Old Stock

On Friday morning, before the shop had quite decided to be open, the bell above the door made its sound, a small polite question, and the question was Grigori.

The shopkeeper was behind the counter with a cloth in his hand and a clock in pieces in front of him, the way other men have breakfast. He did not look up. Neither of them said good morning, possibly because between the two of them the word would have had too much to carry.

Grigori took off his hat. He did not browse. Men like Grigori do not browse. He stood in the middle distance of the shop, among the kept things and the waiting things, and let the stock take his inventory, which it did, thoroughly, from several shelves at once, and appeared to find everything in order and nothing surprising.

“You are interfering,” said Grigori. “You have never interfered.”

The shopkeeper fitted a small wheel into the clock with the tip of one finger.

“A tin,” said Grigori.

“A return,” said the shopkeeper. “Returns are not interference. Returns are the trade.”

“The destination was on no ledger in this world.”

“It was on mine.”

The clock in pieces said nothing. Somewhere back in the stock a whole one struck the hour, alone, unseconded, a clock that had been keeping some other city’s time for a hundred years out of loyalty.

Grigori moved down the aisle, unhurried, his hat in both hands, and stopped at the counter, and the two of them regarded each other across it, the clock parts between them like a small opened country.

“We are not the same trade,” said Grigori.

“No,” said the shopkeeper. “You keep records. I keep things.” He took up the cloth and passed it once over the counter’s brass edge, which shone already. “Between the two of us, the world is tolerably covered.”

“And which of us,” said Grigori, “keeps the course of rivers.”

The shopkeeper set down the cloth. He looked at Grigori then, for the first time in the visit, all the way, with eyes that were old the way the canal was old, quietly, and with a great deal underneath, and what passed across the counter did not have words in it, and took a while to pass.

“Rivers keep themselves,” said the shopkeeper. “Mostly. They know where the sea is. Now and then something falls across one, a tree, a war, a well-meaning engineer, and the water forgets what it was doing and spreads about in the fields, being a marsh, being lost, being very industrious about it.” He picked up the small wheel again, and turned it over, and set it down in a different place, which appeared to be the correct one. “Moving the tree is not interference. The river does the rest itself. It always knew the way. It only wanted the weight gone.”

“Mm,” said Grigori.

It was entered somewhere. Anyone watching could have seen that much, and there was nobody watching except the stock.

Grigori turned his hat once in his hands, and looked down the shop, past the clocks, to the shelf by the window where an old birdcage stood in the morning light, its little door standing open on its hinge, dusted, cared for, ready, a cage kept the way you keep a promise.

“It is empty.”

“It is open,” said the shopkeeper. “Those are different things.”

He came out from behind the counter then, with his cloth, and went to the shelf, and dusted the cage, which did not need it, the small door, the perch, the thin old bars, each one, patiently, at the pace of a man doing something he had done every morning for longer than the street outside had held its name.

“I sold a bird once, with the cage,” he said, to the cage. “Long ago. The bird got out, the way birds do. Everyone said it was gone.” He worked the cloth along the last bar, and straightened, and looked at the little open door, and left it exactly as it stood. “Birds come back,” said the shopkeeper. “Not always. Not soon. But a shut cage is a cage, and an open one is a home, and a bird knows the difference from a very long way away.”

Grigori stood in the middle of the shop with his hat in his hands and said nothing at all, for a long time, and the stock held its breath around the two of them, and the loyal clock ticked its foreign hour, and whatever was being said in the silence was said all the way to the end.

Then Grigori put on his hat.

“Good day,” said Grigori.

“It is trying to be,” said the shopkeeper.

The bell asked its small polite question again, and was answered, and the door shut, and the shop went back to holding its breath. The shopkeeper stood a while at the window shelf in the morning light, cloth in hand, beside the empty cage, which did not need dusting, and had not needed it for a very long time, and was kept ready anyway.