Bert Barnum Finds a Little Black Book

‘That will do nicely’, thought Bert.

Standing at the back wall of the antique store, he thumbed the pages of the small black notebook between the soft pads of his fingertips.

It was nothing special. The same could be said of Bert. Average height, average weight tending to paunch around the middle, thin, fair hair just starting to wisp around the temples. A well-mended taupe cardigan over pressed shirt in a small check. Pleated pants. Deck shoes, brown. Gentle eyes, lines just beginning to creep into wrinkles around the edges.

This was the best part of Bert’s week. A single black coffee and two boiled eggs with the morning broadsheet, then a brisk walk three blocks down to the antique store to look over the back wall, where any new acquisitions were displayed. Never needing to pick up and touch, stroke his hands along the shining trinkets under spotlights as he had seen other younger, more unruly shoppers do, Bert was content to let his eyes roam over the week’s additions, bright and shining and new.

Mr Caruzzo, the store’s proprietor, had what he would joyfully call to anyone who would ask ‘eclectic taste’. Some weeks there might be a giant lamp, green glass frozen into crystal plates like seafoam, eternally raised by a coy maiden wreathed in a sash of bronze. On another Sunday there had been a collection of military badges, their copper tarnished and fabric frayed, what once might have been scarlet and navy burnished by use, by proud wearing, the smudge in the lower corner maybe just showing up a dark, brownish red under the light. A child’s tea set, Victorian perhaps, painted yellow marigolds winding around bone china, chipped and marked by generations of little hands.

Today, there was the notebook.

Nothing special, Bert thought. Nestled among jewellery and painted screens, plates of beaten and burnished brass, elaborate watches and music boxes, the notebook rather stood out for its ordinariness.

Smooth black leather, well-bound. Small enough just to slide into the palm of a hand, a back pocket.

In a sudden fit of motion, most unlike his usual restraint, Bert found his hand snapping out from his body. Shocked at his own boldness, the notebook was in his palm almost before he noticed himself reaching.

The leather was soft between his fingertips. Warm. Were Bert minded to flights of fancy, which of course he was not, he might have said there was a kind of heat coming from the notebook itself, a low, buzzing kind of vibration.

Turning it in his hands, awed at his own new bravery, he cracked the notebook open.

The pages inside were blank, unlined. Inside the front cover Caruzzo had stuck a yellow tag reading ‘$2’.

$2, thought Bert.

That will do nicely.

Bert found himself pacing the three blocks home just a little more quickly than usual. Ringing up the notebook, Mr. Caruzzo had eyed him jocularly, his own eyes wrinkling up at the corners.

‘A purchase today! Nice to start somewhere. Lovely little thing.’

Bert had looked up, distracted, and had managed to send Caruzzo a weak smile.

‘Yes, thank you. It’ll do nicely.’

Back at his apartment, Bert found himself unwrapping the notebook with something he might almost have called excitement. There it was again, that strange heat, the low vibration he had felt in his hands in the shop. In his small apartment, the late morning sun streaming pale through striped curtains he had bought on sale and hemmed himself, on the small, foldaway table that he had picked up at a flea market to fit his galley kitchen, the notebook seemed almost illuminated by a light all its own.

Opening it at the first blank page, Bert noted with faint interest that his hands were trembling.

He unclipped the fountain pen he always kept in his top pocket — you never knew when you might need a pen — and lowered it to the paper.

Where to begin? The entire notebook lay empty before Bert, all the potential of the world within it. He could write anything, draw anything, scribble poetry, a song, a sketch. At that moment, with the sun streaming through the curtains, the small black notebook on the table and pen gripped in his shaking hand, Bert thought of what he wanted most in the world.

A nice cup of tea.

Bert noticed with satisfaction how easily the ink flowed onto the thick, creamy blank page. There it was again, that strange heat, that low hum.

Even as he raised his hand from the final punctuation point, Bert could see the steam rising through the air.

He could smell it, hot and fresh and impossible, and as he raised his eyes from the paper, he allowed himself a small sip of breath.

There it was on the galley kitchen table, as he knew it would be. In his favourite mug with its jolly, faded red rim, half a sugar and just a splash of half-and-half.

A nice cup of tea.

Bert did not feel dizzy. The room did not spin around him as he jumped from the table shrieking, laughing, tearing his hair, leaping down the stairs and running through the streets to tell someone, anyone, everyone.

Bert Barnum sat at his desk, looking at his nice cup of tea, and lowered his gaze once more to the notebook.

Nice to go on holiday, he thought.

Pay off some bills. He might even get a cat, veterinary bills now notwithstanding. He had been thinking of getting a cat.

He could get a new mug.

Mind you, he was fond of the one he had with its faded, jolly red trim.

With a now steady hand and a deep sense of peace, Bert lowered the pen to the creamy paper of the notebook once more. The sun streamed in through the window, catching in the curled fingertips of steam from the mug on the table, as he wrote out the sum in careful, joined-up script.

$20,000.

Holiday. Bills. Cat.

As Bert Barnum leaned back, the small table of the galley kitchen now hidden under the weight of crisply-printed bank notes in neatly bound bundles, he capped his pen and smiled. Closing the notebook, its full, blank pages still humming with that strange heat, he paced over to the second shelf beneath which he kept his cutlery, and placed it in with elastic bands, paperclips, and the spare pair of scissors he kept for unexpected events.

Yes, thought Bert Barnum.

That will do nicely.