A phenomenon so humble you walk by without noticing, the boxes are scattered over the city, sometimes looking like ugly storks on a tilting stick of plywood between the kiddie zone and the stairs into the mairie (Kremlin Bicêtre), painted like a dollhouse outside the entrance to the métro (Porte de Clichy) or jammed into the ground where a green pathway leads to a withered garden, two benches facing each other silently, not a reader in sight. Or like the photo above, on a traffic island on Boule’ Jourdan, across from Stade Charlety, not far from the prestigious university up the hill, which must be packed with all sorts of treasures neatly arranged in a system by Dewey, if that old crank hasn’t been replaced yet. No worries ! The library, arranged from Assyrians to Ziggurats, knows its business. Not so with the little boxes, you’re thrusting your hand into the local head. What do they read around here ? you wonder. Are these the books they couldn’t stand or the ones they had no room for in the new life ? The find they had to share with a stranger or the gift they couldn’t stand ? The cheap white shelving, about to collapse in a heap, has a stack of twenty odd books down below, the same color and size. Intrigued, I drew closer. These odd totems seem like messengers from another age.
All giving is mysterious, and a little box like this, even if it is rejected items, tells me something, like the famous pair of baby shoes on the sidewalk. Whoever owned these books didn’t walk down to the local Gibert Jaune to see what they could get for them. They gave them away. Remember Neruda’s story of when he was a child, when he discovered the hole in the fence big enough to wriggle your hand through ? He left a colored stone from the beach there and came back the next morning to find a pine cone. Maybe books, like cats, own us - for a while - and not the other way around.
It was a long summer twilight then, and I was on my way after a swim in Butte aux Cailles to Parc Montsouris, which before plague-time, was open all night. I wanted to lay down in the meadow of grass, feel the ground rumble as the trains poured under the park while counting the stars. I was on my way when suddenly I discovered I was ravenously hungry. I’d been swimming for almost an hour. So I detoured to the boulevard to seek out the places where students eat and crossing the intersection, found the teetering stand of books.
So what were they ?
Balzac, Collected Works. Complete in twenty-two volumes.
I could hardly believe my good fortune. A fated meeting ! A challenge ! A duel ! Here was insurance for the coming winter (little did I know how long it was going to be), my chance to face off against the master, the man who ‘invented the nineteenth century.’ The man whose prose is equally thrilling and impenetrable for my semi-hemi-decent French.
I hesitated. Should I take ? I didn’t want them if they were going to sit on my shelf and look impressive. Sooner or later I read every book I own twice. Was I, a little village dweller, ready for Everest ? Wasn’t there a grad student in the kebab shop who could put the volumes to better use ? Terrible lack of ambition on my part, but I’m content to read Cousin Bette a third time this winter.
I said, Decide while you eat, knowing precisely what that meant. I spent my time thinking about the person who put them there, not in a box at the entrance to one of the university libraries but on a traffic island, tri-cornered by park and sports stadium and faded gray apartment buildings. Not exactly a reader’s paradise. I couldn’t come up with a picture of this person, couldn’t figure out who they were. Of course some can’t stand Balzac. There’s that memorable essay by Henry Miller where he whittles away at Balzac’s reputation for two pages, only to spend the next eight or ten raving about B’s « Swendenborgian » novel. So it goes.
Rolling back from my light supper, I was ready to wrap the books in my pool towel, lay them out next to me in the park and begin a long conversation with Honoré. They were gone. Of course. I knew they would be. I should have grabbed the twenty-two volumes when I could.
Even so, the stars were magnificent, and if the ground didn’t rumble as the trains plowed their grooves, the evening was warm and small knots of people gathered on the hillside, talking until two or three and some until dawn.
*
Where did I find today’s offering ? I can’t even remember now. There weren’t many books inside the little hutch. It’s a contemporary novel that sells itself like ‘Sweets of Sin’ did for L. Bloom in the Dublin book stalls. A Cold Day in Hell it’s called, in French translated from the Norwegian, so maybe I’ll learn something about those mysterious Nords. I’ll at least have the chance to improve my erotic vocabulary, the words they use on paper anyway. The back of the book promises ‘the same sexual tension as Lady Chatterly’s Lover and the same power as The Butcher by Alina Reyes.’ People read books because they’re the same as others they’ve read before. That seems a little mysterious, too. Anyway, the leggy lady on the cover was probably enough in my case. Good comedy or bad, it’s all humaine, right, Honoré ? I’ll maybe throw it against the wall, or put it in another book box, just to keep things moving around.
14 december 21, 19:24