How do you look at someone who comes to return a book after 35 years?!?
With suspicion, bewilderment, amusement, shock, ready to send them to the madhouse… I was prepared for anything, so I held my ground! 🙂
MIHAIL SADOVEANU LIBRARY
While dusting off, in an excess of zeal, all the books in my parents’ library, I discovered a stamp inside one of them from a public library.
“Municipal Library M. Sadoveanu.”
Oh Lord, how long have I been living in this illegality? – I wondered.
I started calculating, and it turns out it has been in my family’s library for 30-35 years! Shame, shame, and triple shame! I have no idea how it happened, nor do I know if I was the one who borrowed it (I don’t even remember reading it) or if it was my sister, who used to read a lot. Somehow, it lived its youth in our library.
I started flipping through it. I found another stamp a few pages in and, on the inside cover, the marks of a card pocket that probably once held a library card, right?
I can’t understand how the librarians didn’t catch us back then, how they didn’t send someone after us, or how we didn’t end up on the Wall of Shame (or maybe we did, but we never went back there to see…).
Anyway… now that I’ve stumbled upon it after all this time, sandwiched between other books in the large library we always had at my parents’ place, I decided to return it to its rightful owner. So, I put it in the car trunk to take it back whenever I get the chance.”
I didn’t get the chance. So, it stayed there, forgotten, for a few more months.
When I finally rediscovered it, I set off with the book in hand, heading determinedly to the Mihail Sadoveanu Library, thrilled about what I was about to do.
But guess what? The library was closed hahahaha. What were the odds that it would be closed THAT DAY, for some cleaning or whatever?!?
I didn’t give up. After a few more weeks during which the poor book absorbed the smell of gasoline, food, or other things carried in the car, I grabbed it decisively and… straight to the library!
Today it’s open, thank God!
I walk in, amused by my own actions.
Inside, no one! Not in any of the ground floor rooms. How strange! It’s been so long since I’ve last been in a public library – could things have modernized and, above all, relaxed this much?
I hear voices. Real ones 🙂 Following their direction, I strike up a conversation with two employees.
“What do you need?” – the gentleman, the lady’s colleague, asks me.
“You’re going to laugh, but I’ve come to return a book… after approximately 35 years.”
After a brief moment of hesitation, he takes the book and, with a reflexive gesture, places it on a modern scanning device. Then he realizes it’s pointless. There’s no way the system could find something that was never entered into it.
He’s clearly flustered, I’ve put him in a situation… unprecedented. Will he call the police and hand me over to the authorities?…
Shrugging slightly in helplessness, still holding the book in his hand, he tells me he’ll check if the book still exists in their old inventories. It seems like he’d rather get rid of it than bother looking for it in their records, but I still hope it will find its place back on the shelves of its mother-library.
I thank him and leave. Although it might seem silly or a waste of time, I’m actually happy I did this.
And suddenly, I feel an urge to reeead… So, I walk into the nearest bookstore to buy a book.
Would they have ‘The Birds’ by Alexandru Ivasiuc? 🙂
