The first time James bought a second-hand unread book he was pleased; happy, even, and it only cost a single coin. That first purchase was made at a school fair several years before he took action. It was a vivid moment in his life.
The classroom in which he had sat with barely a thought of his own some thirty years earlier was arranged with banana boxes full with books stacked on the thigh-high desks. James jostled sideways in the crowded room with his head bent toward the exposed spines. He liked hard covered books best and stories set in places he could only imagine and, of course, picture books. He had no specific interest; he just liked the feel and promise of a good book. He chose with careful consideration from the extensive selection as he shuffled between the rows.
‘That’s a lot of reading,’ said Katy from the bakery, indicating the clutch under his arm.
James looked up with a blur in his eyes. He eased his glasses back into position on the bridge of his nose with his forefinger and smiled at the familiar face of a woman his own age. The gesture puffed his checks so that his face was almost round.
Katy and James had known each other since childhood and were the only two of their peers who had never lived anywhere other than their own small town. Katy worked in the family bakery and, although she had travelled extensively and visited many of the great pastry producing nations of the world, she always returned to the familiar town. Her regulars looked forward to the fresh delights she conjured from her oven when she returned. Her ambition for her baked goods inspired the placement of the map on the back wall. Whenever she heard a foreign accent she encouraged the traveller to identify their land of origin with one of the brightly coloured pins she kept beside the drinks fridge. The map was testament to her international reputation. It had even been the subject of an article in the Eastern Beacon during a slow news week in the middle of June some years earlier. Katy kept the story next to the map, on the notice board where she posted media releases from the National Bakers Association announcing the short-list for the Bakery of the Year award. Katy’s bakery had been short-listed seven years in total and was runner-up twice, with an honourable mention for her steak and mushroom pies. The elusive win remained a year away.
‘Yes,’ James replied, nodding heartily in response to Katy’s observation. He returned to the task at hand without further engagement. Katy brushed his shoulder as she moved toward the back of the classroom. James flinched beneath his heavy coat.
He handled a lot of books that day and flicked through hundreds of pages assessing content and condition. He loved books. Between the pages was a world in which he would rather be, where his mind and body were at one and without fault. It was the world he took to his dreams. Books were the better part of his life.
He had Mrs Johnston from the library to thank. He had always liked the library, even before he could read. It was warm and quiet and he could listen to music on the headphones and look through as many picture books as he wanted. Those were the days when he ignored the squiggle of words as if they were mere decoration. That was until the head librarian, Mrs Johnson, started talking to him. At first it was a simple hello and then, noting his regular visits, she began to ask questions about his reading preference. She soon realised that James couldn’t read and she made him her mission.
She also discovered he couldn’t see very well, so she took him to the optometrist. After the bill for his glasses arrived she ran a cake stall to cover the cost. James was never the same.
Mrs Johnston took the time on quiet Wednesday afternoons to teach him the fine art of reading. It had taken him a long time of looking and concentrating and wanting to give up until he recognised the jumble of shapes and was able to decode their meaning in the magic part of his mind. And when he did, he entered a world larger than he ever imagined. The thrill of the story and the wonder of the world came to him in the turn of a page. It was where he went as often as he could.
He continued looking for books on that wet April day, feeling the excitement of possibility as he surveyed the classroom’s rough division of fiction and non-fiction. A group of children had been tasked with the job of categorising the books and had made several understandable errors about politics and history.
Bargains were there for the finding and James had no other plans for the day. He had already been through the jumble of clothes in the room next door and found a dark blue hand-knitted turtle-neck jersey, which he thought very smart and rather slimming. The yarn was a little pilled on the underside of the sleeves but there were still a few more winters in it. James knew he had a bargain. He haggled the price down to seventy cents and was very well pleased with himself. He was, in fact, the only person who had questioned the set price. It had surprised the woman at the stall to such an extent that she felt obliged to accept the offer.
James then walked through to the new-entrants classroom and bought a date loaf for two-dollars fifty before making his way to the senior block. He was in no hurry as he searched the rows of books, looking for nothing in particular but hoping to find something of interest.
He gathered as he walked between the rows: a novel set in China; a guide to fishing knots; a cookbook; a big book full of kitten pictures; and a book explaining how electricity works, which he hoped would solve the mystery behind the light switch.
He was nearly finished when he stopped with a start in front of the one book that surprised him the most. In amongst the histories and sciences the bold black lettering invited his gaze. The Wonderful World of Weeds it read, but it was not the title that drew his attention. He plucked it from the firmly jammed row to examine the tidy volume. He opened it with a gentle, almost loving, grace and flicked through the first few pages, feeling their stiff resistance. He turned another single page, then another and became quietly aware that he was the first person to ever read the trail of letters on the open page.
He closed it, as if surprised, and looked again at the solid unmarked spine and smiled to himself. No-one noticed his grand and obvious find nor his quickening breath. The treat of the unread book amused and amazed him. He added it to his pile in a subdued fit of glee and manoeuvred his way to the cashier at the front of the classroom. The exchange was brief. He paid a total of four dollars and twenty cents for seven books, adding his savings to the rattle of coins in the ice cream container. He placed the books in his backpack and left without comment.
He went home ready to read the first unread book he had ever had the good fortune to own in all of his thirty-seven years. His pace hastened as he turned the corner toward his house, which was the third of four council flats. A pot of pansies beside the front door welcomed him home. Within moments of walking through the door the jug was on, his favourite tea cup was ready and his new book had been placed beside his reading chair.
The second time it happened, a few months later, he was again surprised and delighted. He had walked the length of the longest road that divided the town, turned the corner, and walked a while longer until he came to the best little bookshop in town. This he knew, because it was exactly what the sign in the window declared. It was one of several bookshops in the town which was big enough to have a few of every kind of shop.
Despite his love of books, James was not a regular visitor to the second-hand bookshops. They were a long walk from where he lived on the other side of the railway track. It took the most part of a day before he was sitting in his comforting chair with a cup of tea and a fresh book on his lap.
Most of his reading material came from the library, where Mrs Johnston recommended two or three good reads every week. He was an avid reader of well-read books. Last week he had read A History of New Zealand followed by The Ship from Cove Bay. The former made him realise it takes a lot of people and time to make a country and the latter reminded him never to go to sea.
James felt a sense of adventure in his soul on that dull spring Tuesday when most of the town was somewhere else and he and the book-seller were the only people in the shop.
‘Hello, James,’ said Nelson from behind his glasses as he sat in the stiff-backed chair at the wooden desk, holding an open book.
Nelson knew James because Nelson’s mother lived in the next-door flat. She had introduced the two men one day when they found themselves together at the white letterboxes beside the footpath. James was on his way back from the library as Nelson was leaving. Books became the topic of conversation for a good ten minutes until an awkward silence tore them away. Over the years James and Nelson had become greeting strangers.
‘Hello,’ said James.
‘How can I help you?’ asked Nelson, placing a marker in his book.
‘I’m looking for a book,’ said James and began to do so. Nelson settled back to his own reading. It was his third crime novel that week.
James began by the door and worked his way along the shelves. He eyed the titles as he stepped across the hollow wooden floor. His gaze sidled in a zigzag fashion from right to left. Working the room, he craned his neck and stretched himself tall until he was almost standing on tip-toes as he moved from poetry to antiquity. Finally, stooped and bent toward the floor he completed the circuit with a book by Émile Zola in a language James did not recognise.
Nearly two hours after arriving, he walked towards Nelson’s desk and placed two books on the wooden surface. At the top of the pile was a recent edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. James had previously read a tattered library copy and liked the story very much. It made him wish he and Tom had shared a childhood adventure in his own small town.
James looked across the counter at Nelson and smiled a self-conscious shoulder-shrugging grin.
‘Great story that one; classic,’ said Nelson.
‘Yes, I’ve read it,’ said James with a broad smile.
‘Good on you,’ said Nelson, raising an eyebrow. He opened each book to read the pencilled price on the inside covers.
The second book was a slim volume of poetry by someone James had never heard of before. He liked the cover.
The third time he found an unread second-hand book was at a garage sale down the road from where he lived. At first, he was annoyed that the book had been placed in the wrong box. One book alone amongst the china cups and cutlery was at odds with the way things should be. His frustration grew when he noticed the unmarked spine, the flat un-fingered pages and the resistance of the unturned paper. The only blemish was a saucer stain on the cover, which smudged the title to read For try, which made no sense to James until he opened the cover and read Forestry. The book had not only not been read, it had been vandalised. James felt the heat of his own anger. He looked toward the woman who was selling her stuff and scoffed aloud.
James respected books. He knew it was harder to write one than it was to read one. He had tried, but had very real problems moving beyond the first paragraph of his own life story. He started at the beginning, when he was born, but soon realised he knew very little about how he came to be. His parents had not stayed long in his life and the families who raised him had never told him anything about his beginnings, nor had he thought to ask. He understood the science but had no idea about the specific circumstances of his own making. He had sat in front of the blank page for a very long time before realising his role. He was a deliberate reader. After all, there were a lot of books in the world and perhaps, he thought, there were even enough.
Unread books prompted both his wonder and his distain. He thought long and hard about why someone would buy a book and never read it. He held the volume with a firm grasp, as if grappling with an answer. It was the only thing he bought that day and even though he wasn’t particularly interested in chopping down trees or their commercial value, he read it anyway.
It was after finding the fourth unread second-hand book that James decided to dedicate his life to the new pursuit. Unread books in second-hand bookshops were, he decided in the quiet of his mind, a crime against reading. He was oddly possessed by the thought and felt the need to redress the situation and restore justice amongst books.
And so the quest began. He went to garage sales and school fairs; he rummaged through bargain boxes at second-hand shops and skirted the edges of places where second-hand books were sold. He opened the covers and paid particular attention to the rigid unbent spines and was surprised at how many unread second-hand books were available to anyone who went looking. He had, on one occasion, discovered a book in which several pages had not even been cut. After buying the dejected volume he took it home and performed delicate separation surgery, being very careful to ensure the pages where cut straight and even. After completing the task he began to read all about the history of the bicycle and wished he had made more of an effort at a time in his life when he was nimble and able.
In this way, he read many books he would not otherwise have read and was often glad for the new and obscure knowledge or an arcane interpretation of a world he would never understand.
After finishing a very large paperback version of Lady Gregory’s Complete Irish Mythology he wondered about the truth behind the make-believe; and much later, when he found a nice little hard back about Maori mythology, he once again pondered notions of reality and possibility.
Over time, he discovered a fine selection of contemporary novels which disquieted him. The novel, he decided, was an unruly form. Some of the best had challenged everything he thought he knew about people and places. A crime story called Blood Bath had given him the shivers and, when he eventually turned to the comfort of his bed, he discovered the book had brewed a nightmare in his head and he woke in a sweat before the sun rose. After staring into the blackened space above his eyes he turned on the light beside his bed and began to read The Complete Book of Seaweed which listed and described all the many varieties and included a recipe for sushi which he was sure he would one day make.
After a time, perhaps years, the rooms in his small house became cluttered with columns of stacked books; the rambling towers hovered around him, along the hallway and into every room. Even the toilet and laundry had become havens for books now read. He kept the newest at the base of his reading chair and, from time to time, carried a bundle or two back along the hallway and piled them beside the latest in a series of towers which began somewhere in the back of the wardrobe from where they spread like cut arteries.
The day he tripped and stumbled into a tumbling column, grazing his forehead on a hard-covered edition of a book which had led him to dream of sea monsters and dragons, he decided it was time to return the books to the world.
With his usual diligence he listed his options, which included running his own garage sale. The problem with that was having people in his house. He wasn’t keen on that idea. He wasn’t, in fact, keen on people. They asked too many questions. Besides, his maths wasn’t very good so a garage sale was out. He put a red line through it.
He could offer them back to the bookshop or take them to the school for their next fair; but he knew he had more than either would want. He could use them for firewood or rip the pages from their covers and shred them on the garden for mulch or throw them in the compost with his scraps and peelings; but he knew in his heart that it would be wrong.
Three days later, after much thinking and dismissing, he developed the distribution plan, which he thought through with clever confidence. It became a task conducted with regimental planning. He started at the front door and worked his way through the house. It took a long time. Days and weeks passed, perhaps even months. He took a bag of books and left one at a time in letterboxes or on porches. He left several at bus stops and a stack at the train station. He left them in public places and private places. He went to all the local toilets and left a few behind in each. He went to cafés and pubs and placed a book or two on a table or in rest areas and waiting rooms. It took the best part of a year to reduce the clutter in his house to a manageable jumble. His life was consumed by the process of acquiring and distributing books. For the first time in his life he felt purpose.
The people of the town were curious and much chatter broke out on the subject of the appearing books. A story featured in the local paper, which led to a series of book reviews called The Random Reviewer. Everyone was invited to contribute their thoughts, which were published one at a time for as long as the newspaper was published. Pretty soon the fellowship of readers became known to each other with a knowing wink or an exchange in passing. Book clubs were established and children were seen to read in public places.
A local builder installed three rows of shelving in the ticket office of the old wooden building at the railway station. James filled them one book at a time, so that no one would notice. It became known as the station library and lasted well beyond James.
He had found his place in the world; and yet through it all, the same question haunted his thoughts. Why would somebody buy a book and never read it? He knew there were probably many answers and he was curious enough to want to know some of them. James was a patient man and he had a very strong feeling that sooner or later an opportunity to ask the question would present itself.
He was right. The occasion occurred in The Best Little Bookshop in Town, where James had become a regular, fortnightly visitor. He was looking through the geography section when a woman arrived with a box of books. James positioned himself with a line of sight to Nelson’s desk while remaining unseen between the dusty shelves. He watched as Nelson and the woman greeted each other. He continued to watch as Nelson considered the books and flicked through the pages. He watched Nelson open the old-fashioned till with the big clanging bells and hand the woman a five dollar note and several coins. And he watched the woman leave.
James walked toward Nelson’s desk with a near skip in his stride.
‘New books,’ he smiled.
‘Yes,’ said Nelson looking up from the pile he was pricing with a sharpened pencil. ‘Would you like to look through them?’
‘Yes please,’ James said, eyeing the fresh stack.
He picked up the first book and placed it beside the pile; he picked up the second, turned it over, examined it and placed it in on the first. It was not until he reached the seventh book that he felt the familiar flush of joy. He opened it and registered the firm and musty pages of the unread book. He created a third pile and continued through the stack. There was nothing else he wanted.
‘I’ll have this one, thank you,’ James said and handed Nelson a fresh copy of A Visitors Guide to New York.
‘Are you planning a holiday?’ Nelson asked.
‘No,’ said James, and left the conversation hanging.
Nelson had long ago given up trying to understand James’ reading preferences, but every now and then he wondered. ‘Is that all today?’ he asked.
‘Yes, thank you,’ said James and then, gulping with courage, he asked. ‘Was that Katy from the Beach Road bakery?’
‘Yes it was,’ Nelson confirmed, ‘Although, she’s retired now and the bakery has been closed since last July,’ he added.
‘We were in the same class at school, a long time ago. Funny how we never really change,’ said James, remembering the statement as a comforting echo of one of his mother’s. It was the most he had said in a very long time. The exertion made him blush. Nelson looked away into the awkward silence.
‘Three dollars should do it,’ Nelson said, after reviewing the book.
‘Thank you,’ said James and paid with the coins in his purse.
‘See you next time,’ said Nelson.
‘Yes,’ said James. He walked out of the shop with a mission. He was pleased to be on the brink of learning an answer to his question.
He worked the words over in his mind as he walked with his hands deep in his pockets and his bag swinging from his elbow in the brisk chill. He walked and worked up courage.
Forty minutes later he was standing on the footpath outside Katy’s house with the book in his hand. He stared at the open and inviting gate and the path that led to her house. He imagined walking on the cracked concrete, stepping over the grass that grew between the broken slabs and treading on each of the three steps that led to the blue front door. He imagined the loud thudding knock of his knuckles on the wood and once more rehearsed the question in his mind. He stood gazing into the middle distance of the front lawn a while longer, ignoring his pounding heart and readying himself for the effort. He took a deep and steadying breath to calm his thoughts before marching through the gate and walking the path toward the front porch with a determined focus. Within moments he was poised to knock. It was another moment before he raised his hand.
From behind her curtains, Katy had been watching the threat of a man she only vaguely recognised but thought perhaps she knew from somewhere she couldn’t remember.