Barbaville

• Nicoletta Mancuso, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2012

We followed him towards his archaic looking home. He was wearing a tuxedo, a top hat and carried a cane in his hand. He looked back at us ensuring that we were following him in the right direction. As he turned to us, his French-styled, black, moustache shone as the light of the sun hit his face. There was something intriguing about his moustache, there seemed to be a tunnel between it and myself that drew my focus directly to it and nothing else. I shook my head, confused at the thought of being in such awe as a result of this bookshop owner’s facial hair.

He held the door open in a chivalrous manner and welcomed us into his home. There seemed to be something unusual about his home, I couldn’t decipher what exactly it was however. The architecture was no different to any other cottage home in Barbaville, nor was there any unusual furniture in the home, there was simply an aura of warmth and encapsulation that filled the entirety of my being.

We looked at the books, one after another. They were all similar in a sense, being that they were all focused on one point of his life. The dust on each cover was somewhat comforting as it brushed my fingers, as I wiped it off what was revealed was an image of a moustache, a different one on each book. After looking through the books the owner took us to his formal lounge room and offered us French pastries and a cocktail of which he assured me would ‘make the hairs stand on my neck’. He spoke to us of his life in France and the obstacles he faced, presenting him with certain curves around the straight plan he had created. He had ended up in England as a result of his financial darkness in France, of which caused him to seek a new start.

I listened to his stories with interest. He was such a welcoming and warm man, allowing us into his bookshop to not only read his novels, but also to talk to us about the obscure life that he had lived. It is then that I realised that this man’s facial hair was not simply just that, but rather was a symbol of him and the life that he had lived up to this point. His life, like his moustache, had been obscured, it was not the regimented and orderly life that he wanted. Rather it was abstract, curved and intriguing, much like the man himself. The warmth of his house was as a result of him expressionism via his moustache and thus, I realised, this man was like me and infact was a representation of society in general. Whether we are aware of it or not, like the bookshop owner and his moustache, we all have an element within us that stands as a representation of who we are and what we have done.