An open-air mall lined with cheap boutiques and stationery shops, and headlined by a supermarket. Next to the greengrocer (trails of trodden lettuce leaves) is a second-hand bookshop. Outside, a tray of 'cheapies' (proclaimed, in yellow) - dog-eared paperbacks, the spines so bent you can't read the titles. Inside, shades of brown that conceal you from the sensual frenzy outside. Dun brown carpet, streaked and scratched wooden bookshelves, lacquered brown counter, yellow pine chairs.
You remember - when you were young and starting out in your career, you were a bit... naive. No, not naive - you just don't know any better (there's a difference). In varsity, where output was graded and critiqued and the marker had a marksheet, every A or B stroked your ego. You deconstructed the state of your industry, on at least three different premises, and you read the thoughts of future peers. Deep down you believe you represent a gestating revolution in the industry and you are eager to learn how to hatch the darn thing.
I can't speak for yours, but in the local media industries, management is often first seduced by and later annoyed by the eagerness of 'newbies' (a grand Thursday night story, told into glasses of wine). See, they think 'eager' means 'exploitable' (and 'expendable') and 'young' means 'cheap'. If you are lucky, management empathises with you but shrug their shoulders because that's just the way it is. If you're unlucky, you get management who have been through the same thing and would like to carve you a matching chip.
Six months in to working with one of the latter, I was off sick with sinusitis. (Note that I do not get sick, that is, without a psychosomatic stimulus. Do not scoff. Whenever and with whatever I am sick, I suffer from some degree of 'sight impairment'. Yip, turns out acute sinusitis can temporarily infect the optic nerves. Partial blindness in one eye.) I was off sick and I was horribly sad. So I wrapped myself up and drove myself (squinting) to the shops to get a movie and a magazine.
Instead, snivelling and with a wad of tissues in hand, I detoured to calm my soul among ceiling-high bookcases, yellowing paper and the promise of treasure. A good rule is to only buy books you have been looking for. Or to buy a bookshop. What would I find? Rushdie? Fowles? Calvino? Mitchell? Or the classics - James? Forster? Woolf? Some poetry?
A black spine, about 15 cm high. The title set horizontally in a thin white font. AS Byatt. The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: Five fairy stories. I pulled it from between its taller companions, forefinger behind the top furl of the cover - it was hardcover, with the dust jacket in perfect condition because it had been neatly covered in thick plastic. I knew then, but I'll tell you more.
The dust jacket is jewel green, with yellow text, the colours outdated now. The inside endpapers are the green of an evergreen shrub. The illustrations are taken from historical collections: a Persian musician, a jewelled peacock and a pious woman. The paper is thick but unvarnished, and textured in the type of grain you can see in brown paper. Each story begins with an historical black-and-white etching.
Mrs Byatt has been one of my favourite authors since I read Possession during my internship. (Damn straight I remember when - the book was thick and heavy, and the writing equally impenetrable.) I feel as though, under her primary author's voice, I can hear another, more tender one, always wondering. How does this work? Why? What happens when I pull this or that? Something sadly empathic under more academic toing and froing. Since then I had collected every secondhand book of hers I have 'unearthed', to build a collection of different editions.
This treasure is by far my favourite. It is my favourite because it represents the ideal of the secondhand hunt. It is my favourite because I was so sad and just holding this book in my hand... I can remember how overwhelmingly reassured I felt. Books like that are the reason I write and the reason I publish. When I think back, I can remember seeing it on the shelf, holding it and buying it, in a room made of blocks of browns. But perhaps that is just my sensory memory gratifying my emotional memory...
I have pulled out the book now and placed it next to me, to the left of my computer. Next to it is my next read: Ragnarok, also by Byatt. I found it by accident the other night, browsing the science-fiction section of the library. The book is thin - less than 200 pages - and a paperback. The yellow spine was pushed back into the shelf, so it was obscured by the tall and thick hardcovers around it. Is this how I am always to discover Byatt's allegories?
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