A Romance With Books -1

Whenever I pass by a bookstore, I recall the days when I was struggling to collect a decent library. That was long ago, when five pesos could buy you a brand new, hardbound copy of your favorite book. So when I was in college, I often dreamed of a house with bookshelves reaching from floor to ceiling, with all the books printed with my ex libries. Being poor and subsisting academically only on scholarship, the dream had a long way reaching reality. By the time I got my degree, I had a few pocketbooks, though. I was penniless and now unemployed. I sought the help of our dean. I quite humbly (for I had in the past caused him trouble), that I needed a teaching job soon or I would perish in the unsafe world. I was hoping a position in the faculty of my own college. He nodded his white haired head and told me to come back in a week’s time. When I went back to him on the appointed day, he gave me a letter of recommendation to a far university. I thanked him but refused the letter and left at once, hardly containing my irritation. I suspected he wanted to exile me to that violent no-man’s island as self-punishment for all the grief I had caused him.

A few days later I bumped into a former classmate who was then a teacher at the near university where I should supposed to teach. He told me stories of his nice life in that mountain city that made me mouth water. She said I could join of it if I liked; all I had to do was send an application to the dean and he would check for me. I did and he did. Out of complete ignorance, I miscalculated my journey’s time and arrived at the bus station in the evening. My teeth chattered in the cold. I could not afford a hotel room. The only way is to stay in a station. I noticed two clerks in the dispatcher’s office engaged in a game of chess. To pass away my hunger, I went in and silently watched them. It was a nearing midnight when they finished. I went to lie down on a bench. I hardly slept that night. I noticed only one other fellow there who could not afford a hotel room. I felt safe in that huge corner whose embrace was the first hospitable welcome I had in that city.

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