You'll have to speak up for Owen
Walking back to the car I came across an elderly man laying books on a blanket on the corner of Brunswick St. A few creative types hovered. The man would pick a book from his wheelie walker, consider it carefully categorising it in his mind, then take an age to shuffle to the right spot on the mat and crank his rickety knees down to position it just so. This strained choreography continued agonisingly. His efforts seemed risky with the air thick and rain threatening. Each book, one at a time.
As I closed in a musty scent reached me, old books. The man was thin and a tattered suit hung from him. His pants were loose around his disintegrating waist, belted to the extent that the fabric buckled, overlapping the way it does when men lose strength, muscle and beer belly. Pants reminiscent of a livelier self. His fly wasn’t done up, though I’m not sure that this was a wardrobe malfunction, rather I just don’t think these pants did that anymore.
The skin on his face seemed a little alive; lumps and ravines morphing to their own agenda. His chin, forehead and nose thick as an elephant’s hide, yet only a veil of translucent skin held in his cheekbones.
He wasn’t talking to anyone, just going about his cataloguing.
He pulled out a range of books and genres one by one. Edgar Allen Poe’s poetry, Brecht’s philosophy, Albert Camus in French, Calavino in Italian, were woven in amongst Shakespeare, Murakami, Orhan Pamuk, Primo Levi, Daphne De Maurier and physics guides. Cantilevering myself over the mat I surveyed this mini library of his mind.
I picked up a book almost guiltily as I knew he’d have to find just the right substitute for the gap I’d left. Albert Camus – time revive my French. There wasn’t a lot of chatter and it was hard to navigate his purchasing system. I asked whether the books were for sale. Nothing. He just kept walking. I tried a woman nearby sitting on a bench flicking through a guide to Da Vinci’s art confidently. She responded matter-of-factly,
‘Yep, prices on the inside of the cover - but Owen is deaf – you’ll need to speak up!’
I took Camus back to Owen and positioned myself squarely in his path; between wheelie walker and mat.
I showed him the five dollars of coinage I’d scraped from the bottom of my bag and pointed to the grey lead $5 in the cover, offering to buy it. His brow gathered at its centre.
‘It’s in French!’ he was quick to point out. I explained with exaggerated nods of my head that I was aware and keen to practice. He flicked his head to the side unconvinced, but took my dollars.
After our odd transaction I hung about a little longer. I had a burning question. These books, all laid out, owned by this man who didn’t converse much, painted some kind of intimate portrait of who he might have been before he became too thin for his pants – so why was he offloading them?
Did he need money? Evidently. Or was he simply happy to cull some of his collection and share some knowledge? Maybe…Or was his health deteriorating like his attire?
When one isn’t properly educated across languages, conversing with someone who is hearing impaired means doing so loudly, insensitively.
It wasn’t a question I could bring myself to ask in the middle of a busy Brunswick St.
As I walked away, I flicked through the Camus I’d purchased and noticed penned English in a neat scrawl sporadically above obscure French. But the translations only lasted a few pages. Maybe Owen didn’t think I’d conquer Camus either.