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No. No. Nelson would still be Nelson to me. I had not changed, with regard to his skin and his smell and his forbidding eyes. It seemed to be the outside of Nelson which came most readily to my mind, and in the case of Donald it was his i
THE REGULAR CUSTOMERS who had changed into something like friends were: a middle-aged woman who was a chartered accountant but preferred such reading as Six Existentialist Thinkers, and The Meaning of Meaning; a provincial civil servant who ordered splendid, expensive works of pornography such as I had not known existed (their elaborate Oriental,Etruscan co
“Spare me the females with the withered, painted faces,” the Notary Public said, the next time he came in. “I hope you haven’t got her lurking around anywhere tonight.”
It was true that the accountant painted her thin, intelligent, fifty-year-old face with a heavy hand, and drew on eyebrows that were like two strokes of India ink. But who was the Notary Public to talk, with his stumpy, nicotined teeth and pocked cheeks?
“I got the impression of a rather superficial fellow,” the accountant said, as if she had guessed and bravely discounted the remarks made about herself.
So much for trying to corral people into couples, I wrote to Donald. And who am I to try? I wrote to Donald regularly, describing the store, and the city, and even, as well as I could, my own unaccountable feelings. He was living with Helen, the secretary. I wrote also to Nelson, who might or might not be living alone, might or might not be reunited with Sylvia. I didn’t think he was. I thought she would believe in inexcusable behavior and definite endings. He had a new address. I had looked it up in the London phone book at the public library. Donald, after a grudging start, was writing back. He wrote impersonal, mildly interesting letters about people we both knew, events at the clinic. Nelson did not write at all. I started sending registered letters. Now I knew at least that he picked them up.
Charlotte and Gjurdhi must have come into the store together, but I did not understand that they were a couple until it was time for them to leave. Charlotte was a heavy, shapeless, but quick-moving woman, with a pink face, bright blue eyes, and a lot of glistening white hair, worn like a girl’s, waving down over her shoulders. Though the weather was fairly warm, she was wearing a cape of dark-gray velvet with a scanty gray fur trim — a garment that looked as if it belonged, or had once belonged, on the stage. A loose shirt and a pair of plaid wool slacks showed underneath, and there were open sandals on her broad, bare, dusty feet. She clanked as if she wore hidden armor. An arm reaching up to get a book showed what caused the clanking. Bracelets — any number of them, heavy or slender, tarnished or bright. Some were set with large, square stones, the color of toffee or blood.
“Imagine this old fraud being still on the go,” she said to me, as if continuing some desultory and enjoyable conversation.
She had picked up a book by Anaïs Nin.
“Don’t pay any attention,” she said. “I say terrible things. I’m quite fond of the woman, really. It’s him I can’t stand.”
“Henry Miller?” I said, begi
“That’s right.” She went on talking about Henry Miller, Paris, California, in a scoffing, energetic, half-affectionate way. She seemed to have been neighbors, at least, with the people she was talking about. Finally, naively, I asked her if this was the case.
“No, no. I just feel I know them all. Not personally. Well — personally. Yes, personally. What other way is there to know them? I mean, I haven’t met them, face-to-face. But in their books? Surely that’s what they intend? I know them. I know them to the point where they bore me. Just like anybody you know. Don’t you find that?”
She drifted over to the table where I had laid out the New Directions paperbacks.
“Here’s the new bunch, then,” she said. “Oh, my,” she said, widening her eyes at the photographs of Ginsberg and Corso and Ferlinghetti. She began reading, so attentively that I thought the next thing she said must be part of some poem.
“I’ve gone by and I’ve seen you here,” she said. She put the book down and I realized she meant me. “I’ve seen you sitting in here, and I’ve thought a young woman would probably like to be outside some of the time. In the sun. I don’t suppose you’d consider hiring me to sit there, so you could get out?”
“Well, I would like to—” I said.
“I’m not so dumb. I’m fairly knowledgeable, really. Ask me who wrote Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It’s all right, you don’t have to laugh.”
“I would like to, but I really can’t afford to.”
“Oh, well. You’re probably right. I’m not very chic. And I would probably foul things up. I would argue with people if they were buying books I thought were dreadful.” She did not seem disappointed. She picked up a copy of The Dud Avocado and said, “There! I have to buy this, for the title.”
She gave a little whistle, and the man it seemed to be meant for looked up from the table of books he had been staring at, near the back of the store. I had known he was there but had not co
At that time, the government of British Columbia applied a sales tax to books. In this case it was four cents.
“I can’t pay that,” she said. “A tax on books. I think it is immoral. I would rather go to jail. Don’t you agree?”
I agreed. I did not point out — as I would have done with anybody else — that the store would not be let off the hook on that account.
“Don’t I sound appalling?” she said. “See what this government can do to people? It makes them into orators.”