The Book on Fire (9 page)

She knelt, face in her hands, weeping.

I stood in the doorway. “I want to read you,” I said.

She uncurled so slowly. Her lips quivered. Her eyes traveled up my
body, met my eyes. “Tell me you’re not real,” she said.

“I’m not real. I’m a ghost in the Library of Alexandria. You rubbed
your candle and called me up.”

“You’re the devil. I’ve conjured a djinn.”

“Certainly.” I knelt before her on the stone. She lifted a finger
toward me. I bit it and she snatched it back, staring at the swelling bead
beside her nail. Her blood was blue.

“What’s your name?” she whispered.

“Call me Balthazar. And you are?”

In blue blood she wrote her name on the stone.

“Shireen,” I read. “I’ve been stalking you for weeks.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m a thief, a book thief: Balthazar the book thief.”

“I’ll have to kill you.”

“Kill me or kiss me: do what you like with me, Shireen, I’m in your
hands.”

“It’s my duty.” She raised her right hand and drew a finger along
its edge, pinkie to wrist, as if testing a blade. Slowly she brought her hand
down in an arc, till it rested against my neck. “Just there,” she said. We were
shaking like teenage lovers. She lifted her hand. “Will you defend yourself?”

I shook my head.

“Why not?”

“I want your touch. I’ve desired that touch since I first saw you.”

“You’ve been spying on me.”

“I saw you reading in your armchair, drinking your glass of wine.
When you went back to your room I sat where you sat, read to your palm leaf. I
drank wine from your glass.”

“But why?” The candlelight wavered on her hand. I could feel, like a
fresh burn, the stripe where her palm had rested against my neck.

“When I first entered the library, I thought I’d pluck the tastiest
books, spirit them away, package them, post them around the globe. But once
inside, all I wanted to do was read and eat cookies. Oh, the first book I read
here, after I crossed the dark river, after I lost my way and abandoned hope
... it was like those dreams of reading, when the pages are turning in darkness
and you know the lines are created as you read, and burn away as your eyes move
on. I ate cookies and almonds and apricots and drank cocoa and read that book,
and then I knew I didn’t want to steal, I wanted to belong. I wanted to know
who had placed the books just so and who had baked the delicious cookies and
who had chosen the blue of the bowls to complement so perfectly the color of
apricots. So I came seeking the librarians. I’ve seen your guilty expressions
as you steal time to read.”

Her hand had dropped as I spoke, and now rested in her lap. “Why
me?” she asked. “There are hundreds of us.”

“You fall deeper into a book. The others flip through the pages,
their eyes are always floating up, but you drown.”

“They call me the drowning girl. Sometimes they rescue me. They call
it rescuing. But why am I telling you this? You’re distracting me.”

“Yes. Apologies. You were going to kill me.”

She raised her hand. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t.”

“Kill me, Shireen. I’m a hunted criminal in a hundred countries.
I’ve violated your space. I’ve spied on you. I’ve tampered with your bookmarks.
You’d be doing the world a favor if you crushed my spine with your pretty
fingers. But before you do so, allow me to present you with a gift.”

“A book?”

“What else?” From my jacket pocket I pulled the book she’d read in a
single sitting.

She put her hand to her mouth. “I was afraid it was a dream.”

“It’s yours.”

She grabbed it, opened to the first page, plunged in, quick dip,
then shivered like a kitten. “It’s so delicious. I searched and searched for
this book. There were no references to it. I had to tell them I’d dreamed about
it. Then I almost convinced myself I had. Where did you find it?”

“I thought you were going to kill me.”

“That can wait.”

“Listen, then.” We had been kneeling, but now I sat back and leaned
against a shelf. “I’ve peeled through a billion pages on seven continents. I’ve
examined by candlelight the shelves of emperors and gondoliers, butchers and
barbers, fortunetellers and chimney sweeps. I’ve entered castles and caravans,
hovels and houseboats, searching for books. And there are books, believe me.
There is no shortage of books, beautiful books, costly books, on this planet.
But occasionally, in my life of crime, I’ve come across a volume that
annihilates me. You know the sensation. You lift the cover, naive, and suddenly
tumble over the precipice. You look up and have no idea where you are, who you
are. It’s long past dawn, on a new planet. This has happened perhaps a dozen
times in my life. Sometimes years have gone by without another encounter, and
I’ll think I’ve lost my touch. But then I’ll be browsing through a shelf,
business as usual, and I’ll tip out a volume, and suddenly, the plummet, my
heart in my throat, I’m drowning. Generally, if I discover a lovely book I pass
it on. But these books, the books that combine in perfect quantity design and
story and song, I keep. The book you read was one of those, a book from my
immaculate bookshelf. As you found out.”

“Do you let others read them?”

“You were the second.”

“Who was the first?”

“She was a mistake.”

“Who was she?”

“That’s a secret.”

“So why me?”

“You like to read. Also, I read the books you chose for me.”

“Oh yes.” She clasped her hands. “Did you love them?”

I told her how they had changed the city above our heads. “My
friends thought I’d taken drugs. And of course I had. The most potent, deadly
drugs.”

“I read them over and over. The others can’t understand. They laugh
at me, they say I’m surrounded by a billion books, that I should read each book
once and move on. They think I must be slow-witted, that I don’t understand
what I read unless I reread. They think I’m sick. They can’t understand that
I’m not reading the book, I’m trying to wear it. I’m trying to eat it.”

“We have the same disease. First readings are like first kisses—you
can’t remember the taste, the shape of the other’s lips, you have only a heady
sensation of stained glass shattering.”

“I’ve never been kissed.”

“No. No, of course not.”

Beat of silence.

“You can’t be real,” she said. “There’s no way into the library. We
patrol the gates night and day.”

“I came in the back door.”

“There is no back door.”

“Then I must be a demon.”

“Demon or not, you’re the first man I’ve spoken to.”

“I beg your pardon. What about your father? How old were you when
you came here?”

“I’m special. The rest of the librarians grew up in ordinary houses
outside the library. In the world. They came here to escape forced marriages or
fathers who beat them, or because they were orphaned, or just because they
wanted more time to read. But eighteen years ago, in a room of books about the
third element, which is always a little warmer than most, one of the librarians
heard a little cry. There I was, on an upper shelf, vernixed with paper dust,
my cord a blue bookmark, tethering me to a book about the nature of fire. She
cut my cord with her paperknife, swaddled me in pages, and carried me into the
reading room. All the librarians suckled me. Yes, strange, isn’t it? But this
is a strange story. This is what they told me: hearing me cry, holding me, they
felt the ache in their breasts and the milk leaked onto their robes. I was
their communal child.

“As soon as I could sit I began to talk. And as soon as I could talk
I could read, a gift of my miraculous birth. The librarians crowded round to
hear me read, no faltering, the words floating out in my small voice. Some
wanted to keep me caged, to confine me to a single room or to the librarians’
chambers, to chaperone my reading. Certain librarians even argued that I should
be put to death. Too dangerous, they said, to have a book at liberty,
unshelved, uncataloged. But they were silenced. I’m the true daughter of this
library, and this is my rightful domain.”

“But you’re also human.”

“My nature—human or book—is the subject of endless argument among
the librarians.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. I can hear my heart flutter like riffled pages
sometimes. I feel more at home among books than among the other girls. My blood
is blue, you’ve seen that, blue as ink. And look at my eyes.” I leaned forward
and realized her pupils were not round but rectangular, the shape of pages, and
within them, deep down, so distant I could not read them, words were written in
burning letters. When she blinked pages turned.

“I cannot read the letters of fire,” my voice quavered. “What do
they say?”

“I can’t read them either. They’re too far away. Written on my
dreams. But anyway, you believe me now. I’ve never spoken with a man. I hear
men’s voices calling to me when I patrol the fence, and in books of course. But
it’s strange to be speaking with you like this. I can’t shake the feeling
you’re a dream. What would you do if I let you go?”

“What would I do if you killed me is the more pressing question.
Then I’d really be a ghost. I’d haunt every page you turned. Would you rather
have a demon lover you can talk to or one who’s invisible?”

“But if I let you go would you promise not to enter the library
again?”

I laughed. “Think about it. Having once tasted the fruit, could you
relinquish it?”

“I’ve taken vows. We all take vows, to hold books more precious than
our own bodies, to protect them with our lives, to kill any intruder. For
centuries every librarian has studied and practiced the secret martial arts, in
preparation for this moment. And now you’re kneeling in front of me, and you
won’t even defend yourself, and I can’t do it, I can’t bring my hand down on
your neck. Even though I’ve lived this moment over and over, imagined myself
the heroine, the dragon-slayer, the giant-killer. I’ve imagined running into
the reading room with my hands soaked in blood and my robe soaked in blood,
shouting ‘I’ve done it, I’ve killed him, I’ve killed the book thief!’”

“So do it.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m too greedy.”

“For what?”

She was silent.

“Ah. What do I have to do to stay alive?”

“Keep me turning the pages.”

“You want a story?” I said. “Listen.” Now at last she sat back,
watching me, the book clasped to her heart. “Call me Balthazar. Call me
silverfish, sweet dreams, the end of the rainbow. Call me dust devil, night
owl, will-o-the-wisp. Call me the man in the moon. But call me Balthazar, and
place a book in my hands.
And what
book is that, the book I reach for ...”

I spun my story till dawn, the story you have nibbled at, the story
you’re partaking of. I snipped it off beneath a raised dagger, in some medieval
abbey. Then I leaned back, looked at the ceiling. “I believe it’s time to kill
me. Soon the librarians will gather in the reading room to practice their
pretty ju jitsu. Someone needs to inform them their exertions are not in vain.”

“But we can’t leave you standing at knifepoint forever.”

“I’m afraid we’ll have to.”

“You ... you scoundrel!”

“I warned you.”

“All right. I see you’ve left me no choice.”

“You have a choice.”

“Yes. Kill you now and go mad, or kill you when I’ve heard the end
of the story. Meet me tomorrow night in ... meet me in the room of chameleons.”

****

I
returned the next day, bearing my candle, uncertain whether I’d encounter the
edge of a hand or an open page, a shriek or a whisper. But the room of
chameleons was empty, and seemed empty of books as well. The shelves at first
glance were bare, dusty. Then, sniffing, I knew some magic was at work here. I
knew pages dwelt in this room, and moved to the shelves, watching at each step
for transformation. “Aftah,” I muttered, “Aftah, ya simsim,” but not until my
hand was within an inch of the shelves did I see the glimmer of edges and
bindings. My fingertips brushed invisible leather. Pulling the book from the
shelf, I could feel its weight, and watched it shift, as if the air itself bent
and bulked into the shape of a book, the golden rectangle that lies at the
heart of the universe and is, surely, the shape of the soul of God. In my hands
it became my hands. Opening it, I read my palm, life line and heart line in
elegant Garamond, shifting and gathering, skewing as I turned a page. And
suddenly, as though I peered not into pages or my palm but into a looking
glass, I saw my story branching ahead of me, each twig terminating in a death.
I followed, in a moment, a thousand twisting branches, and at the end of each
my body lay, crushed spectacles and a book beside it.

I heard a whispered word, but before I gathered its meaning, the
bookmark whipped out like a silk tongue, licked the syllables from the air, and
tucked them into the spine. What word? And who had released it into the room?
Peering into the corners, I finally spied her near the ceiling, seated on the
topmost shelf, hugging her knees to her chest. Her form was uncertain, though
whether this was due to the candlelight or the nature of the room I could not
be sure. I climbed the shelves and sat across from her, tucked between stone
ceiling and polished teak. Like breathing bookends we sat in the room of
invisible, changing books, a shelf-load of lies between us. I could see the
books like a thickness of glass or water, and her skin itself was slightly
transparent in this environment.