Mr. Gwyn by Alessandro Baricco Page A

truthfully, nothing really occurs to me.”
    Jasper Gwyn smiled in the darkness.
    â€œDon’t worry, it’s a phenomenon I’m very well acquainted with.”
    They shook hands as they said goodbye, and the gesture seemed to them both to have a memorable precision and foolishness.

40
    Jasper Gwyn spent five days writing the portrait—he did it at home, on the computer, going out from time to time to walk, or eat something. As he worked he listened to Frank Sinatra records over and over.
    When he thought he had finished, he copied the file onto a CD and took it to a printer. He chose square sheets of a rather heavy laid paper, and a blue ink that was almost black. He laid out the pages in such a way that they looked airy without seeming trivial. After long reflection, he chose a font that perfectly imitated the letters made by a typewriter: in the roundness of the o there was a hint of blurring in the ink. He didn’t want any binding. He had two copies made. At the end the printer was noticeably worn out.
    The next day Jasper Gwyn spent hours looking for a tissue paper that seemed to him appropriate, and a folder, with a tie, that wasn’t too big, or too small, or too much folder. He found both in a stationer’s that was about to close, after eighty-six years in business, and was getting rid of its stock.
    â€œWhy are you closing?” he asked at the cash register.
    â€œThe owner is retiring,” a woman with nondescript hair answered, without emotion.
    â€œDoesn’t he have children?” Jasper Gwyn persisted.
    The woman looked up.
    â€œI’m the child,” she said.
    â€œI see.”
    â€œDo you want a gift bag or is it for you?”
    â€œIt’s a gift for me.”
    The woman gave a sigh that could mean many things. She took the price off the folder and put everything in an elegant envelope fastened with a thin gold string. Then she said that her grandfather had opened that shop when he returned from the First World War, investing everything he had. He had never closed it, not even during the bombing in 1940. He claimed to have invented the system of sealing envelopes by licking the edge. But probably, she added, that was nonsense.
    Jasper Gwyn paid.
    â€œYou don’t find envelopes like this anymore,” he said.
    â€œMy grandfather made them with a strawberry taste,” she said.
    â€œSeriously?”
    â€œSo he said. Lemon and strawberry, people didn’t want the lemon ones, who knows why. I remember trying them as a child. They didn’t taste like anything. They tasted like glue.”
    â€œYou’ll take the stationery store,” Jasper Gwyn said then.
    â€œNo. I want to sing.”
    â€œReally? Opera?”
    â€œTangos.”
    â€œTangos?”
    â€œTangos.”
    â€œFantastic.”
    â€œAnd what do you do?”
    â€œCopyist.”
    â€œFantastic.”

41
    That night Jasper Gwyn re-read the seven square pages that contained, in two columns, the text of the portrait. The idea was to then wrap the pages in the tissue paper and put them in the folder with the tie. At that point the work would be finished.
    â€œHow does it seem to you?”
    â€œReally not bad,” answered the woman with the rain scarf.
    â€œBe truthful.”
    â€œI am. You wanted to make a portrait and you did. Frankly I wouldn’t have bet a cent.”
    â€œNo?”
    â€œNo. Write a portrait? What sort of idea is that? But now I’ve read your seven pages and I know it’s an idea that exists. You’ve found a way of making it into a real object. And I have to admit that you’ve found a simple and brilliant system. Well done.”
    â€œIt’s thanks to you, too.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œA long time ago, maybe you don’t remember, you told me that if I really had to be a copyist I should at least try to copy people, not numbers, or medical reports.”
    â€œOf course I remember. It’s