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Breathing on it clouded the pages. He could not read it, of course, but he
drew his finger vividly under one line, underlining
(though possibly not in the right direction) in a black storm-cloud; then
when the texture grew unpleasant, he put it down.
Silent, satirical cheers from behind the rack. Evne was there, moving
invisibly. The next book rattled like dry leaves: incised, golden metal
through and through. The pages couldn't even be bent. He compared the
characters with those in the first, and put the second down. The third and
fourth were also engraved on metal, the fifth had drawings that he could
not make out at all, then a sixth, seventh and eighth like the first, which
he was reluctant to touch. The ninth book appeared to be a collection of
anatomical sketches and cross-sections; the binding cracked loudly as he
opened the book, and the open page said to him in a whisper:
Everyone understands a picture.
He gave it to know that this was not entirely true.
But take you, for instance, said the page in a soft, flattering voice. You
He shut the book. Opened again to the same page, it at once began,
softly, Everyone understands a picture, and he shut it and put it under
his arm. It was a machine. It had not, of course, spoken in words. He
checked down the rest of the rack as best he could, although many of the
shelves were above his head, finding nothing else that spoke, or that
looked like a grammar or a schoolbook. The metallic books were very light,
the membraneous ones very heavy. He did not understand how metallic
tissue could take such deep incising. A few racks later, near the floor and
against the wall, he ran into a hodge-podge of talking books, a
miscellaneous whispering gallery, each radiating different degrees of
fascination and expectancy, but each simpler than the last, too, so it came
to him finally that these were children's books. They said:
Oh, you are nice!
Let's have fun together.
You can play this game.
You're smart.
I like you.
He carried as many as he could. He tried to think of the words for them,
or what they were good for, but he couldn't; and coming around the last
rack where the membraneous books were piled up like collected fungi, he
saw the door, shut, with a bar passing through two metal brackets in the
wall, and next to it Evne sitting on the floor. She had crossed her legs and
was reading a book, which lay limply in the junction of her ankles, like
water.
He said:
He said then:
He dropped the books and said:
She was watching him intently, shrinking a little, her eyes on her book,
her fingers grasping the edge of it. A black stain spread on to the page. He
shouted. He made a megaphone of his hands. He bent over with his head
between his knees and howled, trying to force the words out, to fill up his
head. From the long trip. What's a long trip? Everything was slowing
down again. Evne threw her book aside, alarmed, but he made her stay
out of it; he turned his back on her and there was the library, shelves upon
shelves of language. The sun came in through the windows on the
language, the different language, there was dust on the floor, white walls,
and on the language. The shelves swarmed with sound. Even these people.
For what?
"Technical matters," he said, without turning round. "You need words
for technical matters, Evne." The word, thus taken up, struck all the books
dead, pushed back the walls and killed the ceiling; it put things in their
place. Like a spring under sand, words flooded his mind, sank, remained a
little damp, vanished, and flooded again. He made himself go back and
forth several times. He felt Evne sigh. She had settled back into the mists
of her childhood, something to do with the book she was reading,
something to do with the pleasant memories here. She liked the
gymnasium. She turned the damp leaf of her book. He sat down beside
her, holding at the same moment and with considerable effort both the
worlds: to know everything and be able to say nothing and to have all the
sayings and not one thing to say. They welled into each other. Two liquids.
And not mix. He put his head on her shoulder, groaning with tiredness.
Evne closed the book, leaving fingermarks on it. She raised her eyebrows;
she looked frightened or surprised. She then pointed first to the
membrane books and then to the metal books, saying with a little nudge:
"These are grown, those are made."
"What's the matter?" said Jai.
She got to her feet in one movement, uncrossed her ankles, and began
to move stealthily down the aisle of books, swaying like a snake trying to
walk on its tail. She said "Ummm" evasively and looked over her shoulder
with a weak, idiotic smile; she looked uncomfortable and unpleasant, as if
she were being polite. When he followed her and took hold of her by the
waist, she politely disengaged herself; she pushed him in the stomach with
her book. The touch of it nauseated him. "That's dead skin," he said;
"throw it away," and taking her by the wrists, forced her to drop it. She
smiled worriedly. He walked forward automatically, making her back up
until she backed into one of the book racks; it then occurred to him to
bend her back over one of the shelves and see if perhaps they could make a
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