The Book on Fire (10 page)

“If you killed me in this room, would the books snap me up?” I
asked. “Or would I become one of them, one of the invisible books? What would
happen to my tales?”

“I’ve betrayed them, I’m betraying them.” Her voice was sodden. She
placed her face in her transparent hands, but I could see the tears trickling
along her finger bones.

I leaned forward. “Who are you betraying?”

“It will end in disaster, I know. Fraternizing with demons is always
a recipe for catastrophe. I’ve read the books. The raving women, shredding
their clothes, ripping their faces, alone in a deserted valley or an empty
room. Is that what you want me to become?”

“Why this room? Why did you choose this room?”

“I thought maybe you wouldn’t see me. I thought you’d find it empty
and leave.”

“What do you read here?” I asked.

“Something different every time. Chiromancy of bones and blood. I
come here to learn about myself, to try to read my future, which is always
shifting, so the story changes moment by moment. I saw you once, Balthazar,
long before you arrived, in an engraving under tissue paper. You were standing
on a rooftop, a book in your hands. There was a shadowed figure beside you. In
the next picture, the book was a leaf or a dagger, something bright, and the
figure was your shadow. Did you see that image in your chameleon book? What did
you read when you came into this room?”

“Such a strange poem ...”

She was my Shahryar. She became, as I spoke, more transparent, as
though my breath, the tale borne on my breaths, was blowing the atoms out of
her body one by one. And I realized that this transparence was her nature, and
that it was precisely this evaporation, this ability to lose herself, that had
first drawn me to her. The drowning girl, the vanishing girl. I spoke more
softly, trying to prolong her disappearance. She became more beautiful, as
blown glass is beautiful because of its fragility. As a soap bubble or a sphere
of gossamer is beautiful. All night long, I spun my lies, and snipped them off
in mid-leap, between rooftops, leaving myself framed against stars like a
tightrope walker teetering on a thread of blue ink.

“More,” she said.

“No.”

She raised her hand. “In your chameleon book, did you see your
death?”

“I saw a thousand deaths. Deaths by paper cut, paperknife, falling
bookshelves, eyestrain, but none in this room, I’m afraid. What about you? What
have you seen?”

“Such beautiful things, Balthazar. You can’t know.”

“But this is the room of lies.”

“Not all are lies.”

“No. Not all.” She was shivering, her transparent skin blue-tinged,
almost opalescent. “Come. If you spend any more time here you’ll vanish
completely.” I climbed down and held out my hand, which, I noticed, shimmered
slightly. I could see, faintly, the lines of shelves and the shapes of bindings
beneath my skin. “I’m disintegrating as well,” I said. My voice seemed
strangely flat, echoless.

Slowly, she let herself down from her perch, feet of blue glass
descending teak rungs. Her hand in mine like a clasp of cool breath. She turned
to me, eyes bright as goldstone. Hand in hand, we left that room, and as we
crossed the threshold I felt my strength begin to return, as though my selves,
my unleaved signatures, had begun to fold into a single volume once more. But
we wandered through many chambers before her grip solidified. Only then did she
seem to notice we were touching, and, horrified, shook her fingers free.

****

The
next night she was not at our rendezvous. I waited a while in the cavern of
asemic books, then strolled through the library, aimlessly, plucking volumes
here and there. And suddenly, as I passed through an archway, cinnamon filled
my nostrils, and she was before me. I could read the fury in her brow, the
determination in her lips, as she brought her arm toward my neck. Motionless, I
waited for her blow while the candle flame tumbled. But only the wind of her
strikes reached my skin. Beneath the archway I stood before her, holding a
candle in both hands, while she performed her violent ballet, snapping an ankle
toward my torso, flicking stiffened fingers a hair’s breadth from my neck. But,
though her face betrayed the strain, she never touched me. One of her movements
snuffed the candle. In the darkness I closed my eyes, not daring to stir, while
the beating of her limbs continued about my body like a lover’s breaths or a
tempest of moth wings. Then it ceased and I heard her subside, panting. I sat
across from her in the darkness, leaning against the archway.

“I can’t do it,” she whispered. “I can’t do it.”

I relit the candle. “Long ago,” I said, “you wouldn’t have had to
kill me. The library was open to readers. The central room, where you do your
deadly dancing, was filled with silent readers, and the librarians fetched the
books for them. What changed? Why did the library shut itself off?”

“No one knows.” She was still trying to catch her breath. “Too long
ago. There are lots of theories, of course. Some say we’d become irritated by
inanities written about certain books within our keeping, and wished to control
all interpretations ourselves. Others say the city itself, overburdened by
bespectacled visitors, ordered the library closed. Still others claim religious
quarrels infiltrated the library: certain groups wanted certain books destroyed
and the librarians, to protect their charges, sealed the library. One or all of
these theories may be true, but I have my own theory: in the absence of male
attention we became infatuated with our books and couldn’t tolerate the touch
of other hands, the glance of other eyes, on the skin we adored. And so we shut
the doors, shut our lips, and retreated to the stone interior, to gloat, to
fondle, to read.”

“And there’s no inclination to open the library again? Has no
librarian tried to smuggle a book out?”

“We make our vows, to defend the books against any outsider.” But
her eyes strayed slightly, and I pressed her.

“But ...”

“Well ... I shouldn’t be telling you all this. These are secrets.”

“My entire existence is a secret.”

She tapped her fingertips together, making a brown cage, then opened
them. “All right.” She paused. “This was before I was born. I don’t know how
long before. A girl came to the library who had been burned. No one knows why.
So long ago her name has been forgotten. Somehow she made her way to the gates,
and begged entrance. She didn’t need to be shaved: her hair had been burned
away. She always wore a veil, even alone in her room, because her face was
gone. We harbor within our labyrinth girls who have been wounded. But this
burned girl was different, as if the fire had not only scraped away her skin and
scoured away her voice, but also scorched her blood. She had embers in her
blood. Every conversation was a quarrel.

“She spent the first years reading. All of us love to read, that’s
why we’re here, but she read as though books were oxygen, as though her life
depended on them. She’d disappear into the library for weeks, reading her way
through room after room, deep under the sea, out under the desert. She read
through mealtimes, and only when sleep knocked her unconscious did she take a
break, though often with a book on her face or clutched to her breast.

“Some of the damaged girls, arriving at the library, embrace the
sanctuary—the protection of the walls, the power of our martial art. But the
burned girl railed against the walls. She wanted the gates opened once more,
and the readers let in. She said we were killing the books. By caging them we
were killing them. And she wanted more than just allowing the readers in: she
wanted the books released, free to leave the library—can you imagine?

“She opened the gates at one point—stole the keys and opened the
gates—and began to call people to enter. After that she was locked in her room.
For a month she was kept prisoner, but she bribed the librarian who was tending
her with knowledge of a forgotten book, and escaped. They found her in the
library grounds, passing books through the fence. She managed to release a
dozen or so before she was subdued. We don’t know what books the library lost,
or exactly how many. A shelfload, perhaps more. I’ve often wondered what
happened to those books, if they still exist in the world, if their provenance
is known.” Shireen looked at me, and a smile flickered across her lips. “Well,
that’s the story, at any rate.”

“She was subdued?”

“We’re not gentle with insubordinates. It’s a cautionary tale, most
likely.”

“It’s no tale.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve met her. I’ve fucked her. I know her name.”

“Liar!”

“Certainly. And storyteller. But this is no ordinary tale.”

“She’s been dead for years.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Of course. I mean, I’ve never seen one, but they come into lots of
books. Some of the girls say that I’m a ghost, and they want to exorcise me,
send me back to my world. And perhaps I am. But how solid I feel. Though my
blood is blue, it leaves a stain. But tell me about your ghost.”

“Zeinab, the veiled book-burner, has chaperoned my sojourn in Alexandria. When I turned from the library grounds my first night in this city, she
whispered to me in her scoured voice. The price of her blasphemous orgasm was
one of the finest books in my collection, which she then burned. She’s a
book-burner, a book-whore. She moves across the city like a blue shadow,
entering men’s dreams, and they pay for her body. They pay with their books,
though they know she will burn them. Through her I met my friends. Including
you. She showed me the way into the library. She gave me the obol that allowed
me to cross the dark river.”

“Describe her.”

“She’s kohl, veil, bells: all exterior. I can’t describe her face
for you—it’s hidden—but I can describe her knife. Her knife is one of the
loveliest objects I’ve seen. It’s perfectly weighted, the handle and guard and
blade in balance. Perhaps it was decorated once, but incessant use has rubbed
it as smooth as the skin of the inner thigh. The wood is perhaps ebony or
rosewood, pouched and rippled into her grip, the blade thin as if snipped from
tinfoil, sturdy as a healed bone. Once she pressed it through my wrist. We were
sitting by the sea. This was following a thief’s supper. Soon after dawn.”

“You’re in love, aren’t you? You’re in love with this, with a book
... a book burner.”

“In love? No, love is the wrong word. Unless you could say Cleopatra
loved her asp or Imru al-Qais his poisoned robe. I’m seduced, horrified. I
don’t want to look any more, but I can’t look away. Is it possible to fall in
love with someone whose face is hidden? Could you fall in love with a book you
hadn’t read? If it was forbidden?”

“So the burned librarian is still awake.” Her eyes darted, she
gnawed at a hangnail. “How terrifying. And delicious.” She shivered slightly,
as if a silverfish tiptoed up her spine. “What would it be like to burn a
book?” she whispered.

“Hush.”

“There are girls who cut themselves. They can’t stop. They say it
hurts, and it feels so good. They say they feel the same revulsion we do, the
blood is just as horrifying to them, but they can’t stop. We hide the knives
and razorblades, but they use paper, splinters, their teeth. I love cutting
open fresh pages. And sometimes, slicing my way through a book, I feel I could
just keep cutting, deeper. Imagine burning a book. To read it, then burn it.
Imagine!”

“Don’t.”

“You’ve thought about it though, haven’t you?”

“Let’s talk about something else.”

“Like what?”

“Anything. Apples. Lions. Roses.”

“Roses.... What do they smell like? Do the different colors have
different scents?”

She had been to Gormenghast and Xanadu, Byzantium and Macondo, could
describe an ent and an ansible, but she’d never smelled a rose or heard the
sea. Talking with her, I’d suddenly realize she was still less than an infant;
she’d never emerged from her book-lined womb.

She made me describe the buttery, flaky texture of a croissant at
the Trianon, the crackle as you bit into a corner, the soft warm core. I
described the lights on the dance floors at the Tempest and the Sound and the
Fury, like a galaxy gone haywire, and the flavor of the mingled smokes—apple
tobacco, clove and menthol, opium, hashish. I mimicked the expressions of the
icons in the Kanisa Prometheus. I evoked, with splayed, flickering fingers, the
effect of sunlight on the water of the bay. I described nights after thievery,
walking across the rooftops, sidestepping dead gulls and sleeping asps,
dreaming poets and fallen kites.

“Oh, how I’d love to come!” she exclaimed.

“If you ever escape your paradise, I’ll take you thieving some
night.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Yes.”

****

We met
the next night, and the next and the next, a different room every time. I
populated the caverns with my devilish deeds and seedy characters, and as dawn
approached broke the story off on a threshold or a rooftop, or at knifepoint,
and sent the youngest librarian to sleepwalk to the reading room. I spun my
story with fleece combed from all the books I’d read, carding it, braiding it
into a flying carpet of many colors. But why am I describing it to you? Read
on. You out there, up there, eavesdropper, fellow weaver.