The Book Thieves

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.”

— Jeanette Winterson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Book Thieves

 

Vidya kept the bag on the table, the opening facing her.

Nuts and I knew what would happen next, but the suspense of the very first time the same scene played out was still as strong.

We waited. And Vidya is a tease. She started talking about the elections, the possibility of the unmentionable getting elected again, she almost broke the teacup when she slammed it down. Then she was wondering if we should go to Furiosa over the weekend.

I have had enough. Of the three, I am known for being impatient. I blurted out “OK, show us. What is it this time?”

Vidya was only waiting for this moment. “I thought you would never ask” she smiled. She kept her cup down a second time, brought the bag closer to her and opened the zip, and stuck her hand inside.

“Ta-da”

Perfectly timing her “ta-da” with a grand flourish, she brought out a copy of

“Point Counter Point” By Aldous Huxley!

It was ancient, to say the least. The pages had not just yellowed, they had turned almost brown. They were actually brittle. It was one of those older copies where the owner had it bound in such a way that the book cover was not seen. It had a generic red pattern cardboard bound look.

A reader who pays attention to detail must have noticed that the owner of the book was mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Well done.

Because the book belonged to none of us.

Till now!

Now it is our property. Like so many books before this.

It started innocuously. The three of us had many things in common but none stronger than our love for books. We devoured them. We could never have enough books. Each one of us individually had a huge collection. Put together, the whole collection can put a local library to shame. We grew up together. And at some point in our adult life, we had reached an agreement by which we ended up not buying what the other had bought or intended to buy. As our statistics professor used to say our collections soon became mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.

Money was not a problem. We could buy all the books we wanted. We wanted excitement and thus started our habit of stealing books.

“You covet what you see,” said Hannibal Lecter to Agent Starling. Thus our acquaintances became our victims. It was actually simple. We just needed to be sure that we could be in someone’s living room for a brief period, unobserved.

And we needed a bag.

It started with picking what was available. Then our tastes improved. We started looking for specific books. Then specific editions. Then rare ones.

We never stole from bookshops! We have our own principles.

Relieving a wealthy individual of a single book (or few books, as some of our victims were repeat clients – it was their fault - possessing so many books and leaving them about so carelessly) was not seen as a crime.

At least not in our books!

Wow! That was clever, right?

The rest of the chai session was spent discussing the details. How it transpired? What exactly happened? Were there any close calls? Did her i-watch send an alert “unusual heart rate”?

Every Friday we met for this session at our usual joint. Not any chains that dished out undrinkable concoctions camouflaged as coffee and tea. This old joint run by an ageing Parsi couple served some of the best bun maska and tea.

Inspired by Richard Osman, we christened ourselves The Friday Book Club.

Over cups of tea, we targeted our next adventure and chose the victim from a list of probable. We increased the stake by narrowing down the genre, the author, or even down to a specific book by name.

Stealing a Ulysses was never fun; be frank, the owner is not even going to realize it was gone. Or actually, be thankful as he/she can now live without the guilt every time they finish one book and must choose another.

On the other hand, grabbing popular books was risky. Anyone will notice a missing TinTin, Asterix, or a Phantom.

It is also not possible to escape from those one-book authors like Harper Lee (I know I know – you will all say she wrote a second book; which she should not have. So, for us at TFBC, she is a one-book author) or James Agee.

It is in the established order of things that a good thing does not last long. As a matter of fact, they can, provided greed does not overcome common sense. But greed is greed, because, over centuries it has encouraged sensible people to act insensibly. We should have stayed with one book a week per person and enjoyed the general sense of adrenalin rush that accompanied every snatch. Instead of aiming for the most obvious.

Henri moved into our neighborhood; on a Friday! He arrived on a sunny Friday, unaccompanied by any family. He arrived first and a truck arrived the next day. Nuts could watch the arrival of the truck and the unloading from her third-floor window. What caught her eye was the unmistakable cartons that could only be books. She took a picture on her phone and enlarged it to see the labels; and any doubts she had, vanished.

The cartons themselves may not have been conclusive but the labels were dead giveaways.

“Classics”, “Hardbound”, and “Rare” – these were enough.

“We have a new fish” a message arrived on our group chat.

“Elaborate,” said I.

A photo landed.

A whistle emoji arrived from Vidya.

I hearted the photograph.

That afternoon when I presented my recent acquisition, a dog-eared copy of “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding, the usual excitement and the urge to push for details went missing. The new entrant and the unspeakable riches that he potentially owes distracted us from basking on any quotidian achievements. The entire afternoon was dedicated to this new man ( Henri – as we would soon learn) and his treasures.

Nuts moved in quickly, as she usually does. She befriended Henri. All she needed to do was to seat herself on one of the benches along the walking track with a copy of Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-Yong. If that would not pique the interest of a stranger none of us know what else could. Henri paused on his walk and introduced himself

“Hi. I am Henri. I moved in recently. I gather that you want to introduce yourself to me in that subtle way and here I am conceding that I have noticed what you wanted me to notice”

It is not often one finds Nuts struggling with what to say. This was one such moment. To her full credit, she did recover quickly (quicker than either Vidya or I would have) and replied

“Thank heavens! I was getting worried if I was too subtle”

This quick exchange was a decent start. After a few more such “chance” encounters, it did not take long for them to visit each other and discuss books and their favorite authors and movies. Introverts are often misunderstood. People expect them to be reticent all the time. You can’t see a more social person than an introvert in the right company.

“He has the “Les Diners De Gala”. What a gorgeous copy! It has a golden cover and the pages are fine quality paper and the illustrations are as good as we expect them to be” exclaimed Nuts when we met a few weeks later. Our weekly meetings continued, but all we could discuss was the progress or lack thereof in reference to Henri.

Les Diners De Gala is a clear example of how irrationally an obsessed mind works. There is nothing we could do with that book. There is not one recipe that will work. Forget a recipe working, we will not even be able to source all the ingredients. It will be at best a trophy book. And the way we have been acquiring books recently, it would be impossible to display what we have. Still, we needed it. Even though his collection was exquisite as well as enormous, Nuts concluded that if we were going to take possession of one book from his collection, this would be it. I opened Google in the meantime and keyed in “Images from Les Diners De Gala”. What came up was a series of images that looked as if we were looking at the table spread of Hannibal Lecter.

But the inimitable talent of Dali was visible. It can be more of a Dali book than a cookbook by Dali.

Henri fitted the introvert book lover description perfectly. We had no idea where he worked, or what he did for a living. He was single. But a good dog parent. Nuts often ran into him on the morning walks when he was walking Rocky. If Henri was the perfect introvert, then Rocky was the exact opposite. He soon became the children’s favorite (Rocky, not Henri). In his small closed world, there were few friends and fewer still who could visit his home. Nuts broke that barrier thanks to their common interest in books, music, and movies.

Each week we met, Nuts had more information about the books in Henri’s possession. We were often tempted to change our target as more interesting books cropped up. There was a first edition of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, an autographed copy of “The Blue Umbrella”, a picture book of “The Sapiens” in two volumes but we resisted all our temptations and stayed focused on our one prize catch. Unfortunately, it was a heavy tome. Not something that you can slip into your bag and walk away. And Nuts made sure that she never showed any interest in that particular book.

Single-minded obsession makes you less efficient in your other activities. Nuts stopped contributing to our “special collection”. Vidya and I continued to chip in with what we could “lay our hands on”. Our collection became richer with a “Black and White Asterix”, a German Graphic Novel of “The Moby Dick” among other less notable additions.

None of us can read German.

When you want something really bad, the universe conspires to make it happen. Right?

Henri called Nuts on a Thursday evening and asked if she could come to Lilavati Hospital. Henri was getting down from the BEST bus and a rash two-wheeler driver (is there another kind?) rode past him, actually whizzed past him, and knocked him hard on his elbow. The pain was excruciating. Henri lost his balance and fell on the side of the bus, which had started to move. This knocked him back onto the pavement causing him an ugly bump on his head. The last things that Henri noticed from his prone position were part of the license plate and that he/she was wearing a helmet! The driver did not care for the pedestrians but took the safety of self seriously. The CT scan for the bump on the head did not reveal anything to worry about but the elbow was sore. The doctor put him in a cast and decided to keep him under observation for 24 hours. Henri called Nuts as he needed someone to take Rocky out for a walk. Rocky needed to be taken care of for a few days; Henri said a few days as he was certain that the doctors would not discharge him with a weekend coming up and he was getting resigned to accepting the fact that he would be an in-patient over the weekend.

This was not a problem. Nuts loved dogs more than people, as a rule. Taking care of Rocky for a day or a few days was not a problem at all. Henri did not have to spend the weekend at the hospital as he feared. He was discharged on that Friday afternoon. Nuts offered to walk Rocky even after he returned but Henri refused. Henri recovered well even though the hand was stiff for a week even after the cast was removed. Rocky hardly registered the change of his caretaker for 24 hours. Nuts was already a familiar face.

It was one of those rare Fridays that we did not meet. Nuts called in to say that she would not be able to make it and we did not meet.

The Friday after that, we assembled as usual and Nuts brought an unusually big bag. The whole Henri episode was not known to us as Nuts wanted to preserve it for her big moment.

“Aylaaaaaaaa” exclaimed the usually quiet Vidya.

“You can’t be serious” I mumbled and placed the tea cup on the table as it was evident that I was about to spill the tea from all the excitement.

There on the table was “Les Diners de Gala” glowing almost like an ingot of gold in the bright sunshine. Nuts sat back, arms crossed with a smug expression of satisfaction on her face. This was the most prized possession of ours, without a trace of doubt. We peaked. We could stop our activities immediately. Nothing in the coming days can ever match or exceed this task. The book was everything we expected it to be; and more. For the first time, we felt a slight remorse for the original owner of this book. It was brief and we were soon involved in marveling at the book. The drawings were of a kind that only Dali could have conceived. Even Dali must have been as high as a kite to have created something like this. It was stunning. It was brilliant.

Henri must have noticed the missing volume. A book like this must be a prized possession in anyone’s collection. He never mentioned it to Nuts.

It appeared as if Henri came to our town to only ensure that we ended up with this book. Just before what would have been his first anniversary in the new town, he left. All his stuff was packed again and Nuts met him on the day he was leaving.

“I will miss Rocky,” said Nuts.

Henri smiled at the honesty the utterance carried. Nuts gave him the gift that she gave to all the people she cared for. An illustrated tabletop version of The Little Prince. Henri was moved.

“It is a crime to have less than 3 copies of The Little Prince” smiled Nuts.

Thus Henri left the town. Bruised by a typical two-wheeler rider and poorer by a book.

 

It takes a lot to depress Nuts. It was hence strange for Vidya and I to see a sad-faced Nuts when we assembled for our usual meeting of TFBC.

“Why such a long face?”

In reply, Nuts took a small box and left it on the table.

“This was delivered this morning,” said Nuts through gritted teeth.

Inside the box were two bottles. The transparent preservative liquid made the contents clearly visible.

Snails and Frog Legs.

There was a handwritten note that said

"Recipe #56 and #57 - Page 146"