Artur (The Bookstore)

Anyone who knows me, knows that I LOVE fiction books. I have traditionally claimed The Hobbit as being my favorite book; however, it is probably more accurate to say that the Ender’s Game series has now become my favorite set of books. I get so into them that I finished three of those books during last Fall’s finals week at school and finished a fourth over Christmas break.

This week I finished the first of the Halo books. No, I’ve never really played the game much, but I love stories like that and I thought I’d give it a shot. I loved it. There are two other books in the series I’m anxious to read, but BYU’s bookstore conveniently doesn’t carry the next two books! Who does that? That’s like a crack dealer that only sells to you once! Anyway, it’s not that important.

One series I always wanted to read was the Chronicles of Narnia series. That’s what this blog is about. It also involves my old Brazilian roommate Artur. I was reminded of the story this evening as I was with my friend Jesse and we were relating some of the ludicrous stories we have involving Artur. Just for the record, though this and any following Artur chronicles feature a crazy Brazilian, let it be known that I love Brazilians in general, lived in Brazil for two years as an LDS missionary, made great friends there, and I have been fan of their national team for about 15 years. But I digress…

One afternoon, my old roommate and great friend Jesse and I were in our room after school. Jesse was probably studying in his bed and I was most likely playing NBA Live ’99 for N64 on my computer’s emulator while listening to Jock Jams as I usually did. That’s when, also as usual, our beloved roommate Artur entered the room swiftly and quietly without necessarily being invited in. He had been roaming the streets of Provo that afternoon, yet again as usual.

He started to tell us of his exploits as we tried our best to ignore him and make him feel as unwanted as his presence in our room was. Then, he said some something that caught my ear. Artur had been to a used bookstore on Center St. of Provo and purchased a collection of the Narnia books for about $5 or $6! As I said before, I had been interested in reading them and this sounded like a sweet deal to me.

Jesse recognized my excitement and interest and offered to give me a ride to the bookstore so I could purchase my own copy. Artur said he would come along and show us where he got it. I was incredible excited for the Narnia books and whatever other treasures the store might hold in store. I was practically bouncing up and down in the car and babbling on incoherently about books I had recently finished.

When we got to the store, I sprinted inside and began searching for the book I desired. I found what seemed to be the right shelf and searched it extensively. I found Lord of the Rings (which I already had), books by Orson Scott Card, and single Narnia series books. I couldn’t find the one I wanted though! T

That is when Artur strolled up behind me, after what seemed like an eternity of searching by myself for the book I wanted, to show me where he found it just an hour before. He walked right up to me, pointed to shelf on the stand I was looking at, and said in his accented English, “Dis is where I godit, it was di last one!”

… There was an awkward silence. Jesse and I looked at each other in shock, but not disbelief… well, we couldn’t believe that it happened, but we believed that if a situation like this were to happen, Artur would be responsible for it. One of us began to ask, “Wait, if you got the last one… why wouldn’t you say…” whoever, it was that started to ask that realized how pointless the question was. There wasn’t a good answer for that question. We stared at each other and tried to contain our laughter. I knew it was too good to be true.

We tried to salvage our trip by looking at the other books, but nothing caught our eyes. We settled on making fun of obscure sci-fi book titles and plot lines… which is always fun… but not as fun as reading the back of romance novels. To this day, I’ve never read the Chronicles of Narnia series. I almost feel like it wasn’t meant to be. I did get a fun story out of that experience though!