Art Pact 165 - Journals

"What do you do all day?" I asked. He raised an eyebrow, turned to look out of the window. Thinking that he hadn't heard me, I was about to ask again (louder), when he suddenly leapt up and hammered at the frame.

"GET OUT OF THERE!" he yelled. I saw a flash of ginger shoot out of his herb garden and across the lawn, leaping up in one fluid movement onto the brick barbecue and then over the fence and away. "Bloody cat," he muttered. He turned back to me again. "Sorry, love, what was that?"

"I was just asking what you did all day. I mean, here."

"Oh, yes. Of course. You'd want to know that."

He nodded, sat back down in his chair, and pointed to the books surrounding him.

"You read?"

"Yes, I read."

"What sort of thing?" I said, standing up to examine the spines. The bookcases, covering three walls of the room, were packed with slender books of various types and styles - plastic and card-spined books that were obviously the product of the last couple of decades, leather-bound volumes that might have been either new or old, a few padded, or with faux pink feathers running down the spine. What they had in common, though, was their anonymity - none of them had any markings to indicate what they were. "Fiction, is it?"

He laughed.

"No, my dear, not fiction! Not fiction at all!"

He gestured to me to pick one up. Running my hand along the shelf edge I let it come to rest in front of one of the leather-spined ones - a genuinely old one, I thought, tatty and coming slightly apart at its stitchings. It took a bit of delicate teasing to extract it from its cosy position between two slightly newer tomes, but I managed to get it out without damage. There was no title on the front cover either, no blurb on the back, but I felt an unusual sensation - a sort of ticklish precognition about what I was about to read, so that when I let the book fall open and saw the handwriting inside I was not actually surprised. I read from about half-way down the page:

"April 7th - awful day at the factory, quite the worst I've had since I was moved up here. Trouble with the workers, and Smith asking for permission to fire a couple to set an example for the rest. Not really what I wanted to achieve, but the old man is telling me to get on with it. I think he and Smith must have had a pretty cosy relationship in the past, I wonder if I'm getting in the way of some money-making scheme the two of them have cooked up. Melissa still intractable. I wonder if the doctor is telling her something that he's not telling me. Seems ridiculous, but I can't get that feeling out of my mind. I shall have to go down there and confront him. I'm her husband, damnit, I have a right to know!"

"April 10th - situations eased slightly at work, but disastrous meeting with the doctor. He threatened to call the police on me. I have made arrangements for Melissa to see a doctor in the next town, recommended to me by the old man - one of his cronies, no doubt, and I have ambiguous feelings about the whole thing, but I seem to have no other recourse. We shall see."

I closed the book, slid it carefully back into its place and selected another - a much newer one, a mass-produced hardcover notebook that had probably been intended as a lab book or exercise book. I imagined that the original owner had stolen it from work or school. I opened it at the beginning.

"10/9/2008: New book! Not sure what to do with the old one. Not sure whether to keep it or whether its done its job. Could burn it, make sure no-one can ever get hold of it. But all that writing! Plus, what if I want to read it again myself at some point?"

"11/9/2008: C being a bitch again. Too angry to write."

I flicked through to the final pages. They were blank, and I had to travel back to the half-way point to read the final entry. I'd been worried about what I might find - a suicide note, perhaps? Some signs of depression? But in fact the entry was utterly mundane:

"9/3/2009: Maths test today. Did OK, I think, no scores until next week. Mum says I can have a new phone, iphone 3gs I hope, but will have to chip in some of my own savings I think."

I flipped it closed, eyes scanning the shelves nervously, and turned back to him. He was watching me silently, an expectant expression on his face.

"Where did you get them from?" I asked. He nodded. That was what he had been expecting me to ask. I felt a brief stab of irritation.

"Some I buy, some come to me when their owners pass away."

"Some? What about the others?" For some reason I didn't think that the girl who'd written the last diary was dead.

"I have a supplier," he said. "He in turn has associates who work in the field of asset redistribution."--he laughed--"Thieves, my dear. They steal them for my supplier, knowing they can get a good price from him, and he buys them knowing that he can get a better price from me."

I turned slowly back towards the shelves, sluggish, all my senses except my sight contracting so that the room seemed to be moving away from me to a great distance. I scanned the shelves frantically, remembering the break-in, the surprise my landlord had showed at how little had been taken. I had never looked in the suitcase under my bed, though.

The shiny black patent-leather back of the diary was sitting about half-way between my head-height and the ceiling, just as high as I could reach on tip toes.

"In case you're wondering, my dear," he said from behind me. "Yes, I have."