The book

'What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not: yet I say boldly that I know, that if nothing passed away, time past were not; and if nothing were coming, a time to come were not; and if nothing were, time present were not.'

-St. Augustine, Confessions

Although the place where I stayed was situated relatively close to the Jules Joffrin métro, I refused to take the Paris subway unless it was imperative. Not only can one learn more from most countries by walking their streets than from visiting their museums or reading about their history, but it is much easier to find oneself involved in interesting situations if one develops the habit of walking through paths that lead to unknown places.

This last thought crossed my mind as I entered the antique bookstore, compelled by the thought of closely examining the main piece on display: a 1686 French translation of Saint Augustine’s Confessions, a book that I had become obsessed with after a philosophy course in my freshman year at University.

Photo by Gerardo Meléndez

The air in the room was dense, full of the scents of dust, wood, and books. Wherever I turned I could see yellowed pages with varied calligraphies, ancient volumes stacked in shelves that seemed to be about to explode, writings in every language imaginable. The orange sunset, glowing through the windows, gave the room a warm and calm appearance.

A bell attached to the door frame announced my entry. No one came right away, so I ventured deeper inside the store. Soon I stepped into a studio, where a completely absorbed old man studied a manuscript under special lighting and with the aid of a monocle. A black cat lay lazily at his feet, fixed its bright eyes on me for a second, and then decided to go back to its standard task of sleeping. The man hadn’t noticed my presence, until someone spoke behind me.

‘Bonjour monsieur’, said a soft female voice. I turned around to find an extremely beautiful woman in her early twenties. She had delicate features and a fragile constitution, blonde hair, gray eyes, and a look that made me think that, like me, she was old inside; this was matched by her seriousness and the formality with which she addressed me. ‘Puis-je vous aider?’ she added after my silence –‘Can I help you?’

I was, of course, speechless. I opened my mouth and tried to utter a more or less understandable sentence in French, but nothing came out. She looked at me inquisitively, ‘Monsieur?’ she repeated. I tried again, and fortunately this time I was able to mutter some words: ‘Augustin, Les Confessions’. Her expression transformed slowly, and a smile appeared on her face after a few seconds. I smiled back, hoping I had made myself clear. She looked at the old man, who limited himself to nodding before fixing his attention on the document again. ‘Suivez-moi’ she said -‘Follow me’.

She took me to a small room away from the old man’s studio, and asked me to wait. A minute later she was back with the piece, holding it close to her body as if it were a treasure of her belonging. She placed the volume in front of me and then gazed into my eyes, I felt as if she were searching for something inside my soul. Then she spoke in English, with a heavy French accent: ‘Do you think about it too? Do you wonder about time?’

I gazed back at her, and it was my turn to try to find something in her depths. Perhaps she had stayed up all night many times, angry, anxious, trying to find an answer for the question. Maybe she had considered the idea of every second existing for eternity: still drops of time not flowing, but staying, and our lives being the illusion of their movement. Possibly, she had explored the thought of every act repeating itself an infinite amount of times, which is the same as saying that it never happened. Or the notion that anything that could happen at any moment will eventually occur or has occurred, in the next time, the previous time, or the other times, if there are such things.

-‘Oui’ I said, trying to get over my perplexity, ‘it is all I can think about sometimes’.

She looked down and opened the book, carefully turning its pages until she reached the fourteenth chapter. ‘Voilà’, she said, almost in a whisper. And there it was, the question that would always haunt us:

Qu’est-ce donc que le temps?