candle
and immediately achieved orgasm. The first sight of that underground treasure
tipped me over the brink and I soaked my pants. I was standing behind a
bookshelf, peering between shelves. For a long time I stood there with my
candle, besotted by my first glimpse of the Library of Alexandria, then moved
out from behind the bookcase.
I was in an irregular cavern, a grotto with several apertures
through which I could see other caverns like the chambers of a honeycomb.
Around the walls, set in nooks cut into the stone, wooden bookcases stood, each
uniquely shaped; some with glassed doors, some inlaid with mother-of-pearl and
exotic woods. Framed engravings and poems and manuscript pages hung on the
walls. Within the cases books stood, slightly disheveled, some leaning
together, some placed sideways upon the others. There were brackets for candle
holders on the walls and carpets on the floor and dilapidated sofas and
armchairs, all piled with worn, embroidered cushions. Beside one sofa, on a
linen-covered end table, lay two thermoses and a battered silver pitcher of
milk and a bowl of brown sugar and several stoneware mugs and a jar of cookies
dusted with powdered sugar and another of salted almonds and a blue bowl of
apricots. Well, you can imagine my transport. Without further ado, I returned
to the bookcase that hid the door and pulled out the book I’d first touched. I
settled myself into a sofa, the cushions about me like a plump embrace, and
poured myself a mug of cocoa. Eating cookies and almonds and apricots, I read
the book from beginning to end, while the semen dried to a new-found islet on
my crotch. And if some savage librarian had chanced upon me during that read,
I’d have opened my arms to her and smiled and said, “Strangle me with your
ink-stained fingers, miss, for I have achieved nirvana.”
The finest books are at once completely ordinary and completely
strange. You feel you’ve read them before, or something like them, but the more
you struggle to pinpoint the references, the more you realize that the books
create their own references: they are their own histories. The first book I
read in the Library of Alexandria was such a book. It had, I felt, been formed
in my shape, and was waiting for my arrival. Completing it, I blew out my
candle, curled on the sofa, and slept like a newborn.
****
My
thief’s sense woke me. Opening my eyes, I saw a grain of light, heard a
footfall. I gathered my satchel and candle and retreated behind the door
through which I had entered, closed it softly, then peered through the keyhole.
My initial reckless euphoria had been replaced by the need to explore further
and I did not wish to be apprehended. A woman in gray, bearing a candle in one
hand and an ostrich-plume duster in the other, emerged through one of the
apertures. She sniffed the air a moment, then spotted the spread-eagled book
and dirty mug and apricot pits beside the sofa and pursed her lips. She
replaced the book on the shelf, picked up the mug and pits, tidied the books a
little and swatted them with her duster, then passed out of the room.
I stayed motionless for a time before venturing out once more.
Replenishing my stock of candles from a stash on an upper shelf, I started
through the library, going in the direction from which the librarian had come.
For hours I wandered, from node to node of that vast net, utterly lost, as I
had been in the catacombs, but lost in paradise.
In tremendous caverns, bookshelves lifted tier upon tier into the
gloom; long ladders were affixed to the shelves, which I climbed, up to the
ceiling. I perched there at the edge of a cliff of books, and looked across the
canyon; it was as if a river, in carving its valley, had exposed strata of
titles. Other rooms were mere nooks, no bigger than a cupboard, with space
enough for a single bookcase.
I read impossibly gorgeous scripts. Scripts in which each hieroglyph
filled a page and took a day to write, but could express an
and immediately achieved orgasm. The first sight of that underground treasure
tipped me over the brink and I soaked my pants. I was standing behind a
bookshelf, peering between shelves. For a long time I stood there with my
candle, besotted by my first glimpse of the Library of Alexandria, then moved
out from behind the bookcase.
I was in an irregular cavern, a grotto with several apertures
through which I could see other caverns like the chambers of a honeycomb.
Around the walls, set in nooks cut into the stone, wooden bookcases stood, each
uniquely shaped; some with glassed doors, some inlaid with mother-of-pearl and
exotic woods. Framed engravings and poems and manuscript pages hung on the
walls. Within the cases books stood, slightly disheveled, some leaning
together, some placed sideways upon the others. There were brackets for candle
holders on the walls and carpets on the floor and dilapidated sofas and
armchairs, all piled with worn, embroidered cushions. Beside one sofa, on a
linen-covered end table, lay two thermoses and a battered silver pitcher of
milk and a bowl of brown sugar and several stoneware mugs and a jar of cookies
dusted with powdered sugar and another of salted almonds and a blue bowl of
apricots. Well, you can imagine my transport. Without further ado, I returned
to the bookcase that hid the door and pulled out the book I’d first touched. I
settled myself into a sofa, the cushions about me like a plump embrace, and
poured myself a mug of cocoa. Eating cookies and almonds and apricots, I read
the book from beginning to end, while the semen dried to a new-found islet on
my crotch. And if some savage librarian had chanced upon me during that read,
I’d have opened my arms to her and smiled and said, “Strangle me with your
ink-stained fingers, miss, for I have achieved nirvana.”
The finest books are at once completely ordinary and completely
strange. You feel you’ve read them before, or something like them, but the more
you struggle to pinpoint the references, the more you realize that the books
create their own references: they are their own histories. The first book I
read in the Library of Alexandria was such a book. It had, I felt, been formed
in my shape, and was waiting for my arrival. Completing it, I blew out my
candle, curled on the sofa, and slept like a newborn.
****
My
thief’s sense woke me. Opening my eyes, I saw a grain of light, heard a
footfall. I gathered my satchel and candle and retreated behind the door
through which I had entered, closed it softly, then peered through the keyhole.
My initial reckless euphoria had been replaced by the need to explore further
and I did not wish to be apprehended. A woman in gray, bearing a candle in one
hand and an ostrich-plume duster in the other, emerged through one of the
apertures. She sniffed the air a moment, then spotted the spread-eagled book
and dirty mug and apricot pits beside the sofa and pursed her lips. She
replaced the book on the shelf, picked up the mug and pits, tidied the books a
little and swatted them with her duster, then passed out of the room.
I stayed motionless for a time before venturing out once more.
Replenishing my stock of candles from a stash on an upper shelf, I started
through the library, going in the direction from which the librarian had come.
For hours I wandered, from node to node of that vast net, utterly lost, as I
had been in the catacombs, but lost in paradise.
In tremendous caverns, bookshelves lifted tier upon tier into the
gloom; long ladders were affixed to the shelves, which I climbed, up to the
ceiling. I perched there at the edge of a cliff of books, and looked across the
canyon; it was as if a river, in carving its valley, had exposed strata of
titles. Other rooms were mere nooks, no bigger than a cupboard, with space
enough for a single bookcase.
I read impossibly gorgeous scripts. Scripts in which each hieroglyph
filled a page and took a day to write, but could express an
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