Half a Circle — a short story

At the bookbindery

“The numbers are mine. The notebook isn't,” Rudin said.

Varya opened it at the first page. There were his surname, his phone number and a brief warning: CHECK THE WIDTH ON SITE. The next page showed a cabinet with its measurements. He had crossed out the bottom drawer so fiercely that the pencil had scored the paper.

“Is this your cabinet?”

“A customer's. I drew it.”

“Then what's wrong?”

Rudin took the notebook, closed it and ran his thumb over the back cover. He repeated the movement, more slowly.

“I don't know. It feels wrong.”

He wasn't angry, which made things harder. People sometimes brought Varya books they had already repaired with sticky tape and asked her to make them new, while keeping them old. There was something to argue about with those jobs. This one was neat: a new black cloth spine, firm joints, not a single missing page.

“I'll leave it until tomorrow,” Rudin said. “Have another look.”

After the door closed, Varya put the notebook under the lamp. Grey cover, worn corners. Inside the back cover was a brown arc, as though somebody had begun to draw a bracket and thought better of it. There was a stain on the last blank leaf, too. Cleaning old paper hadn't been part of the order.

She took another grey notebook from the collection shelf. It belonged to Kira, who ran the picture-framing shop round the corner. Hers also contained measurements and rectangles, though they were frames rather than cabinets. Kira had brought it in on Friday, fifteen minutes after Rudin, and joked that old notebooks fell apart to a timetable.

They really were identical: grey boards, squared paper, a little diamond on the back cover. Varya had remarked on it. The stationer's next door hadn't sold that kind for years.

She checked the orders. Seventeen: Rudin. Eighteen: Kira. The numbered paper bands were still between the pages. Rudin's name was in seventeen. Kira's first page bore her signature and a list of debtors headed DO NOT RELEASE WITHOUT PAYMENT. No mistake there.

Varya called Rudin.

“Could you have mixed up your notebooks before you brought yours in?”

“With whom?”

She named Kira.

“I know her. Had a frame made there. We don't exchange notebooks.”

“It's just that they're very alike.”

“But I know my own.”

There was no triumph in his voice. He might have been reminding her of a measurement she'd forgotten.

Varya laid the remains of the old spines on the table. They had crumbled as she removed the covers. The covers had needed to come off completely; otherwise she couldn't reach the tears. She had immediately put numbered bands around the blocks of pages. The two empty grey covers had gone side by side.

Then the supplier had called. Then a man had come for a dictionary and spent ages looking for his receipt. After that, Varya had returned to the table.

She remembered perfectly well that Rudin's notebook had been on the left.

Now she couldn't remember which side of the table she'd been standing on.

She picked up number seventeen again and opened it at the back. Near the fold on the last leaf was half of a small brown circle. The other half began inside the back cover—but it belonged to a much larger circle. The edges at the fold did not meet.

In Kira's notebook it was the other way round: a wide arc on the leaf, a small one on the cover.

Varya held both open spreads under the lamp. Each stain had a dark edge and an almost transparent middle. They were marks left by wet mugs once set across the open notebooks. One ring had been small, the other large. Now a small half met a large one.

She took a narrow strip of tracing paper and traced the arc on Rudin's last leaf. Then she placed the drawing beside the arc on Kira's cover, as though there were a fold between them. They made a small circle. Even the two halves of a little comma-shaped run in the stain matched.

The numbers really were Rudin's. The cover was Kira's.

Varya called them both. She told Kira that her order would take another day. She told Rudin he'd been right.

“You found it?”

“I switched the covers. I'll put them back.”

“I thought you were going to say I was imagining things.”

“I was going to.”

There was a silence on the line.

“Good thing you didn't get that far,” Rudin said.

He came back the next day without his receipt. Varya had set both notebooks on the counter, each on a separate sheet bearing its owner's name. She had had to take the joints apart again and remake them. Rudin had his small circle back; Kira had her large one. A narrow strip of new paper ran between the halves, but the lines on either side now matched exactly.

Rudin picked up his notebook and ran his thumb over the cover.

“There.”

“What is it you can feel?”

He turned the notebook over. Near the bottom edge, the board had a slight hollow. His thumb settled into it.

“I hold it against the wall when I'm writing. Must have pressed it in. Never looked.”

Varya showed him the circle.

“This is what I found.”

“The mug?”

“The mark it left.”

Rudin narrowed his eyes.

“Wouldn't mind finding the mug, too. Left it at a customer's somewhere.”

Varya handed him his receipt, marked PAID. She hadn't added anything for the second repair. He put the notebook in his inside pocket and left the receipt on the counter.

She called him back.

Rudin returned, took the slip and tucked it between the last leaf and the back cover. For a moment, the broken brown circle was visible in full. Then it disappeared again.