“On Judgment Day the dead will walk the Earth” said Father Johnson to His loyal sheep.
That was all that Sue Forster heard from the second row, on the chair closest to the wall in Church. That was all Sue ever heard. After that, after the first sentence, everything else pretty much became a blur.
Sue was never one to enjoy going to Church every Sunday morning. She used to think, still very sleepy, while her father took her by the hand to Church, along Main Street - whether it was winter or summer, cold, rain or a sunny morning in springtime - she used to think that she would like to at least once in her life sleep for just a little longer on a day she didn’t have to go to school. But it was never like that. Her father was a strict pious man who had vigorously set several obligations for his family: the kids were always in bed by eight, dinner was served at 6 o’clock sharp and Sunday morning everyone would always go to Church - sick, healthy or just very sleepy. And those were just a part of the big motto. Sue lost track of the times she heard her father say the words: respect, faith and honor shall never be of want in this house.
Years later, Sue would still remember how everything was on Main Street when she was six, then twelve, then sixteen years-old. Things hadn’t changed much during the years she lived in Maytown. So, on Main Street, to the right, there was Mrs. Cobblestone’s clothes shop, always the best dresses for the best ladies. There was even one time when Mrs. Cobblestone got to mention her shop on the State radio. Sales didn’t improve much because Mrs. Cobblestone didn’t account for the fact that no one from outside Maytown would ever buy her dresses. The railway stopped about 5 miles out of town and Maytown wasn’t even on the map.
To the left on Main Street Mr. Williams the Butcher had his business running for almost 40 years. Sue could remember hearing the people in town saying Mr. Williams once had a brother with whom he shared his family business. But somehow, the other Mr. Williams disappeared one day after a fight with his brother and no one ever saw him again. Sue learned one day and to her own expense that Mr. Williams didn’t like to be asked about his brother. And so Sue learned at the age of eight never to ask a personal question to a grown up.
The person Sue liked the most on Main Street was definitely Mr. Knight. Mr. Knight had a newspaper shop, right around the corner of the intersection with Second Street, where he also sold tobacco, gum, sweets and, in the back of his shop, only for a very few special clients, Mr. Knight had a few books he would sell from time to time. The people in Maytown didn’t read much. Other than buying the local newspapers and magazines for the gossip or the State Report for the news of the war, the people from Maytown didn’t have the time or will to read a proper book and properly absorb knowledge.
Sue always found Mr. Knight to be a fascinating man. Firstly, she loved his name. She thought it made him look like a wise keeper of a treasure that had been kept secret for centuries and to which she had now privileged access. Secondly, because Mr. Knight was indeed a charming old man. No one knew for sure how old Mr. Knight was. No one even knew his first name or whether Knight was his real family name. That lovely and kind old man that Sue loved to visit every Sunday afternoon when her father would let her go out and play was actually a mystery to everyone in town. He was very respected by everyone, for sure. And he was probably the oldest person in town because nobody seemed to remember the day that Mr. Knight had opened his shop for business. It was like he had always been there.
And so Sue Forster would sit in Church amongst everyone else who were patiently and carefully listening to the wise words of the Priest. But Sue would never really pay much attention. Sue found out by time she was nine years-old that Father Johnson’s words were of no use whatsoever to her. The only words Sue was ever interested in were waiting for her in the dusty basement of the back of Mr. Knight’s store. Her father never once gave her a coin so she should buy a book or a sweet or anything else. She would come to understand years later that it was because the money was so tight in her house that her parents had to struggle every week to make sure Sue wouldn’t go to school hungry. And so Sue got accustomed to the idea that in order to read those books, she would have to go to Mr. Knight’s store every week. And if she didn’t have the time to read a whole book in one day, she would have to resume reading the next Sunday afternoon.
The back of Mr. Knight’s shop was indeed a magical place. It is very hard for anyone who was never there to properly describe it, not only because it was a cramped, dusty place, with the smell of old paper filling the tight space between the shelves, papers and old volumes spread all over the floor, in a mess of ideas and disorganized knowledge; also, it seemed like a far-off land for a child: it had all the princesses and queens, kings and knights, all the great men, politicians, great leaders, white-collar criminals; painters and musicians, common people, beggars and sellers; con-artists and pickpockets; prostitutes and mayors’ wives, walking together in the middle of a crowded street. Ideology, politics, value and moral distorted in the midst of the communion between all the characters, real or imagined, of all the stories told in all those books. Pages and pages filled with the description of countries and places Sue never even heard about, exotic beaches on deserted islands; pompous cities where the lights never go out, with movie theatres, musicals and cabarets; green pastures that extended for miles and miles and great big mountains with snow on the top, rivers and waterfalls. It is fair to say that for a kid with a mildly vivid imagination, the cellar in the back of Mr. Knight’s shop was a place where you could fit the whole world.
To be continued in Chapter II
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