the pencil note
I hadn't looked at the inside of the back cover properly. There's a note in pencil, very small, very neat, old-fashioned handwriting:
Band II hat die Reihenfolge. Nicht bei Keller fragen.
"Volume II has the order. Don't ask at Keller's."
The order of what? They're random numbers, there isn't supposed to be any order.
So on Sunday I went back to Mauerpark and found the man I bought it from. Big beard, sells old radios (Grundig, Stern, a Sternradio Rema the size of a fridge) and boxes of books he doesn't seem to care about. I asked where the book came from.
"Haushaltsauflösung," he said. A flat clearance. Somewhere in Lichtenberg, an old lady, the family didn't want anything. He shrugged. "Bücher, Bücher, Bücher." Books, books, books.
I asked if there were more like it. He said maybe, he'd look. He won't look.
I think this is going to be my summer project.