BOOKSEEKER

by

Kusamei Q

 

 

"Huh, so you've brought in another pile of worthless stuff?"

"I'm not asking you to buy these for a fortune."

"Then why don't you leave them here all for free."

"No way!"

It hurts to sell books from your shelf. Each one of them had been an indispensable part of my world until that morning. After receiving a petty amount of money from the bookseller, I said to him, "By the way, have you found the book I've been asking you about?"

"What...Oh, not yet. Maybe next time we have it."

Another empty promise. Next time I'm here, I was sure though, I would see most of the books I had just sold lining up on the shelf with the indifferent look of ex-lovers, showing off their fancy new prices.

I checked the shelves ritually and walked out of the secondhand bookstore. In this city, the sky was always framed by buildings. The sun was already behind one of those concrete structures, filling the air with a heavy, gelatinous flood of orange light. I walked along the busy street toward the subway entrance. The district was monotonous and diverse at once: A bookstore, secondhand bookstore, secondhand history bookstore, secondhand music bookstore, theater bookstore, and towering "book department store"... All of these buildings, big or small, old or new, wooden or stone, were tilted and distorted by the vast weight of books. Their shelves were squeaking with time, history, and dead people's words and thought. Every page had accumulated years of cigarette smoke, crumbles, spilled coffee, fingerprints, laughter, anger, and tears. Walking on the street, I felt like walking on a page of one huge book.

This Jimbo district had been the dreamland of my boyhood in distant countryside. I smelled the district behind all the books I read in the school library. So many poets and novelists had written about the district, which was made of books instead of bricks. I still remember the ecstatic dizziness I felt when I came to the street for the first time. I was eighteen. I thought the whole world had been compacted as books into the area.

However, the reality soon turned out to be much more prosaic. Within a few years, I knew every bookstore had similar books, similar customers, and similar owners whose only specialty was buying my books cheap. What once seemed to be a whole new world to explore now looked like a mere repetition of limited small variations of reality. Bestsellers and ex-bestsellers were everywhere, but rare books were difficult to find even in this district. For months, I was desperately looking for one book. Tired of the day's endless walk, I stopped at the middle of a bridge and looked down at the dirty river, feeling people walking and driving past behind my back.

"Hey, mister! Do you have a habit of daydreaming?"

I turned to the voice and found an extremely thin man standing beside me. He wore a fitting dark suit and a thin black tie. His age seemed anything between twenty-five and forty-five. On his fingers were a couple of obnoxiously big rings. His black hair was well combed and long enough to reach his back. He looked stylish and seedy at the same time.

"What?"

"You're looking for a book, right?"

"Everyone is looking for a book in this area."

"That's true, but I know the book you want is special and difficult to find."

He was right, but still that was easy to guess from my attitude. He threw another line into my silence.

"I can help you, if you want me to."

"For what?"

"Buy me a bowl of noodles."

Despite his dubious appearance, I decided to try the possibility. Maybe I was too tired of my lonely quest for the book.

 

You can find a "noodle hut" anywhere in Tokyo. It is fixed to the ground and has a roof and door, but never looks large or decent enough to be called a "noodle restaurant." We walked into the one at the next corner. The long U-shaped fake-wooden bar surrounding the kitchen was full of customers---or bookworms. Everyone was reading, no matter whether they were eating or waiting for their noodles. To my surprise, the thin man's order was a bowl of "moon-watcher's noodles" (a hot noodle soup with a half-boiled egg on top). It was just two hundred yen (approximately two dollars), next to the cheapest choice, "plain noodles." I ordered a "moon-watcher," too.

"So what kind of book are you looking for?"

"The novella by Jinkichi Takahashi."

Takahashi was a poet. Only once in his life he wrote a novella, which had been regarded as a total failure. It was forty years or so since the book immediately went out of print. I found the novel for the first time as a brief quotation in an old magazine's book review. Although the reviewer severely criticized the novella, that short excerpt was full of poetry and music to me.

"Did you check the Congress Library?"

"Yeah. The book was on their catalogue, but has been lost for years."

I could easily imagine a person who had stolen the book only to own it. I had felt that kind of seduction even from the excerpt.

"I have read his poems when I was younger. A great minor poet, isn't he? But I have no habit of owning all of my favorite books. They make my life too heavy."

Hiding my difficulty to imagine him reading poems, I agreed with him.

"That's true."

I remembered the conversation with the bookshop owner.

"Ok, now I'm full. Let's go to find your book."

He put his chopsticks on the empty bowl and briefly put his palms together to thank Buddha.

"Do you have any specific bookstore in your mind?"

"Kind of..."

 

I was surprised when we came back to the bookstore I had sold my books an hour ago.

"This doesn't work. Today the owner said he didn't have the book."

"We are not buying from him."

Inside, the owner looked at our faces in turn and said,

"Hi Kimo! Are you working for him this evening?"

"Yeah, can we use the roof?"

"That's fine, but don't break the building."

Kimo lead me to the staircase. The building was one of the tallest in the area, each of the seven floors tenanted by different small bookstores. I felt something was going wrong and stopped before the stairs. Kimo noticed my attitude and said, "Do you think I would walk around the whole district with you and greet the owner before kicking you off the roof?"

"Well...No."

"Then, just trust me."

The stair was narrow and suffocating. During our zigzag ascent, I saw six different floors filled with different kinds of books and book-addicts.

 

From the rooftop, we could see all Jimbo district under our eyes. In the wind, I smelled the sea behind the walls of skyscrapers in distance. Now the orange sunlight was quickly fading out, just leaving thin gold lines on the contour of every object. I kept myself near the door on the inside for precaution, while Kimo walked onto the vacant roof yard. At the center of the roof, he turned to me with a faint smile, and then he fixed his standing point with his back toward me. I saw his shoulders move slightly a couple of times with deep, slow breaths, as if for an extreme concentration. Suddenly, he raised his right hand and snapped his fingers. I only heard the traffic noise from below for a few more seconds...until countless flapping sounds began to approach us from all directions. In the next moment, my sight was full of books, flying with their leaves open like wings. The books flew around Kimo in a whirlwind. While thousands were leaving him, another millions came flying. Round, round, round...against the vast fresco of the evening sky, I saw the last drops of sunlight glisten on the gilt titles of the flying books.

When all the storm was gone, Kimo walked to me and handed me a book---exactly the one I was looking for. It was decently worn for its age, but apparently cherished by the previous owners. He opened the door behind me and left the roof. I couldn't do anything but look at the book in my hands for a long time. Then I ran after him, rushing down the stairs.

 

I caught up with him on the street before the building.

"...How do I pay for this book?"

Although I was full of questions, that was the only one which managed to come out.

"Don't worry about that."

He waved his right hand in a nonchalant denial. I stared at the hand. There was nothing special about it. The rings on his fingers still seemed cheap and ugly.

"I'll see you next time you really need meÉeh, maybe. Thanks for the 'moon-watcher's.' Bye."

He walked down the street, now dark and decorated with neon signs and moving headlights. Soon he melted into the crowd of people still looking for their books. After seeing him off, I began to walk in the opposite direction, in the flow of people released from the day's labor and heading for the subway station.

In my apartment, I found some two thousand yen (about twenty dollars) had gone from my wallet. Fortunately, the book is still on my shelf.

 

THE END

 

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