Page 9 of The Bookshop of Forbidden Books

“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. So you’ve decided to resist, and the best thing you could come up with was slipping me a copy of Delta of Venus? Look, I don’t think you’ll be getting a medal for bravery, but I’ve always wanted to read it, so…”

Mitch didn’t answer, but Mathilde’s childish teasing had finally taken effect: he found her unexpectedly charming. She saw things the same way he did. She shared his contempt for the regime. He decided he could trust her.

“It’s… a little more ambitious than that,” he said. “I’m going to open a secret bookshop.”

Mathilde looked at him with growing admiration. She swallowed slowly, her breathing quickening. She usually didn’t trust her own fits of emotion, but when Mitch told her about the secret room he’d discovered and the work he’d put in to restore it, and when he mentioned, among other things, the sofa he’d reupholstered, all of a sudden the only thing she wanted was to see it, now. Because, for Mathilde, the raison d’être of literature boiled down to one thing: love.

Mitch had a lazy tendency to assume that things – whatever they were – would never go any further. Once again, he was wrong.

Chapter 6

The Music Lesson

Verner taught violin at the conservatory. To make ends meet, he also gave music lessons to elementary school students twice a week. He was a courteous man with a fondness for food, who enjoyed dining alone in restaurants. Married too young, he’d been divorced for years and had no regrets. Sex had always been something of a footnote in his life, and he had no desire to meet another woman; the game of seduction seemed, to him, a phenomenal waste of time. Beneath his cool exterior, however, he was an altogether more complex man than he let on. Brahms brought tears to his eyes, which was precisely why he avoided playing his music for students – none of whom would have guessed that, every Saturday afternoon, their teacher took an hour-long train to a tango class.

Verner had loved the tango in secret since his married days. He’d never dared tell his wife, who’d eventually begun to suspect that he was sneaking off every week to his mistress. Once, she’d followed him to the station, boarded his train, and sat in the carriage behind his, so she could keep an eye on him through the window of the door separating the cars. When he got off, she’d followed him. Verner had noticed her some time ago, but had found her behaviour more reproachable than anything she might’ve accused him of.

They never did confront each other. But when Madame Verner saw her husband dancing the tango, holding and dipping a man twice his size, she was seized with intense jealousy – made all the more irrational by the fact that she’d fallen out of love with her husband years ago. As Romain Gary once wrote, you wouldn’t believe how many drops of water a vase can hold before it overflows. Vexed, Madame Verner had turned round and left. When Verner got home, he’d found a suitcase waiting for him in the foyer, neatly packed with all his things.

Verner liked to spend the two-hour train journey each Saturday reading, and his choices were as complex as he was. Ever curious, he’d developed – if not quite a friendship – a relationship of mutual respect and warm rapport with the fellow who ran the bookshop near the station.

Mitch hadn’t forgotten the music teacher’s look of disappointment when he’d been unable to fill his order. Of Mice and Men had recently been added to the banned books list, due to its ‘lewd and vulgar dialogue’. Verner had not taken the news well: he’d erupted, calling the censors ignorant fools, bigots and – for good measure – shit-eaters. So when the music teacher showed up at the bookshop one Saturday morning shortly before his train was due to depart, Mitch gave serious thought to his ‘candidacy’. As a teacher, Verner was paid by the state, which made his involvement a potential risk. But Mitch didn’t want to let himself be deterred by preconceived notions. Besides, after the law came into effect forbidding the children of undocumented immigrants from attending school, a number of teachers had falsified their enrolment records to keep those students in class, while others had hidden them during immigration raids. And Verner struck Mitch as very much that type.

As Verner browsed a table display, Mitch gave a loud, deliberate cough – just enough to get his attention. One more, and the music teacher hastened over.

“Frog in your throat? I have some cough drops, if you want one,” he offered.

“Mouse under the counter,” Mitch answered, like some Cold War spy speaking in code.

“Yes, that’s becoming more and more of a problem, isn’t it,” Verner agreed indignantly. “What can you expect, with garbage only being collected three times a week? They keep telling us how great the economy’s doing, how terrible things are across the border, but somehow ‘economy’ has come to mean tightening our own belts.”

“I didn’t mean that kind of mouse.” Mitch kept his voice low.

“You’re acting weird this morning,” Verner commented. “What kind of mouse are we talking about then?”

Mitch looked pointedly down. For a split second, Verner thought he might be about to reach for his fly – but quickly dismissed the idea. Mitch had always struck him as quite sane. He leaned further over the counter to see what the bookseller was getting at, and spotted the Steinbeck cover. He shot Mitch a stern look.

“Don’t tell me you’re running a black market. I’d be terribly disappointed.”

“No, Monsieur Verner. And I don’t intend to sell this to you.”

“Ah. Now you’re haggling to drive the price up. I see.”

“This isn’t about money. I’ve been threatened with administrative closure.”

“Then why this charade if you can’t sell it to me anyway?”

Just then, a customer pushed open the front door. Mitch leaned in quickly toward Verner.

“The law doesn’t say anything against renting,” he whispered. “See what I’m getting at?”

The music teacher considered this very carefully, sensing that he was being put to some sort of test. He was older than Mitch – though not as much as he believed – but then, Verner had felt like an old man since he was a teenager. Maybe that was why Mitch had come to him, he thought. There was something in the bookseller’s voice, a certain need for approval. Feeling suddenly invested with authority, Verner waved a hand toward the door, as if to say: get rid of the intruder. This new business between them was far more important.

The ‘intruder’ in question was Madame Bergol, a regular with a fondness for steamy romances. She wasn’t a great customer, coming in every day to read a single chapter before leaving empty-handed. She was also nearly deaf. To reassure Verner, Mitch waited until she’d found her latest read and picked up where she’d left off the previous evening, before calling loudly:

“Madame Bergol! Feel like reading us a hot sex scene?”

She didn’t even look up.