2023. 4. 30 Sun
I’m reading Kaminsky and this girl at the table next to me asks ‘Where have you the book?’ pointing at it. I look up and she reminds me vaguely of this intern about two years ago at our office, Julia Rosas. I’m surprised by this acute memory myself and can’t really say how I remember this name, probably because of the conversation we had one morning when we met on the bus to the office from the central station. She said she will continue her studies in Switzerland I think. Also she was showing me her bruised wrist from beach volley the night before. Fotios used to arrange this and book the sand courts in the Mitte using the office money. He would encourage other colleagues to join and I guess Rosas did even though she didn’t look much like a beach volley person. I also went there once or twice when I had just joined the office but only to sit at the fire with a beer and to watch. Anyway, that was the only time I talked to Rosas.
‘You mean where I bought this book?’ I ask this girl and she nods. I tell her it’s from Shakespeare and Sons and that they also have bagels. In fact, I bought this book this morning on my way here. It’s my weekend ritual to walk down the Warschauer Str and to stop by Shakespeare and Sons to pick up a book, whatever that might be. Sometimes it’s not so easy to find something and I come out empty-handed. One has to invest enough time in front of the shelves, looking. I’m usually looking for a small book of poems, preferably from someone who’s already dead, and also with a cover not too much commercial, with a nice layout and fonts and so on. And I buy it, go to a cafe - this cafe - and read it.
She doesn’t seem to have quite caught it. So I repeat myself. ‘Shakes-peare, he was an English writer. Or a collective maybe. Him and his sons, Shakespeare and Sons, it’s on the Warschaur Str that way.’ And I point to that way where I have walked down from after having picked out Kaminsky. My arm is parallel to the walls of the East Side Gallery outside. And I remember I have the receipt. So I take it out from the back of the book and hand it to her.
‘You can keep this.’
She takes it, looks down at it and carefully reads the name on it. ‘Sha-kes-peare.’
After she and her family leave I wonder what her question was really about. Was she asking where I got an English book? But her English wasn’t fluent. Then was she asking about this specific book? Did she know Kaminsky, the girl who hasn’t read Shakespeare? Then I think maybe this family is from Odessa - but their language didn’t sound Slavic. More Portuguese if I had to guess, then I remember Rosas was from São Paulo. Maybe this girl who looked like Julia Rosas was also from São Paulo and just wanted to read something. But I wouldn’t ask a stranger for the source of a book unless I was absolutely sure I wanted it. And how would one know whether he really wants it or not, unless he already, at least partially, knew it? Then my thoughts wander to Fran Lebowitz - she says she is always (and probably only) interested in what people are reading when she sees those rare people with books in the subway of New York. I also have a habit of glancing sideways to read whatever is on the page of the person sitting next to me. I am usually intrigued and then quite quickly disappointed. I know of an actress who covers her books not particularly to keep them from harm but rather to hide them - hide them from other nosey no-good-doers like me who likes to judge by the cover.
So I say if you want to remain concealed, read poetry. Because it is the only instance of a reader seen from outside, that which is not a reader but the writer who is the source of that book - namely the poet. For example, if I saw a person reading Tennyson, I wouldn’t make anything of this person who is reading Tennyson, but would only see Tennyson who is the book.
In this way I’m the carrier of Kaminsky today - and he tells his book, ‘Little book, go to the city without me.’
