For some reason, he was never able to find a place of his own. Something inside him just pushed him forward, and he never stood still long enough to build something, to make something of himself or for himself.
So now, at sixty-something years old, Fionn was back in his home country after traveling the world. He was almost penniless, but not quite, he still had some relatives, but not quite, and quite surely he had no idea what to do with his life.
Old age was looming ugly over his future days.
Fionn had always been a tough man. Strong by nature, he stood at 6 foot 4, or 193 cm as he told them in other places when they asked. He was never particularly well groomed, but was always washed and had clean clothes.
If he remembered something from his upbringing, it was the respect for cleanliness, and although he was not necessarily very tidy, he was a stickler for cleanliness.
Now, with his hair growing in all directions and a big grey beard, he looked like an ogre most of the time. An ogre in need of work that is.
The few euros he had, he was guarding well, trying hard to make them stretch to the maximum.
Fionn did not even remember all the jobs he had done in his life, but now he had to take into consideration a new factor, something that he had never thought about before. His getting older. Now he could not lift as much as he used to, or stand on his feet for hours on end as he had done on countless building sites around the world.
To be fair, Fionn did not even know what job would work for him now, as almost all the jobs he was good at before, or he could do, not sure about good, seemed to be unsuitable now.
A ship marooned on the shore, its wood drying out, decaying, forced to stare at the sea, contemplating what was, what is, and what will never be.
Sometimes he would think of all the people he’d met, of all the hopes he had, of how it was all gone, and now he was here, unsure of what to do with himself in this great, big world.
Fionn had found a room in a big house split into many tiny rooms. He was grateful for it. He was too old to share and also, over the years, he had become very wary of sleeping in a room with other people. More than once they tried to steal his things, and a few times they even managed, until he got into the habit of putting all his precious belongings in a pouch around his neck and his backpack, which, while sleeping, he would hug tightly as a mother would her baby.
His room here was the definition of tiny. He had a bed, a small nightstand and one of those fabric wardrobes from Ikea, but most importantly, it had a window. A window he could use to look out and check the weather, a window he could watch the stars through when the nights were clear. A room of his own.
Money was tight though, and Fionn was desperate to find something to do and earn something. He had tried construction, but he was useless, plus he got laughed at so much by the young workers, seemingly unaware of their human condition, that he was now firmly convinced that the chapter was over for him.
One day, deep in his thoughts, unaware of the rain seeping into his clothes, Fionn walked the streets of Dublin looking for something, anything, and what he found was totally unexpected.
An old man, older even than Fionn, was on his knees on the sidewalk, gathering some spilled books and putting them in a box. The man was wearing a tattered suit and had a bright dignity about himself there in the pouring rain, on his knees on the dirty sidewalk, gathering books and trying to protect them from the rain.
Fionn knelt and quickly helped him gather the rest of the books and supported him to stand up. The box seemed way too big for the frail man to carry, so Fionn picked it up and waited for the man to lead the way.
They understood each other without words, and walked quickly, well, as fast as they could, on the slippery sidewalk, then on a small alleyway, stopping in front of a little shop front. The old man unlocked the door and motioned Fionn to follow him inside.
The interior was unlike anything Fionn had ever seen before. Walls covered from floor to ceiling in shelves bent under the weight of books. Books, books everywhere, more books than Fionn thought existed in the world.
‘Put that here, please!’, Fionn snapped out of his fascination and did as he was told.
In the soft light of the bookshop the old man seemed to have transformed, and from where before he looked very old and frail, now he seemed quite well, not young, but not old either. Even his suit was now seemingly made out of a sparkly kind of tweed that moved with elegance at every little gesture.
‘Ogma, nice to meet you!’, by the extended hand Fionn understood that, that was the man’s name.
‘Oh, hello! Fionn, nice to meet you too! You have so many books … I don’t think I have ever seen so many books in one place …’, and with his eyes wide open, he spun in place to look all around.
Ogma was obviously very pleased by the admiration elicited in his guest by the rows and rows of books.
‘And you should see the warehouse!’, he added in a proud parent tone.
‘There are more? Did you read them all???’, Fionn was genuinely interested.
Ogma laughed, a strange, resounding laugh.
‘Well no, not all. That is not really my job. I love to read, and I only read the ones I like. Many are not really to my taste … I am more old school you know …’ and a cheeky smile flourished at the corner of his mouth.
Because of all the books lining the walls, the place was quiet and peaceful, also it smelled pleasant of old books, of incense of some sort and a flowery scent that Fionn understood the source of when Ogma brought him a steaming cup of tea that smelled more like perfume than anything else.
Ogma must have understood the dismay on his face.
‘Oh, sorry! You don’t drink this! I am sure I have some builder’s tea somewhere!’, and flustered, he disappeared behind a curtain in the back of the shop.
Fionn sat down in the armchair he was directed to and found it to be the most comfortable thing he had sat on for a long time. It somehow molded around his body, supporting him just right so that his back did not hurt and his neck was comfortable. Oh, if only he had an armchair like that. Maybe he would even read! And he chuckled to himself.
‘What is funny?’, Ogma seemed to have just materialized next to him.
Without time to invent a lie, Fionn told him what he had thought about.
‘If you come work for me, you can sit in it all you like!’ Ogma smiled, relaxed, while sipping his soap-smelling tea.
Fionn was completely taken by surprise. A job! Yes! Any job! Especially one with a very comfortable armchair!
‘What job?’, he was playing it cool.
‘I need help with all these books, sorting them, moving them from place to place, dusting them, carrying new ones in … you saw what happened today … if you hadn’t helped me, all the books would have been destroyed, and my job is to keep them safe.’
They sat there talking well into the evening, when dinner time came, Ogma invited Fionn to have dinner with him. They had colcannon with ham, which Fionn though was the best food he had had in a very long time.
The job sounded much too good to be true, it came with an en-suite room upstairs where a small kitchen also provided all the needful for proper living.
Ogma explained that he lived somewhere in town and he would come every day to the shop, but that Fionn would take charge of the day-to-day management, of opening and closing, of dealing with the customers. Of course, Ogma would help in the beginning but later on he planned to take some time off for himself, so Fionn would be ‘the main man’. Ogma had never traveled much, and the sun was calling.
Fionn was very wary of good deeds, yeah, he had met plenty of good people in his path across the world, but he had learned that most often there was a hidden catch, always, without fail.
He was too old and too poor though to pass up such an offer, so he accepted, but kept his tiny room as a backup for a long enough time, until he was convinced he was not being scammed.
The job proved easier than he thought, and most importantly, it turned out to be more pleasant than he imagined. Fionn had never been a big reader, so up till then his interaction with books had been minimal, but now he discovered that they were actually interesting. Some of them at least.
He discovered, to his utter surprise, that he himself had a lot in common with the Stoics. Ogma had given him to read a big, beautifully illustrated book, with big writing and the most amazing, light-catching paper. The object was almost as wonderful as the content. He loved all of it.
In the shortest time, Fionn found that he felt at home in the cozy shop that seemed to contain all the books in the world, and those that it did not Ogma would send him out to find in charity shops, house clearances, and old bookstores. And although they brought in so many new books, there always seemed to be space on the shelves.
In the warmth and safety of the bookshop, Fionn felt stronger and healthier. When he got glasses for the first time, he laughed at himself in the mirror.
‘That is it! I have turned! I became one of them!’
Them were the people who came into the shop and who picked up books with quivering fingers and were almost teary-eyed when they found a book they had been looking for, for a long time.
Sometimes, sitting in his comfy armchair, Fionn also got teary-eyed for the chance he got to spend his life there, among books, among those people, alive and not so much.
Fionn had spent his life looking for somewhere to go, and now, he finally had somewhere to stay. A place with infinite worlds in it.