The Common Breath Fiction Series, January 2021



Translation
by Kiera Mitchell


The bookshop did not have a bell above the front door, unlike a lot of other small shops. I could see the door from the desk which I stood behind, whilst I slowly lost the feeling in my feet, and lost the will to live as the hours progressed. It was quiet enough that the door’s creak as it was swung open, was able to alert me of an incoming customer. I did not have much else to do, so I watched as a middle-aged woman entered the shop wearing the exact brown, teddy-bear style jacket that I had almost bought in Debenhams the weekend previous. I had taken the jacket off the display rack, even tried it on once I had located a mirror, but when I looked at the price-tag again, I decided that I could get one similar for less that £85. The woman’s blonde hair contrasted against the brown jacket better than my auburn-coloured hair had anyway. Her sun-kissed hair, and glowing, tanned skin which was almost completely covered with various items of warm clothing, caused me to assume that she was not from Aberdeen.

I perched on the edge of the chair which was always stacked high with deliveries that I had signed for, but did not know where to put. The woman smiled at me and I smiled back as she headed towards the fiction section. That was the only section worth looking at in my opinion. I do not mean that in the sense that non-fiction books are bad, just, this was a university bookshop. Most of the non-fiction books were textbooks, they had been hand-picked by lecturers of the university buildings which surrounded the little bookshop. The shop was always literally in the shadow of those grand, scholarly buildings, and the choice of books that we sold reflected that. My boss Mark, once told me about two of the business management lecturers, who actually spent one summer working together and writing a textbook designed specifically for the course which they were teaching on. It was a great way of bringing in some extra money for themselves I supposed, especially when they added that particular textbook to the class’s compulsory reading list every year. Most of the textbooks that I had briefly skimmed through when I was meant to be placing price stickers on them, contained some very heavy and unexciting reading, unless you were into that sort of thing.

We did have some other but much smaller sections of the bookshop that were designated to attract the tourists too. There, we displayed items such as: maps of the local area, or Scotland in general, coasters featuring painted pictures of the university buildings that still looked good and not just old, and bookmarks with highland cows on them. That was just an example of the type of kitsch knick-knacks that the tourists were rewarded with, if they could find this section of the shop at the beginning of a university semester, when we were at our busiest. To succeed in this, the tourists would have to get beyond that looming stack of textbooks, and the distraught students who just discovered the price of them.

However, the shop had been very quiet that day, so the woman had quite easily discovered a display table in the back-left corner, that featured local texts and authors. The shop had admittedly been very quiet every day recently. The students who actually read the textbooks ahead of the class, had already been in to buy them or ordered them online a few weeks ago when the semester started. Due to the shop’s heavy emphasis on being a university bookshop, I felt like it did not have much of a purpose during those in between times when the students did not need it. Mark had to have been relying on the tourists to make some sort of income during those times.

It was only the woman and I on the shop floor, so I tried to make it less awkward for her by appearing as though I was very busy behind the till. I wanted to seem like I was not interested in watching which books she picked up, and then quickly put back down again after reading the blurb. I moved the computer mouse around and got it into a position that I liked, then I put a few pens back into the pencil-pot and I binned an old post-it note. I realised that I had not seen anyone else in the shop for the last few hours. Mark had left to work a book stall outside of a Law lecture after my lunch-break, and the other staff members who worked in the back-office, kept to themselves and never really left the back-office – I was still not exactly sure what they did, but I was sure it was something important.

At the final minutes of every hour, I saw a swarm of students pass by the shop, but I assumed that they were all desperate to get home and put their pyjamas back on, after struggling through maybe two hours of classes that day.

As much as I tried not to watch what the woman was doing, she was the only other moving thing in the room. I felt the woman approaching the front of the shop and heading towards the desk, so I looked down at the computer screen and pretended that there was something interesting on it. I glared intently at the rectangular box on the screen that asked me to login.

‘Hi, I was wondering if you could help me? Do you have this book but in like an English translation?’ She lay a copy of David Toulmin’s Collected Short Stories down on the desk in front of me.

‘Not to my knowledge, I guess I could google it though?’

‘Yes, please. If you could order in an English translation that would be great.’ She rubbed at her arms to combat the cold air in the shop, and I thought about how I had made the right decision in not buying that jacket, if it merely looked warmer than it actually was. The shop was very cold though. The electric heater that was plugged in behind the desk to make up for the broken central-heating, was not making much of an impact. I logged into the computer as it had requested, and I stood there watching the loading wheel slowly turn. Everything in that shop was old. I regretted the woman’s choice to begin making small talk whilst the computer took its time. ‘This place is so cute and old-looking,’ she turned her head to look at the condensation-covered window on her right, and the dilapidated book case on her left.

‘Old is an understatement, I think it just desperately needs remodelled,’ I joked, but I was not sure that she was listening as she stared admiringly at the fluorescent utility-lighting overhead. The lights were dotted with the shadows of wasp corpses. They had been trapped in there from summer’s past, and no one had bothered to remove them. Beneath us was the carpet that was probably put in when the building was built, and I could not tell the difference between faded pattern or stain on it. The wooden bookcases were falling apart and getting dangerous; if I ran my hands along the shelf then I would definitely be picking splinters out of my skin later.

‘That’s why I moved to Aberdeen, for the old-ness of it all, I just like it.’

‘You just moved here? Where did you come from?’

‘Edinburgh’

‘There are some pretty old buildings there too though, no?’

‘Hmm. Have you found the translation?’ The internet had loaded, and I had typed in the question, ‘is there an English translation of David Toulmin’s Collected Short Stories,’ but to no avail. Google suggested ways that I could have improved my search and made it more efficient. I am sure that Google was right to judge me, and my internet searching skills did need improvement, but no matter what I typed, I could not find what she wanted. I did manage to find results for some of Toulmin’s other books and I tried clicking on a few links, but it got me nowhere. I was familiar with the book but there were gaps in my knowledge of it, so I had given the woman the benefit of the doubt that a translation might exist. The more I thought about it, the crazier an idea it became. She looked at me expectantly.

‘Sorry I don’t think I can get you an English translation of this book.’

‘Do you know any other bookstores who can?’

‘Well, no, because it’s not really in a different language per say, it’s just in Doric, I think. It’s a different dialect, because the man who wrote it was from around here, so that’s just how a lot of people from here spoke, or still speak actually!’ The woman’s previously excited smile towards the ‘old-ness’ of the shop had turned into a frown.

‘Oh so you mean it’s like an accent? I skimmed the first page though and yes there is some English in there, but I tried sounding out the other words like I would with Scots, and it didn’t do anything for me.’ She placed both of her elbows on the desk and got comfortable. ‘When I went to Queen Margaret University, outside of Edinburgh, I made loads of friends with accents from everywhere. Glasgow, England, just everywhere. This isn’t one I came across though. Some of these words just aren’t at all English, Nova.’ she had scanned my shirt for my name badge. I felt a bit uneasy when customers said my name. It meant that if I made a mistake and told them the wrong information, then my boss could trace it back to me. I had to be careful and very accurate with my answers now.

‘Why don’t I search it online one more time?’

She nodded her head and pursed her lips smugly like she had proved a point. I felt like she thought I was lying to her, and that I just did not want to tell her about a translation for this book, as if I wanted to keep it all to myself.

‘Maybe you’re not putting his name in right. It’s Toulmin here. T O U L M I N. Not Toulman with an “A”. It’s an “I”. Did that work?’ I shook my head. I had delved deep in to Toulmin’s life now, I knew where he lived, and where he died – only a street over from where I lived! I even discovered that David Toulmin was not in fact his real name. ‘Should I come around there and have a look maybe?’ I gazed down at the desk between us. It was covered in marks and dents like the rest of the shop, but I respected it more than any of the other furniture. It was what separated me from the customer. It marked out the boundary between my space and theirs. I could move out of my space, the badge which I wore on my shirt, embossed with the letters that spelled out ‘Nova’, gave me the authority to do so. However, the customer could not enter my space. The woman shuffled to her left as to make her way to the open end of the desk and join me. I started talking quickly, to stop her.

‘I am really sorry but there is no such thing as an English translation to this book because it is still technically in English’

‘But- ‘

‘Maybe you could make a friend here who speaks Doric and they could help you with it?’

‘Nobody really speaks like that in the city, surely!’

‘You would be surprised, in fact if you purchase this book and turn left when you walk out that front door, then you will come across a bus stop. When the bus comes, hop on and nine times out of ten, the bus driver will speak like the people in this book.’

‘I need to turn right out of the shop to get to my flat though.’

‘Ah well it was worth a try, I’m guessing you won’t be wanting this book then?’

‘No that’s alright. I will just take this instead.’ She slid a coaster across the counter to me. It had a flowery border around it’s edges and a cartoon drawing of a highland cow. The cow stood on its hind legs in a human-like fashion and waved it’s fist/hoof in the air. There was a speech bubble coming from its mouth which read, ‘yi glekit gype!’ I knew that phrase from when I had tried to buy the equivalent of a student ticket on the bus after first moving here; the drivers did not care who you were, you paid full price in Aberdeen. I supposed it could be funny if you had it said to you in a nicer way than I had, but I could not understand why they would put that on a coaster, or why Mark would buy it in for the shop to sell. The woman had clearly been pulled in by the picture, as a lot of tourists were.

‘That will be two pounds please.’

‘Perfect, thank you.’ The till played a little celebratory tune as it printed out her receipt, but she declined its paper, and left through the creaky door. ●




Author Bio
Kiera Mitchell is an undergraduate student at the University of Aberdeen, studying an MA in English with Music studies. Originally from Forfar, she has immersed herself in the culture of Aberdeen, and is enjoying reading local literature. /// t: @kmitchell1608