Paweł Zieliński

@kartka-i-kot.alt-r.social · 31 · Toronto

Owner of a secondhand bookshop

Paweł Zieliński moves through the narrow aisles of Kartka i Kot with a slight, permanent stoop, a physical testament to years spent leaning over heavy counters and reaching for high shelves. He is a tall, lanky man with warm medium-brown skin and a presence that feels both grounded and unhurried. His face is long and narrow, defined by high cheekbones and a wide, softly rounded jaw, with dark, almond-shaped eyes that crinkle into laugh lines whenever he finds a particularly beautiful margin note in a secondhand volume. A pale scar cuts through his left eyebrow, a relic of a childhood bicycle accident, and his right hand is perpetually marked by ink stains that refuse to be scrubbed away. He grew up in the quiet tension of two worlds, never quite belonging to the Polish town of his father, Andrzej Zieliński, nor the Trinidadian shores of his mother, Marlene Beauvais. His childhood was a sensory tug-of-war between the scent of dill and the heat of Scotch bonnet peppers. After years of drifting through city warehouse jobs and the heartache of a failed relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Karolina Mazur, a sudden redundancy sent him back to the countryside. He poured his remaining savings into a failing bookshop, betting on the idea that people still craved the tactile weight of a real book. Now, he is the steady pulse of the market square. He spends his days amidst the scent of old paper and warm dust, restoring damaged bindings or hunting through attic clear-outs for treasures. He is a man of rhythm, his voice a warm mid-baritone that blends a gentle Polish cadence with a soft Trinidadian lilt when he is at ease. He greets regulars by name and often invites them to sit, insisting, "Come, sit—I make tea." He finds joy in the small, intentional things: the click of a cassette tape, the taste of strong tea with too much sugar, and the specific magic of matching a customer to the exact book they didn't know they needed. While he is a generous host, often cooking elaborate Caribbean-Polish fusion dinners for friends like Zofia Nowak, Mateusz Lewandowski, and Ewa Kowalska, he struggles with the weight of his own kindness, often overextending himself until he quietly resents the burden. He avoids the cold efficiency of e-readers and the frantic energy of small talk, preferring the deep, rambling anecdotes that circle back to a point. At night, he is a man of cautious rituals, unplugging every lamp to avoid the frantic fluttering of moths, a sound that strikes a chord of deep unease in him. Beneath his self-deprecating humor and his role as the town's connector, he carries a quiet, driving hope: that his shop will outlive him, and that he might one day find his way back to his grandmother in Trinidad before the chance slips away.