Someone has set up a fake facebook page claiming that I’m a Muslim Communist because I advertised a copy of the Koran and the Communist Manifesto for sale on adverts.ie. I’ve also advertised copies of the Karma Sutra but the trolls have made no comment on that. Maybe I could be a sexy Communist Muslim? Or an Islamic sex guru with an interest in socialism?
I suspect Sodom MacPurity is behind the page. Sodom is one of my customers and a self proclaimed revolutionary republican, woken thinker, urban guerrilla, anti-establishment, anti-leftist, anti-migrant, anti-politics activist with delusions of grandeur and a lifelong hidden disability that makes work or any voluntary labour impossible. He regularly visits my shop to barter over old Ayn Rand paperbacks which he rarely actually buys, and to tell me of some perceived slight that the government has committed against him.
“I hear you’re a Muslim now,” Harpo tells me when I arrive to open the shop. “It was on Facebook.”
“Must be true then.”
Harpo’s hands are blue and I realise he’s been waiting for sometime for me to arrive. “Why did you try selling that book on terrorism anyway?”
“The Koran is not a book on terrorism Harpo,” I say. “And I’ll sell any book I get my hands on. I don’t believe in censorship. You’ve seen me sell Mein Kamp before.”
“Oh is that the old Sci-Fi one you showed me last week?”
“You’re not far off. It is an outlandish unbelievable story."
“Who do you think would win in a fight, Osama Bin Laden or Batman?” Harpo is a comic book fanatic who has taken much of his solid ethics from the pages of Marvel and DC.
“Well Bin Laden is dead so…. But Batman is a fictional character. It’s a tough one.”
This seems to delight Harpo. “Yeah, it is, but Batman always wins because he’s the good guy.”
Sodom MacPurity turns up unexpectedly in the afternoon, wearing his trademark baseball cap decorated with badges of dead IRA men, radical slogans, Chelsea football club pins and a Make America Great button that he ordered off eBay. “I just wanted to warn you that some vicious individual has posted your picture on a Facebook page called Communist Islamic Collaborators,” he says, like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “Thought you should know.”
“That’s nice of you Sodom.” He nods. “Although, to be honest, I don’t like mixing with traitors.”
“Oh right, well maybe you shouldn’t have come in here then. Your lovely badges might get smudged in this cesspit.”
“Maybe, but I know you’re just one of the uneducated sheeple,” he says softly. “Any Rand books in?”
“No,” I lie.
“Makes sense I suppose,” he says, moving towards the door. “Since you’re an Islamic Communist.”
“There’s no such thing as an Islamic Communist,” I shout after him. “It’s an oxymoron. Like disability for the able bodied.”
When George Orwell wrote his famous bookshop memories, an essay on his time working in a second hand bookshop, he couldn’t possibly have perceived the threats that would face our section of the book industry in the early twenty first century. Amazon, e-books and giant chain stores like Easons, where accountants decide what goes out on the shelves, have radically changed the nature of book selling forever.
Orwell was also wrong about the humane totality of bookshops. Book selling has become cut throat and removed from the chivalrous ideals of past ages. The trade is being completely vulgarised, although I can’t decide if this is been carried out by the online monsters and the chain store giants, or by the likes of me!
Harpo turns up wearing a Zorro mask and a cape in the afternoon. Offering no explanation, he casually browses the fantasy section and freaks out two elderly customers.
“Harpo, what are you wearing?”
“Uuuhh? This?” he asks, pointing at the mask. “Its just an idea I have. I think this village needs a superhero.”
“Ok I suppose. Is this about that dog that keeps shitting outside your front door?”
Harpo slaps his head with the palm of his hand. “Noooo Bookman, it’s not the dog. The dog is just mean but you don’t need a superhero to deal with him. It’s about that page they set up about you.”
I’m touched, as always, by the genuine kindness in Harpos little heart. Until he accidentally knocks over a shelf of vampire romances.
“Trolls are sad little incels sitting in their underpants fantasising about other people’s lives,” I say.
Harpo starts laughing uncontrollably. “You think the trolls are jealous of you?” he sniggers and throws his eyes around the shop. “Selling second hand books in a converted cowshed?”
“Feck off Harpo.”
I’m closing the shop up when Stout Trout steps off the bus across the road. He approaches me with haste, like a man in need of urgent attention. “Do you have a battery for a car?”
“No,” I say. “I’ve told you before Trout, this is a bookshop.”
“Well I think you’d be better off selling car batteries to be totally honest,” he sulks, before heading off into the night.
Humane trade? Humane killer required more like.
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