A Very Special Year (5 page)

Limits were essential, therefore. Every bookseller selected from what they knew and liked. This gave the bookshop its own personality. Then there were orders from customers who asked for certain books they couldn't find among the stock. If this happened frequently, the bookseller would buy copies of the title to have it in stock for when the next customer came asking for it. And that's how a bookshop evolved, like a child that grows up, severing the umbilical cord from its parents and developing its own character, its distinct personality: unpredictable, idiosyncratic and full of surprises. But the more strongly this character is developed, the more strength and empathy it needs to master it and show off its
best. It's like a hot-blooded horse that needs a first-rate rider.

Valerie, however, was not a particularly good rider. To tell the truth, she wasn't a rider at all. In actual fact, she had the feeling, even after just a few weeks, that she was the one being ridden here. If she trotted in one direction (for example by drawing up a new price list) the strange world of bookselling would mercilessly rein her in (because prices are fixed by the publisher long before the product is in the shops). If she galloped in the opposite direction (let's say by means of bold discounting to gain greater support from publishing partners) the law would force her to make a U-turn (in this case because discounts in Germany are only allowed up to a certain level; anything beyond this is termed ‘unfair competition'). The combination of stipulations, conventions, customs, regulations, and therefore opportunities, appeared such a complex amalgam that big leaps seemed out of bounds from the beginning. It was only with content that there were no limits and this lack of limits was so absolute that, in addition to the aforementioned qualities needed for the felicitous management of a successful bookshop, Valerie soon stumbled upon the final, equally indispensable, requirement: unqualified madness.

Experienced readers of novels that deal with booksellers may at this juncture argue that another fixed element is essential for everything to run smoothly: a mysterious female cat that was either a pharaoh or temple dancer in a previous life, or alternatively an unscrupulously gallant tom with differently coloured eyes and a missing claw. In fact Ringelnatz & Co. had the necessary technical provision for this: a window onto the backyard, tall and narrow (both the window and the yard). When Valerie opened it for some oxygen to combat the tiredness that had overcome her, she thought she glimpsed a modest grey tabby darting away beneath the sill. The yard looked like the set for a Mafia film. In one corner raindrops tussled with brown leaves, while the wind cut so bitterly through the ramshackle walls that Valerie decided it would be better to tilt the window open from the top to stop it from slamming shut in her face. Beforehand, though, she placed a saucer of milk on the sill. Then she lay in wait, wondering what name she'd give the cat. ‘Ruby' came to mind, but that didn't suit grey. ‘Grisella'! But wasn't that the name of a little donkey from a children's story she vaguely remembered? ‘Grisaille', perhaps? Valerie didn't know that this was a painting technique for oil designs. So Grisaille it stayed. She thought it sounded like a friendly old lady,
such as Aunt Charlotte. She kept thinking about this until the cat popped onto the window sill and turned out not to be a cat after all. Not even a tom cat. Grisaille was another beast altogether and, yes, Valerie got quite a shock when there it was staring straight at her just a few inches away, albeit separated by the windowpane. For Grisaille was almost the opposite of a cat: she was a rat.

SIX

I
t was some time before Valerie finally secured an appointment with the bank. Till then she'd just had a statement in the post for the end of the quarter. As was to be expected, she saw that there hadn't been any payments in and only a few deductions – mainly from the bank. Account charges, debit interest, postage, transaction fees. Money for nothing. One ought to be a bank, Valerie thought, as she got on her bicycle and rode to the branch where Aunt Charlotte had her account. She'd packed all the lists that she'd made in the previous weeks: debit, credit, stock, outstanding receivables etc. Now she had to find out what dark spots were still lurking in the finances.

The customer account manager greeted her with an engaging smile and a glance at her cleavage. As she followed him to one of the consultation booths that had been set up for discreet conversations to the rear of the service centre, she fastened another button on her blouse.

‘Right, we're very pleased you've come to see us. How is your…' – he looked at the letter she'd written him, which was now in a folder – ‘aunt?'

‘Thanks for asking,' replied Valerie, who over the course of her studies had learned when it was better to keep some pieces of information to yourself. ‘She's fine.'

‘I assume you have a letter giving you power of attorney?'

‘Of course.'

From her documents Valerie took a sheet of paper on which she'd knocked out the following using Aunt Charlotte's old typewriter:
I hereby give my niece Valerie D. the power of attorney to look after my bank affairs. Yours faithfully, Charlotte K
. She'd extravagantly covered the squiggle beneath this with the freshly inked Ringelnatz & Co. stamp. The banker took the scrap of paper without affording it more than a cursory glance and slipped it into his folder.

‘Now,' he said, trying to sound businesslike as he
noticed to his chagrin the fastened button, ‘what brings you here?'

‘We're in the process of giving Ringelnatz & Co. a thorough overhaul to relaunch the company. Now that we've finished our assessment of stock and have checked and recorded all the bookkeeping matters, assets, liabilities etc., it's time to address the company's cashflow and financial resources. We're also subjecting to scrutiny our lines of credit and the terms of our business transactions.'

The account manager's gaze had wandered upwards in slight disbelief and settled on her eyes. It took him a moment to switch from ‘petty nuisance' to ‘business meeting'. Clearing his throat, he leafed briefly through what was a very thin folder and said, ‘Well, I'm afraid we can't really talk of cash
flow
in relation to your… business.' He scratched his neck. ‘For some time now it's been more like a standstill.'

‘Obviously, the amount of cashflow we generate is directly linked to how the business is running – and to which bank account we're using.'

‘Yes, of course,' the banker hurried to agree, but then paused. ‘Hold on, are you saying there are other banks?'

‘Of course,' Valerie bluffed. ‘No healthy company
would shackle itself to just one credit institution, would it?'

‘Well, you shouldn't look at it that way,' the man contradicted her. She bet his hair had already started thinning at school and now, on the cusp of middle age, he was probably wondering what he was doing still sitting in this cubbyhole, haggling with the most minor businesses over the most minor conditions, while colleagues of his were playing at being financial jugglers in the skyscrapers of the bank's headquarters and were allowed to gamble with billions. ‘I mean, a bank isn't just responsible for transactions; it can be a long-term partner for your business. We see ourselves, at least, as a universal adviser for all financial questions. Look, with our financial products and services—'

Valerie cut him off with a wave of her hand. ‘First I'd like to see what liabilities we have and what the interest rate is.'

The adviser flicked through the file again. Then he rocked his head from side to side and said, ‘Your bookshop did have a business overdraft facility on its current account…'

‘Did have?'

‘Hmm, yes, well at some point it was converted into a private overdraft facility.' He cleared his throat again.

‘At some point?'

‘Two years ago, to be precise.'

‘For what reason?'

‘Errm… I'm afraid I can't see that from the documents in front of me,' the man said. His uncertainty made it blatantly clear that the bank had taken her aunt for a ride.

‘Are there other documents, then?'

‘Well, I don't know of any…'

‘Then I presume that the bank did it purely out of its own interests and without any prior consultation with my aunt.'

‘But we did write to her. Look…' He pointed to a standard letter with the bank's letterhead.

‘And did you get a reply?'

‘Hmm… no, clearly not.'

‘Well then, as you I'm sure know, your unilateral action is not legally binding. I'd like to object to the change, and demand a recession and recalculation based on the value from that date.'

‘I don't know if I can do that without consulting my manager…'

‘Both of us know that not only can you do that, you
must
do it,' Valerie asserted, bending over the table. ‘Let's move onto the debts.'

‘Debts?'

‘How high are the liabilities that Ringelnatz & Co. currently have with your bank?'

‘Oh.' The adviser essayed a smile but it looked forced. ‘Well, you'll be pleased to hear that there aren't any liabilities, apart from the negative balance on the last statement.'

He adjusted his glasses, looked at the statement as if it were an imperial proclamation and said, ‘Five euros eighteen.' He cleared his throat again. ‘I should point out, however, that your aunt's private wealth is almost all gone. She won't be able to inject capital for much longer. I mean, as she's done over the past few years.'

Valerie shrugged, seemingly casually, but inwardly at a loss. ‘She won't have to inject any more capital,' she curtly informed the dumbfounded banker. Giving him a nod, she stood up.

To Valerie's astonishment she found out over the coming days that, although there were pretty much zero cash reserves in the small business that was Ringelnatz & Co., Aunt Charlotte had nonetheless carefully avoided accruing anything like debts. Whenever a financial hole had appeared, she'd plugged it with her own money – during all those years she'd run the shop she gradually returned to the business the little money she'd been able to save. There weren't
any other banks of course, nor any other assets – but there weren't other liabilities elsewhere either.

Basically, the appointment with the accounts manager had been totally unnecessary. His involvement extended to little more than passing on a statement of net income (although it had been years since one could talk of net income) and an invoice for his work.

The only real items in Aunt Charlotte's business accounts were the quarterly direct debits for gas, electricity and water, as well as the incidental costs for the premises. What Valerie hunted for unsuccessfully was a regular rent payment, until finally she discovered that the elderly bookseller actually owned the shop! The business itself might not have been thriving, but Aunt Charlotte had had money in bricks and mortar! Or she still did. For in spite of all the conclusive proof Valerie was faced with, she didn't want to exclude the possibility that the old lady might still be alive. Hopefully she was. Valerie wished it to be true. But of course she was enough of a realist to know how low the probability was.

‘The appointment was a roaring success, by the way!' she later told her new friend, who was now showing up on a daily basis, over a saucer of milk. ‘Bankers are as predictable as an atomic clock.' Valerie sipped
her tea and watched Grisaille's pretty pink tongue lap away at the white liquid. If you set aside your prejudices and look at a rat close up, you can't help finding it beautiful. Rats have coats that shine like silk, clever, alert eyes, while their claws are tiny masterpieces of evolution. What's more, Grisaille always had one ear open for Valerie's reflections. And now Valerie even dared leave the window open when the rat emerged from its obscure corner.

In spite of this proximity to literature, however, Grisaille was more interested in her own tail than the tales housed in the bookshop. When Valerie once tried to read her a few lines of Susanna Clarke's
The Ladies of Grace Adieu
, the beast fled – which can't have had anything to do with Clarke. At least this cleared up what species of rat Grisaille belonged to. Valerie thought that it couldn't be
Rattus norvegicus
, the common sewer rat, or
Rattus rattus
, the established house rat, but
Rattus alliterarius
and thus a welcome distraction from the insularity that usually envelops the written word and its reader. With this, Valerie added a sixty-seventh species of rat to the sixty-six already recognized by zoology.

‘Do you think Aunt Charlotte is still alive?'

Grisaille looked at her with her pitch-black, reflective eyes. Was she smiling?

‘Thanks,' Valerie said after a while. ‘I bet you're right. She's travelling somewhere in the history of the world. Maybe she hijacked an underground train and absconded to South America with it. Or right now she's inviting a few Eskimos to share an excellent bottle of Tunisian vodka.'

Grisaille smirked, then lapped up a little more milk. When Valerie poured herself some more tea the rat vanished. But then the bell by the door rang and the postwoman came in.

‘You're not going to believe this,' she said by way of a greeting, handing Valerie the usual bundle of bills, flyers and a trade journal that Valerie had never even glanced at. But right at the top was a postcard. An idyllic scene with a sea view that invited envy. At the top was written ‘Porto'.

Curious, Valerie turned over the card and read:

 

Dear Valerie
,

I hope all's well with you. Please

don't be worried about me! Bye bye!

Charlotte

It seemed to Valerie as if she were looking straight through these barren lines at Grisaille's mysterious little rat smile.