Oracle Night Read Free Page A

especially attractive to me, and with their hard covers, quadrille lines, and stitched-in signatures of sturdy, unblottable paper, I knew I was going to buy one the moment I picked it up and held it in my hands. There was nothing fancy or ostentatious about it. It was a practical piece of equipment – stolid, homely, serviceable, not at all the kind of blank book you’d think of offering someone as a gift. But I liked the fact that it was cloth-bound, and I also liked the shape: nine and a quarter by seven and a quarter inches, which made it slightly shorter and wider than most notebooks. I can’t explain why it should have been so, but I found those dimensions deeply satisfying, and when I held the notebook in my hands for the first time, I felt something akin to physical pleasure, a rush of sudden, incomprehensible well-being. There were just four notebooks left on the pile, and each one came in a different color: black, red, brown, and blue. I chose the blue, which happened to be the one lying on top.
    It took about five more minutes to track down the rest of the things I’d come for, and then I carried them to the front of the shop and placed them on the counter. The man gave me another one of his polite smiles and started punching the keys on his cash register, ringing up the amounts of the various items. When he came to the blue notebook, however, he paused for a moment, held it up in the air, and ran his fingertips lightly over the cover. It was a gesture of appreciation, almost a caress.
    ‘Lovely book,’ he said, in heavily accented English. ‘But no more. No more Portugal. Very sad story.’
    I couldn’t follow what he was saying, but rather than put him on the spot and ask him to repeat it, I mumbled something about the charm and simplicity of the notebook and then changed the subject. ‘Have you been in business long?’ I asked. ‘It looks so new and clean in here.’
    ‘One month,’ he said. ‘Grand opening on August ten.’
    As he announced this fact, he seemed to stand up a little straighter, throwing out his chest with boyish, military pride, but when I asked him how business was going, he gently placed the blue notebook on the counter and shook his head. ‘Very slow. Many disappointments.’ As I looked into his eyes, I understood that he was several years older than I’d thought at first – at least thirty-five, perhaps even forty. I made some lame remark about hanging in there and giving things a chance to develop, but he merely shook his head again and smiled. ‘Always my dream to own store,’ he said. ‘Store like this with pens and paper, my big American dream. Business for all people, right?’
    ‘Right,’ I said, still not exactly sure what he was talking about.
    ‘Everybody make words,’ he continued. ‘Everybody write things down. Children in school do lessons in my books. Teachers put grades in my books. Love letters sent in envelopes I sell. Ledgers for accountants, pads for shopping lists, agendas for planning week. Everything in here important to life, and that make me happy, give honor to my life.’
    The man delivered his little speech with such solemnity, such a grave sense of purpose and commitment, I confess that I felt moved. What kind of stationery store owner was this, I wondered, who expounded to his customers on the metaphysics of paper, who saw himself as serving an essential role in the myriad affairs of humanity? There was something comical about it, I suppose, but as I listened to him talk, it didn’t once occur to me to laugh.
    ‘Well put,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t agree with you more.’
    The compliment seemed to lift his spirits somewhat. With a small smile and a nod of the head, the man resumed punching the keys of the cash register. ‘Many writers here in Brooklyn,’ he said. ‘Whole neighborhood full of them. Good for business maybe.’
    ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘The problem with writers is that most of them don’t have much money to