The Book

     The cold fall air blossomed inside Bernard's lungs, bringing life to his dead body as he stepped out of the office.   The offices were disgorging their occupants, the pavements and roads were full.   There were people everywhere, but Bernard did not see them.   He noticed them, he moved his steps and shoulders back and forth, twisting himself one way then the other to avoid contact.   But he did not see them.   He did not see their faces, or their new fall fashions or their smiles or frowns.   He did not see them as people, but obstacles.   He did not notice the red busses or the black taxis.   He did not notice the motorcycles skimming through traffic.   He did not notice the fading blue of the sky behind the clouds.   He did not notice the red growing on the horizon marking the end of the day.       

      Bernard's flat was far enough from work to make it a good walk, but not far enough to take a bus.   So Bernard walked every day.   Once away from the busy streets Bernard counted the stones in the sidewalk.   Each stone was one and one half strides wide.   So some days he counted: one, and a, two, and a, three, and a, four, and a, five, with each comma a step.   While some days he internally chanted:   between, crack, between, crack, between, crack.   He kept his head down while walking.

     At the market two blocks from home Bernard bought some frozen dinners, a few sodas, and some chocolate.  

     Down the resendental street from the market and he watched the paving stones: crack, between, crack, between and then something caught his eye.   There were not many things that caught his eye any more. But this caught his eye.   It was a little sign in a window that read 'Books', and next to it, in the glass fronted door, an open sign.

     Bernard stopped and looked around.   The street lights were becoming visible in the darkening sky.   Cars were lined single file along each curb.   The houses were all connected together.   They were mirror images of each other, like a paper chain of people, cut out of one string of paper, all their hands and feet connected.   The front doors were set a few feet above the level of the street.   Five steps up to the obviously different colored doors.   And next to the upward steps, five steps down to the basment space.   Most of the steps down were fenced off, to keep out the homeless, and punk kids.  

     But the steps down to the 'Books' sign were clean and open.   The glass fronted door was new.         

     Bernard hesitated.   He hesistaed a lot.   Things that should not be done.   He should not walk into this book shop, he should not break his habit, he should get home and put his food in the freezer.   He did not need any books.   Bernard looked up and down the street.   There was no one around.   If there was someone there, he might have lost his nerve and continued walking.   They would have seen him and he would not have been able to change his habit in front of them.  

     There was a bell hanging from a spring on the inside of the door and it rang as he entered.   The bell rang again as he closed the door.   Bernard instantly felt at home.   This was the right way for a book store to feel and smell.   Not like that one on the High Street that was filled with flourscent light, and the dead smell of air conditioning and coffee.

     This place smelt of decaying plant matter.   Paper wilting from age.   And the light was right, lamps on tables and small fixtures on the wall illumated the room just enough, but the corners were dark, shadows hiding mystery.   And it was cluttered.   At the end of each set of shelves were piles of books that did not have a home yet, and the tables were filled to overflowing with hardback books.   Books that were so beautiful, they were just scattered around.  

     And to top it off, there was a stuffed Badger, snarling, ready for a fight, in the center of one of the tables.

     At the back of the shop, within view of the door, was a desk.   It looked like it had been there for centuries, rooted to the spot, wide and long and dark.   Papers were scattered upon it and an upright copper register, slowly turning green.   There was no one behind the desk.

     Bernard walked through the shop.   He ran his fingers revenentually over the spines of the books as he walked down the stacks.   The names on the spines of the hard back books were faded with time, and only a few names were visible.   A Poe here, a Dickenson there,   and the occasional Bronte thrown in for good measure.

     Bernard used to read all the time.   He used to spend Sunday afternoon curled up in bed reading about the world around him.   When he went to bed, he read until sleep came, and the book spent the night next to his head.   But over the years his reading had fallen in disuse.   Now he spent his time sitting in the chair in front of his television, watching the screen flicker.   He had seen most of the movies at the local rental store.  

     One wall of his flat was covered with three bookshelves and on those shelves were books, lots of books and those books were sitting in alphebeticl order so Bernard could find the book that he wanted when he wanted.  

     In his moves, which grew less and less as the years past, he would box up all the books and then number the boxes so he could put them in order again.   He never sold a book and he never liked to loan a book because he was always worried it would never come back.  

      Every once in a while he would pull down somehting he knew from the shelves, like an old friend, and read from the middle, but this happened less and less as the television took his brain.    But Bernard loved the idea of books, he loved the feel of the books and he loved the idea of having the books on his shelves   He loved coming home to the shelves, it made him feel intelligent, and worldly.   He could know anything from his books.   He could be a man of the world.  

     Bernard loved this new book store, it was the cliché of all the books stores that he loved.   It was the book store of someone who loved books and loved to read, who was not worried with that pointless thing called money.

     They had this store because of love, not because of anything else.

     Bernard pulled a book from the shelf and rifled through the pages, but there was a strange uneasy feeling down in the back of his brain.   Which was strange, because this place felt like home.   He put the book back on the shelf and he walked down the isle, but the feeling followed him.   He stopped, not knowing what to do and pulled out another book, and the feeling was still there, it was not invasive, it did not hurt, it was just a strange feeling of intrusion.   A feeling like someone was standing too close while they talked to you.   Or that someone had opened your drawer at work to find a pen.   It was not actually bad, but uncomfortable.  

    Holding the book in his hand, the feeling suddenly went away and so he walked to the end of the isle.   He could see out the window past the book sign and now the street lamps shone in the night and the windows across the street had lights in them.   He turned past the door and bumped a pile of books, he nelt down and glanced throught them while restacking them.  

     When he looked up there was a lady behind the counter.   He jumped a little, taken from his solitary revelry.   But he caught himself quickly and smiled.   She smiled back.  

     Her hair was grey and pulled back in a bun, squered with what looked like a single chopstick.   There was a pair of half round glasses perched on her nose and everything about her said grandmother.   The soft grey sweater, the wrinkles around the eyes and mouth.   Instantly Bernard could see this lady giving sweets to her grandchildren.   She was the one who remembered their birthdays with a card and some money.

     She was the grandmother that the children loved to see.

     She said hello.

     Bernard replied with a hello.

     There was a pause.

     "Um... I like your store"   Bernard said.

     "Oh it needs lots of work, none of the books are really in order and there is already dust everywhere and my poor badger always needs dusting and there is never enough time to put all the books away.   But you don't want to sit here an listen to my problems, the problems of an old lady."

     "Well, I think it is one of the most beautiful books stores I have ever been in, this is how a book store is supposed to feel."

     "Thank you." She says with the wrinkles smiling back at him.

     There was a small pause.

     "When did you open?"

     "I have been setting it up for some time, just pottering around and getting it ready.   I opened just a couple days ago.   My son bought this house and I don't think he really wants me to stay with him, but I brought him into this world and I felt he owed me just a little.   And I try to stay out of his and his wife's way."

     There was another pause and she added, "Did you find something?" looking down at the book in his hand.

     "Oh, um, yes." He said, walking forward and plaing the book on the counter.   She picked it up and opened the cover, "hmm, no price."   she looked in his eyes, "how about two pounds?"

     "Sure" and pulled out the money.  

     "Come back again."  

     He smiled and looked around the place, "Yes."

     The book fit in his plastic food bag and the little bell rang as he opened the door and again as it closed.

     At home Bernard put the book on the growing stack in the corner.   He put the food away and started the oven and sat in his television chair.   The evening news started.  

     The bookshelves were filled with the books that Bernard had read.   But sitting in piles were the books that he had not read.   He could not bring himself to put them on the shelf, it felt like cheating.   The books on the shelf were finished, they were trophies, while the ones on the floor, they were not done yet.  

     The stacks on the floor were growing, as he continued to purchase books.   All the owners of the used book stores in the area knew him by sight.   They all smiled and said hello to him when he entered.   But the books just sat on the floor, waiting for a reader.

      Bernard continued to return to the book store, he felt at home there, and he bought books, not books he ever read, but he bought books to add to his collection and to hopefully keep the grandmother in business, keep the store open.

     One night in spring a storm crept across the city, Bernard took off his wet shoes when he arrived home and continued with his usual routine.   The rain splattered on the windows and the wind shook the pane.   After dinner and somewhere in the eight O'clock hour, the lights flickered and died.   The television poped off with that strange etheral noise televisions make when they lose their life.  

     Bernard sat for a moment, then walked with his hands outstreached toward the kitchen, he bumped against a stack of books, knocking them down.   Lightening flashed as he pulled his foot from underneath the convoulted pile.    In the kitchen he found the stove and then the little drawer filled with everything else.   He blindly reached in and found the stapler, the tape and a few thumb tacks, and at the back, a box of candles.   He continued to dig for the matches, and not finding them turned on the gas of the stove and lit the candles from that.

     With the candles on small plates, he returned to his chair and stared out the window at the wind and flashes of light.   The tree swawed back an forth in front of his window, a darker black over the black sky.   The lightening produced still-life-with-tree-shadow on his wall.

      A short while later he went to the spilled pile of books and grabbed one at random.   It was a hard cover, old and beautiful.   It looked like the one he purchased the first day of the store, but he could not be sure.   He ran his hands over the cover, feeling the corse colleciton of strands that made up the cover.   There was no title on the binding, and he opened it to find his name on the title page.   Nothing else, no publisher, no date.   Just his full name printed in block capitals across the middle of the page.

     He started to read the first page.   It was a description of his birth, from his point of view.   The doctor holding him up, the confusion of the light and the cold.   And then the warmth of his mothers chest and the giants all looking down on him.

     He skipped a couple pages and read a story about the contentedness of suckling on his mothers breasts, and the pure horror and the screaming of not being at his mothers breast.  

     He flipped through more pages and there was Dana sitting in the seat in front of him.   The teacher talked in class, but he watched the neck of Dana.   How it moved when her the breath moved in and out.   How her hands scratched the back of her neck and how her fingers ran through her hair.   Bernard remembered trying to talk to her, trying to walk up to her and say hello.   But he never did, he was never able to talk to her.

     The storm still threw rain at the window and Bernard sat in his chair and held the book open and watched the water and drempt of Dana and how he could have said hello to her and how he could have held her hand and how he would have been better than Bruce who she went out with and he could see her pretty smiling face with the short pigtails.

     Moving forward, there was a scene from the woods near the school.   Bernard sat against a tree and looked at the leaves.   He turned them over and over in his hand and pulled them apart at the dead veins running throught the leaf.   In his comfortable home, in his comfortable chair, the hairs stood up on his arm and he started to sweat.   The three boys from an older grade came walking through the woods.   Thay saw him and came over.   What is the little faggot doing in the dirt, one of them said, his name was Tim.   The others laughted.   You like the dirt, one of the others said.   And they laughed again.   Lets give him some dirt, and they jumped on him and Bernard could do nothing.   They held his arms and his legs and one of them grabbed handfulls of dirt and leaves and smashed them in his face.   And   Bernard could taste the dirt in his mouth, and feel the tree root pushing againt the back of his head and he could feel the boys on his arms as he struggled uselessly.   And the boys laughed and Bernard listened to them laughing at him.   He could hear their laughter as he sat in his chair and looked at the storm outside.

     Bernards's hands shook and the anger welled in his eyes and his muscles tensed to fight back, but the boys always won.   And Bernard read about the story he wrote afterward, when he was hiding in his room, the door closed and the dirty clothes in the hamper and the dirt washed from his face so his mother would never know and how he lay on his bed and wrote on loose sheathes of paper.   How he would kidnap those three boys and tie them up and torture t