Library of Unrequited Love (6 page)

Young man would like to meet young woman who admires Critique of Pure Reason for Kantian adventure
. There was even a mobile
phone number. Now don't tell the Librarian, but I wrote underneath,
Mature woman would like to meet young man who admires Critique of Dialectical Reason for Sartrean adventure
. Obviously, not everyone would get it. And nobody ever replied. Admittedly, I didn't dare put my phone number. But I don't see why I shouldn't have a bit of fun too, instead of watching the readers getting off with each other and the books stacking up. I've got a right to something, haven't I? I don't see why, since I'm neither more nor less depressed than anyone else, I should have to spend my whole life not being noticed. My whole life, down in this basement. Martin, I know perfectly well, never looks at me. He's totally indifferent to me. And yet I do everything I can to make it nice here. I've had armchairs brought in, I got hold of a pot plant. You don't see many of those in libraries. Perhaps Martin doesn't like rubber plants. I don't know what I have to do to get his attention. Put a note in with his borrower's slip? I can't offer him a bunch of flowers! Such a lovely neck … No, never, he never so much as looks at me. He just sits there reading his old history books, that really gets
me. I ought to go up to him, I really feel this, I should say, Martin, it's so stupid reading all those books. Don't fool yourself, how many of these wretched books do you think you know? Go on, you've got plenty of intelligence, so let's say you read two books a week, for fifty years. In your lifetime, you'll have read how many? Five thousand? That's nothing. Nothing at all, compared to what we have here: two hundred and fifty thousand, seven hundred different books. And in the National Library, they've got fourteen million. We're just cockroaches. So we'd do better to have a bit of fun, look at each other, talk and reproduce, don't you think? If you like, we can go to Versailles, together, any time at all, we can go wherever you want to go, to some beach somewhere, I'll be your Pompadour and we'll love each other until the end of love, hand in hand, we'll gaze at the sea, the sea that begins and ceases and then again begins, the pounding of the surf, the flow of water, the flow of light coming in new every day, fresh surges from the deep, the tide will carry us off, and the flow of paper, every year fifty thousand new titles, fifty thousand books fighting for
the chance to come and swell our groaning bookshelves, and every year they make me more aware of my limited span, my old age and my insignificance. Yes. It's all an illusion, a massive illusion. You never feel so miserable as in a library. You can bow down in front of books all you like, try to understand, read and re-read them, but there's no hope. You know this perfectly well. Books can't do anything for us. They will always win out. In fact, if you don't keep trying to hold the lid down on them, they'll kill us all, the damn things. They have their own logic. Remember, last month? There was an armchair here and four reader's seats. All gone. Replaced by two bookcases made of chipboard, for shelfmark 960. The counter-revolution is under way. We have to do something. Their aim is the elimination of all readers from the library. I can see the books planning it. They hold meetings, they pile up in towers, they barricade themselves in the stores, and once they've gathered enough strength, they charge. With the help of some of the librarians, the aristos on the staff, they're getting the best places, bit by bit. The readers step back, stumble,
resist a little, but gradually get pushed out, they're in the way, human beings are in the way, and they know it. So, in the end, they throw up their hands and leave. That's it.
Finito
, “The dead eat up the living” as the old saying goes. I'll tell you how it works. The library is the arena where every day the Homeric battle begins between books and readers. In this struggle, the librarians are the referees. In this arena, they have a part to play. Either they're cowards and take the side of the mountain of books, or they bravely help the worried reader. And in this fight, you have to let your conscience be your guide. But librarians aren't automatically on the side of the humans, don't be fooled. You don't realize, but you're a flock of sheep in our hands, you think you're gambolling about free as air, but there are wolves everywhere lying in wait for you, cyclops, sirens, naked nymphs, oh, the pity of it … A barricade only has two sides and I know which side I'm on, comrade. I'm here to help the poor, depressed, thirsty reader faced with the crushing prestige of the Army of Books. You haven't noticed, because I keep myself to myself, but I'm on your side, and always
have been. On the side of the pedestrians, the boules players, the regulars. With my shelfmarks 900 and 910. Some people have chosen the other side, the duchesses up there at 200 and 800. My class enemies. Look out, lady. Look out! I see them, the thought police of the library, I've seen the way they talk to the readers. They hit them over the head with “You must read
this
, or
that
”. They decide what's “well-written” and what isn't, they're like statues of the
Commendatore
for French literature. They say that everyone must have access to Literature with a big “L”, then they put up this huge monument – the Classics – and it demands sacrificial victims every day, new flesh, fresh blood. With the duchesses, you're never on the right foot, never. They're the cultural cops. If you set foot in their precinct, hesitating, a bit unsure of yourself, you're afraid they'll call you over. “Hey, you. Yes, you! Show me your classics please. Hmm. Yes, very unsatisfactory, lots of gaps there. How long is it since you opened a book by Balzac? Hmm. Occupation? Do you have a full-time job? Oh well, you have no excuse. I'd be ashamed if I were you. What's that book in
the bag? Open it, please. Oh, I see, very interesting. Easy reading. Airport book. Glossy cover. Badly written. Rubbish! And you plan on staying some time in this cultural state, do you? You'll have to be taken in hand. I'm recommending a set of eighteenth-century classics for you, for ten months. Don't argue, you've no choice. Report back to me after that. No, leave this book here, please. And don't let me catch you again. Right, on your way now.” The brutes. I would never, ever let myself say things like that. Attacking the readers that way. Not even Martin, no. Anyway, I'll tell you this, it doesn't work. It doesn't work any longer. On the contrary, you need kindness, more kindness, always more kindness. I see them come in here, the young kids from technical college, apprentices, the children who need study support. The first time, they come in groups, no way are they going to set foot in the library on their own. They come in with their mates, they make a lot of noise. As if they're trying it on, to show they're not intimidated, but of course they are, poor things, they're terrorized. They shiver as they enter the arena, they know the books
aren't on their side. When you've always been useless at school, thousands of books all gathered together in one place are scary, humiliating, for a man they're castrating – well, that's by the way. So, now my little flock settles down. That's when you have to go over to them with a big smile and welcome them. They've got a project to do for school. I bring them some books. They whisper to each other, they don't sit still. The regulars give them dirty looks, but it's not too bad. Then some of them come back. They start to know their way around. They read pretty useless books, but at least they're reading. It can take months, this kindness offensive. We know we've won when they come back all on their own. That's when they feel at home, they're accepted, they're reassured. They have a right to be here. “School sometimes makes mistakes, and the library can put them right,” that's what Eugène Morel said. Ah … Eugène. Ah … Martin. Yes, indeed, you can accomplish great things if you're a librarian. That's why I really can't understand why Martin is so indifferent towards me. O.K., I didn't get the right grades for the teaching certificate, but still, I'm
not so bad, am I? Answer, please. What does this kid want? To meet an I.T. manageress? A woman who puts the banknotes in A.T.M.s? A woman who sells private swimming pools? A nuclear power station engineer? No, I really don't get it. Here I am doing a useful, interesting and brave job, one that calls for a whole lot of qualities. When they bring a book back: “Yes, I liked that one too, did you?” Point out another they might like. Gently ease them away from the bestseller shelves. Apply emotional tactics. Agreed, they don't always work. I may not be that good at it. But I could say in my defence that it all depends on what's gone before. At the very beginning. Everything depends on the very first days, the first time someone walks over the threshold. That's when it starts. The beginnings of civilization. Birth. The primal scene. Before that, frankly, the reader is a virgin. Yes, a virgin. And I like to see people losing their library virginity. Oh well, of course, if the first time is a fiasco, it'll be hard to carry on. Very hard. If the librarian comes charging at you like a bull, no kindness, no foreplay, that's it. You'll never come back. Divorced from culture. Lifelong
abstinence. Don't wriggle about on your seat like that, I'm not going to bite you. Be patient, only a quarter of an hour until opening time. There are plenty of ways to humiliate the virgin reader, to abuse or terrorize him or her. Those counter-revolutionaries upstairs, they know all about that. The first tactic is the Dewey decimal classification. What a perverse invention, an instrument of torture. Does anyone understand why it jumps from 300 to 500, leaving out 400? Stupid, anarchic, megamoronic. The Dewey system is a secret code invented by the Axis of Evil that binds books and librarians together in order to scare the reader off. It's terrifying, the Dewey system. Totally inhibiting. Everything goes into it, like a mincer. Your holidays, your house, your tastes, your furniture, just everything. There's even a classification for sexuality – and plenty of different shelfmarks for all the complications. No, sorry, we don't have that down here, it's upstairs. “Reserve Section”. I'm telling you, if no-one stops them, the people on the ground floor will end up putting a shelfmark on all of us; my refugees, my unemployed, my little old men,
everyone, shelfmarked. We mustn't let them get away with it. They're
perverts
. Their supreme sin is to set up a system where the books are all in the stacks and you have to fill out a request slip. You go into a library, but instead of looking at the books, being able to pull them out and handle them and borrow when you want … no, they shut them up in stacks, in a big cold warehouse. As if they were too precious to be touched. And how do you get hold of books that are hidden? You have to fill out this little slip, very clearly, and humbly present it at the desk. It drives me nuts, this antiquated way of carrying on. Twenty minutes later, or even half an hour, they deign to bring you your book, and they ask you for your surname, please, now your first name. It's as if they were stripping you naked in front of everyone. And no more than three books at a time, blah blah blah. The assault course is scattered with obstacles and ambushes, like red-hot brands to mark the first-time visitor. You have to know which book to order, so you have to consult the catalogue, and good luck to you if you aren't familiar with its little ways. Then you fill out your “little slip”.
Then you have to wait. And waiting already sets you up for humiliation. Your desire for the book gets blunted, and by the time the book arrives the reader has gathered that nobody cares about his enthusiasm. They've arranged everything it takes to put people off for life, to cause immense frustration. Of course, after that, I can't pick up the pieces, the damage has been done. Not to mention that a traumatic system like this leads to the development of library neurosis, repression on a grand scale, and before you know it, outbreaks of sex attacks and cultural violence, I don't have to draw a diagram, do I? Oh, hear that noise? They're winding the blinds up. The doors will be open soon. I'd better put my earrings on, you never know. I'm going to confess something to you. About the back of his neck. No, I've had plenty of time to think about it, haven't I, so I've thought about it a lot. This other evening, I was at my desk. I had this book in my hands and I was just going to re-shelve it. A solid sort of book, a hardback with a nice squared spine. And as I was putting it into place, I looked at it again, among the others. And seen from the back, this book reminded me
of something, but what? And then, I kid you not, I had this revelation. It was the back of Martin's neck. Yes. Then I understood. What's the spine of a book, if not its nape? No need to look at me like that, anyone can see you don't spend your life among people and books with their backs turned on you. Well, this flash of insight just blew my mind. Now, even looking at that bookcase, I sometimes get a funny feeling … The worst thing is when Martin is wandering around among the books. All I have to do is get up, and pretend I've got something to sort out. I can follow him quite closely. I try to sneak along a few steps behind him. And that's when I get the most beautiful sight of all: the back of Martin's neck, a kind of synthesis, a universal résumé of Man's inviolate buttocks, wandering through hundreds of books all with
their
backsides turned towards you, and the two buttocks multiplied infinitely and magnified by the nape of Martin's neck, it makes me want to, well, I don't know what I might be capable of. But not in the Town Planning and Geography section, no, it's completely impossible. Now don't you go telling the Librarian that, eh? I don't
want to lose my job. I'm already in their bad buttocks here,
books
, I mean, bad
books
 … No, don't snigger, as if I were the only one with ideas like that. As if being in daily contact with our great works of literature placed an invisible and chaste veil over our age-old primitive impulses. Pardon me while I smile. You think perhaps that writers are respectable people? No, in order to write (I've thought about this one too), you have to have a sexual problem. It's obvious. Either too much libido or too little. Whichever. But writing is a sexual activity. So you see for me, in the middle of all these books, with Martin there, almost within arm's reach … Luckily there are two thousand years of civilization behind me, and the rubber plant between us, otherwise … What was I saying? Oh yes, writing is a sexual activity. You don't shut yourself up for ten hours a day to write, if everything in your life is absolutely hunky-dory. Writing only happens when something's wrong. If everyone on earth was happy, they wouldn't write anything except recipes and postcards, and there wouldn't be any books, or literature, or libraries. It would be the sign that humanity had