Bibliomania, part IV

{Excuses for the length. I hope the content will make up for it.}

When he got home that day the Old Man was exhausted from his journey to the bookstore; he carried with him three bags full of books and could not wait to fall onto his couch and lose himself in their pages for hours. When he arrived at the door of his apartment, however, the Old Man was surprised to find that it was ajar. He stood there, frozen, the heavy plastic bags cutting through his palms, absolutely terrified. Someone was in his apartment. Someone was looking at his books, touching them, stealing them, perhaps; or worse, throwing them out the window or into the oven. Someone was attacking his world and he was unable to act. He thought he heard the noise of metal clashing upon metal, and then footsteps. After interminable minutes of contemplating the tiny crack of the unquestionably unclosed door in stupefaction, the Old Man had taken his decision: he would simply run away, taking with him what books he had bought that day. He would walk away from his apartment building and go to some park and read for hours and hours, waiting for the stranger in his home to leave, and then when that stranger would be gone, he could finally return and assess the damage, hoping that none of his books would have dissapeared. The Old Man remembered now that thieves stole TVs, jewellery, and money -- not books. Having taken his decision, the Old Man was just about to turn his back to his apartment door and walk away, when the door opened on a middle-aged woman holding a plastic garbage bag. A startled look of surprise ran across her features as she saw the Old Man standing their, all dishevelled, but it soon became pity as she noticed his look of absolute terror -- his eyes widened by fear, his brow greasy with sweat, his complexion even paler than usual.

“Dad? Oh, Dad, come on in, how long have you been standing there? It’s just me Dad, come on, come on in. It’s me, Dad. It’s Anne. Here, let me take these bags from you. Oh my, they’re so heavy, how were you able to carry them all the way home. So many books Dad, did you buy all of them? You should really think of going to the library instead. Come on, come sit down, I made some tea if you want some, I brought you food as well. Come, come sit down.”

An endless flow of words, spoken with deafening speed, assailed the Old Man as he was being dragged by this woman toward his kitchen table. He cast a glance of panic at the closed door to his room full of books. The important thing was that his books remain safe from foreign eyes, from foreign hands. Finally the old man was forced to sit down and a mug of steaming liquid was placed before him on the table. Then the Old Man remembered the bags of books he had brought back from the store. He no longer held them. Where had they gone? What had the woman done with them? The Old Man tuned back to what the woman was saying: something about his books. No doubt she had already penetrated within his sanctuary of books and now she would want to take them away from him, starting with the ones he had just acquired. He would not even be able to read them, already that woman would whisk them coldly away from him. The Old Man glanced around the room, and found the bags of books lying on the floor by the front door. They lay there like worthless junk by the bag of trash the woman had wanted to throw out when she first opened the door on him. The blurry silhouette of the woman was still moving about the kitchen with dizzying speed. The Old Man tried to concentrate on her again, on the flow of words that erupted endlessly form her spot in the room, all the while bent over a pot of steaming liquid on the stove. A few minutes later she set before him on the table a bowl of soup, and grabbed his hand to put a spoon in it.

“You have to eat now, dad. Your place is a mess, I didn’t find a scrap of food. There was old bags of stuff I brought you last time, but... I thought you were able to go do the groceries on your own dad, but I don’t think you have, have you? No, of course you didn’t. You can’t live off what I bring you every other week, and I can’t keep on coming here and cleaning up like this. This is ridiculous. Now eat, stop looking around like that, don’t be afraid dad, why are you trembling? Your hands are freezing. It’s me dad, it’s just me, Anne, it’s me, Annie, your little girl Annie. It’s okay. Come on, eat up your soup you must be famished. You have the strength to go buy books, Dad, why can’t you go and buy foo? You can’t live on books! Come on, eat up. That’s it.”

You can’t live off books.

You can’t live off books.

The phrases fell like a weight in his mind, surging ripples of thought that echo across the vaults of his psyche. Someone else, somewhere else, had said the same thing to him, but he had refused to listen.

That night the Old Man did not sleep well. He tossed about in his sheets, sticky with filth and sweat, his dreams mingling with reality -- as close as he could come to remembering. He dreamed of his books, of the people he had encountered in them, of the places he had visited, of the things he had done. They replaced his own life, which he was unable to recall now.

There had been a life, of course, before this. There had been a family: a father, a mother, a daughter. Then, the mother had died, and something happened to the father. While the daughter dealt with her grief and moved on, the father stagnated, closed in on himself, and forgot. Slowly, year by year, he stopped doing normal things like going work, seeing friends, cleaning, and cooking. All he did was read.

He read and read and eventually replaced everything he had inside himself with the content of his books, channelling the stories and people within the covers, and losing all contact with reality in the process.

The Old Man could have remembered all this, that night, it was still inside him somewhere. He did not, however, remember anything other than his books. He dwelt in literature, instead, dreaming of Egypt under Roman rule, of Nazi Germany, of dystopian futures where books were prohibited, and murdered monks in medieval Italy.

Suddenly, the Old Man was completely awake. He knew what he had to do, now. He got up from his bed and walked over to the kitchen. There, he fumbled for a moment with the oven and managed to turn on the gas. Taking the matchbox in the cupboard, he then went into the room with all his books. He went over to his chair and sat down, easing himself in its musky softness. In the dark, he waited.

He waited for what seemed like a long time, until he could smell something different. Something warm, but not comforting like the smell of a book. It smelled dangerous. He waited longer, until he felt light-headed and drowsy. The Old Man knew the time had come. He took a match out of the matchbox and scratched it gently against the side of the box.

You can’t live off books.

“Then I can’t live at all.”