Snap Happy

Mr Konstantin takes a long weekend to come to the front door of his shop. I felt guilty about pressing the buzzer three times as it was, by the fourth I thought I'd have to call an ambulance. I don't blame him for locking it. If you're in it for the long haul, a shop with no customers is better than a shop with nothing to sell.

"Oh it's you. Come on in." I stepped over the threshold and shut the door to the jingle of an ancient wiry noise surely not heard since the days of Marconi. The shop was visibly dusty and there was a vague whiff of something pleasant being cooked from the back of the shop. The backrooms of shops have always held a magical quality for me. I suppose it's partly because it is the forbidden turf as a customer and it's partly because I am nosy. High street shops are simple vessels. Goods come in the back door; products go out the front door. What lights up the process is a complex intermingling of how the product is presented when you first see it, how it is sold to you, the price and whether you like the smell of the shop. The sale is more remarkably about what goes on in the back.

"Come on through." Mr Konstantin's shadowy form beckoned from the back of the shop. I was still centred in his electronic Aladdin’s cave, twisting on my heel, and taking in the museum pieces. I was six years old again. The shop was a factory of Christmas shoppers. The elephantine televisions were on but silent and feebly amplified festive music played above the sweaty downtrodden heads and frozen feet. Mr Konstantin stands behind the counter with his son, offering little or no sales advice apart from the occasional “Dr Graham bought one of those for his mother just yesterday.” Or “This is the last one we have.” These were the days before the competition moved in with their aggressive and commission.

When someone asks you round the back of their premises, the first thing you want to take as much in as you can as you skip round the counter. What do they keep under the till? A baseball bat, a gun? It would seem that Mr Konstantin kept a Remmington Fuzzaway. I turned the corner into the darkness and was immediately blinded by an enormous flash. Mr Konstantin had taken my picture. I was still reeling from the shock when he said, "There we go. Quite a good one too." He waggled the Polaroid in the air like a rattle.

"Do you take photo's of everyone that comes in here?"

"Of course, how would I know if they've been here before?"

"So let me get this right. You take a photo of everyone who comes in here, every time they come in?"

"Yes." He was quizzical as if it was the normal behaviour of shopkeepers up and down the land. I watched him file my picture away in a battleship grey, chest high filing cabinet at the end of the corridor. I approached Mr Konstantin at the cabinet.

"Can you tell me how many times I have been in your shop?" He looked disgruntled and I wondered if he had ever used his bizarre filing system as a database?

"You have been in my shop fourteen times."

"Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that I have been photographed in your shop fourteen times?"

"Don't let my age fool you, my brain is like a machine and I have eyes like a shit-house rat. Take it from me; you have been in this shop fourteen times and now you are wondering why you've been here so often no doubt? What does it matter? You still keep coming back I see.”

“Mr Konstantin, you had a son, that worked here in the shop with you?”

“I most certainly did.” He looks me firmly in the eye and I can see that he looks older and sicker than I have ever seen him. “Do you know where he is?”

“I didn’t know he was missing.”

“Nor did I for many years.” Mr Konstantin handed me a faded Polaroid. “That is him. His name is Karl. If you see him, tell him he has a shop to re-open.”

I closed the shop door behind me and heard the sound of locks and bolts slam against the wooden frame. I turned down the steep incline of the high street, looking back at the glowing window display and realised that I had completely forgotten what it was I had wanted to buy.