The Marginalia

Old Zhou's bookstore sat in an alley on the west side of town. The storefront was narrow, but it ran deep, like a flattened chimney. Bookshelves lined three walls, with two more rows standing in the middle. You had to turn sideways to walk through.

Buying used books was his main source of stock. Whenever someone in the nearby apartments passed away, or a kid went abroad for school, they'd call him when they cleared out the study. He'd go pick up the books, pay by the kilogram, and sort through them back at the shop. The good ones got wiped down and shelved; the beat-up ones went into a corner, sold by weight.

That afternoon, a young man came in carrying a cardboard box. He said his grandmother had passed away the month before, the house was being sold, and no one wanted these books. Old Zhou flipped through them—literary titles from the eighties up to the early two-thousands. Nothing rare, but the condition was decent. He gave the kid eighty yuan, who thanked him and left.

The box sat behind the counter. Old Zhou didn't get to it until after he'd closed up for the night.

The first book was a 1983 edition of Fortress Besieged. The spine had loosened, the corners worn pale. He opened to the title page. Three characters in pencil: Lin Shi'an. Neat, balanced strokes—someone who'd practiced calligraphy.

He turned to the main text. The margins were filled with penciled notes. Tiny characters, squeezed beside paragraphs as if afraid of taking up too much space.

"This part is satire." An arrow pointed to the passage about Fang Hongjian buying a fake diploma.

Old Zhou flipped forward a few pages. "Miss Su is actually pitiable." A few pages later: "Perhaps it's for the best that Tang Xiaofu left."

He closed the book and picked up the next. A 1985 edition of Border Town. The same three characters on the title page—Lin Shi'an—but the handwriting had matured, the structure steadier. The marginalia had grown more frequent too. Stars drawn next to paragraphs, wavy lines under sentences, the occasional brief comment.

"Cuicui's person isn't coming back."

This sentence had been erased—but not cleanly. The pencil marks were still visible if you looked, and the paper had been pressed down hard. Old Zhou ran his finger over the indentation. Why would someone erase that?

He went through the books one by one.

A 1987 copy of The Ordinary World. The notes had multiplied. Lin Shi'an seemed especially fond of Sun Shaoping—every time the character appeared, a small check mark sat beside the passage. At the part where Sun Shaoping decides to leave Shuangshui Village, Lin had written in pen—starting from this book, the pencil had been replaced by a fountain pen—"I want to see the outside world too." The pen had pressed down so hard that the words "outside world" nearly pierced the paper.

A 1991 One Hundred Years of Solitude. The fountain pen strokes had grown sloppy. Sometimes a whole page would have nothing but a couple of exclamation marks; other times, a straight line ran the full length of a paragraph—impossible to tell if it was agreement or dissent. The signature on the title page had changed too. No longer neat and upright, but scrawled quickly, like an autograph.

A 1994 To Live. The notes had suddenly thinned out. Old Zhou flipped through the entire book and found only four words in the corner of the page where Fugui buries Youqing. The strokes were faint: "I can't go on."

Old Zhou closed that page and lit a cigarette.

A 2000 edition of Norwegian Wood. On the title page, beneath Lin Shi'an's name, was an extra line: "Purchased at Beijing Xidan Bookstore, March 2000." The marginalia in this book had shifted again—no longer reflections, but scattered words and questions, as if someone were talking to himself. "Why." "And then." "Really." Drifting across the pages.

A 2004 The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Next to the name on the title page, someone had added a line in different-colored ink: "Lin Nian, happy birthday." The handwriting wasn't Lin Shi'an's. It was round, girlish. Old Zhou flipped further and found, beneath that line, Lin Shi'an's sloppy fountain-pen reply: "Thank you."

These were the only two words in the entire box not written by Lin Shi'an. Old Zhou stared at them for a long time.

A 2009 Mountains Depart. The marginalia had returned, but they were no longer commentary or reflections. They were dates and places. "April 12, 2009. Guangzhou. Rain." "July 3, 2009. Father hospitalized." "January 25, 2010. Moved today." Like an informal diary, written inside someone else's books.

Old Zhou picked up the last one. A 2014 edition of The Miracles of the Namiya General Store. The condition was nearly new, barely touched. Lin Shi'an's name was still on the title page, but the strokes had lost their earlier strength—they trembled slightly. The book held no marginalia at all.

Except on the very last page. Tucked inside was a sticky note, written in pencil:

"Shi'an, when are you coming home?"

Old Zhou turned the note over. The back was blank. He tucked it back in and closed the book.

Twenty-four books had passed through his hands, like watching a forty-year time-lapse of someone's life. He didn't know who Lin Shi'an was. Didn't know where he was now, or even if he was still around. But he knew that the owner of this box had liked pencils when he was young, switched to fountain pens later, gone to Beijing, gone to Guangzhou, cared for someone named Lin Nian, had a father who had been hospitalized, had moved, and that later someone had asked him when he was coming home.

A question that, as things stood now, probably had no answer.

Old Zhou pressed the sticky note flat, tucked it back into the last page of the Namiya book, and arranged all twenty-four books by year of publication. He cleared a shelf in the most visible spot in the store and placed them in, one at a time.

He taped a note beside the shelf: "Lin Shi'an's Collection. Not For Sale."

The next afternoon, a middle-aged woman stood in front of that shelf for a very long time. She pulled out each of the twenty-four books, one by one, flipping through them. When she reached the last one and saw the sticky note, she wept.

Old Zhou didn't approach. He sat behind the counter with his head down, pretending to go over the accounts, pretending not to see.

Other people's stories—no need to ask.

He just waited until she left, then went over and added a small lamp to that shelf. Warm yellow light fell across the spines of twenty-four books. In the evening quiet of the bookstore, it looked as if someone was waiting for someone to come home.