He's walking through the rain, water pools in the gutters, streetlamps glisten on the street.
Turn right, up a flight of steps, the P from the bookstore lit with a flickering yellow light, the P, if you look close, wrought into the shape of a man tied, his liver being pecked by a eagle, a fitting motif for the Prometheus Press.
There is no bookstore better than this.
It is open. Sometimes late, often not at all and you're left in the alley, peering in through windows at the towering silhouettes of shelves of books, a labyrinth, a maze, the hours posted, they're no more than a rough guideline, an ideal, in practice it's unpredictable, the proprietor, he's out looking at or buying books himself, or on a day off, or perhaps organizing or pricing, whatever booksellers do when they're not open.
Inside, well, let me take you inside. The sections - there are sections, roughly, if you wander around you will find the order, there's history, and today those shelves are marked with an old set of scales and weights from the gold rush - from world history - books on Assyria, clay cuneiform tablets reassembled, photographed, drawn, with translation, Enheduanna, Shuruppak, from here to Africa, European, the comparatively recent Herodotus, and these at one end flow towards the more local history, things of relevance to where you are living now, and at the other into anthropology, the oral traditions, cultures and customs of others, then into mythology, religion, fairy and folk tales of the world...
You pick your way among the shelves. They are full, books are piled in towers at their foot, you need to pull them away to look at the books behind, to pull out a book and then discover behind it an entire new hidden row...
It would seem you could not, in an afternoon or a weekend, even just lightly scan the smallest portions of the titles available.
There is literature, roughly classed, the foreign and translated authors on one wall, the rest, the more familiar, opposite, I say literature although it might be more often called "fiction" - but this proprietor, his books are curated, there seems to be a discrimination in the books he acquires, values, those he doesn't end up on the free table outside.
And discriminating indeed. First editions, a tinted edition of Vesalius's "De humani corporis fabrica libri septem", an illustrated Irish manuscript, bound, in vivid colors, under glass and there is, at this point, no asking the price, works on architecture - the books, not just prints, many booksellers would buy them up, frame each print separately, triple, quadruple their profits, no - this proprietor, he loves his books. There are old illustrated encyclopedia, text delicately cut away to reveal the juxtaposition of 100 different century-old technical visions of the future, perfect for the wall, there is a large antique globe, for a time an antique reliquary bookended the Christianity shelves, within? I haven't asked, only know that it gathered such a following he sold it, giant ivory bound bibles, first editions of remarkable poets, there is - where the counter should be if ever it was clear of books, stacks of beautifully tooled leather notebooks, the finest of fountain pens, inkwells, if - if - you should leave here and still have an appetite to write.
Few do. Most are here to find something to read, there is always something, and if you should have no luck it speaks to your humor, not the selection.
There is music. It doesn't intrude, it's played faintly and far away, there is a gramophone somewhere here, you don't notice it until - suddenly - you do. Maybe something foreign, a peculiar and haunting anthropologists recording of such and such a tribe, or perhaps a favorite libretto, even...
Stop, admire the curios. It is a museum of sorts, and the pieces, they come and go. They have no price, merely they await a "reasonable" offer, then disappear and are replaced...
An antique chess set, elaborately carved ivory or bone pieces. A brass ships portal. A small diorama of stuffed toads dressed in the finest Victorian clothes and wigs having a trial.
The scent, well, old books smell of cut grass and hints of vanilla and their owners lives, each one a little different, this one of wine, this of tobacco, but today - there's another scent in the air...
People, quiet, murmuring with the reverence due a library.
A restless heart, to visit a good used bookstore is to travel both through time and space, the wide world of the imaginations is bound up before you, knowledge, speculation, the innumerable whisperings of people you can understand, the friendship of people who never existed, people of character and intelligence, this alone is the clue. Weigh each book in your hand, know it by title, or author, or reputation, or merely know that it has some merit by virtue of it's being here - and - what was it he was looking for again?