The day that waited for me on the other side of the door was warm and sunny, with a breeze that warned of colder days and shorter nights that were all too fast approaching. Consequently, I resolved to walk at least to Angel Station before subjecting myself to the fetid air and inhumanely close quarters of the London underground and set off down the road with the slightly melancholy air that late summer mornings always bring.
Newington Green was full of children squawking and shrieking on the swings and tumbling across the grass as if determined to squeeze every instant of sunlight left in the sky and the earth. I rounded the corner and was almost immediately collared by the smell of fresh-baked bread. Suddenly, irrationally ravenous, I allowed myself to be led down the street to a aqua-fronted bakery by the smell that was strong enough to be like a physical force, pushing me to the door.
The shop looked empty as I peered around the door frame, save for the paralyzingly delicious smells, now not only of bread, but of crumbly pastries and the snappy tinge of sugary frosting.
"Come in! Come in! How are you?" The voice came from behind a cooling rack of small, crusty rolls and, heeding it, I saw a man--or, rather, his head, peering through the loaves at me. He soon came around the racks to rest his elbows on the pale wooden counter before him, his floury fingers having left streaks up his arm when he rolled up his sleeves.
He wasn't exceptionally tall, but he had long limbs, and carried himself with enough grace that he seemed to be much taller. He had dark hair that fell across his forehead and just brushed his eyebrows, which shaded some of the brightest eyes I'd ever seen. He had a constant look of expectancy, as if the world was unfolding for his sole entertainment. The skin around them was wrinkled with traces of past laughter and as I came into the shop, they folded up into a smile. I had originally thought him around fifty, but the transformation that came over his face with that grin made me wonder if indeed I wasn't a little older than him. You couldn't look at such an expression without feeling a reciprocal gladness from it, and I came up to the counter, eyeing the basket of croissants just behind him.
"You are new, yes? Such a face I would remember." My eyes jerked back onto his face, missing the compliment in my surprise.
"Govoritiye parussky?" I said automatically. His eyes widened and he snapped up to his full height, which was barely equal to my own.
"Of course I speak Russian!" He cried (in Russian), throwing his arms wide, "the surprise is that you do, as well!"
"I spent five years learning to read it, but I don't speak as well as I should."
"Then your Russian is no better than my English. We shall fumble together?" He finished in English with a small wink. "I am Sergey," he offered me a flour-dusted hand and squeezed my hand with a strength for which I wouldn't have previously given him credit.
"Kipling," I replied, smiling in spite of myself.
"Like the author? Of the Phantom Rickshaw and the Jungle Books?"
"The same," I said, relieved that there was one person who didn't need any further explanation.
"This is brilliant! I have just finished the Just-So Stories, and they are for me quite wonderful."
He bent down as he spoke, pushing the release button on a battered microwave behind him. The door sprang open and I saw that it was full of paperback novels, many with pastry-dribbles across the covers, and all dog-eared and well-loved. He pulled out a volume from the far left, leaving a flour smudge across the spines of two nearby books, and set a 1960's Penguin edition of Kipling's Just So Stories on the counter between us.
"That is fantastic!" I tried in Russian, "I need to start keeping books in my microwave!" He laughed out loud at this, a sound of pure delight that made him look almost elfin.
"If my Sonya found me reading during working hours--well, there would be darkness and storms around here for days. So I hide them away where she doesn't think to look and practice my English in between batches." He winked conspiratorially, nodding sideways as if to indicate Sonya's relative position. I could only smile back, marveling at the sheer energy of the person before me. There ensued a few inevitable minutes of literary banter, mostly about my namesake, but it turned out that his microwave also held Sherlock Holmes, Dracula and, incongruously, a book of Wittgenstein's essays on mathematics.
"Yes, yes. My taste in books is...quixical?"
"Quixotic?" I tried, unsure if his look of concern was over Wittgenstein or the word.
"Quixotic?" he tried it slowly, as if trying it on for size, "Quixotic....this is it?"
"Yes, it's from Don Quixote, describing--"
"The windmill man!" I jumped, but he didn't notice it, as he suddenly produced a notebook from his back pocket and began writing with the stub of a well-chewed golf pencil. "I must..add...'Quixotic'...yes. To my collection." He smiled, sliding the notebook and pencil out of sight once again.
"So, Miss Kipling," he began, clearly as comfortable in English as Russian, "if you don't mind me noticing, you are from far away, are you not?" I nodded, not feeling the same sense of embarrassment that usually comes from being a transplant. "Where is home for you, then, where they teach you to speak such good Russian?" I laughed.
"Home is Boston," I said simply.
"No! I have been to Boston!" Sergey cried, slapping his side of the counter with an open hand, "it is where I first start learning English!"
"Really?" his excitement was infectious.
"Certainly. My Sonya and I go to visit my niece and nephew in New York and our plane lands in Boston. And it is while we are waiting for the train to New York that I buy my first English dictionary. And I begin to learn English." I smiled, already enchanted with this bizarre baker, but also feeling every mile between me and that train station he described. He squinted ever so slightly at the expression he saw on my face and his eyes softened.
"You are a long way from home as well, aren't you?" he said quietly. I nodded, suddenly unable to speak. This happened every once in a while. I could talk about home for hours on end, or relish in my distance from the familiar for days, but every so often, something, often too subtle to even warrant mention, would inspire a melancholy homesickness to sneak up and sucker-punch me, causing my eyes to fill and my throat to contract before I had time to throw up my defenses.
"As am I." Sergey said, still quiet, but with sunshine in his smile again. "It's not easy, but think! Think of the stories we have to tell! No one believes me when I tell them the things I have seen! And now," his linguistic shifts were making me dizzy, "I find this beautiful American who speaks Russian! There are too many surprises left for me!" I laughed in spite of myself, slightly confused by his real meaning but too charmed to let it bother me long.
"Come, come," he said, suddenly slightly flustered, "if Sonya sees tears here, she will never forgive me." He passed a napkin over the counter to me and started staving off the mascara trails that were building in my lower lashes.
"Thanks," I said, my voice steadier than I expected.
"Not at all. I am glad to have met someone with such--immaculate, yes?--taste in literature. You are close by?" I nodded.
"About twenty minutes that way," I pointed through the far wall.
"Excellent. Then I expect to see you soon, yes?" I nodded again, and he beamed. "Brava! Now, that I have taken up all this your time with talk of books, here," he slid one of the plump croissants into a thin paper bag and handed it over to me. I took it eagerly and moved my hand to my sweater pocket for my wallet. Before I could do any more than shift my weight, he had snatched the bag back and was glaring at me in mock severity.
"No, no! Here is the bargain, my friend," he jerked his head to the microwave library, "I am in need of 'The Valley of Fear' still. You have a copy of this?"
"Of course!"
"Excellent! You bring it for me tomorrow, then. Words for breakfast, yes?"
"I think that sounds perfect." I answered, wondering how I had made it through twenty-something years of existence without a croissant-dispensing bibliophile friend like this.
"Until then, my quixotic friend."
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