Shakespeare and Company

‘Reading room,’ the sign said, pointing up the stairs. In all the visits here over the years, I realised I’d never been up there. I started up, then turned back: two people were descending. There was only room for one-way traffic. OK, off I go, and oh, there are beautiful words that escort you up, painted lovingly onto each step as follows:

I wish

I could show you

when you are

lonely or

in darkness

the Astonishing

Light

of your own

Being.

I bought a postcard from the bookshop last week, with these beautiful words from Hafiz on it, for a friend in darkness. Only, I hadn’t appreciated it was a photo of this staircase. In the postcard, a man is sitting at the top of the stairs, reading. His folded legs obscure the writer’s name.

Downstairs, the overall feeling is one of levity. Yes, there are little pockets of reverence everywhere. For some, this bookshop is part of a pilgrimage, following a favoured author’s journey, or it provides sustenance or solace for the would-be writer or the lonely expat living here and craving connection – for some, even, it’s a reason to be in Paris. And yet, while the depth of the meaning of the shop to browsers is present, it’s tempered by the breeze that sometimes finds its way through the two open doors. There is also regular movement of people, out and in, so even the teeniest of nooks receives a refreshing shuffle.

Upstairs, it’s an entirely different matter. Once my eyes left Hafiz, I stepped into a thick, enveloping wad of energy. The density of it planted my feet to the floor for several moments before I remembered to breathe in. Then I exhaled with the lungs of a meditative yogi. With that out-breath, I unshackled myself from this not uncomfortable and yet certainly enforced embrace.

I stepped out and over to the first room on the right. In my periphery was an underfed yet plentifully nourished young man reading in the farthest, darkest corner. I longed to know the book he’d secreted himself away with, but kept my eyes averted.

The photographs on the walls captivated me as much as the books, but I couldn’t tell you a single title or name a face from those photographs. It was as though all that my eyes saw dissolved from my mind as I slowly made my way through the cave-like spaces. Was that really a piano? Could a grown human really fit into that chair before the typewriter?

Pulled towards the sole source of light and air like a tree towards the sun, I made my way to the front room, the window flung open over rue de la Bûcherie, drawing the eye to Notre Dame Cathedral, the spring green treetops and the big blue sky above us all. The open bouquinistes’ wares were almost visible from where I briefly stood over a young woman’s shoulder. She was seated at the desk under the windowsill.

She was one of a group of three young women in the room. They made no sign of noticing I’d entered. Like the spindly young man I’d just left, they were seeking a private moment. They spoke in hushed tones, pausing frequently; they turned in silent unison towards the light.

Behind me was a bench that ran along one of the walls. Wooden, it was topped with a thin flat cushion the same rectangular shape as the bench. A conventional cushion lay crumpled at the top. It took the position of a pillow on a bed, and I thought of that scene in Before Sunset when Jesse tells Céline that he slept up here the night before. I imagined Ethan Hawke’s long body attempting to find a restful enough position to sleep on that thing. Would his legs or feet have to dangle off the edge even if his knees were tucked in? The bench didn’t appear to be as long even as a single bed.

Then all I could think about was dust. There had to be millions of dust mites in those cushions, but also in this room, in the whole bookshop. The romance of it all was quickly draining away. I turned to go, to gather it up again. I sneezed, paused to retrieve my handkerchief. Stepped over to another bookcase, noticed a heating device discreetly hidden by a squat antique-looking screen, took in the piano again. I wished I had something to play, Debussy, perhaps. Something gentle and soft that would enhance rather than disrupt, weaving through all the intermingling thoughts and ideas, and the giving of thanks going on all around me.

I said my goodbyes, carved my way back through that dense ball of energy at the top of the stairs, and descended. Shoulders back, I took in the shop afresh, the downstairs of this ground, hallowed to so many. I almost bumped into a woman turning from a shelf to share a title with her mother, who was browsing the books on the table on the other side of the narrow thoroughfare. She let me pass, I nodded to the keeper of the queue, and left the shop, stepping out from its shadow and into the afternoon sunlight.