Across the Universe

Ler Devagar is ranked number three in the list of the 5 best bookstores in the city according to The Hidden Secrets of Lisbon. The store has set up shop in the ” hipster-chic LX Factory project, occupying a former warehouse lined with bookshelves”. For those from Toronto, picture the Distillery District; or think of a gentrified section of a small industrial area in your town. The complex boasts of artisan crafts, trendy clothes, and cool restaurants for the discerning tourist.

For me, the bookstore was the attraction, an always satisfying saunter sifting through shelves of soft and hard cover editions, fiction and non-fiction, eyeballing titles and authors, stopping on the ones in English, pulling out the Portuguese translation of a Canadian author. I am not necessarily interested in purchasing any more. I own the Dutch version of The Sisters Brothers by Patrick De Witt. It languishes on my shelves along with other foreign language editions,  unread, unable to sell, unwanted by anyone else. My interest in a bookstore in another country where English is not the official language, is both for curiosity and entertainment. I hope to discover which authors from Canada, aside from Margaret Atwood, are popular in other cultures .

Olga and I wandered into different sections. After a tour of the records and posters on the second level, I meandered down the stairs, pausing in front of tables, noting a larger number of English language books than we viewed in Portugal’s second oldest bookstore, Livraria Ferin, a few days earlier. Booker Prize nominees were on display, reprinted in soft cover by Bloomsbury Press, all with a 2024 shortlist label on a redesigned cover. James by Percival Everett, Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner and then Held by Anne Michaels. I had forgotten about Held with its Booker Prize honour and its capture of the 2024 Giller Prize. I had delayed my purchase when it was nominated and could only find a third printing making for an easy decision to forego adding it to my incomplete collection of Anne Michaels’ other works. For some unknown reason I was compelled to pick up the book and randomly opened it to page 61 :

There are so many ways the dead show us they are with us. Sometimes they stay deliberately absent, in order to prove themselves by returning. Sometimes they stay close and then leave in order to prove they were with us. Sometimes they bring a stag to a graveyard, a cardinal to a fence, a song on the wireless as soon as you turn it on. Sometimes they bring a snowfall.

Wow. I thought immediately of my uncle, Fr. Kees de Cock, who I have been researching. Have I been missing clues along the journey or has the amount of time been a message itself? Was attending the funeral in Oosterbeek part of his showing? Or maybe this paragraph is about my mother, the cardinal being her favourite bird, engraved on her headstone. Olga would often comment that Mom was visiting every time one flew into the trees; and when a robin lands in our yard, she would say hello to Tato, her father. Whatever the sign, I wanted to share the passage with Olga.

“Oh my gosh” she said. “Now I have to show you another book which caught my attention. Over here. I was browsing when I saw this one. I picked it up for the title, The Soul Catchers, and because it is the translated version of a rediscovered Japanese classic by Naoko Higashi. Here. Read the inside cover”

What if you could come back after death to watch over your loved one, installing yourself in a treasured mug, for example, or perhaps in your mother’s hearing aid, a diary, or even a climbing frame, to feel the clambering limbs of your beloved sister. Eleven recently deceased protagonists find themselves floating in the afterlife, where a nameless ghost offers them a joyous reunion with their loved ones. But not as you would expect.

“I thought about the moment when I picked up embroidery again”, continued Olga, “sitting in the sofa chair, with my Ukrainian cross stitch pillow and then the bookmark. I could feel Tante Toos sitting in the blue chair across from me, with a smile of approval that I was working on those pieces to share with family, exactly as she had done her entire life.

You need to buy both books.”

I knew it as well and thought the same. Somewhere from across the universe, a message was being sent. I don’t understand, I don’t, at least not yet. Perhaps the reason will become clear at some point; maybe there will be another sign.

“You need to read them both. You need to write about it.”

I will.

Buoyed by the synchronicity of our discoveries, I clutched the two works under my arm and continued to browse. The big, bold letters spelling out Ben Okri called me to his latest book, Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Brokenhearted. He is a Nigerian born, British poet and novelist, winner of the 1991 Booker Prize. I had read the follow-up work, Astonishing the Gods, with its profound passages of creativity and love and reaching that highest version of ourselves. I picked up Madame Sosotris and turned to the last lines on the last page:

‘Nothing happens that is not what we want, or what we need, or what we deserve.’
‘There is no such thing as chance.’