smiles frozen on their lips, their eyes searching frantically for a kindred spirit, or a lift home.

He arrived with the tea. Two well-tannined mugs, a silver teapot oxidised in brown and green, biscuits that had the odour of the books, a bowl of sugar that looked grey with fatigue.

‘That’s very kind,’ I said, hoping he wouldn’t notice I hadn’t reached for the biscuits. He stared about the room with satisfaction. ‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘It’s nice, isn’t it?’

‘Very impressive,’ I said. He glanced down at the coffee table where the tea tray sat precariously on a tower of coffee-table books.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you haven’t had a biscuit.’ I reached for one and tentatively broke a piece and put it into my mouth, and tried to look as if I savoured it. It had the consistency of sand. It tasted of ancient parchment.

‘I’ve got some first editions,’ he said, and getting up went to the shelves. He returned with three titles from Mills & Boon. Tattered lovers on the front, breathing in, or out, in what remained of their passion for each other. She looked up and he looked down. On another she nestled into a manly armpit while he stared away into the mountains. ‘These are not highly thought of by the cognoscenti,’ he said, ‘but I feel we must not despise popular taste; there is room for everything in the great hall of literature. The pious tale and the dirty story share alike in the literary glory. Auden,’ he added. He shook the tin box. ‘Do have another biscuit,’ he urged. ‘There are still three rooms to see. And then we can settle down to a nice chat.’

Later that evening I let myself in by the backdoor (which I had had the foresight to leave unlocked) and hurrying to the sitting room emptied a can of petrol over the piles of books and magazines on the floor and the rest over the sofa and armchair with their copious growths of horsehair. I rasped a Swan Vesta and threw it into the middle of the room and then ran out of the house with the roar of conflagration in my ears. I circled the block and came up behind a small group of well-wishers who had gathered to enjoy the fire. ‘Never seen anything like it,’ said one. ‘Look at them sparks,’ shouted another. ‘Must be all them books,’ said a third. ‘Nothing burns like a good book.’

‘You seem lost in thought,’ he said, taking the cup and saucer and the inedible remains of biscuit from me, with all the solicitousness you might accord the very old. ‘Come this way, I have much to show you that will interest you.’ And as we climbed the stairs, threading our way between piles of papers and defunct magazines: ‘You look a little pale, are you sure you’re all right?’ He didn’t wait for an answer.

Harry Greenberg was a counsellor to victims of torture, and spent many of his latter years writing and publishing stories, articles and witty asides on Jewish life and upbringing. His Letters to Kafka is published by CentreHouse Press and is available at Amazon Kindle and on most other ebook platforms. There are plans to publish more from Harry’s backlist.