Read Online Firmin by Sam Savage - Free Book Online

the old wood-paneled Buick wagon would be so weighed down with books that when he backed up to the shop door the bumper would scrape on the sidewalk. Opening the rear gate, he would carry them inside by the armful and stack them next to his desk in waist-high piles and during the days that followed open them one by one and pencil a price on the inside. I hated that part of the business. I hated most of all reading the inscriptions over his shoulder: ‘For my darling Peter on our fiftieth wedding anniversary’ (in The Ruba’iya’t of Omar Khayya’m ), ‘This book was given me by dear dead Violet Swain when we were both seventeen’ (in The Catcher in the Rye ), ‘To Mary, may it bring her solace’ (in John Donne’s Sermons ), ‘ Just to remind you of our fortnight of Italian heaven’ (in Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice ), ‘Madness is only misunderstood genius - pray for me’ (in Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience ), ‘I live, I die; I have lived, I am dead; I shall die, I will live’ (in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling ). Dozens of these in every carload. It was obscene. They should have buried the books with their owners, like the Egyptians, just so people couldn’t paw over them afterward give them something to read on the long ride through eternity.
     
    Most books got priced at less than a dollar, though Norman had an eye for real value too, and - what with the bumps above his ears - a gift for secrecy. When he spotted a truly valuable book at one of those estate sales, he kept it up his sleeve until he had bought it for a song. He might pay a nickel for a book and then turn around, stick it in a glass-fronted case, and sell it for a thousand dollars the next day. When the collectors came in to see what he had, they put on white cotton gloves before touching anything in the case. And some of these were books that Norman had been schlepping around in his station wagon a few days before. But don’t tell that to the collectors! They sat there as solemn as Popes with their white gloves on, holding a book as gently as if it were a newborn baby, and talked about provenance, first printings, autographs, and the great Rosenbach. Some of these people knew a lot about the history of books, but none of them knew as much as Norman, and they could never put anything over on him. He was amazing. I came to believe that he knew everything. In my mind I had long since taken down the sign that labeled him as merely the Owner of the Desk, and next to his name I had put up two new signs: THE SWORDSMAN and THE BEARER OF THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE. It was an easy step, via the image of the key, from there to St. Peter. And that was how the image of Norman Shine got mixed up in my mind with the idea of sainthood.
     
    There was another interesting aspect of the book business, one that brought Norman closer to the hidden projectionist at the Rialto. You see, besides the good used books on the shelves and the very used books in the basement and the rare books in the glass-fronted cabinets, there were also books in the old iron safe in front of the Rathole. These were the banned books, white-covered paperbacks published by Olympia Press and Obelisk Press and smuggled in from Paris. They had titles like Tropic of Cancer, Our Lady of the Flowers, The Ginger Man, Naked Lunch, My Life and Loves . The customers for these books spoke the names in whispers. If Norman knew the customer, or after sizing him up (they were all men) decided to trust him, off would come the Friar Tuck disguise: Norman’s round eyes would narrow, his little pocketbook mouth would flatten to a hard slit. It was like watching a different movie - here was the secret agent of the French underground handing out forged papers, or perhaps an underworld fence passing stolen diamonds. ‘Just a moment,’ he would say, and he would shoot a quick glance around. Then, crouching in front of the safe so as to hide its contents from view, he would deftly angle the