Read Online The Book on Fire by Keith Miller - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Keith Miller
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the world above,
I seldom encountered books unfamiliar to me, and most I had seen dozens or
hundreds of times, but here were rooms filled with volumes that might have been
written on another planet, so odd were they.
And slowly I arrived at a realization so startling I was almost
afraid to believe it. I found, as I moved through this subterranean forest,
that I could imagine a book, known or unknown, read or unread, and be certain
of the path I would have to take to find it. I tested it, over and over, and
could not fail, as if my mind had been somehow prepared for this library, or as
if the library had been modeled on the patterns of my mind. And when I realized
this, I knew I could follow the patterns back through the caverns to the room
where I had entered the library, to the book I’d read when I’d first arrived. I
could not be lost, and this seemed right. Was Adam lost in Eden? Only cast into
the eastern thorns did he lose himself, but in the garden of the tree of life
and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, where God strolled in the
afternoon, he could name every flower, every bird and beast. There was
something so heady about this, I felt I was under the influence of a drug. We
all have titles, questions swept like sodden leaves into the corners of our
minds, that we have little hope will ever be answered or solved, but that we
cannot get rid of. Suddenly, I found myself in the orchard of answers. Any
title, any question I could think of, was waiting to be plucked. Greedily, I
dashed through the library, finding this volume and that, seizing on ideas, and
what I encountered of course engendered new branches.
But with this realization came the knowledge of the precarious
nature of the library. In the aboveground collections, a book here or there
might never be missed, but this library, so carefully tended, was in a delicate
balance. A theft, I thought, might create havoc.
For a time, I wondered if I would simply stay here forever, reading,
sampling the delicacies, hiding from the librarians—the ghost of the Library of
Alexandria, a reformed thief in paradise. And I wondered what would become of
my soul if I chose that path. Even in the world above I was reclusive and
solitary, often sunk in a book or in my thoughts. But if I eschewed human
contact altogether, my only companions fictional characters, my only landscapes
those manufactured of ink and imagination, what would I become? Would I start
to resemble a book myself? I imagined the process: a male Daphne, spine curing
to leather, ribs ironed to leaves, fingers and toes and tongue flattening,
elongating, blood darkened to ink, veins strung like boustrophedon across the
pages. My pressed heart would beat out iambic pentameter, hendecasyllabics, and
some day I’d simply lean in a corner with my companions, waiting for a female
hand to pick me up, lift my cover. And what book would she read then? Ah, that
is the book we step toward, you and I. Can you see it? Can you feel the texture
of those pages?
****
Before
I entered the Library of Alexandria, my dreams had been of the books I would
discover there, but I found, once I had penetrated the labyrinth, that I had to
know who the caretakers of these volumes were, who had ordered the pretty
cabinets and who had chosen the framed engravings and who had baked the cookies
and plumped the cushions on the comfy sofas.
So, rather than fleeing the librarians, I began to stalk them. The
rooms of the library were so cluttered it was not difficult for one accustomed
to stealth to find places of secret vantage from which to spy on the
librarians. Like a child in a vast game of hide and seek, I edged closer to the
gray-garbed women; a dark asteroid passing through their system, intent on
piecing together a little of their lives and days.
At the heart of the library was the great reading room. Here, as
dawn poked rosy fingers through the skylights, I peered through a keyhole at
the librarians ranked beside the
I seldom encountered books unfamiliar to me, and most I had seen dozens or
hundreds of times, but here were rooms filled with volumes that might have been
written on another planet, so odd were they.
And slowly I arrived at a realization so startling I was almost
afraid to believe it. I found, as I moved through this subterranean forest,
that I could imagine a book, known or unknown, read or unread, and be certain
of the path I would have to take to find it. I tested it, over and over, and
could not fail, as if my mind had been somehow prepared for this library, or as
if the library had been modeled on the patterns of my mind. And when I realized
this, I knew I could follow the patterns back through the caverns to the room
where I had entered the library, to the book I’d read when I’d first arrived. I
could not be lost, and this seemed right. Was Adam lost in Eden? Only cast into
the eastern thorns did he lose himself, but in the garden of the tree of life
and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, where God strolled in the
afternoon, he could name every flower, every bird and beast. There was
something so heady about this, I felt I was under the influence of a drug. We
all have titles, questions swept like sodden leaves into the corners of our
minds, that we have little hope will ever be answered or solved, but that we
cannot get rid of. Suddenly, I found myself in the orchard of answers. Any
title, any question I could think of, was waiting to be plucked. Greedily, I
dashed through the library, finding this volume and that, seizing on ideas, and
what I encountered of course engendered new branches.
But with this realization came the knowledge of the precarious
nature of the library. In the aboveground collections, a book here or there
might never be missed, but this library, so carefully tended, was in a delicate
balance. A theft, I thought, might create havoc.
For a time, I wondered if I would simply stay here forever, reading,
sampling the delicacies, hiding from the librarians—the ghost of the Library of
Alexandria, a reformed thief in paradise. And I wondered what would become of
my soul if I chose that path. Even in the world above I was reclusive and
solitary, often sunk in a book or in my thoughts. But if I eschewed human
contact altogether, my only companions fictional characters, my only landscapes
those manufactured of ink and imagination, what would I become? Would I start
to resemble a book myself? I imagined the process: a male Daphne, spine curing
to leather, ribs ironed to leaves, fingers and toes and tongue flattening,
elongating, blood darkened to ink, veins strung like boustrophedon across the
pages. My pressed heart would beat out iambic pentameter, hendecasyllabics, and
some day I’d simply lean in a corner with my companions, waiting for a female
hand to pick me up, lift my cover. And what book would she read then? Ah, that
is the book we step toward, you and I. Can you see it? Can you feel the texture
of those pages?
****
Before
I entered the Library of Alexandria, my dreams had been of the books I would
discover there, but I found, once I had penetrated the labyrinth, that I had to
know who the caretakers of these volumes were, who had ordered the pretty
cabinets and who had chosen the framed engravings and who had baked the cookies
and plumped the cushions on the comfy sofas.
So, rather than fleeing the librarians, I began to stalk them. The
rooms of the library were so cluttered it was not difficult for one accustomed
to stealth to find places of secret vantage from which to spy on the
librarians. Like a child in a vast game of hide and seek, I edged closer to the
gray-garbed women; a dark asteroid passing through their system, intent on
piecing together a little of their lives and days.
At the heart of the library was the great reading room. Here, as
dawn poked rosy fingers through the skylights, I peered through a keyhole at
the librarians ranked beside the
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