I stopped.
Light reaches through the glazed frontage of the old townhouse all the way to the far end of the long room, though the glass is dirty now. Even so, it reflects the image of a woman in a white jumper and a scarf of the same colour, falling almost to her knees.
I stepped closer. Behind the reflection, which moved as I moved, people passed along the pavement. They entered it and disappeared again without stopping.
The girl in the glass was opening the door for them. In her hands she carried a small pile of books, carefully arranged by size into a tower of colour.
‘Beautiful day.’
I drew breath to answer her.
A moment later, she began to move away. As she walked across the room with her little stack of books, she became the only image I could see inside the empty building.
She paused for a moment at the far end, in front of the solid wooden frame around the wide doorway. With each step she took, with the soft shuffle of cork slippers across the dark carpet, my awareness of the passers-by drifted further away.
I breathed in the scent of vanilla and cinnamon from the aroma lamp by the door. It complemented the warm tone of the cherry wood.
The murmur of conversations between people standing beside the full shelves occasionally seeped through the ukulele strains of ‘Over the Rainbow’, without disturbing them.
The muted light of three pendant lamps illuminated a counter crowded with all sorts of things. Small wooden boxes, bookmarks, postcards with photographs of the historic bell tower or the castle at the end of the street. Copies of Literárna revue and catalogues of new books.
‘Help yourself.’
The girl with long brown hair and cork slippers gestured towards a tray of apple-and-cinnamon strudel. She carefully wrapped a new edition of Anna Karenina, its cover made to resemble a leather binding, in flowered paper, then picked up her stack of books again.
On her way towards the corner of the room, to the desk that looked as though it had stood there forever, she greeted my history teacher. The lady with her always perfectly arranged hair returned an approving, equally kind smile.
The girl sat down at the desk.
A large diary covered half its surface – notes about books that needed to be ordered, dates and numbers mixed with tiny flowers drawn along the margins.
In one corner she wrote:
wrap the antiquarian books.
She did.
Twelve hundred books, one by one. On white wrapping paper, I wrote the title and the author’s name in black ballpoint pen. Most of them ended up in the town library. The rest on the shelves of my own.
More people passed behind me and, for a moment, the girl disappeared inside their reflections. When the glass emptied again, only the long vacant room remained behind it. Dust on the stone floor, whose irregular pattern of tiny laid stones I knew by heart. And artificial flowers in enormous pots that someone had left along the wall.
As though in storage.
A brown-yellow leaf from the nearby chestnut tree flew past me. It landed on the pavement without a sound – leaving behind only the slightest tremor in the air, almost imperceptible, as though someone had turned a page. The street had nearly emptied, yet it remained full of liquid time, caught in the cornices and in tiny golden reflections across the shopfront. No unfamiliar faces moved through the glass now.
For a moment, my reflection was the only movement on its surface. I remained standing there. A woman in a white jumper and a scarf that looked soft to the touch. All it took was for the light to shift slightly towards the bell tower, and the image in the glass became a mosaic of all the hours I had spent here.
Could this motionless space beneath an even layer of dust once have been hope? Could six brass handles on an antique desk have held the weight of my twenty-two-year-old existence? I stepped closer, until my shadow touched the stone floor. The glass was cold. Surprisingly cold for something that had been taking the afternoon sun for so long.
I placed my palm against it, expecting a breath of the old warmth, the smell of leather from the shoes that had hung there for years like a thick fog. But beneath my hand there was only a smooth, impenetrable surface.
For every passer-by.
Had she gone back to her desk?
The last ray of light pulled the white jumper from the glass. I reached into the canvas bag slung over my shoulder and found my notebook. I should go. Make my way along the familiar street to my car.
Neither happened. Instead, the green lamp came on in the corner.
Its muted emerald light cut through the deep shadow at the back of the room. In exactly the corner where the antique desk had always pretended it would stand forever. The girl lifted her head for a moment, as though something in the room had disturbed her. Her gaze travelled over the shelves, paused at the door, then returned to the book.
She did not see me.
I pressed my palm more firmly against the glass. There was nothing between us that could be opened.
If I stand here long enough, I will see another hour. Then another. Someone will come in. The telephone will ring. The girl will get up, put down her pen, straighten a book on the shelf. In the evening, she will switch off the lamp. And in the morning, she will switch it on again.
Slowly, I withdrew my hand from the bag. The notebook remained inside, but my thought had been written. One last time, I touched the smooth glass with my fingertips, where, for a moment, my reflection merged with the green glow behind it. I hoped no one had seen me. I turned towards the street.
Footsteps were approaching over the stone cobbles.
‘Hello. How are you? It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?’
A neighbour passing by had spoken to me. As though we had last seen each other only the week before.
It still is.
Out loud, I said yes.
