The Legacy of Solomon Read online

O’Connelly had been invited to what was announced as a ‘travel writer’s celebration’, organised by Shakespeare & Company, a Parisian bookshop, in reality a rag-tag monument to second-hand books and literature, situated on quai de Montebello opposite Notre Dame on the Left Bank of the Seine. It was run by an ancient Bostonian, George Whitman.

  O’Connelly was present as member of a discussion panel entitled ‘Travel in Words’. To his regret he had not been invited to present a new book of his own – he had written nothing for over two years. His name was still a good draw for the reading public, a successful writer, whose books had regular remained in the best sellers’ lists for several weeks and could be found on the shelves of most bookshops and libraries.

  He remembered having met George by chance one Sunday summer afternoon a good many years previously as he explored the shelves in the vague hope of finding Liddel Hart’s biography T.E.Lawrence published in 1934, for background to an article he was writing for another of the endless Middle East crises.

  George Whitman, who was born in Salem, must have been in his early seventies at the time. At first glance O’Connelly had taken him for a rather strange scruffy old eccentric, which he was, even for the owner of a second-hand bookshop. Whitman after asking him if he was looking for something in particular, led him up a very steep rickety stairway lined higgledy-piggledy with old books to the first floor. In a small back room with an unmade bed, he quickly glanced over the shelves, stopped then pointed a wrinkled finger to a dusty red spine red on a low shelf deformed by the weight of books. O’Connelly slid the book out and flipped it open to the publisher’s information page. It was exactly what he was looking for, a June 1935 reprint, published by Jonathan Cape, complete with fold-out maps, in pristine, though yellowed, condition. On the inside cover was pencilled 20F, a bargain.

  ‘I’ll take it, excellent.’

  ‘Would you like to join us for tea?’

  ‘Tea!’ said O’Connelly a little surprised.

  ‘Yes, come with me.’

  He followed him up several more flights of steep, creaking, stairs, past more books it seemed than the British Museum Library. On the top floor in a rather worn room, looking over the Seine towards Notre Dame, several people who seemed as bemused as O’Connelly were gathered around holding cups and saucers and drinking tea, trying to make conversation as a plate of home made cake cut into slices was being offered around.

  George poured a tea and handed it to O’Connelly, then left in search of another impromptu guest.

  Since that time O’Connelly became a regular visitor to the bookshop and its Sunday afternoon tea sessions and as the years passed little changed, George got older, though as sprightly as ever, but perhaps a little more abrupt.

  Shakespeare & Company was now managed by a new generation, which seemed not only determined to maintain the tradition, but also to turn the monument into an institution with the ‘celebration’. For O’Connelly it was a welcome event in the literary wilderness of Paris, for English writers that is.

  A large white marquee had been set up in the Réné Vivaldi Park just a few paces from the bookshop to serve as a conference hall for the four day event and twenty seven of the ‘best’ travel writers had been invited to speak.

  Inside there was a pleasant looking crowd, bon chic bon genre, looking prosperously clean in their summer outfits, the only off key point was a drunk, whose bench had been usurped by the event, and who appeared from time to time to shout obscenities.

  The round table question time was going well, the guest writers replying to the questions from a mainly Anglo-American crowd with a sprinkling of French Anglophiles, who spoke slightly accented but perfect English. It was a relief from the pompous French intellectual literary milieu, perched on the pedestals and always ready to be outré, for ever sliding back to their favourite phobias of racism, guilt and socialist politics.

  Towards the end of question time Laura slipped in, taking the only vacant seat on the front row reserved for guest writers, critics and organisers, she caught O’Connelly’s eye and smiled. A few minutes later the session broke up and the audience ambled towards the bookshop where the writers were signing books for the public. It seemed a long time since O’Connelly had performed that obligation.

  ‘Pat, there’s somebody I would like to say hello to you…you know the archaeologist,’ said Laura taking his arm, nodding towards a thin, elongated individual, whose brown bespectacled head reflected the afternoon sunshine like a polished brown nut, who was gazing in the direction of Notre Dame.

  ‘Now?’ O’Connelly replied sounding a little vexed.

  She pouted.

  ‘Okay,’ he said giving in, reluctantly allowing her to guide him towards the newcomer.

  ‘This is Monsieur de Lussac,’ she said in French introducing him to the tall Frenchman.

  ‘Enchanté,’ said O’Connelly forcing a polite smile, looking at the archaeologist’s narrow face, wondering if he was not a reincarnation of King Tut.

  ‘Ah, it’s a pleasure to meet you,’ replied de Lussac beaming, ‘I have read your books and Laura has told me a lot about you.’

  On second thoughts, he looks like a curé from a medieval film, thought O’Connelly.

  ‘Monsieur de Lussac has been working a project about the Temple in Jerusalem.’

  Laura had vaguely mentioned de Lussac’s work, however, O’Connelly had only half listened. He smiled as he tried to recollect which temple, as images of gold domed mosques flashed through his mind.

  ‘Very interesting discussion,’ said de Lussac nodding to the now empty stage.

  ‘Yes, very.’

  A young woman appeared, one of the organisers, waving a hand, urgently beckoning O’Connelly.

  ‘Look, you must be quite busy,’ said de Lussac waving to the crowd. ‘I don’t want to bother you now, why don’t we try to meet at a more appropriate moment, here’s my card.’

  ‘Excellent, I’ll call you,’ he replied relieved to escape vespers.

  He headed towards Laura who announced the editor of the cultural section of Le Monde was waiting for him in the private cocktail room set up on the first floor. Florence Bousquet was a friend at the Middle East desk of the paper and had little to do with culture. Their friendship went back to the days when O’Connelly had first arrived in Paris as a correspondent for The New York Times.

  ‘So Pat, still bathing in an aura of recent glory?’ asked Florence.

  O’Connelly frowned.

  ‘Ah! So it’s serious, sorry I was just pulling your leg.’

  ‘No, don’t worry, I’m looking for an idea, but that’s as far as I’ve got.’

  ‘Why don’t you do something on the Middle East?’

  ‘You mean something like how I tracked down Osama bin Ladin,’ he said a little sourly collecting a glass of Champagne.

  Florence shrugged, she was only trying to be helpful.

  ‘Forget it, here’s to future success.’

  O’Connelly emptied the glass and got a refill.

  ‘When are you off again?’

  ‘With the present situation in Palestine, I’m off to Jerusalem next week, an interview with Shimon Perez.’

  ‘Lucky for you, be careful.

  ‘Don’t you miss all that?’

  ‘Not really, I never did like editors and their deadlines breathing down by back.’

  ‘Me too, I’d prefer Cannes and film festivals.’

  ‘Book events?’

  He gave a Gallic shrug, ‘Can’t really say I like that either.’

  ‘Where’s Laura?

  ‘Down stairs talking to some kind of an archaeologist…curé’

  ‘Curé?’

  ‘Looks like one, or a Jesuit.’

  ‘…an archaeologist?’

  ‘Yeah, some kind of a strange bird. Something about a temple.’

  ‘A temple?’

  ‘Jerusalem.’

  ‘That sounds interesting’

  ‘If I remember what Laur
a told me he’s discovered some new site.’

  ‘That would stir up a hornets nest.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I assume your talking about the Temple.’

  O’Connelly shrugged he was not sure, he hadn’t thought about it.

  ‘It’s an age old bone of contention between the Jews and Muslims. In the present circumstances best left alone.’

  ‘So you’ll join us for dinner?’

  ‘That’s the general idea, a bit too early though. We can have a before dinner drink somewhere on St Germain, get some air.’

  ‘I’ve had nothing but fresh air all the afternoon,’ he said thinking of the open marquee. ‘You know Gilles?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘He’s somewhere outside with Laura, he’s reserved a table.’

  ‘Great.’

  They spent fifteen minutes shaking hands and tapping shoulders before they got away, joining the early evening strollers along the Quai des Grands Augustins, following Gilles had reserved a terrace table in a restaurant facing St Germain des Près. The table was well placed in one corner of the square where a modern jazz festival being held – Gilles was full of surprises. They ordered drinks and listened to a quartet, playing jazz classics, ensconced on a small stage erected in the middle of the square. The audience consisted of a prosperous easy going crowd of mostly plus forties – enthusiasts and passers-by – jazz had long since become an intellectual thing.

  Laura chatted excitedly telling them about her archaeologist, she had worked more than a week trying to persuade O’Connelly to meet de Lussac. He had been preoccupied by other things and had only half listened, he was more concerned by trying to fix a meeting with his elusive agent to discuss prospects before his New York publisher arrived in Paris at the end of the month, wondering what kind of a story he would tell them. He had pocketed an advance of twenty thousand dollars for a book he had not even started, and did not know where to start. Not that the money was a problem, words on paper were the problem, and worse ideas were in such short supply that his mind seemed to have shrivelled to the size of a walnut.

  2

  San Francisco