As the shop was being painted and fitted with shelves, bookcases and a glass counter, Sonya exchanged her car for an older-model van and set out to learn her new trade. Taking notes all the time, she quickly made contacts and got a feel for the buying and selling price of different types of books. Her sources of supply were advertised in newspapers or picked up by word of mouth: markets, church fairs, second-hand stores that sold everything from clothes to furniture, garage sales of people shifting house, estates of souls who had moved from this world to the next. Having completed her homework, Sonya went about indulging her passion for books in a way she had experienced only in dreams. She bought two large, sturdy suitcases from a nearby church-run welfare store and embarked on an exhilarating shopping spree, filling the shop with cartons of books. Over several nights, losing all track of time and sustained by coffee and cigarettes, she arranged her purchases on the new pinewood shelves, transforming her life in the process. On the day the signwriter smoothed the final brush-strokes to BIBLIOPHILE on the front window (she had studied his list of scripts and decided on Gothic in gold, set in a crimson block), she stood behind the counter, happy and proud at what she had accomplished in such a short time. The smell of pine, paint and paper mingled in the shop. Neatly arranged on the new shelves according to subject and author, her books were ready for business. When the signwriter came in for payment, his -white overalls spotted with colour, he complained that his was a dying craft. Computers, he said, as she counted the notes into his palm. Sure they could laser print peel-off-stick-on signs for half his cost, but such signs were impermanent, their letters wrinkled and cracked, lacking not only the body of paint but the human touch. The sign on her window would last a lifetime and draw customers, he said.
With turnover increasing each month in the first year, Sonya comfortably met her outgoings, made her repayments on the bank loan, and still had enough left over as clear profit. Comparing this to her life in teaching, she could scarcely believe her present happiness and capacity for work. Work? The word had all kinds of unpleasant associations. Her present activity was a pleasure, a passion – the profit was quite ancillary. Immersed in the business, surrendering herself to the charm of books, she felt no need to socialise with her small circle of friends. Books, novels in particular, had always been her joy. Whenever she recalled an important event or a defining moment in her life, it was always in terms of the book she had been reading at the time; not just the title and text, but the very texture of the pages, the feel of its weight, the smell of its paper. Now, surrounded by the objects of her desire, there was no need to seek happiness elsewhere.
The honeymoon lasted nearly two years, and then, almost overnight, the country’s economic climate changed: the air became heavy with recession, while the more gloomy forecasters were warning of depression. Suddenly second-hand bookshops were springing up everywhere, proliferating like mushrooms in damp conditions. Two others opened on the same street, not more than a few hundred metres from her. Takings declined, falling to a level where she barely made a wage. Investigating the larger of the two shops, she was disgusted by what she found. The bearded, dishevelled proprietor had no feeling for what he sold, or he would not have housed books in such a dismal place. The fellow had no doubt taken advantage of a cheap lease (the only things flourishing in the city were the FOR SALE and FOR LEASE boards on once-thriving premises, with an obvious sale in every lease), knocked together some rough shelving, and taped a sign on the window announcing BOOKS BY THE KILO. Her disgust turned to anger. Books were not cabbages: they were not meant to be bought, consumed and discarded. A voracious reader from an early age, Sonya had always cherished her books and as a child would spend hours arranging and rearranging them on a plywood case her father had built. The permutations of colours and titles seemed endless, and each arrangement was like a new collection. At times she would read the titles aloud, as though that particular arrangement of sounds were the key to a world of adventure, the ‘Open Sesame’ of a story yet to be written. This place would not last long, she consoled herself. The fellow was obviously an opportunist, cashing in on the misfortune of people caught out by the recession, forced to sell not only their books but all they owned. He did not have her love of books. Her view of the shaggy proprietor was vindicated by a pile of comics in a corner of the shop. She detests them and refuses to sell them, despite their present popularity as collectors’ items, and the fact that a few have acquired something of a cult following. Her dislike goes back to childhood: even then, possibly because of her advanced reading level, she considered herself above comics. They were intended for those with a feeble imagination, for whom illustrations were needed to flesh out the text and make the wonder of words come to life.
Straightening up from writing in a notepad, the fellow rotated his head a few times, jerked it this way and that, accorded her a thoughtful look, then returned to his work, scribbling as though inspired. A writer, she thought, and her antipathy toward him subsided. As an avid reader it was only natural that she had also wanted to be a writer, but her one serious attempt ended in failure. She was twenty-one and had just completed her first placement as a student–teacher. The three-week experience had gone well, at least on the surface, with an encouraging report from her supervisor; on a deeper level, however, she felt as though she -were being inexorably drawn toward an abyss. Desperate, she suddenly saw writing as her means of salvation. The outcome, completed in six months, was a turgid Lolita-type novel in which a teacher was seduced by one of his students, a mischievous girl who, disliking school, decided to test the power of her newly-awakened sexual prowess m a destructive game against him. Devastated by four or five rejections from publishers, she gathered all the copies of the manuscript together with the intention of burning them. She put them in a tin drum and, wanting a quick end, sprinkled them with kerosene. But she recoiled from the match’s impish flame, terrified by the finality of fire, as though she were about to cremate part of herself. Instead, she took the manuscripts and buried them in a compost heap, beneath rotting leaves, fruit and vegetables. A week later, when the paper had putrefied without trace of a word, she forked the stinking refuse into the flowerbed, amongst the flourishing roses and rhododendrons.
the art is inside
