Jasper Gwyn spent five days writing the portrait—he did it at home, on the computer, going out from time to time to walk, or eat something. As he worked he listened to Frank Sinatra records over and over.
When he thought he had finished, he copied the file onto a CD and took it to a printer. He chose square sheets of a rather heavy laid paper, and a blue ink that was almost black. He laid out the pages in such a way that they looked airy without seeming trivial. After long reflection, he chose a font that perfectly imitated the letters made by a typewriter: in the roundness of the o there was a hint of blurring in the ink. He didn’t want any binding. He had two copies made. At the end the printer was noticeably worn out.
The next day Jasper Gwyn spent hours looking for a tissue paper that seemed to him appropriate, and a folder, with a tie, that wasn’t too big, or too small, or too much folder. He found both in a stationer’s that was about to close, after eighty-six years in business, and was getting rid of its stock.
“Why are you closing?” he asked at the cash register.
“The owner is retiring,” a woman with nondescript hair answered, without emotion.
“Doesn’t he have children?” Jasper Gwyn persisted.
The woman looked up.
“I’m the child,” she said.
“I see.”
“Do you want a gift bag or is it for you?”
“It’s a gift for me.”
The woman gave a sigh that could mean many things. She took the price off the folder and put everything in an elegant envelope fastened with a thin gold string. Then she said that her grandfather had opened that shop when he returned from the First World War, investing everything he had. He had never closed it, not even during the bombing in 1940. He claimed to have invented the system of sealing envelopes by licking the edge. But probably, she added, that was nonsense.
Jasper Gwyn paid.
“You don’t find envelopes like this anymore,” he said.
“My grandfather made them with a strawberry taste,” she said.
“Seriously?”
“So he said. Lemon and strawberry, people didn’t want the lemon ones, who knows why. I remember trying them as a child. They didn’t taste like anything. They tasted like glue.”
“You’ll take the stationery store,” Jasper Gwyn said then.
“No. I want to sing.”
“Really? Opera?”
“Tangos.”
“Tangos?”
“Tangos.”
“Fantastic.”
“And what do you do?”
“Copyist.”
“Fantastic.”