The Second Life of Samuel Tyne by Esi Edugyan Page A

was clotted with all that his craft demanded: fuse testers, transmitters, soldering irons, circuit boards, power supplies and, that apple of his eye, the oil-analysis machine, with its talent for measuring nitrogen, hydrogen and nitrate levels. The shop was soon so full he could barely fit his workbench. By the end he thought the dog’s hours would cripple him. But nothing could match the satisfaction of having done the work by his own hand. A lesser man might have begged for help. Not Samuel. He’d gotten twelve hours of sleep in a three-day period, but his elation kept him lucid and agile. Another slogan came back to him, this one from his school years, and in his exhaustion it made him laugh a full ten minutes: Dream it. Live it . It had taken him half a lifetime, but he’d done it. Some, he ruminated, don’t give themselves the chance to try.
    The week before his opening, Samuel invited his family down to see the fruits of his labours. Grudgingly, Maud rounded up the girls, and the five of them drove to Glover Street in a tense silence.
    So nervous it took him two minutes to find the proper key, Samuel unlocked the shop and let them wander inside. Under their scrutiny, he began to notice things he hadn’t seen before. The ceiling leaked in one corner. Shadows like obstinate crows refused to scatter when touched by light. He looked hesitantly at the children and was pained by the pitying look Ama gave him. When they’d finished the tour, Maud paused, resting her arms on the counter.
    “Well, Samuel,” she said, “a greater man wouldn’t have done any worse.”
    She herded the girls back to the car and, afterwards, mentioned the shop as little as possible.
    After two weeks, Samuel’s spirits dampened. He no longer felt the grandeur of first ownership, and was given to watching the silent film of passersby on their lunch hours. Otherwise, people were a rare sight, and when one entered his shop he felt a sort of sick joy and mixed up his words in an impolitic move to make the quick sell. He began to pine after and dread customers, for before he opened his mouth he knew he had lost the sale. The shop became prone to deadbeats who came in to idle Samuel’s time away with stories of the ridiculous. Felix, one such man, only left by threat of police. When the equipment Samuel ordered from abroad finally came, he found he had no money to pay the distributors and had to ask Maud’s permission to dip into their shared savings.
    “The self-made man condescends to ask me something,” she said. “I thought you did as you pleased and paid no mind to anyone.”
    Nevertheless, she told him to take the money. He paid his bills and resolved never to admit he spent most of his day alone.
    A peddler began to plague the shop. At first Samuel politely resisted, but his loneliness began to soften him, and with pity he permitted the man to at least finish his sales pitch. He was a coal-coloured old gaffer in a pristine suit. Samuel took an immense interest in that suit. Unlike his own enormous suits, the peddler’s looked like a leftover from adolescence. His cuffs and hems shrunk back to reveal slender wrists and ankles. His ginger Panama hat, like an afterthought on his large head, made his body seem even larger.
    Gravely, the peddler placed three englassed candles of different heights and colours on the counter.
    “Light of God,” he said. “Multilingual.” He pointed to the labels, on which the Lord’s Prayer was printed in three different languages.
    Samuel marvelled at the man’s accent, which was so filled with contradictions it was impossible to say from which country it originated. “Mule-tie-lin-gle,” he’d said. Seeing that Samuel didn’t resist him, he groped through his carton and placed three stuffed doves—“For the chil’ren”—and piles of watches and faux antique clocks—“What is a man without time?”—on the counter. As he continued, Samuel was haunted by a feeling he knew this man, though