The Marginalia

Priya had owned the secondhand bookshop for six years before she noticed the handwriting.

Priya sudah enam tahun memiliki toko buku bekas itu ketika ia akhirnya memperhatikan tulisan tangan tersebut.

It appeared first in a battered copy of an old travel memoir: a single line in blue ink, cramped and slanted, disagreeing with something the author had written about the loneliness of long journeys. A few shelves over, in an entirely different book by an entirely different author, the same hand had written something else, this time about grief. It read as if continuing a conversation no one else had been invited to. Having sorted secondhand stock for years without once paying attention to marginalia, Priya found herself, almost against her will, reading the edges of every book that came through the door.

Mulanya muncul di sebuah memoar perjalanan tua yang lusuh: satu baris tinta biru, rapat dan miring, yang membantah sesuatu yang ditulis pengarangnya tentang kesepian perjalanan jauh. Beberapa rak dari situ, di buku lain karya pengarang lain, tulisan tangan yang sama menulis hal lain, kali ini tentang duka. Bunyinya seperti kelanjutan percakapan yang tak mengundang siapa pun. Setelah bertahun-tahun memilah stok buku bekas tanpa sekali pun memperhatikan catatan pinggir, Priya mendapati dirinya, hampir di luar kemauannya, membaca tepi setiap buku yang masuk.

Not until the sixth book did she realize the two hands were arguing with one another, rather than simply annotating alone. What unsettled her was not the handwriting itself but the fact that it argued with a second hand. In a paperback of poems, the blue ink had underlined a stanza and written, "This is sentimental and Marta knows it." Three books later, a looser hand, in pencil, replied in the margin of an entirely separate novel: "Sentimental is not the same as false. You always did confuse the two." Neither writer signed a name. Neither, as far as Priya could tell, had ever left so much as an initial.

Baru pada buku keenam ia sadar bahwa kedua tulisan tangan itu saling berdebat, bukan sekadar mencatat sendirian. Yang mengusiknya bukan tulisan tangannya, melainkan kenyataan bahwa tulisan itu berdebat dengan tulisan lain. Di sebuah buku puisi bersampul tipis, tinta biru itu menggarisbawahi satu bait dan menulis, "Ini sentimental dan Marta tahu itu." Tiga buku kemudian, tulisan yang lebih longgar, dengan pensil, membalas di pinggir sebuah novel yang sama sekali berbeda: "Sentimental tidak sama dengan palsu. Kamu selalu saja menyamakan keduanya." Tak satu pun penulis membubuhkan nama. Sejauh yang Priya lihat, tak satu pun pernah meninggalkan sekadar inisial.

She began keeping the books aside instead of shelving them, a small and growing pile on the counter that her assistant teased her about. It was the dates, once she started checking them against the shop's old purchase records, that told her the truth. The exchange had run for the better part of nine years. Two readers had been buying and presumably trading these same secondhand books, arguing in the margins across a decade without, so far as she could reconstruct it, ever meeting in person.

Ia mulai menyisihkan buku-buku itu alih-alih menatanya di rak, tumpukan kecil yang kian tinggi di meja kasir dan membuat asistennya menggodanya. Tanggal-tanggallah, setelah ia mencocokkannya dengan catatan pembelian lama toko, yang memberinya kebenaran. Percakapan itu telah berlangsung hampir sembilan tahun. Dua pembaca membeli dan mungkin bertukar buku-buku bekas yang sama, berdebat di pinggir halaman selama sepuluh tahun tanpa, sejauh bisa ia susun kembali, pernah bertemu langsung.

Then, as abruptly as it had started, it stopped. The last book she found, a thin volume of essays bought at an estate sale eighteen months ago, carried only the blue ink. It held only one line: "I don't think you're going to read this one. I'm leaving it here anyway."

Lalu, sama mendadaknya dengan awalnya, semua itu berhenti. Buku terakhir yang ia temukan, kumpulan esai tipis yang dibeli di sebuah lelang harta warisan delapan belas bulan lalu, hanya memuat tinta biru. Isinya hanya satu baris: "Kurasa kamu tidak akan membaca yang ini. Tetap kutinggalkan di sini."

Priya spent a full week trying to trace the estate sale back to a name, a family, anyone who might explain who "Marta" had been. She wondered, too, who had written to her so faithfully for so long without ever once identifying himself. The trail went nowhere useful. Wills are not public record in any way a bookshop owner can easily search, and the auction house that had handled the sale had long since closed.

Priya menghabiskan seminggu penuh mencoba menelusuri lelang itu hingga ke sebuah nama, sebuah keluarga, siapa pun yang bisa menjelaskan siapa "Marta" itu. Ia juga bertanya-tanya siapa yang begitu setia menulis kepadanya begitu lama tanpa sekali pun menyebutkan dirinya. Jejaknya tak membawa ke mana-mana. Surat wasiat bukan catatan publik yang mudah dicari pemilik toko buku, dan rumah lelang yang menangani penjualan itu sudah lama tutup.

She still has the books, six of them now, kept together on a shelf behind the register that is not for sale. Customers sometimes ask about them, and she tells them the truth, which is that she doesn't know who the writers were, only that they had once, apparently, known each other very well.

Buku-buku itu masih ia simpan, kini enam jumlahnya, disatukan di sebuah rak di belakang meja kasir yang tidak dijual. Pelanggan kadang menanyakannya, dan ia mengatakan yang sebenarnya, bahwa ia tidak tahu siapa para penulisnya, hanya bahwa mereka dulu, tampaknya, saling mengenal dengan sangat baik.

Not knowing, she has come to think, is not quite the same as the story being unfinished. Some conversations end because someone stops answering. This one, as best she can tell, ended because someone finally did.

Tidak tahu, pikirnya kini, tidak sepenuhnya sama dengan ceritanya belum selesai. Ada percakapan yang berakhir karena seseorang berhenti menjawab. Percakapan ini, sejauh yang ia tahu, berakhir karena seseorang akhirnya menjawab.