Lenka Vera

The Bookbinder’s Wife

by | Apr 13, 2023 | Mindfulness | 0 comments

Illustrated by my daughter Hannah, 6 years old.

The Bookbinder was looking at his wrinkly old fingers. They were always a little bit sticky from the waxed binding thread he worked with each day. The tips of his fingers were bruised from the occasional needle that pierced his skin, as he was moving it with loving precision through the perfectly aligned sheets of paper, covered with someone else’s dreams. Countless pages dressed in enchanting stories, poetry, and the occasional biography, made passage through his warm hands. He did so gladly and lovingly. With each book completed he felt a great sense of calm fulfillment, a sense where service met purpose.

When those same bruised fingers caressed his wife’s skin at night, she felt, as if she was entering all the imaginary worlds captured on the many pages he has been joining together for the world to read, through the portal of his hands. It was their way to travel. It made her feel as if they had this unexplainable secret bond, no-one would ever understand. This sense of their perhaps unusual intimacy filled her heart with closeness and her mind with youthful glee.

Sometimes during the day, the bookbinder wandered upstairs into the house from his dark workshop, that smelled of ink and glue. There, in a tiny kitchen, sat his wife next to a petroleum lamp, cutting up vegetables for supper on an old white table with paint that was peeling. She looked up and her kind eyes smiled gently. She could read his face with such ease, rarely did they need words in their peaceful bond of so many decades. She knew that he had stumbled across some beautiful lines during his work, that were only going to please his soul fully, if shared with a beloved.
She put her tools down and watched him lean against the rough wooden door frame, that marked the kitchen entrance. No preamble was needed. This intimate ritual of their old age became the fabric of their union. He waited for their eyes to connect in perfect presence, and began to read. His soft, but masculine, a little raspy voice carried through the kitchen, blending with the silence of the snowfall behind the windows. She sat there, looking at him, drinking in his presence in the knowing that their days are being numbered. Her old bones were aching, it was chilly in the room, but none of that mattered, as the gratitude they shared for the simplicity of this moment, lit up the whole room.

When he finished reading, he walked slowly towards her, his heavy boots shuffling slowly over the creaky old wooden floor. He leaned towards her and gently kissed the top of her head, right there, where her grey hair parted in a perfect line. She closed her eyes and inhaled briefly as if to mark the moment with her breath.

Then, without saying another word, the bookbinder made his way back to the workshop. She watched his broad back, dressed in a black-suede leather waistcoat, as his figure was slowly disappearing down the stairs. She noticed shiny patches on the leather around his armpits, a testimony to the waistcoat’s many years of service. When his figure disappeared completely from her sight, she returned to her work, and her heart was peaceful, her mind quiet, and her soul grateful.

“Mummy, his workshop was called ‘Happy Life’ and he had a book binding machine there too for when his hands were tired.”

Find this story also as an audio version here. Listening to calming stories before falling sleep is a great way to improve the quality of your slumber by switching from your busy day into a restful state.

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