He held the book that had been hard to find and might be harder to read.
The old man in the Chinatown bookshop had pointed it out as a challenging story. Unable to open and inspect it unless he bought it, he’d taken up the offer and purchased the book sight unseen.
“Make sure to read it immediately after you open it,” the old man said. “It’s most important that you do that.”
Not sure what that might mean, he sat in his reading chair and removed the plain brown paper wrapping. The cover, a solid, simple black, gave no clue to the contents, and when he turned to the first page, he was disappointed the proprietor hadn’t mentioned that the text was incredibly small and densely packed.
Retrieving a magnifying glass, he squinted at the typeface and realized that whatever language this was, it wasn’t recognizable, which he found odd since the man had told him he would enjoy the story immensely, apparently not realizing that he read only English. He wondered if he somehow looked like someone who could understand whatever language this was.
Flipping to a random page, he was surprised to see that the typeface, although still tiny and tightly packed, was different. Some other strange language, but not the one on the first page. Turning to the next page, he found that it was, indeed, written in English, although the words were arranged in a non-sensical order, like some kind of random spouting with no regard for coherence.
Going straight to the last page, he was surprised to see it was written in Hanguel, the language of his grandparents’ native Korea, which comforted him somehow, even though he couldn’t read these words either.
This puzzle perturbed him. Determined to solve it, he turned back to the first page. It was blank. So was the next page, and the next. Page after page, all the words had disappeared.
Frustrated, he returned to the store. Placing the book on the counter, he opened his mouth, but the proprietor spoke first.
“I can see by your face what happened,” said the old man. “Remarkable, isn’t it, that so much can be packed in so few pages? But, as you’ve discovered, if you don’t understand what you see the first time through, there’s no second chance to reread the text. It’s the nature of the way these books are printed. The ink they use begins to disappear once the pages are exposed to light, which means that if you don’t understand what you see the first time through, you have no second chance to read it again.”
A small TV, its volume turned down, sat on the shelf behind the counter. He could see that they were announcing election results from the night before.
The old man saw what he was looking at. “So what do you think about the outcome?”
He shook his head. “I don’t understand it.”
“Yes,” said the old man, nodding. “And if we could turn back the clock to live election day over again, we’d still not understand what we were seeing, don’t you think? But we can’t do that anyway, as you well know.”
He gave a resigned nod.
“Would you like to buy another copy?” asked the old man.
He shook his head. “I’ll stick with this one,” he said, picking up the book of blank pages, the text of which he would never be able to read. “If I bought another one, I’d still not understand what I was seeing before it all disappeared, so I’d only end up with one more book of blank pages.”
The old man smiled and waved. “Have a nice day,” he called out, “and be kind. Now more than ever it’s most important to be kind.”
He smiled as he stepped out into the sunshine. Now this, this he understood.
Lanning Lee 