The man with the books

A few years ago, Hubby and I came home one evening to find several people from our building standing on our floor outside our next door neighbor's apartment door. Apparently, the apartment underneath had a water leak and the source of the leak seemed to be coming from our neighbor's water pipes. Problem was, he wouldn't let anyone inside, wouldn't even open his door, and therefore no one could verify if the problem was indeed coming from his place. The pompiers had to be called and after negotiating with our neighbor for half an hour they finally got him to open his door just a sliver of a crack big enough to let one of them in. What the pompier saw (and those who peeked over his shoulder) inside the apartment left him speechless.

It seems our neighbor, who must be in his eighties, never talks to anyone and doesn't seem to have any family nor friends who visit him, had amassed over the course of the years an unimaginable amount of books and other stuff that his place was literally packed to the gills. I wasn't one of those who dared to look inside the apartment while the pompiers were checking the pipes, but those who did later described what they'd seen.

Every single centimeter of the apartment had floor to ceiling piles of books, magazines, leaflets, maps and random stuff (clothes, boxes...). The reason the entrance door had only opened a sliver of a crack wasn't because that's all our neighbor would allow, but because columns of stuff literally blocked the door shut. No sight of the kitchen nor the living room nor the bedrooms not the bathroom was visible or even accessible... all that was able to be seen were door frames literally bricked shut by books that went all the way up until a few inches below the ceiling. The pompiers had to literally climb and crawl over the books in order to reach the bathroom and from there only one of them was actually able to reach the pipes since there wasn't any further space.

Our neighbor, it seemed, had been living exclusively in the only available space left in his apartment: a 4ft x 4ft square in his entrance hall.

After the pompiers left (the water leak having been fixed) our neighbor shut his door in our faces and we seldom saw or heard from him after that.


Until a few weeks ago.


We came home one night from work to find again several of the neighbors gathered outside of our next door neighbor (Mr. L)'s door. Again, a problem involving a possible water leak was the source of the gathering but this time, the family living right underneath Mr L's place was afraid that the weight of Mr L's things would end up caving the floor underneath, crushing them in their sleep.

So they (Mr & Mrs A) and their next door neighbors (Mr & Mrs B) had decided to come up to our floor and try to talk Mr L into letting them help him. By the time we arrived, they'd already gotten Mr L to open his door and to more or less agree that the situation was quite serious (fire risk, leaky water pipes, insalubrious living conditions, risk of floor caving in, etc). They'd manage to get him to accept that he needed help, both physical and psychological (apparently during their conversation with Mr L, which we didn't actually witness, he'd finally broken down and admitted that he'd let things get completely out of control and that he'd even considered suicide at some point). Finally, Mr L had agreed to let them take care of getting his place back into livable conditions and contacting an association that would send someone to talk to him. By the time we arrived, Mr L had already gone back into his apartment and both families were discussing the action plan to take. Mr B asked us if we'd be willing to help as well. We of course accepted.

The most pressing matter was of course getting the apartment back into livable conditions for Mr L. We weren't really sure of how much of the things inside his place were actual objects that held a sentimental value and how much was simply crap that had been accumulated over the years (magazines, brochures.. stuff like that), so we had no idea of how much we were actually going to be able to get rid of. Still, the fact that Mr. L was willing to let us help him was a big step already. Also, we weren't sure of how much of his books would be able to be donated and how much he'd want to keep. In the end we agreed that we would gather as many cardboard boxes as possible and pack them with the books. We'd then ask the tenant's association if we could use the abandoned bomb shelter in our building's basement to stock all the boxes and Mr L could calmly sort through the boxes a little at a time while we found an association willing to help us with donating them or giving them to schools.

The big "cleanup" day finally arrived. We'd never settled on an actual date of when we were going to do it, but last thursday I came home from work a little after 9pm and Mr & Mrs A and Mr & Mrs B as well as Mr L were already hard at work. They'd formed a human chain and were slowly taking things out of the apartment and sorting them in the hallway. Half-filled boxes of books were already starting to fill our hallway and there was a huge trash bin that Mr B had brought to our floor from the building's main trash room. There was also piles of clothes, papers, magazines, kitchen utensils, appliances and hundreds of all kinds of things scattered all over the place. I quickly went home, changed into some jeans and tennis shoes, filled Hubby in unto what was going on (he'd come home earlier before the others had started) and a few minutes later we were out on the hallway helping out.

We worked for 3 hours solid that night. At some point, our other next door neighbors, Mr & Mrs C, also joined in in the efforts. By 10pm we'd cleared enough space that the entrance door was finally able to open correctly. By 11pm two people were now able to fit into the apartment and thus the works advanced faster. By midnight we'd taken down 42 cardboard boxes to the basement, filled a box and three suitcases with clothes that needed to be taken to the cleaners, filled another box with important documents that had to be kept in the apartment and filled three of the buildings four collective trash bins. This amounted to having cleared the entrance hallway in Mr. L's apartment.

Since all of us had to work the next day and some weren't available during the weekend we agreed that we'd continue next week.

I can't explain to you how it felt to be a part of this. The solidarity of the neighbors towards Mr L moved me to a point I had to invent a story about being allergic to wool in order to explain the teary eyes a couple of times while we were working. Everyone was incredibly respectful of the situation, no one made any jokes nor degrading remarks and we all made sure Mr L was asked his opinion before anything was thrown out. I'd felt his apprehension at the beginning of the evening, but as we worked together he slowly began to relax and towards the end he would even ask us if we thought he should throw such and such out.


It's going to take a long time before Mr. L will be able to finally see his kitchen sink again or sleep in his bed. But I'm convinced that we're going to make it.


Fned.