SECOND-HAND BOOKS

 

Strolling around the river gauche at Quai Voltaire I stopped over one of those bouquiniste stands by the Seine, took a quick glance on the bouquins since I haven't enough time and was strapped for money. But a thick volume in beautiful binding, rose vellum, gold embossed caught my eyes:

"The Correspondence between James Joyce and Clarissa Holloway(1928-1941)

Hogarth Press (so revealed the ex-libris)was the publishing house. Year of issue: 1953.

At first sight I thought it was a long-winded and pedantic essay about the metafictive connection between James Joyce and Virginia Woolf's styles. But when I started to flick through its yellowish pages there was no doubt: I was reading the crossed letters between a real person and a fictional character from a very famous novel. You don't say!, I thought smirking, I'm sure it's only a boutade contrived by some two-bit admirer of Georges Perec. However, I noticed the book was prefaced by Leonard Woolf himself who spent several years to compile the letters. I read some of them with the growing curiosity of a scholar and that really oozed the aroma of something pukka, not a bogus. Enthused with such a rare trove, I asked the bouquiniste(an old blue-eyed geezer with grey beret and Quebec's accent) about the book price. He dusted it off examined the first pages like an expert with a magnifying glass, at the same time he tipped the beret over one ear, then over the other like a madman. "40 euros"-suddenly he snapped without raising the eyes from the book. I was surprised, rather expecting a hefty price, maybe 100 euros, even more. Nevertheless, I only had 20 euros on me, so I nearly entreated the bouquiniste not to sell the book to anyone, that I'd be back in a jiffy with the fric. I nipped to the next ATM and withdrew 60 euros. When I hurried back I came across the same stand, the same books, but not the same bouquiniste: this time I met a young and strapping Senegalese with long and colourful dreadlocks. His dark shades mirrored back my face. A kind of piercing glinted on his lower lip. Sat down on a stool, slouchy, he seemed more interested in selling old postcards about Notre Dame de Paris. I asked him about the old man with grey beret and the book he had put me by. I flaunted my 60 euros. His dark shades reflected the sad and overcast sky of Paris as well. He only grinned and gave me the cold shoulder and after billowing out the smoke from an odorous spliff, he got up to attend a gaggle of Japanese tourists. Disappointed, I asked around all the stands, all the bouquinistes but nobody knew anything about the book, let alone about the blue-eyed old geezer with Quebec's accent.