Old Litkinov

Fiction

I wrote this short story at the end of December. I have already posted it, buried at the end of a collection of mini fiction which was for paid subscribers only but I feel, with hindsight, it might deserve a page of its own. I’ve got some more short fiction coming for paid subscribers in a few days and - who knows - maybe this might tempt two or three people to sign up for that. Whatever the case, upon rereading it, I felt a little better about it than when I originally wrote it, and couldn’t find a reasonable argument for not sharing it with everyone…

Old Litkinov owned the bookshop and, back when I was a poor student, I would sometimes sell books to him that I had stolen from delivery trucks, supermarkets and the bedrooms of people who’d verbally undermined me. Ever-perceptive, Litkinov surely knew what was going on and when I arrived with my weekly rucksack full of paperbacks he never questioned my sources. An eccentric character, misunderstood by many, he was the natural ally of those trying to screw the system and carve out a living on the margins of society. The shop had been there since before forever and I heard from acquaintances that there had been other, even older Old Litkinovs in charge of it prior to Old Litkinov. On the loftiest of the building’s four storeys was a storage room with a sagging floor and two old triple-decker beds, which the latest Old Litkinov had generously opened as a bunkhouse for passing bohemians and bookworms in the grip of penury. Always he would put a crucial opening question to his potential lodgers, “Do you write poetry?” If the answer was yes, they were turned away without mercy.

The neighbourhood was a hotbed of poets in those days and, although my antipathy to verse was nothing like as prickly as Litkinov’s, I have to admit that I found most of these individuals grating, arrogant and pretentious. All the poets were constantly hosting workshops from which they made much more money than their actual poetry, and this only led to even more poets hosting even more workshops to support their unsuccessful poetry, and the character of the city was visibly taking a turn for the worse as a result. In a characteristically counterintuitive gesture, Litkinov would often keep the shop open late into the evening to host open mic poetry nights. These he would usually sabotage by setting fire to his hair with a candle or playing Bartok’s Concerto For Orchestra at such a volume that no other sound in the room could be heard.

“There’s a position opened up, and I wondered if it might be of some interest to you,” Old Litkinov said to me when I’d been visiting the shop for six months or so. As he spoke, he did not lift his eyes from the thick Algerian novel he was reading. “It’s not a lot, maybe 20 hours a week, and the pay’s nothing to send a postcard home about.” The previous week I’d dropped out of university after being accused of placing savoy cabbages on the seats of the royal lecture theatre prior to the visit of a celebrated neuroscientist, and now it was December, the month of daytime nights where you feel like the dark is closing in on you from both ends of the tunnel, and you fear, counter to what experience has told you, that the days will never again expand. I remember, as Litkinov spoke, there was a street lamp flickering directly outside the shop and watching it I was struck by the sensation that I was looking at my life’s one final faltering bit of electricity. “Sign me up,” I said.

I had never seen anyone else working in the shop with Old Litkinov and my assumption was that the truth was less that a position had “opened up” and more that he had taken pity on me. I had a dim view of myself back then - a thief, girlfriendless, excommunicated from my own family - but also possessed a strange, deep inner confidence that I would one day do something hugely important with my life: more important certainly than working in a moderately successful secondhand bookshop. However, the years ticked by, my hours and responsibilities increased, and I realised, to my surprise, that I was not the unhappy young cloud of a man I had once been. I was rarely rushed off my feet, had plenty of time for reading, and the bookshop provided a refuge from the increasingly cacophonous outside world, if you ignored the times I heard Litkinov on the front desk, berating a customer for purchasing a collection of writing by Ted Hughes, Carol Ann Duffy or Philip Larkin. The space I rented at the top of the shop - what had been the lodgings for Litkinov’s itinerant bohemians, before too many poets tried to finagle and lie their way into it - was not large but it was comfortable, and I had been permitted to decorate it to my tastes, without censorship on the part of my landlord slash employer. The only thing it lacked was perhaps a few extra books but I could always find plenty of those downstairs.

As time went on, and I became entrusted with handling more important parts of the the shop’s infrastructure - for example, Litkinov, who despised every bank or building society employee he had ever met, now left it to me to count the day’s takings, subtract from them what was needed for that week’s groceries then place the remainder under a loose floorboard in the Literary Criticism section - I obviously sometimes thought about Litkinov’s advance age and how that related to the future of the business. His birthdays went by: 97, 104, 111, 118 (Litkinov preferred to age in sevens), but he continued, undaunted, his mind as sharp as ever. He never spoke of any living relatives and I was aware of his growing affection for me, especially via the way he would sometimes grasp my chin in both hands and pass on homespun wisdom to such as “A good table is worth three bad chairs” or “Drink six beers a day but never a drop more and your life will never be be a dry or flooded river.” I didn’t want to make assumptions, but I knew how important the shop was to him, and how much he’d hate it to fall into the hands of a property developer or a chain burrito outlet. Meanwhile, I was not getting any younger myself, and had no family inheritance, savings or pension to fall back on. Spending your days with a person significantly older than you can give you an unrealistic sense of your own youth hence it was with surprise that, around the time of Litkinov’s 125th birthday, I looked into the mirror of the bathroom we shared and realised that my hair was completely grey. Litkinov’s, meanwhile, was now extraordinarily thin, consisting of no more than seven or eight strands in total. This had sapped some of the drama from those moments when he chose to disrupt poetry readings by setting fire to it.

Around that time a surprising development occurred: Litkinov took a wife, by the name of Issy. He told me he had met her in the marketplace while queuing at the Polish stall for the final cured sausage of the day, whose future care Litkinov chivalrously conceded to Issy. My initial reaction was that the pair were a curious match, due to the 104 year age difference and, perhaps more pointedly, because of the stark contrast between Litkinov’s interest in 18th Century French History and Issy’s interest in lip filler. But I am not one to judge and could not deny there was something deeply touching about witnessing Litkinov lecturing Issy, say, about how the lavish spending of Marie Antoinette had contributed to the French financial crisis of the 1770s, and Issy replying, “Llll-ove that for her. Hashtag girl boss.” Litkinov was still the same man in many ways: he continued to smell like an attractive European city and eat bananas in the same apprehensive way he always had, but there was a noticeable new weightlessness to him, too. Soon, the happy couple were introducing one another to their respective families: Litkinov making a rare trip out to the suburbs to enjoy a roast with Issy’s parents and then showing Issy a photograph of his own mother dressed up for an important social occasion during the 1920s, to which Issy replied with emphatic approval, “Oh, for REAL. Skinny queen.” I had never seen Litkinov even close to being in love before and, even though I missed having him all to myself, it was impossible to begrudge the couple their happiness. So when, only a month after their honeymoon, Litkinov announced that he would be leaving the bookshop to start a new business with his bride, I wished him the best.

“So… a nail salon,” I said. “That sounds like fun.”

“Nail salon and fitness tattoo spa, I think you’ll find,” said Issy. “It’s a total vibe.”

“Of course, this also means that the bookshop will need a new owner,” said Litkinov. “And I think I know just the individual.”

“I’m going to guess you’re talking about Craig from the flats over on Shepherd Avenue,” I said. “He’s been looking so down and lost since he lost his job as Deputy Manager of Waterstones.”

“No, you, you idiot. It’s all yours.”

So that’s how it happened, the way I became, through no real ambition or special ability of my own, the manager of a secondhand bookshop. To be honest, little fundamentally altered after I took over. What was especially peculiar about this ambience of immutability was that when customers came in, they did not seem to notice the change of management. “Good morning, Litkinov, my man,” they would say to me. “Do you have anything by Angela Carter with a red cover?” or “I’m looking for another book on 13th Century Spanish moths that’s just as informative as the one you sold me last year” I decided it was too much hassle to correct them. And when I catch sight of my reflection, I can see the root of their mistake: perhaps all those years with my mentor rubbed off on me in a physical way, as well as a psychic one. The sign above the door is still the same: it says Litkinov Used Books, just as it has done forever. What would be the point of replacing it? That would only serve to confuse valued customers. I think the world changes so fast nowadays, some people just want a solid rock they can cling to, as the sea rages all around them. My job has become to maintain that rock, and I suspect I will end my days contentedly doing just that.

I never did see the real Litkinov again. But one day, a couple of months into my life as bookshop owner, feeling a tiny bit lonely, I went to visit him at the adress he’d given me for his new business venture. But when I got there it was just fields, as far as the eye could see. I don’t know what happened but I trust that, wherever he is, he is getting by just fine. In fact, when I stare in the mirror at night, into the face that was once his, I can go further than that: I can say, categorically, that I know it.

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