The Swipe (Harry Leeds)
This must have been more than five years ago because it was after my sister finished graduate school but before she moved down to Virginia. I was living with her for the time being and rekindling old friendships. This was when we had no money but still didn’t care. We thought there were jobs out there and it was only a matter of time before we stumbled into a profession and job security. One acquaintance my sister and I both kind of knew fascinated us all. He would get books, but only those without pictures on the cover, and purposely go out to not-brand name cafes to read them, holding them high enough to make the titles visible, in French, with salient accent marks, and sometimes the author’s name. He had us over to his house often, he had a fairly large place and his roommate was always out of town, and he was really good at throwing together something at the last minute. He knew where to go just to get sliced meats (I especially remember he always had sopressata) and cheeses, crudites, could put together a playlist and we loved making assumptions about his books. It seemed like everyone had seen him or someone like him occupying a chair in a coffee place for more than his share of the day, and here we were in his apartment, glimpsing through the window of his books and into the other side of his secret life. His books were all in French, and many of us had gotten the impression that he didn’t speak French well enough to converse, but, we supposed, well enough to read it. We’d talk about this, his supposedly poor French, even at the parties he was holding. I think most of us were embarrassed we couldn’t even understand these works in translation so we never asked about it.
We didn’t know much about Igor, that’s what I’ll call him, and he always had a nonplussed attitude and an air of bonhomie about him except when he took talked about film which was often. He loved Goddard and always said the name with a pretentious pronunciation none of us had ever heard before which therefore struck us as accurate. We were an erudite-enough group, a couple of us had dabbled in film classes and would try to conduct a two-way conversation on the subject. At least once at each one of his parties someone would bring up Goddard and he’d just go into a tirade of the great genius of this man. Igor would pick his books off the shelf, toppling them over, throwing them in the sink, and saying, this, this is all toilet paper compared to what Goddard did. Sometimes he’d get a lighter and light them on fire, the books in the sink, but at worst he only got to singe the edges and besides we could just turn on the faucet to put it out. He was honest, even generous about his love of Goddard, like he knew something about life he could share with us only through these movies. We all promised we’d watch them, but I never did myself.
A girl named Elle who must have been one of my sister’s grad school friend’s friend’s started coming to these things at Igor’s, she was pretty and friendly, you know, she had a split chin that was about a third the length of her entire face and she always put on too much contour makeup, but she was agreeable, not the kind of person you’d whine about to your significant other the next morning nor the kind of person you’d want to see outside of the setting of a well-attended party, but of course her one thing is that she thought Goddard was the biggest fraud in Western Art. The first couple of times she was in Igor’s apartment and he brought up the director, Elle opened her mouth to speak out against Goddard and me or one of our friends saw, lopped it closed.
Well after about the third time this happened she couldn’t help herself and started to say Goddard was a fraud. Igor stole into his bedroom. It was one of those apartments with no grates on the radiators or lights, everything was just out there and stark and exposed. He came back with a two-foot metal pipe and lighter fluid. He banged on the radiator with the pipe. We sat around watching and with two hands, pipe and lighter fluid under his armpits, he picked up and transferred a whole row of books into the sink all at once, and soaked them with the lighter fluid. He reached for a match and when someone moved forward to stop him, he brandished his pipe and back we went. He looked at Elle and told her to open all the windows. He repeated, louder, all of them! All the way! To let out the smoke. She was so frightened she did what he said.
It seemed crazy, somehow sick, to let books burn.
My sister and I are pretty much on the same wavelength, and I nodded my head to her, she shrugged, and I took control and went for the lunge, anyway, she followed, and we neutralized Igor, disarmed him. I got someone else to hold him down while I turned on the sink to put out the fire. The flames were a bit high by the time I got to it, and I tried taking off my sweater to extinguish them, you know, by taking away the oxygen. My sweater was ruined and I burned my forearms. But looking in the sink I found that his books were written half in English.
They were dual language editions, that is, at the bottom of each page there were footnotes in English for the student of French. Igor finally relaxed from his frenzy, stood up wiped himself off, hopped right up to me in the face. But he was talking to everyone when he said, calmly considering everything, “Get out of here.”
We knew immediately something was ruined right then. That was going to be the end of parties at Igor’s, but also a lot of our friendships. People had to get jobs, and without Igor’s place to bring us together we just stopped finding excuses to hang out. I think people mostly blamed me, since I had stopped his burning books, but it had to come to an end, just our friendships floating around like that.
People backed away, and when they got outside decided to head to a bar nearby, but as I headed outside Igor pulled me back and asked me to wait a minute. He boiled tea.
“What do you have all French books for, anyway?” I asked.
“My mother is French,” he said. “If I had only French books, I thought I’d learn French.” By now everyone had gone and he began to tear up. His hand trembled as he went to sip the tea. His parents, it turned out, were paying for everything: his apartment, his books, his coffee, the sliced meats and crudites. He didn’t have to work. His mother even told him he should never worry about getting a job, and just do what he wants.
“So I figured I’d devote my time to study. At first, I wanted to read about philosophy. Then I decided to learn French,” he told me looking in the direction of the burned books. “But after all this time, a French mother, I still don’t read like a native. There are six-year-olds who read French better than me.”
I told him it wasn’t the same, thanked him for the tea, and caught up with everyone downstairs. I didn’t tell them about Igor’s little confession there. I wanted to feel proud in this, that the mystery of the pretentious francophile had been solved, but it seemed easy and simple and unsatisfying. The lurking figure showing off the title of his book in the cafe turned out to be as painfully common as anyone else. I had the sense I wouldn’t be meeting with these friends consistently again, but then, this seemed common as well. Probably about three weeks after that I moved away from the city anyway.
This must have been more than five years ago because it was after my sister finished graduate school but before she moved down to Virginia. I was living with her for the time being and rekindling old friendships. This was when we had no money but still didn’t care. We thought there were jobs out there and it was only a matter of time before we stumbled into a profession and job security. One acquaintance my sister and I both kind of knew fascinated us all. He would get books, but only those without pictures on the cover, and purposely go out to not-brand name cafes to read them, holding them high enough to make the titles visible, in French, with salient accent marks, and sometimes the author’s name. He had us over to his house often, he had a fairly large place and his roommate was always out of town, and he was really good at throwing together something at the last minute. He knew where to go just to get sliced meats (I especially remember he always had sopressata) and cheeses, crudites, could put together a playlist and we loved making assumptions about his books. It seemed like everyone had seen him or someone like him occupying a chair in a coffee place for more than his share of the day, and here we were in his apartment, glimpsing through the window of his books and into the other side of his secret life. His books were all in French, and many of us had gotten the impression that he didn’t speak French well enough to converse, but, we supposed, well enough to read it. We’d talk about this, his supposedly poor French, even at the parties he was holding. I think most of us were embarrassed we couldn’t even understand these works in translation so we never asked about it.
We didn’t know much about Igor, that’s what I’ll call him, and he always had a nonplussed attitude and an air of bonhomie about him except when he took talked about film which was often. He loved Goddard and always said the name with a pretentious pronunciation none of us had ever heard before which therefore struck us as accurate. We were an erudite-enough group, a couple of us had dabbled in film classes and would try to conduct a two-way conversation on the subject. At least once at each one of his parties someone would bring up Goddard and he’d just go into a tirade of the great genius of this man. Igor would pick his books off the shelf, toppling them over, throwing them in the sink, and saying, this, this is all toilet paper compared to what Goddard did. Sometimes he’d get a lighter and light them on fire, the books in the sink, but at worst he only got to singe the edges and besides we could just turn on the faucet to put it out. He was honest, even generous about his love of Goddard, like he knew something about life he could share with us only through these movies. We all promised we’d watch them, but I never did myself.
A girl named Elle who must have been one of my sister’s grad school friend’s friend’s started coming to these things at Igor’s, she was pretty and friendly, you know, she had a split chin that was about a third the length of her entire face and she always put on too much contour makeup, but she was agreeable, not the kind of person you’d whine about to your significant other the next morning nor the kind of person you’d want to see outside of the setting of a well-attended party, but of course her one thing is that she thought Goddard was the biggest fraud in Western Art. The first couple of times she was in Igor’s apartment and he brought up the director, Elle opened her mouth to speak out against Goddard and me or one of our friends saw, lopped it closed.
Well after about the third time this happened she couldn’t help herself and started to say Goddard was a fraud. Igor stole into his bedroom. It was one of those apartments with no grates on the radiators or lights, everything was just out there and stark and exposed. He came back with a two-foot metal pipe and lighter fluid. He banged on the radiator with the pipe. We sat around watching and with two hands, pipe and lighter fluid under his armpits, he picked up and transferred a whole row of books into the sink all at once, and soaked them with the lighter fluid. He reached for a match and when someone moved forward to stop him, he brandished his pipe and back we went. He looked at Elle and told her to open all the windows. He repeated, louder, all of them! All the way! To let out the smoke. She was so frightened she did what he said.
It seemed crazy, somehow sick, to let books burn.
My sister and I are pretty much on the same wavelength, and I nodded my head to her, she shrugged, and I took control and went for the lunge, anyway, she followed, and we neutralized Igor, disarmed him. I got someone else to hold him down while I turned on the sink to put out the fire. The flames were a bit high by the time I got to it, and I tried taking off my sweater to extinguish them, you know, by taking away the oxygen. My sweater was ruined and I burned my forearms. But looking in the sink I found that his books were written half in English.
They were dual language editions, that is, at the bottom of each page there were footnotes in English for the student of French. Igor finally relaxed from his frenzy, stood up wiped himself off, hopped right up to me in the face. But he was talking to everyone when he said, calmly considering everything, “Get out of here.”
We knew immediately something was ruined right then. That was going to be the end of parties at Igor’s, but also a lot of our friendships. People had to get jobs, and without Igor’s place to bring us together we just stopped finding excuses to hang out. I think people mostly blamed me, since I had stopped his burning books, but it had to come to an end, just our friendships floating around like that.
People backed away, and when they got outside decided to head to a bar nearby, but as I headed outside Igor pulled me back and asked me to wait a minute. He boiled tea.
“What do you have all French books for, anyway?” I asked.
“My mother is French,” he said. “If I had only French books, I thought I’d learn French.” By now everyone had gone and he began to tear up. His hand trembled as he went to sip the tea. His parents, it turned out, were paying for everything: his apartment, his books, his coffee, the sliced meats and crudites. He didn’t have to work. His mother even told him he should never worry about getting a job, and just do what he wants.
“So I figured I’d devote my time to study. At first, I wanted to read about philosophy. Then I decided to learn French,” he told me looking in the direction of the burned books. “But after all this time, a French mother, I still don’t read like a native. There are six-year-olds who read French better than me.”
I told him it wasn’t the same, thanked him for the tea, and caught up with everyone downstairs. I didn’t tell them about Igor’s little confession there. I wanted to feel proud in this, that the mystery of the pretentious francophile had been solved, but it seemed easy and simple and unsatisfying. The lurking figure showing off the title of his book in the cafe turned out to be as painfully common as anyone else. I had the sense I wouldn’t be meeting with these friends consistently again, but then, this seemed common as well. Probably about three weeks after that I moved away from the city anyway.