Cape Town - On Saturday, I fumbled my way into the Book Lounge in Roeland Street.
Load shedding had plunged the area into darkness. Food fridges in nearby cafes lay fallow, samoosas curled up and died on counters, ATMs stared blankly and traffic lights stood like decommissioned terminators.
Yet in the upstairs area of the book store, a nest of children sat transfixed on cushions listening as a woman read to them. Some munched muffins. Parents sat equally enthralled.
On the darkened stairs leading downstairs, a man sat reading to a little girl. In the basement, the children’s book section was illuminated with fairy lights. Small heads leaned together as huddles of children chose books, read books and pointed at pictures. It was like a book starship – as magical and otherworldly as reading itself.
On Sunday, I passed a signboard outside a shop in Kalk Bay. “Shock your parents and read a book!” it said. I thought of five-year-old Theadora, the daughter of my friends in Bolivia, with whom I recently spent a month. If she had her own signboard, it would read: “Shock your parents and don’t read a book.”
While she is just learning to read, she is obsessed with books: books about bunnies; books about adopted children; books about magic tree houses; books about submarines and dinosaurs and lions and honey guides.
I spent many evenings reading to her, doing deep voices for daddy bunnies and growly voices for lions. At breakfast, I sat and listened to her mother read over porridge and eggs.
As I watched Theadora’s face – shining with anticipation, her wide eyes expectant – I thanked the heavens and Buddha and the goats above that I learnt to read. And I thanked the gods and the trolls and every letter in the alphabet that I had returned to books.
As a child, I was a voracious reader. In my first years of high school, Mrs Tatham – the whiskered librarian – would allow me to take out books reserved for older pupils. I loved the swearing in David Niven’s The Moon’s a Balloon and fell in love with DH Lawrence’s Oliver Mellors. As a too-tall geek with the social skills of a peg bag, I found friends and freedom in fiction. At university, I accumulated enough books on which to mount my scabby mattress and read in pubs, parks and pools.
Then real life happened. Between working, walking dogs and worrying about the world, I read less. And when my first brother died, I stopped altogether. I didn’t want to read about make-believe worlds when my own was so horribly real. I closed the door on books and turned to the TV, the nights dribbling into each other in a numbing wash of flickering Americans. But I knew I would be back.
Now I am as obsessed as Theadora. I read while stirring noodles. I read while waiting for the train. I read during lunch and during yoga (not really). I read in the bath, in bed, on blankets. I read over coffee, over tea, over the cat. I buy cheap books from charity shops and expensive ones from pierced purveyors. I swop novels with friends and borrow anthologies from acquaintances.
Author David Mitchell wrote: “Books don’t offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.” I have found this to be so.
Reading provides us with an intimate space where we can imagine, believe and, often, transform. It is a silent communion between author and reader, and good writing makes us feel less alone. It shows us how we live.
After leaving the Book Lounge, I walked into town to find a functioning ATM amid the hum of generators and the dark doorways. In Plein Street, I passed The Bookery, a non-profit organisation which establishes and stocks libraries at under-resourced schools. With the help of public donations, they have set up over 40 libraries.
As I drove home towards an afternoon of Richard Ford and the Paris Review, I remembered the wonderment on Theadora’s face when I read to her. And I imagined that same look on the faces of thousands of children who now have access to reading.
Books are more than words and pages; they are microcosms and fathoms. They whisk us away and plunge us deeper. They shake the heart free of coins and offer us riches – even when life becomes stranger than fiction.
Cape Argus
* Helen Walne is an award-winning columnist and writer based in Cape Town.