Chapter 15
Vronsky sat next to Aurelia on the window seat and was first to break the silence.
“It might be easiest, Miss Lyndham, to comprehend us to be as real as you are: capable of thought, emotion, and action. I understand that a man named Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy wrote a novel in which he described aspects of my life, but I view him as one might view a parent. He created me, but I live a life distinct from him and from the confines of my book.”
Vronsky paused, his lip quirking into a smile.
“Do I bore you with my philosophizing? I am amenable to any subject of interest to you, apart from banalities about the weather.”
“No, please! I’m enjoying it. I was thinking that it reminded me of discussions I had at university in my literary theory courses.”
“You have taken courses at a university?”
“Yes, I graduated from UCL with a degree in English literature.”
“U-C-L?”
“Oh, sorry—that’s short for University College London.”
“And you obtained a degree! How very fascinating. I believe we had one university in Russia that admitted women, but it closed not long after it opened. You say this university with women is in London?”
“It is. In my time, most universities admit men and women.”
“Your time, you say—when exactly are we? I presumed from what I have observed of the shop and its wares that we are not in my own time, but I am undecided as to how many years beyond it you and your shop exist.”
“I think your novel started in the early 1870s?”
“Yes, I believe that is when Count Tolstoy chose to begin his account of my life.”
“Then I live over one hundred years later—we’re a little way into the twenty-first century here.”
“The twenty-first…” Vronsky trailed off as his eyes widened in surprise. “Can it be? I guessed a few dozen years, but… well over a century?”
“I imagine it’s a lot to take in, but some things are just the same as they were in your own time. Like… Well, people still read books. Some people still ride horses, though I never learned. We still like wine, and parties, and the theatre.”
“That is a comfort. It would be difficult to believe that such pastimes could fall out of fashion entirely.”
Aurelia decided not to mention that some people rode in cars instead of carriages, or read books on screens instead of on paper.
Vronsky shifted gears, then, saying softly, “I have observed you asking others in the shop about their lives and stories. You must feel free, Miss Lyndham, to ask questions of me.”
Her heart went out to him at his offer. Knowing everything he’d gone through in his novel, his willingness to be an open book was extremely generous.
“Thank you. First, though, please call me Aurelia. I’ve been asking the others to do the same.”
He seemed taken aback, then recovered himself.
“I must remind myself that we are in modern times in this shop. If I am to call you Aurelia, then you must call me Alexei.”
Aurelia held out her hand, as though to shake his. He quirked an eyebrow at her.
“If we’re being thoroughly modern, Alexei, we should shake hands—or at least pretend to,” she said, laughing. “In modern times, men and women shake hands when they introduce themselves.”
A wide smile broke across his face as he said, “Then I should hate to be left behind.”
He reached his hand toward Aurelia’s and, as close as he could get without passing through her, they both motioned a single shake, up once and down once.
With that settled, Aurelia’s brow creased as she started debating where to begin with her questions.
“Well, Alexei, I do have questions for you. I’ve read your novel many, many times—probably more than any other.”
His eyebrows rose in surprise.
“It’s very odd to be sitting next to a—”
Aurelia stopped herself from saying ‘character,’ feeling it wasn’t quite right to use the word to refer to someone who seemed as real as herself.
“Next to a person who feels like a friend even though we’ve only just met.”
Vronsky looked down at his hands before responding.
“I struggle to place myself in your position. If I were to wake tomorrow, confronted with characters from the novels on my shelf, I would presume I had gone mad.”
“I did think I might have lost my grip on reality. I also wondered whether I was dreaming all of you. Honestly, I wonder that still.”
She gave a smile, which Vronsky returned.
“But here you are, sitting next to me and seeming as real as the customers who came in and out of my shop earlier today. Or yesterday, rather,” Aurelia added as she noticed the sky outside the window slowly morphing from deep cobalt to a soft violet-blue as dawn approached.
Vronsky also made note of the changing light and his eyes took on a worried cast.
“Are you alright, Alexei? Is something wrong?”
“The night is ending,” he said with a regretful smile. “It has been a pleasure.”
He stood and made a slight bow.
“I don’t understand—are you leaving?”
Aurelia stood too, confused by his change in tone. A moment ago, they were going to talk about his novel and he’d invited her to ask him about his life. Had she said or done something wrong?
Vronsky smiled reassuringly and took a step backward, toward the spiral staircase.
As her eyes followed him, his body began to shift and change, melting back into a parchment-colored mist littered with words.
Startled, Aurelia jumped back and fell neatly onto the edge of the window seat.
She saw mists appear all around the shop as the figures that had been solid a moment before were changed back into their literary forms.
Dropping to her knees, she crawled to the mezzanine railing to watch Vronsky’s mist join the others that were making their way back to the Recommended Reads table, back into their books, and back to their own lives and stories.
She stayed at the railing long after they’d vanished, watching the table and its copies of their books.
Was it really that simple, that easy for them to disappear?
Just like that, swept up in a breath of air, they were gone and she had stood by, unable to stop them.
She was sure that Vronsky, at least, had been disappointed to leave.
Eventually, Aurelia sat back, stretching her aching legs before sitting cross-legged on the floor.
They’d come to the shop two nights in a row now. Was it unreasonable to hope they’d come for a third night? A fourth? She smiled, remembering Cuff’s teasing words: ‘You doubted?’
Maybe hope wasn’t such an unreasonable thing after all.