Biblioklept

I remember this guy. A friend of mine. He was a biblioklept.  This means ‘one who steals books.’ That was back in high school in Palapye. He was my classmate. Some 14 years ago. He stole a book in the library every week. Novels. Very long novels yet he couldn’t even read a ‘pacesetter’ or his own essays. He was one lazy fellow. I read those books and related the stories to him. Not by choice but under ‘gunpoint.’ He’d laugh and kick as he listened to the stories, especially the Sidney Sheldon’s.

I never saw him sneak out with the books from the library. I don’t even know how he passed through those field-interruption alarm gates without being detected. Surely he couldn’t have had the time to strip the hidden sensors from the book. Those things are tightly concealed.  After some time, and though I enjoyed reading them, I complained to him, threatening to spill the beans. Then he shifted to the local bookstore. There, he took two books a week! I couldn’t call it stealing anymore. This guy was practically taking. He called the bookstore a ‘Boers’ shop’ though I never saw such kind in there. Perhaps he knew the owners. Anyways, my collection of books grew into a mountain. I had to devour them as quickly as I could, lest the police came for them. But no police ever came. Never. This guy was a social engineer – an expect in the art of thievery. I never saw him again after high school.  

Last month I was in a bookshop admiring a book I couldn’t afford. I thought of him and a wave of shame swept over me. The very thought embarrassed me. I put the book down and felt the cameras zooming in on me. Then I came back home. This guy was still playing in my mind, like a recurrent film. I wondered where he is. What he could be doing in life. Was he still a biblioklept? Or was he living a posh life somewhere?

Then I took out my trunk of books and started counting those books I collected from him. I still have most of them, though quite a number were lent out and disappeared for good. Fifty three novels – hard covers and paperbacks! I picked out my favourites and started reading them again. In my mind, I was reading for him. I really wish I could see him again. Not that I want him to steal books for me. I want to read him my own stories this time. I’m sure he’d like them. He’d always said I should write novels and I told him that one day I would. Now that I’m published writer, I know he’ll be very proud of me. And, most importantly, he’ll know that stealing books isn’t cool at all, especially when your friend is a writer. Writers, I’d make him understand, survive on the sale of their books. You steal one book you’ve stolen a great deal of money from the already struggling writer.