Tristan lived by himself in a two story house tucked away in a cave at the edge of a valley. He rarely went out —only when he found his kitchen shelves bare of food— and he rarely invited visitors, although he had several neighbors who knew him and invited themselves for a visit now and then. Tristan did not object to his neighbors’ visits and even enjoyed their company, but mostly Tristan kept to himself and to the confines of his house.
His house, from the outside, was not remarkable; beyond its unkempt surroundings and its peeling paint, it was much like any other two story house in the valley. But the inside of Tristan’s house —and his neighbors after a visit would always mention this among themselves— was quite peculiarly decorated. Certainly, all of the items one might expect a bachelor homebody to have were part of the decor: a television, records, half-started repair projects, stacks of dishes; but surrounding the clutter, on all the walls, were long rows of shelves. They stretched from one side of the house to the other, on every wall and always at least five or six levels high. In the whole house, Tristan had left no more than three feet of wallspace shelveless.
A few of the shelves had items neatly stacked and organized on them: clothes, boxes, books; more shelves were less tidily piled upon without any sense of organization; but most of the shelves, certainly more than three quarters of these shelves so dominantly displayed in Tristan’s house, were empty. The strangeness of this emptiness was especially marked, of course, by the completeness of the decor —everywhere one looked were shelves and most of them were bare— but even odder, on the floor of Tristan’s house, everywhere, were stacks of boxes and piles of things, every imaginable knick-knack thing, that could have filled those shelves and given Tristan and his occasional visitors room to stand and move about. Instead, Tristan would crawl and leap and wiggle his way around the rooms and over his unshelved stacks, always telling his visitors with a most apologetic tone, “I’ve been meaning to get to this stuff.” And he was going to do it, too, he told them, as soon as he could find the time.
It was for this spectacle, one might assume, that Tristan’s neighbors visited him at all. He did not have an outgoing personality or a magnetic charisma and he never reciprocated with visits of his own. But he was pleasant whenever called Tristan upon, and however busy he said he was he seemed to enjoy taking the time for a friendly conversation with his visitors.
There was always something to talk about: all one had to do was pick out something curious from among the stacks and ask, “Tristan, what is this thing?” or “What inspired you to save a thing like this?” And Tristan would cheerily answer about a someday plan he had or a reminiscence heintended to properly memorialize, or there was a simple appeal to the object itself that he could not resist. “I don’t know what it is,” he might say, “but I liked it and I just wanted to keep it. It’ll do good on that shelf over there, don’t you think?” And Tristan would hop over some stacks and put the thing on the shelf over there.
All the while, in fact, as Tristan and his company visited, he busied himself with putting things on shelves. If one must assume reasons for Tristan’s neighbors to visit him, this seemed more likely: their occasional visits always accomplished activity in Tristan’s house. But once they left they would notice through the window that the purposeful flurry would abruptly stop. Tristan would pick up a book he had been reading or go to the television, oblivious once more to the piles around him.
This led Tristan’s neighbors to believe they were being good neighbors, helping someone get things done. They agreed amongst themselves to rotate the duty of helping Tristan straighten his house up. It did not require much of them, other than time; just their visits would be helpful by merely prompting Tristan to work. They were genuinely good neighbors, though, and they would chip in, which Tristan was more than happy to allow.
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