Page 49 of The Bookshop of Forbidden Books

“I’m back, yes.”

“So how was your trip? It must’ve been life-changing!”

“And what brings you in today, Madame Ateltow?” Mitch asked, his expression unreadable.

“What kind of question is that? Why, I wanted to see you, of course. I’ve missed our little evenings together. I never got the chance to thank you – or to say goodbye. You left so suddenly. My local bookseller tried her best, but it was never quite the same.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he replied stiffly.

Madame Ateltow bit her lip, adjusted a strand of white hair, and shifted uncomfortably.

“Are booksellers bound by professional confidentiality?” she asked at last. Her expression had turned deadly serious.

“Of course,” Mitch replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I don’t trust mine.”

“…To choose a book for you?”

“No, she’s actually quite good at that, but she talks too much. You see, my son worries far too much about me – to the point of becoming a real tyrant. He watches everything I do like a hawk, and he’s decided that because of what I read I’ve got my head in the clouds. He says if I didn’t read so much fantasy I’d be more sensible about how I live.”

“Sensible… in what way?”

“Well, for starters, he can’t stand that my political views differ from his.”

“Well now, that’s ridiculous. How old is this little tyke of yours?”

“He’ll be forty-two in December.”

Mitch sighed. “In that case, he’s a lost cause. It’s sad, how much control he has over you – and even sadder that he’s so closed-minded.”

“It’s not his views that control me, it’s the money. I live off the pension he gives me. I can’t exactly tell him to bugger off, though God knows I’d love to. Don’t judge me too harshly. I hope you’ll be in a better situation than me when you’re my age. It was much harder for women of my generation to be independent than people think.”

Madame Ateltow had met her husband while working as a teaching assistant in a middle school. He’d been the principal. She had always been self-conscious about her appearance; if she’d been able to see herself clearly, she might have realized how attractive she really was. Monsieur Ateltow had smiled at her every time she brought him a file, and his warmth had quickly convinced her that she couldn’t hope to find anyone better.

Back then, she feared nothing more than the idea of ending up alone and unmarried. Some of the crueller students used to call her the ostrich because of her long neck and spindly legs. Within six months of their first movie date, they were married, and she shelved her dreams of teaching to play the dutiful wife.

Monsieur Ateltow had been charming in the few months before they married, but things changed very soon after the wedding ring went on. As the years went by, he revealed himself to be controlling, self-important, and far less intelligent than she had imagined. The nonsense he spouted was endless. Worse, he had opinions about absolutely everything.

She was bored senseless for twenty years. The birth of their son, Rony – who quickly revealed he’d inherited his father’s worst traits – offered only brief reprieve. When Monsieur Ateltow was hit by a garbage truck on his Sunday bike ride, his widow discovered a hidden talent for acting. Wearing a rather unsettling grimace, she snatched a shovel from the gravedigger and eagerly started burying the coffin herself. Everyone around her mistook her behaviour for a sign of overwhelming grief – instead she was actually experiencing a profound relief at the idea of reclaiming her freedom, and the faint hope that she might, someday, find true love.

While waiting for fate to work its magic, she returned to teaching – mature students this time. Unfortunately, what little her husband left behind didn’t last, and her modest pension barely made a dent. It was then that Rony stepped in, providing her with a comfortable life – on his terms.

A man obsessed with “clean living”, Rony had started by taking control of his mother’s diet, regularly inspecting her fridge and confiscating any sweets, allowing her only a single glass of wine a day, at dinner.

Years later, when Madame Ateltow had begun spending time – too much time, in his opinion – with a music teacher whose salary was well below what a man his age should earn, Rony (now holding an important position at a major bank) did enough digging to come to yet another stupid conclusion. It was inconceivable that she had actually fallen for a penniless so-called artist – especially one with a scandalous passion for tango. Clearly her books were to blame for her romantic delusions.

The next day, Alfred de Musset’s Gamiani, or Two Nights of Excess, Marguerite Duras’s The Lover and Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence were all consigned to the garbage.

As his former literature teacher poured her heart out, slouched across the counter like it was a therapist’s couch, it dawned on Mitch that Rony had probably played a big role in Verner’s own romantic disappointment.

“Don’t worry,” he told her gently. “If your son ever does show up and ask questions – which I seriously doubt – I promise I won’t say a word. Now, with that out of the way, was there a particular book you came for?”

She didn’t answer right away, but got up and walked around the bookshop, her handbag dangling from the crook of her elbow.

“He’s the one who told me you were back,” she murmured, leafing through a copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer.

“Who?” Mitch asked, feigning ignorance.