The apartment was overrun with books. Under the dinner table, on top of the TV, beside the stereo, out in the corridor, etc. Without the old bookcase, the situation had gotten entirely out of hand. It may have been small, but once it was gone, chaos reigned. The vague order in which the books had been stacked disappeared. The subjects got all mixed up and the visual memory of each pile began to jumble. We spent fifteen days errantly roaming among schizophrenic piles.  

Out in the service area, the library’s purgatory, there were six more large cardboard boxes spilling over with crumpled, torn and dampened books. In the airing cupboard, displacing the bed sheets and towels, another crammed shelf. The books were sprawling, pushing us out, demanding.   

One night I arrive home from work to find my wife with Inácio from the plasterer’s and his crew. They’re building the structure of the new bookstand – from the floor to the roof, from the door to opposite end of the living room. Our daughter is asleep in the other room, despite all the hammering and screeching power drills.  

The next morning, I go out and buy the shelf brackets and rack rails.  

Before things can progress any further, along comes an extended bank holiday and interrupts the work, condemning us to spend yet more time in that pandemonium. In order to sit on the sofa we have to first shift a stack of books; to eat at the table, we’ve got to pull out the angle hinges. More anguish. As could only be expected, I and the two women of the house begin to fight.   

Finally, another working day comes round and so does Agnaldo, the carpenter. We fix the rack rails to the wall, and the brackets to the rails, at various different heights. Then we screw on the shelves. I get irritated when they tell me that they still need to be painted. I’m in a hurry. And besides, the name of the paint sounds a bit strange to me: Titanium Dioxide. Highly toxic, I imagine, but I accept it as a kind of baptism off fire for the new bookcase.   

Two days later, my wife takes it upon herself to do the painting. Afraid to go anywhere near the bookcase until it’s entirely finished, I leave the house with my daughter.  

As the last stage of assembly, the caretaker of the building does a nixer painting the racks. We use pale tones, as on the plaster, the radioactive shelves and the wall itself. The bookstand is finished. Just a little more patience and the mess will be over. 

Finally, along comes Saturday morning, the day of putting things in order. It’s deliciously cold and the sky is clear and blue. My wife heads off to work. I wake up and see our daughter by my side. She’s fast asleep. I leave the room on tiptoes, eager for a little time with no children around. Sweet illusion. One minute later, I hear the slow slapping of flip-flops and there she is in the corridor. She gives me a sleepy hug and I respond with gentle kisses on her languid frame. We go into the kitchen and I prepare her chocolate bottle and make a cup for myself. To heat them up in slow motion, my daughter climbs up on a stool and plants herself in front to the microwave.  She makes a point of pressing the button herself.     

While she goes to the sofa to drink her milk, stretching and threatening to fall asleep again, I start to pick through the books. Before leaving for work, my wife dusted some of them and left the cloth on the table. I examine them in the light. Illustrated books I haven’t looked through at leisure in a long time. But it won’t be today either, I’m far too lightheaded for that.  

I try to concentrate and calculate how many books will fit on the new stand. A drop of fear still persists. Something tells me we have underestimated the size of the chaos. The only way to find out, of course, is by stocking the shelves. I try to estimate just how long that will take and find myself discouraged before I even begin.  

My daughter interrupts me, saying she needs to go to the bathroom. 

When we get back to the living room, I put her favorite cartoon on the video. It will be impossible to arrange all these books in just one day while looking after her. Even the hypnotic power of the baby monitor has its limits. And seen as it’s not going to work one way or another, why bother starting so early in the day? I hesitate. I feel like I need an incentive. I grab the portable CD player and put on something by Pixinguinha. Turning down the volume on the TV, I tell my daughter that this kind of music is called chorinho. She giggles, thinking I’m joking.       

I look at the empty bookstand. I can remember all the bookstands I’ve ever had. The polished white one with the rounded edges, from when I was a kid. The wooden bookcase of adolescence. I can remember the times I didn’t have a bookcase, like when the moves came around – from single to married, changes of city, of state, from married to separated, then married again, with the same/other woman – and with the moves came the cardboard boxes, in smaller houses, the lack of space. I never did see all the books together again. Even today I have lots of stuff stored at my father’s farm. Speaking of which, my Landseaandair collection is still there. Land-sea-and-air, what a name!     

Little by little, I put the first few books on the new bookcase. I dust them off, leaf quickly through the pages and pop them on the shelf. Pretty soon I quit flicking through them. In the interests of saving space, the tallest ones all go on the same shelf, regardless of subject; photography books, architecture books, the Atlas, a photo album on Flamengo, books of paintings, portraits… The new bookcase can absorb all this eclecticism without the slightest difficulty.     

I open one of the older books. Its yellowed pages exude an indescribably good smell. I run my fingers over its cloth jacket, the paper, pictures, the photos glued by hand. I admire the details, the movements of the bodies, the drop of water on a thigh, the brightness in the eyes, the gold thread in the dresses, the landscapes, the columns, the temples. I open another and see a ball in the back of a net. A third, and I smile at the cat, the man, the ladder and the water jar all frozen in mid-air, captured by photography in their simultaneous flight.    

I bring the boxes in from the service area, six in all. I fetch the books from the hall closet. First to hand are the comics; full of old heroes who I revisit with the frightening consciousness of the passage of time. Rockets, cowboys, detectives, brave princes, damsels in distress, irrepressible Gauls. Magic potion?  

I open another box and discover where the biographies have been; all of them read and re-read in the craving to learn the secret of genius. Ambition? Self-denial? Who knows…The biographies can go on one of the shelves down the end. Whenever I need one I’ll go and get it.   

Next, I happen upon the library of the historian I ended up not becoming. Greeks and Romans. Feudalism. The Renaissance. The Enlightenment. The Russian Revolution. Resounding clamors. History gets two shelves, way up top.    

In dribs and drabs, all the books of the house are drawn together onto the new bookcase. It makes me think of one of those ecological sanctuaries, where birds gather after migrations, each species arriving from a different part of the planet. They happily deliver themselves to the comfort and safety of the bookcase. Their flocks have suffered, many have been lost along the way, but now, on the day of arrival, the joy speaks louder. I hear and see the ruckus emerge from the boxes and spread itself across the room, perching on the shelves.      

The new stand receives all my books, with space to spare. For the first time in my life I know what it feels like to have more space than collection. I make the most of the golden opportunity to relieve the shelves in the office, where I keep the authors dearest to me, those who never leave my side, never disappear into boxes, into storage, into other people’s houses. I come back from the office and stuff some more shelves.    

As I put the books away I make thousands of associations, with places, with people. Book by book, book by book, book by book.  

I spend the whole day in this, switched off from the world. Night falls. What did I do with the kid all day? It’s now ten-thirty. My books are all safely stowed, at arm’s reach. Blessed extra cash. 

My daughter’s gone off to bed, clutching her bottle and security blanket, which is really some blue lacework they made for her. My wife is in the bedroom, reading, watching something on TV or just resting after work. I call her, I want her to see how it looks.  I turn on all the lights. The colors shimmer. I walk from one end to the other, anxious for an opinion. She’s shocked that I’ve managed to get it all done in a single day, and without her being able to help. She asks if there’s any space left for her books, which are still boxed-up. I say there is. Two empty shelves in the office. In the sitting-room, with everything nicely sorted, there’s some leftover space too. Happy ending. No more fighting and the house is ours again.     

I take the boxes out into the hallway and pile them up beside the dustbin. After endless hours bending down and straightening up, climbing the stepladder and carrying heavy loads, I can finally stop and appreciate the colorful squawk and chatter of the bookcase. It’s a new bookcase for me now, I’ve never seen it like this before. With this I cease my wanderings through chaos and, as the wheels never stop, make some space for the books I don’t yet own. I feel happy, nostalgic, anxious, melancholic, curious and excited. Same as ever, but different.      

This story originally appeared in the book Tripé, Ateliê Editorial, SP, 1999.

 Literally meaning “whinge”.