The Mysterious Life Of Lief N. Nielsen

Walking down a street in Lagos my eye is caught by a box of books outside a shop. They are in English, oh holy grail of holy grails. In five minutes I have found Conrad, Arthur C Clark, and Somerset Maugham grasping these happily I go inside. A large trestle table takes up the centre of a cluttered shop floor. It is piled with books, my smile widens at them all. Books of all shapes and sizes piled in heaps of twenty or more cover the whole table, most are in English, some Spanish some Dutch and lots of Danish. This is what remains of Lief N Nielsen’s life, this Danish man died and all his effects somehow or other ended up given to this charity shop down a small back street in a sleepy Portuguese town.

His library has obvious themes, he loved the sea has many books about diving and sea life, a big set of encyclopaedias stands right in the centre. The autobiography of the Dalai Lama is the most interesting of a huge collection of Buddhist and Mystic books. Zen and Enlightenment feature heavily. Lots of these books contain old bookmarks. A cutting from a magazine article about the Chinese invasion of Tibet is yellowed with thirty years of age. A Business card for Dr. Thomas Garman, Consumer Studies Family Finance from the college of Human Resources in Virginia is crisp and unbroken. A bookmark advertising The Tigers Fang by Paul Twitchell proclaims that “Wisdom is never for the multitudes, but for the few who seek it”.

This mysterious character has brought me much delight and caught my imagination. See Lief N. Nielsen as he sits in an armchair, elderly and worn. Books and bits of paper clutter a table nearby, he sits still, meditating. By his side a cup of Chai tea steams and his cane is leant against his chair. The room is small and fits around him like rooms do from many years of occupation. The curtains are heavy and patterned, half drawn they only let a little light in from the cold grey day outside. It slants in illuminating the swirling dust and steam rising from the tea. A large and wild spider plant grows down from a tall and narrow cane table, a small pile of earth sits on the floor near it where Lief knocked it earlier that day. The Portuguese lady who cleans for him will deal with it tomorrow when she comes but it will have to wait until then. The walls are covered with photos of his life, smiling boldly he looks out from the top of a mountain in Nepal, he proudly beams at his graduation. There are several of friends and lovers, Panama and Ceylon, diving in the South Pacific and Walking in Denmark.

He had a son, but hasn’t heard from him in many years. The next time his son thinks of his father will be when Lief’s cleaner calls to tell him his father is dead. However Lief often thinks of his son, trying to remember how they drifted so far apart. He doesn’t know where his son is, or what he is doing. He doesn’t know that he has a granddaughter, or that his son has cancer. He never will. He thinks also of his lovers, they were many and varied but none lasted, he drove them all away one way or another. Later he reads in the dim light of a standard lamp, he goes out to a small café on his corner for dinner. The people recognise him and serve him a bottle of wine and seafood cataplana without saying anything more than greetings. Lief eats alone, he goes home and listens to Beethoven on an old record player.

Lief lives like this for months; meditating, walking slowly to the café for his dinner, reading listening to old records, thinking of his son. One day the cleaning lady comes in to find him sitting in his chair. When he doesn’t return her greeting she walks over to him and sees his eyes closed. His tea is cold, so is his hand.

Lief’s son buried his father in the local cemetery, desperate not to think of death as that cloud hangs over him too he takes a few things from his fathers house and leaves the rest for a charity shop to pick up. He leaves Portugal and goes back to Germany to his wife and child. He tells them he has cancer, but he does not mention his Father.

Two weeks after that day I go into a charity shop and buy this man’s books. They sit beside me now old, yellowed and smelling as old books should. One day someone else will buy them.