A Very Special Year (12 page)

Valerie nodded, went inside and came out shortly afterwards with a glass of tea and some sugar. ‘There you are,' she said, handing him the honey-coloured, steaming drink. The man shoved his cap into his coat pocket and seized the glass. Not greedily, but with a gesture that reminded Valerie of a religious ritual.

‘You make such nice tea,' he said with a gentle sigh. ‘Dark, strong – how it ought to be. Most people in this country make tea too weak. It has no aroma, it has no taste. In my country we say, “It's seen a policeman.”'

‘Seen a policeman?'

‘Because it's turned so pale.'

Valerie nodded with a smile. Why on earth was this man working on the construction site? His dark eyes sparkled; in the corners sat mischief as well as a touch of sadness.

‘Which is your home country?' Valerie asked, studying his features.

‘Persia,' he said, taking a little sip of tea and another, and listening to his word repeating itself in Valerie's voice:

‘Persia. Have you been living here long?'

‘Too long. Thank you for the tea! It's delicious.' He finished the glass in small sips, before putting it on the table and reaching inside his pocket.

‘No money, please. It's my treat,' Valerie said, holding up her hand.

‘I cannot accept that,' the man insisted, shaking his head.

‘If it's reminded you of home then for me that's payment enough.' Valerie gave him a friendly smile and he shrugged.

‘That is terribly kind of you, thanks.' He nodded at the window. ‘You're a bookseller,' he said.

‘Yes, I am.'

‘A lovely bookshop. My uncle had one in Shiraz.'

‘Shiraz? I assume that's a town in Persia.'

‘It is. The greatest writers came from there. Hafez. Saadi.'

‘I believe we have books by both of them here,' said Valerie, indicating the door. ‘Actually the bookshop belongs to my aunt.'

Wistfully, the man gazed at the entrance. ‘There is nothing more beautiful than a bookshop. I wish you had Persian books here too.'

‘As I said, we've definitely got Hafez. Shall I take a look?' Valerie was making for the door but the man shook his head. ‘Do you know what? Hafez isn't easy even in Persian. I would never understand it in German.' He appeared deep in thought for a moment, then continued, ‘But maybe you could recommend me a good book in German that's not so difficult.'

‘Wait, I'll be right back.' She took the blanket off the chair and, with a swift gesture, invited him finally to sit down, before going into the shop. When she returned soon afterwards she held out a slim volume, bound in black leather and with embossed golden letters that spelled:
Peter Schlemihl
.

The man opened it and read:

 

After a favourable, but for me most onerous passage, we finally reached the
harbour. As soon as the boat and I had landed ashore, I loaded up my few possessions…

He looked up. ‘How enchanting. You Germans write so beautifully.'

‘This book was written by a Frenchman,' Valerie explained. ‘But in German. His name was Adelbert von Chamisso. It's called
Peter Schlemihl's Miraculous Story
, a very special book.'

The man nodded, shut it and ran the tips of his slender fingers along the binding. ‘If he wrote it in German, I must be able to read it in German. I will try. How much is it?'

Valerie told him the price, he paid, bowed a final time then hurried back to the building site, where he was soon on the scaffolding again, dragging timbers and tightening clamps, a world away from Chamisso or Hafez. But Valerie took her things inside and looked for the great Persian writer in her aunt's card index.
Love Poems
. Only a small book, similar to the one she had given the builder, but richly decorated. She opened it at random, as she liked to do with poetry books, because sometimes – although only if she liked the result – she read them like an oracle:

 

I received the happy news

That these days of sorrow will not last
,

That it will not remain as it was

And not remain as it is now
.

She paused. Is that what she wanted?

One Saturday – at this point we should note that Valerie was not especially disciplined about keeping to opening hours, but on that day she happened to be there – the Persian was standing at the door, knocking with a politeness that bordered on timidity.

‘I don't wish to disturb you,' he hurried to assure Valerie, when he saw her standing with a list at the non-fiction shelf.

‘You're not disturbing me at all, please come in!'

‘It's just that I discovered a book you might like.' With a bow typical of him he handed her a parcel wrapped in simple packing paper. ‘It's by a Persian. It appeared first in English, but this here is a German translation.'

‘Well now,' Valerie said, offering him her warmest smile, ‘you've pricked my curiosity. Many thanks! I'll give you it back when I've finished.'

‘No, no, no!' he said, holding up his hands. ‘You
don't have to do that. It's a present. I'm very happy when I can explain to other people how hard life is in my country.'

Valerie nodded. ‘I understand. Now then…' She'd already started to turn around when the Persian thought of something else. ‘If you like, rather than pay for the book, come to the theatre. There is a group of students who are putting on a play. This evening. It is the story of this book. And I think they've done it very well. You would be doing a good thing if you bought a ticket. For these young people are very courageous. I'll leave you a flyer.'

As if attempting to forestall her rejection he hurriedly pulled a red flyer from his pocket and placed it on top of the package in Valerie's hands. Then he bowed again and disappeared so quickly that any response would have been pointless.

A touch disconcerted, but mainly curious, the young woman went into the office, put the parcel on the desk, grabbed the letter opener and carefully cut through the sticky tape. The name of the author stood there like an exotic promise: Shahriar Mandanipour. When she took the book out of its package the title sounded so confusing she had to read it twice:
Censoring an Iranian Love Story
. Her gaze wandered to the red theatre flyer peeking out from beneath the
wrapping paper. The production it advertised had a different title:
Teheran, Mon Amour
.

The novel was the story of a Persian writer who – as became clear to Valerie after a few pages – was prevented by circumstances from publishing a love story in his own language, because love and passion were considered the devil's work in his country, and everything that corresponds to the beautiful, good and true is turned on its head.

 

In the air of Tehran, the scent of spring blossoms, carbon monoxide, and the perfumes and poisons of the tales of One Thousand and One Nights sway on top of each other, they whisper together. The city drifts in time…

Valerie learned that publishing love stories in Iran is no simple endeavour. ‘Endeavour,' Valerie thought – a beautiful word that might appeal to the Persian construction worker. In Iran you are allowed to publish and print these sorts of stories. But to sell them you need the approval of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. In this government department, however, sits a gentleman with the nickname Petrovich
(that's right, Detective Porfiry Petrovich, who has to investigate Raskolnikov's murder in Dostoevsky's
Crime and Punishment
). His job is to read books assiduously, novels and stories, love stories in particular… He crosses out every word, every sentence, every paragraph and even whole pages if they are indecent and consequently represent a danger to public morals and time-honoured social values.

The play was performed in the basement of an old house in the city centre, instead of in a conventional theatre. Perhaps there was no stage for this sort of thing over there. The entire company consisted of only four students, all of whom acted with such virtuosity and ease that Valerie was enthralled by the performance, in which the oppression of a great and ancient people was dramatized with colourful ideas and delightful entanglements until it became a comedy as bittersweet as oriental tea.

She saw the Persian construction worker too. He was sitting in a corner at the very back, where he didn't stand out. Dressed in a smart suit and freshly shaven, he could have been taken for a doctor or a lawyer, one of the old-fashioned types. Perhaps he was a doctor, Valerie pondered as she looked at him covertly. Who could say what reasons had caused him to leave his country and
what unfortunate chain of events had driven him to scaffolding and cement mixers? Valerie thought about the character of Sara in
Censoring An Iranian Love Story
. Like Valerie, Sara was a student, but her studies had been so different. There had been a passage in which Sara tried to borrow a book called
The Blind Owl
from the university library and was told the book was banned. Valerie couldn't imagine living in a place where certain books were forbidden.

But a young man has been watching her in the library and he will find ways and means of getting her that book. And with the book a message that he'll pass on to her in a secret code. This develops into a forbidden love story – above all, the telling of the story is forbidden. For books, as Valerie learned, are dangerous in a country where freedom doesn't exist.

And so that evening Valerie went back to her bookshop deep in thought (she'd intended to go home, but then decided to check whether
The Blind Owl
actually existed: it did). The book the Persian construction worker had given her was still on the little table beside the armchair. Valerie stroked the cover, picked it up and read some passages of the text she'd just heard in the basement as part of a tightly packed audience. How animated such a text is, how directly it can be translated into action.

The worker from Persia, whose name was Aghaye Massoud, visited on a few other occasions, until one day his team had finished the tasks assigned to them there and they were sent on to their next job, or the weather made it impossible to continue working. For at some point, of course, it had become wintry. An unpleasant wind howled down the street, darkness alternated with the murk of late-autumn and early-winter days, snow with rain. On one of the last sunny days, close to the start of Advent, Valerie again dared to put her table outside and present herself to the dazzling, oblique sun. She was going to miss this ritual she'd been performing since late summer and thanks to which she'd enjoyed so many journeys around the world. With Highgrown Kenya tea she'd followed Piscine Molitor Patel's experiences with the intuitive Bengal tiger Richard Parker in the expanses of the Pacific Ocean; with English Breakfast she'd studied
Jin Ping Mei
's China; with Gunpowder she'd giggled at
The Innocents Abroad
. With Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe she'd traced the fate of
The Beautiful Mrs Seidenmann
through the streets of Warsaw; Sencha had accompanied her to the Swiss Alps and
The Magic Mountain
; Lapsang Souchong on
A Passage to India
; Darjeeling from the highest plantations of the Himalayas on John Franklin's search for
the Northwest Passage; an East Frisian blend through the backwater of Macondo in the Columbian Jungle; and Peruvian Mate with
The Aspern Papers
through the melancholy alleys of Venice.

A number of discoveries were thanks to Aghaye, who turned out to be a very well-read and sophisticated man. Valerie missed him as she had missed Timmi (although not as much, because, although the boy had been a touch mysterious, he was nowhere near as polite and reserved). And so the gloomy, rainy autumn days departed and winter set in. One day a letter arrived – from Timmi. In tidy, error-free handwriting and in light-blue ink he wrote:

 

Dear bookseller
,

We moved, unfortunately. That's why I can't come by any more. But I still owe you money. So I've put four euros in this envelope. I hope this letter gets to you. And I hope you're well. Sadly, there's no bookshop on the way to my new school. But if I'm in the area again I'll pop by. All the best!
Regards
,

 

Timmi

Valerie was touched. There were four euros in the envelope. The boy had paid off his debt. The accounts tallied. His letter pulled at her heartstrings – how could it not? Valerie didn't need to mull it over for long. She'd given the construction worker over the road a special book as a goodbye present. Now she wrapped the same book in tissue paper – Timmi would be highly appreciative of this – and wrote him a card:

 

Dear Timmi
,
Coincidentally this book costs exactly four euros in my shop. Perhaps you'll like it. It's not especially beautiful – from the outside. But inside it's a treasure chest! Visit me if you're ever in the area. I'll always have a cup of tea for you.
All the best,

 

Valerie

She placed the card in an envelope, wrote down the return address that Timmi had put on the back of his envelope and carefully inserted the book. She could see him virtually sinking into the text, this sensitive,
precocious boy; she could see him with his nose over the book, listening carefully to the echo of the early morning in the luxuriant growth of the woodland solitude and feeling the travel bug in the swarm of words in this foliage:
The Unfolding of Language
. A book, not especially beautiful to look at, but a treasure trove of linguistic delicacies, the like of which you might not find anywhere else.

As Christmas approached business picked up again a little, but towards the end of the year it practically came to a halt. Occasionally one or other of the middle-aged women would come in, presumably in the hope that the famous actor might be there. But in the icily cold days leading up to New Year very few customers graced the small bookshop. And at the start of the following year the financial situation was scarcely better than when Valerie had taken on the business. When she opened up in the morning she was greeted by worry and when she locked up in the evening despair waved goodbye to her. Without her small flights of literature, she might have given up. But if you know you're doing the right thing and you really love it, you'll accept many a hardship and many a disappointment. And then there was that letter from Italy.