Nikolski (28 page)

“This is the bed I slept in …”

… back when I was allowed to sleep,
he thinks, unfairly. In reality, there were many more reasons for
insomnia back then, and Noah can easily recall all the wakeful nights he spent inside these walls: the nights he spent studying, the heat-wave nights, the
jututo
nights that went on until the neighbours called the police, the nights he wrote letters to his mother, the nights spent with road maps trying to guess where his mother was, the nights he doubted his mother existed, the end-of-term nights (dark and dreamless), the anxious nights, the epidemic nights, the nights thinking about his father, the nights when he tried to picture Nikolski, the nights spent wearing a bathrobe and lying in bed with a bottle of acetaminophen and a glass of water, the novel-reading nights, not to mention the nights with Arizna, those fleeting episodes that disrupted forever the peaceful course of his life.

Simón does not ask any more questions. He stares at the ceiling and says nothing, as if he too were pondering those long-ago nights, the distant echo from before his birth. How can so many memories be contained in such a cramped room? He raises his arm and traces a little circle, as though wanting to circumscribe his father’s whole life.

“But it
really is so small,”
he breathes into Noah’s ear, his voice full of wonder.

Noah sits up halfway. It takes a few seconds for him to realize that Simón is referring to the bedroom. He smiles and kisses his forehead.

“You’ll see. You’ll get used to it before long.”

ONLY TWO DAYS LEFT BEFORE CHRISTMAS
, and eight before the end of the world.

The bookstore has been almost deserted for a week. People are scurrying around elsewhere—anywhere it glitters, in the mazes of plastic and stainless steel, the china shops, the Pac-Man outlets, the luxury perfume stores, the poultry slaughterhouses. The used-book market is nosediving in the city and, frankly, I don’t care very much. I’ve just finished making a sign, which I’ve placed on the counter right next to the cash register:

I rub my hands as I examine the sign. Well, that’s done. Mme Dubeau, my esteemed proprietor, has been
urging me for several days to prepare the job offer and put it up. She seems to be afraid I’ll leave without warning, and let the bookstore fall entirely on her shoulders.

The truth is, I’ve been preoccupied of late.

All my free time (including a significant portion of my daily schedule normally earmarked for sleep) has been devoted to clearing out my apartment. I’ve been sorting old, inert objects, dusting them off one by one and propelling them into a new life. Furniture and dishes to the Salvation Army. Idiotic knick-knacks to the antique dealers. Assorted articles—sound system, bead curtains, desk lamp, floor lamp, chandeliers, pétanque balls, artificial Christmas tree, ladder—to the flea market. I’m entrusting the bamboo plants, spider plant and papyrus to my neighbour. The old income tax reports and government papers to the recycling bin. The rest—unclassifiable and unsalvageable—I unceremoniously cram into ultrastrong plastic bags for the garbagemen’s enjoyment.

My books are naturally entitled to special treatment. I’ve hermetically wrapped the most valuable ones and stored them in the basement, in the notorious urchin-ridden locker, and I’ve brought the others here to be sold off at a dollar a piece.

Because of all this upheaval I make stupid errors. I make mistakes when totalling up prices, I completely mix up the titles when classifying books, and I neglect to watch for shoplifters, feeling that, in any case, the
only book thief worth anyone’s attention won’t be back here again. Truth to tell, it did take me a few days to arrive at that conclusion. It didn’t matter that I had come upon two RCMP squads in the process of searching her apartment—I still held on to the slim hope that Joyce would not leave Montreal. I scrutinized the newspapers, trying to learn the reasons for the search, but there was no mention of it. The deskmen apparently did not think it warranted a headline, no doubt because the protagonist was still on the lam. As for me, I waited for her to show up at the bookstore sporting sunglasses and a blue wig.

The days went by. Hemmed in by the December frost, I quickly came back to the only scenario that made any sense. Joyce, evidently, was sitting pretty under a coconut tree, with her feet in the warm sand and a glass
of añejo
rum in her hand.

I’ve therefore decided to do something with my life. It’s high time to escape from the gravitational pull of books. I will go without a guidebook, without an encyclopedia, without a leaflet, without a phrasebook, without a schedule and without a road map. Occasionally I look at the shelves and sigh. I’ll of course miss the bookstore a little, but it’s more important for me to find my own road, my own little providence.

Jangle of the doorbell and icy gust of wind. A man and a child come into the bookstore. The man is wearing a plaid fall jacket and his teeth are chattering, and
the child is swathed in three layers of wool and scarves. They shake the snow from their shoes and unbutton their coats. They are enveloped in a delicate aroma of charcoal, caramelized meat and cloves. They’ve undoubtedly just come out of Dunkel’s, the Jewish delicatessen across the street.

While the little boy ventures toward the bookshelves as cautiously as a Sioux hunter, the man steps up to the counter. I notice him eyeing our job offer in a peculiar way.

“Interested?” I ask.

He shakes his head, but I feel inclined not to let the matter drop, as if, for some mysterious reason, I were convinced this man would be perfect for the position.

“You’re wrong, you know. It’s an ideal job: low wages but lots of time to read.”

“I’ll think about it,” he answers with a smile. “In the meantime, do you have any books on dinosaurs?”

“A whole collection! Look at the end of the third row, under the blinking fluorescent light.”

No need to repeat the information—the child has already scampered over to the third row. The man, meanwhile, lingers at the front of the shop. He scans the shelves, hovers for a moment over the “New Arrivals” table, glances at the Mickey Spillane shelf, and finally leans down to examine the cardboard boxes holding books I’m selling off for a dollar each. Most of what’s jammed in those boxes is worth far more. One
immediately discovers, for instance, three relatively recent travel guides (Indonesia, Iceland, Hawaii), an almost spotless copy of a Tintin book
(The Red Sea Sharks),
the
Ashley Book of Knots
(in good condition despite its missing cover) and a special edition of Georges Perec’s
La Vie mode d’emploi
(luxury binding).

Squatting by the boxes, the man examines the books, turns them over, pushes them aside to see what’s underneath. All at once I see him stiffen, as though he’d just stumbled upon a large, shrivelled-up tarantula at the bottom of the box. I quietly step closer. He is holding the old Three-Headed Book.

“Don’t be fooled by appearances—what you have there is a unicum.”

“Excuse me?” he says, as though emerging from a dream.

“A unicum. A book of which there is only a single known copy in the whole world.”

“Really? How can you be so sure?”

“Look at it closely. It’s made up of fragments of three books. The first third is from a study on treasure hunting. The second comes from a historical treatise on the pirates of the Caribbean. The final third is taken from a biography of Alexander Selkirk, who was shipwrecked on a Pacific island.”

“So it’s an anthology.”

“No. These are fragments—literally. Debris. Flotsam and jetsam. The bookbinder salvaged the
wreckage of three books and sewed them together. It’s a piece of craftsmanship, not a mass-printed object.”

The man turns the book over and over in his hands, like a Rubik’s cube.

“That’s weird. I don’t understand why a bookbinder would have done that.”

“Hard to tell. A passion for puzzles, maybe … Look, I’ll let you have it for fifty cents, employee discount.”

Before he has time to respond, the child bursts out of the third row, his arms overflowing with treasures. The man lays the Three-Headed Book on the counter so that he can look at what the youngster has selected. I expect him to drastically reduce this copious selection, but no. He is content to read off the titles, approving each one with a satisfied nod of the head.

“
The Extinction of the Dinosaurs, The Time of the Saurians, The Great Fossil Guide, Giant Gallinaceans of the Jurassic Period
and
The Cretaceous Period As If You Were There.
Not bad at all. Nothing on hummingbirds?”

“Nothing on hummingbirds,” the child answers, spreading his arms.

“Oh well, too bad.”

He pushes the books toward me, puts two twenty-dollar bills on top of them and starts to button up the child’s coat. I add up the price, discreetly giving him a 15 per cent discount, and wrap the purchase in an old plastic bag. When I hand him his change, the man smiles mysteriously.

“You know, your unicum. There’s something missing.”

I raise a quizzical eyebrow. By way of reply, he takes out of his wallet a small sheet of paper folded twice over and places it delicately on the Three-Headed Book. His forefinger stays on the paper for a moment, wavering. Then everything happens very quickly. He collects his bag, straightens his tuque and pushes the child toward the door, while wishing me Merry Christmas.

“
¡Feliz Navidad!”
the child adds, waving his mittens.

Jangle of the doorbell and a brief gust of frozen air. They’ve fled like two saboteurs who’ve just planted a time bomb.

Intrigued, I unfold the little sheet of paper. It’s a map of the Caribbean, rectangular, about twenty centimetres long, bearing no date, no specific information. Nothing on the reverse side either. But there are various clues suggesting that it was made some time ago: the brittle grain of the paper, the yellowish oxidation, the tiny marks caused by fungus, the faded ink and the use of an archaic place name—British Honduras instead of Belize.

One of the sides of the map is roughly torn, as though it has been ripped out of an atlas.

I look toward the exit. The bell is still swaying back and forth over the door. Why did the man rush off like that? Was there some dark secret he was afraid would
be brought to light? His words come back to me: …
your unicum. There’s something missing.

I bring the map closer to the Three-Headed Book, like the last remaining piece of a puzzle. My hunch is correct. The tear fits the binding exactly! This map, then, was torn out of the book some years ago … I stand there open-mouthed, contemplating the implications of this strange puzzle. Here is a discovery that clouds the issue rather than clarifying it.

Nothing is perfect.

I smile, shrug my shoulders and, after taping the map of the Caribbean into place, return the Three-Headed Book to the clearance box.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author:
I would like to express my appreciation to Brigitte Malenfant and Francine Royer for acquainting me at the right time with the residency programme of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ), to Viviane Paradis and Josée Dubeau, who showed no pity in reviewing my grant applications, and to the team at the Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia, who made it possible for me to enjoy excellent working conditions.

A number of readers were patient enough to tackle this book in one or another of its many draft versions: Martin Beaulieu, Héloïse Duhaime, Sébastien Harvey, Saleema Hutchinson, Richard Levesque, Monik Richard, Antoine Tanguay, Hugo Tremblay, Bernard and Marie Wright-Laflamme, Viviane Paradis and Viriginie Rompré. Their comments allowed me to avoid numerous stumbling blocks.

I am grateful to Manuel Pimentel and Rossio Motta for making me aware of
the jututo,
to Joëlle Reid, for reminding me of her ancestor, and to Esther Cayouette, for checking certain parts of this story against reality.

For the English-language edition, I would like to thank Lazer Lederhendler and my editor at Knopf Canada, Pamela Murray.

Lastly, I must especially thank my family, my friends and my girlfriend for their support and wonderful patience during my writing marathons.

The translator
acknowledges the assistance of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre (BILTC) at The Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta, Canada. He would also like to thank the Collège international des traducteurs littéraires (CITL) in Arles (France), where this translation got underway, as well as the Canada Council for the Arts for providing a travel grant.