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GILBERT
PARIS, 1987
The old antiquarian bookstore was a sliver amongst the larger pastel-coloured shops on the leafy Parisian street of Rue Cardinet. It was called Librairie d’antiquités de Géroux but was, nonetheless, as much a part of the Batignolles village as the Saturday farmers’ market, the square, or the tourists retracing the steps of impressionist painter Alfred Sisley.
The only other building that seemed as much a part of the furniture was the abandoned restaurant on the corner, like one of those unfortunate heirloom pieces that tends to clash with everything. Most people believed it to be cursed or haunted as a result of what had happened there during the Occupation, when the former owner had poisoned all of her customers one night. A fact that had turned to legend over the intervening years.
For instance, some swore that when the wind changed or a new season approached you could still smell cooking. When the leaves from the plane trees turned gold, rumours swelled of cream and port and roast chicken. Delicious at first, then as the day grows, turning acrid and sour. And when the wisteria bloomed, whispers flew of apricots and butter and clafoutis, similarly mouth-watering in the beginning, but then growing sickly sweeter by the evening, till you needed to breathe through your mouth to escape the decaying scent of rotten fruit.
Nonetheless, this, too, brought the tourists.
The idea of lingering phantom scents annoyed Monsieur Géroux, the owner of the antiquarian bookshop, on good days, and made him spitting mad on others. Now in his mid-sixties, and with hair tending more to salt than pepper, he despaired at how events that were monstrous enough in their cold, hard facts, turned, over time, to myth, like in some gothic romance.
It had been over forty years and Monsieur Géroux still got nightmares about it. And now, that infernal restaurant was still finding a way to cast a shadow over him.
The bell tinkled as he slipped into his store, pulling the door closed behind him with a sigh. Usually, when the familiar scent of old books, wood and nostalgia enveloped him, he felt a sense of relief, of home. Today he felt dread.
Thanks to that letter.
It had arrived the day before, seemingly innocent in its smart white envelope and officious-looking typescript, until it revealed itself to be an invitation from a law firm to speak about that night. The worst of his life, when his brother, Henri, was poisoned and killed. For an awful moment, after he read the letter’s request, he thought he might burst into tears. He’d fled his shop, heart pounding in his ears, needing to be anywhere but there.
He’d spent the evening walking along the river Seine, trying and failing to get the contents of the letter out of his mind, taking in none of the sights that usually offered calm. The narrowboats with their potted rooftop gardens and their canine sailors, keeping an eye out from the bow. Lovers walking arm-in-arm, perhaps to place a lock on one of the bridges. Shop vendors displaying their wares along the banks, their stalls full of bric-a-brac, records, or books – the latter he could never resist perusing, perhaps with a hot crêpe wrapped up in wax paper in one hand, dripping hot sugar and lemon down his chin, while he browsed, forever hopeful that he might find that rare gem that he might be able to sell on in his own store.
But the calm hadn’t arrived nor the joy and he hadn’t been in the mood for crêpes.
He let out a sigh now, as he approached his shop. He tried to uncrumple his face, like a piece of paper, with the palms of his hands. He’d barely slept, the past rising up to torment him all through the night. The memories poking at him with ephemeral fingers that he twisted away from and tried to ignore, like that letter.
But he couldn’t.
His hand shook as he flicked on the brass light switch and the store interior was illuminated. The walls were painted olive green. There was a wooden floor in a herringbone pattern, floor-to-ceiling shelving in green-painted wood, olive again, and a window seat with mustard-coloured cushions. Against one wall were several glass cabinets filled with rare books; some grew curiously fashionable in his circles of trade, depending on the market. There were first editions, some he would never sell, others he’d been trying to flog for a decade or more. There was even a good champagne from ‘68 he was saving for the day he finally sold a particularly ugly American first edition of Lolita. Though some days, he wondered which one would go first, him or the book. At times this amused him, others not so much. The open shelves were full of second-hand books that weren’t quite as valuable, but proved slightly more popular. Though, as the dust might argue, not popular enough.
In the middle was his desk, an old-fashioned behemoth that had once belonged to his grandfather who had been a headmaster at a local boys’ prep school. It looked suitably austere: if it were a face it would have a very firm chin and Charles Dickens sideburns. It had faded green padding set atop the mahogany, and on top of this were several books, neatly stacked and in need of repair. Monsieur Géroux winced, though, when he saw the mess he’d left behind the night before, seeing that his tools were still laid out from where he’d been busy with a book repair, the glue bottle left to dry. Globules of the stuff were now marring the surface of his desk.
He prised off the bits of glue on the desk – as well as the cap that had formed at the opening of the bottle – with a fingernail, only to sigh when he saw the abandoned paintbrush he’d been using to rebind the leather cover stuck to the desk, the bristles as hard as rock. Even with a good soak in hot water it was likely ruined.
He was annoyed at himself.
‘Coffee,’ he decided. Even on a bad day there was coffee, which was always a small good thing.
Monsieur Géroux collected small good things. The unexpected sound of birdsong, a half-price sale at the bakery, a smile from a passing child. Storing them in his mind for later, when needed.
There were days he felt every bit of his advancing years, like that morning when he’d felt as tired as the lines and shadows beneath his eyes would suggest when he’d shaved off the bristles on his face. But there were days, too, when he caught a glimpse of himself in a passing window and suffered a momentary shock when he realised that the old man looking back in the glass was him. He still thought of himself as a young man with rusted brown hair and freckles.
At least the freckles were still there. He hadn’t liked them when he was younger, but he was fond of them now. Funny how that happened.
He went to light the tiny gas stove in the kitchen to the left of the store, hidden away behind a painted door, also olive green. He sometimes worried he’d overdone it with all the green.
He ran the hot water tap and put the brush in a glass jar to soak. Then he spooned thick black grounds of fresh Italian coffee into his cafetière, breathing in the scent before he put it on the stove to simmer.
He would deal with the letter later, he decided, firmly, after he had cleared up and completed his tasks for the morning. It felt better to give his worry an appointment, and a small part of the calm he’d been searching for since the evening before finally grew inside him, like a small green shoot.
He took his coffee to his desk and began to sort out the mess he’d left for himself the evening before. He switched on the radio to France Musique, a channel with an emphasis on jazz and classical that was his usual morning company. The haunting strings of the prelude of Bach’s ‘Cello Suite No 1 in G Major’ filled the air as he took a fortifying sip of his tar-thick coffee and began to work, applying glue to a new brush and beginning to repair a poetry volume.
Outside, the cobbled street was beginning to fill as this corner of Paris woke up. Shop doors were opening, the closed signs switching to open. People walked past, their hands clasping a pain au chocolat as they made their way to work, or a warm baguette to take home from the bakery at the end of the lane. Children were laughing, and jumping off and on the pavement en route to school. There were old men shuffling their way to their favourite café further on, with its bistro chairs spilling over the pavement, where they would while away the morning with a coffee, a toothpick, and a front-row seat in which to watch the world roll around them.
Monsieur Géroux, however, saw none of this as he continued with his repairs.
The radio station had moved on to the soothing melody of Pachelbel’s ‘Canon and Gigue in D Major’ when he heard a familiar scratching at the door sometime later.
