The Nocturnal Library

by Ermanno Cavazzoni

  I wanted to escape; I was frightened that I might close my eyes for a second or inadvertently lower my head. I didn’t want to attract their attention and their determination to keep me awake; my toothache was enough. But even awake I could not get down to any serious study with them about, always supposing that those incoherent papers constituted something that could be studied.

  Fischietti meanwhile was seated at the end of the hall in silence with his mischievous face close to a harmless old man in pyjamas whose head was resting against the back of his chair in a finely balanced position. Fischietti put the lighter under his nose and had him breathe in the gas while he slept. At the same time he called over his comrade with a wave of his hand, so that he could assist and join in the fun. Eventually the old man started to wave his arms about to grasp something and then he stood up as though driven by an irresistible desire for sleepwalking and fell across a colleague who looked awake with his eyes open, but was in fact asleep as well. The latter, on feeling that weight fall on top of him and seeing the two attendants on the prowl, instinctively hid himself under the table. This caused his persecutors to cry, “Can’t be done, can’t be done; you have been provided with chairs for this purpose.

  You cannot study underneath the table.” They took a foot and dragged it, while he grabbed onto the table leg. And as he only had socks on his feet, they set fire to one and the poor man screamed: “Enough! I don’t know anything, and I haven’t done anything,” and kicked wildly with his other foot which the other attendant unsuccessfully tried to catch and obstruct with one of the man’s braces that had come loose. “You cannot go under the table,” they said, “it is against regulations.” “I’ll come out on my own,” he replied. “No,” they continued, “you have to come out immediately.” And they pulled as his sock burnt, probably searing the most sensitive spots on his skin, because he shouted out, “Help, help, what are you doing?” but it was all in vain. When his toenails caught fire, he let go of the table leg and shouting like a man possessed started to beat and blow upon his burning foot. Perhaps they had poured alcohol on it. Accetto came up with a severe and supercilious expression: “Professor, what are you doing down there?” The attendants had let him go and were standing there laughing and elbowing each other. He sat down again at his table and started to cry in the midst of the smoke.

  Everyone else in the area was awake, but pretended that nothing had happened. They affected to be dutifully absorbed in their books and their own thoughts. Someone coughed while scribbling away, but carefully wrapped up in his clothing for protection, his collar up at the back, and scarf on his head and feet lifted up for fear of the dogs.

  Everyone, including myself, followed the attendants’ movements out of the corner of their eyes. Suddenly someone jumped up and rushed out, he was wearing a vest and his shoes were in his pocket.

  Behind a column a little out of the way but very close to me, Fischietti had discovered someone who hadn’t heard all the shouting and commotion. He was completely stretched out on one of the low tables, and smiled in his sleep as though he were lying in his own paradise. I could see everything when I leaned forward slightly. Fischietti circled him for a bit, and his expression had his colleague running over. He took a small box out of his pocket containing a bee and opened it just in front of the blissful reader’s slightly parted lips. When he breathed in, the bee went in too and started to buzz about: he must have stung his tongue or palate, because the man of learning woke up with a start and the grimace of someone strangled by pain who cannot scream. The bee was already away, and he pressed his hands against his mouth. The attendants looked on with an air of surprise and attentiveness, as though to ask him what could possibly be wrong and whether they could assist in any manner. He shook his head to say no, there was no need of anything at all, it was very painful but they should feel free to move on. He really had no need of anything at all. But they insisted, more through signs than words, that they wanted to look inside his mouth; one of them even claimed he was a qualified nurse: “I swear it,” he cried. His colleague had brought some medicines along. Eventually they persuaded him or he felt he had to give in as it was two against one. With a great deal of play-acting, they produced a bottle of drops with a dispenser in the top. I have no idea what acid it contained or if it really was a medicine. It gave off the smell of sodium carbonate. When a couple of drops had entered his mouth, a white vapour came out, produced by a reaction with his saliva, and the poor fellow started to make some strange noises in a high pitch, and pinch his lips and gums with his hands and then spit. As soon as one spit landed on his book, without any real intention but just in the blind impetuosity of pain, Accetto came over, stood between the man and his book, and hit the man on his neck with his ruler. The two attendants defended the reader: “No, no; that’s enough!” they said to Accetto. “It was not his fault.” And they wanted to administer a few more drops, but the man refused emphatically, without however managing to speak. He stuck out a tongue that was as large as a hand; it was swollen and black, but at the same time limp. He attempted in various ways to get a look at it. One of the attendants came up with the pincers he kept in his tool bag, and wanted to convince the man in a well-mannered way to allow him to pull one tooth, because, he persisted, he was qualified in dental surgery and this was now the only means to stop the spread of the granuloma. The scholar said that he did not want their assistance: “No, no, I can do without, thank you,” and he clung to his chair. But the second attendant argued that the pincers needed to be applied directly to the tongue and he produced a pair of curved ones, as this would release the black bile. Failure to do this would cause necrosis of the jaw and the mucous membrane. Or perhaps his gland should be lanced to prevent an anaphylactic shock. So they started to argue with each other over whether it should be the tooth or the gland, and while one attempted to demonstrate their arguments to the other, they held the man of learning by his ears and accidentally pinched his chin and cheeks as they attached a washing peg to his lips to keep them apart. One of them had got hold of the victim’s nose with the pincers, but the other defended the victim by asserting that the nose had nothing to do with the problem. In their excitement they pinched each other as well. But when Accetto saw that the book was in danger as one of the attendants had climbed up on a chair, he beat them, including the reader who covered his head with his hands while his flaccid tongue hung pendulous from his mouth. Initially the two defended themselves with their pincers, but then they stopped and submissively offered their heads and necks to Accetto for punishment.

  Chapter F

  When however I attempted to get back to my reading to see if I could obtain some advantage from it, a tiny shrew with the look of one of those Alpine crack troopers jumps out in front of my eyes, sat down and waits for me at the end of the line. Spreading its whiskers, it smelt the sentence and scratched its head. To avoid distractions I tried to take no notice of it, and my eyes leapt over it, but with its nose down to sniff, it ran along the lines behind me, overlaying the meaning and getting me in a muddle; then, quite suddenly, it leapt on a cricket that landed on the edge of the book, and it ate it. “How am I supposed to revise for my exam?” I said and shook the page. I should never have done that! An army of earwigs marched out of a hole that ran down from the middle of a capital “o” probably to the last page, and invaded the whole book. The insects then started to climb up my hands: “So much for my studies! So much for my exam!” I blew hard and out of the corner of my eye I could see the two attendants straighten up and Accetto looking at me. Tiny moths were stirred up with the dust and as they twisted through the air some landed up in my hair and down my collar. One nearly went in my eye and another in my nose.

  “You were putting you finger up your nose!” Accetto exclaimed as he unexpectedly towered above me and looked me straight in the eye.

  “No, actually.”

  “But you were scratching yourself. I saw you.”

  “I was not. It’s all these moth
s and lice. They’re everywhere, get all over my face, fly around my head and are a continuous irritation. I was just blowing them away.”

  He looked at me very suspiciously and clearly wanted to thrash me. But he seemed to be weighing me up – me and my words. “How come,” I said, “there are all these offensive animals? They are such a disturbance!”

  “How come? You ask me. Well I can tell how come, no trouble at all. Take a look!” and he pointed out a yellow mark on the page, while all around known and unknown species of insect continued to crawl. “Take a look,” and he pointed to a hair that could have been from someone’s eyebrow or ear. You needed excellent eyesight to see it, as it was as white as the paper.

  “It’s not mine, I can assure you.”

  “It doesn’t matter whose it is; these are the normal and necessary organic by-products of reading. Yours or someone else’s, it makes no difference. But this waste material of yours, albeit unintentional, is what these animals feed off and reproduce from. And then you people complain, but you provide the food on which they thrive.”

  My face expressed innocence, and he came even closer breathing his dampness on me.

  “You have no idea, because you’re a novice still wet behind the ears,” he said, “but the pages of a book can contain the most horrendous filth that can be produced by these dirty and hunchbacked beings called readers. A reader absorbed in reading is by its very nature a corrupt and foul-smelling being in its breath and its trousers, on its way to cerebral dystrophy with all the consequences this has for the health and perspiration of its limbs. So you find all kinds of things in books: dandruff for instance! You have no idea of the filth: snowstorms of dandruff and other sebaceous substances, as well as hairs! You cannot begin to imagine the quantities of hair that fall out, and not just from the head! Hairs from beards, moustaches and ears also play their part. And every time someone reads, they pile up and add to our woes, because reading is an act of vandalism, no less. I can show you the most popular pages on which people injudiciously linger; these are pages covered in grease, spots and stuff that is continuously falling from the reader’s face, even if it cannot be seen.

  There is spit which crumples the paper or makes if wavy if produced by coughs, sneezes, expectorations or laughter, and especially when executed forcefully through the teeth creating the kind of unhygienic spray that you are aware of. And then there is the nose! What isn’t the nose responsible for when it comes to damage inflicted on paper!

  The more a person is absorbed in reading, the more good manners are forgotten, and one finger after the other makes its way up into the nose. God knows what it gets up to in there, what foul excreta are to be found and inevitably end up sticking to the poor book. I am only telling you this to put you on your guard, because just talking about it turns my stomach. In any case the fingers of your average readers, especially those who are regular or passionate ones, would be something iniquitous even without the proboscis problem. They are a trap for animal oils, bacteria, enzymes and glandular secretions. What do readers do? They scratch their feet – or somewhere even worse – and then transfer the fetid mucilage to the page.

  Some of them stick their fingers in their mouths to clean between their teeth, and then proceed to turn the pages, so the corners turn yellow, then grey and finally shiny black.

  And their ears? Just about everything comes out of them and not just that yellow wax that covers the print. I want to show you that in the long term some pages end up transparent like greaseproof paper, they are so filthy and saturated with oils.

  “You’ll be thinking that only shelves for general interest books are affected by these torments. Not at all! Quite the contrary, my dear sir. When a book is exceptionally dull, I find not just the usual human waste matter, but also the imprint on every page of readers’ foreheads, cheeks and noses, after they have given in to that heaviness of the head and bent double across the table.”

  “Bent double?” I repeated a little disgusted.

  “Yes sir!” he said, “and sometimes there are superficial oily shadows, but at others there are the products of hours of sleep, and you must know how we sweat, exude liquid from our tear ducts and toss and turn incessantly, and the head is worse than an ink pad and a rubber stamp; it prints deep deep down from one page to the next. If we are lucky there are no suppurating pimples or ulcers, given the mania for scratching oneself and picking at scabs during the period of reading and drowsiness, because if there are, then the poor book is little more than a gauze or a bandage that covers a leper, and becomes a kind of repulsive and, might I say, stinking shroud, on which I can recognise the eye-sockets, the chin, cheekbones and all the wrinkles of that delinquent, that philistine who used it as a pillow.”

  I tried to interrupt him, but he ignored me.

  “You are naive, my dear fellow; you are an idealist if you think that people in here use their books correctly. This place has just turned into a nocturnal nursery school, a public dormitory, where people snore loudly and rest their sleepy heads on the books, resulting in considerable damage to our library stocks and literary heritage. I would have such persons wear a nightcap at the very least and use cushions. Do you think it gives a good impression to have a renowned library full of people fast asleep with an open book in front of them? What, I would like to know, does this say about reading? And then there is the smell!

  Have you noticed it? You see, during sleep the body has to free itself of all the gases produced by fermentation – not only through the principal meatuses but also through pores and the nose, so the air becomes thick and there is obsessive convulsed coughing, and then there are the ravings generated by dreams and the screams because some people are troubled by nightmares, not to mention all the other base and scurrilous language that sleep brings with it. I wander amongst the desks and bang on the table to make a noise. I bring along paper bags which I blow up and explode close to the ears of these bogus readers. When I clap my hands, they stir and sway about for as long as I am in the area, but if I turn my back, their faces fall flat on their books as though their cheeks were made of honey.

  Just imagine the state in which a book can be returned to me: I lift it up with two fingers and I would gladly hit them over the head with it, rain down blows on them and throw them out of the library, because our books have become a breeding ground for viruses, diseases, herpes, brucellosis, scrofula and myasis. Do you understand?”

  I stood up and started to walk away, to flee. He followed me and whispered his ideas in my ear. I was unable to block them out.

  “My honourable friend, even if none of this were true and all the readers had gloved hands and masks over their faces, our books would still end up covered organic residues and effluent; and do you know who would be the primary culprit? The print worker! Do you know how filthy and unscrupulous print workers are? They grow the nails of their little fingers very long;” and he showed me his own one, “even longer than that. Out of sheer badness and in order to harm the owner of the print works who has failed to grant them a pay rise or a coffee break, they insert the nail deep into their ears and dig around very conscientiously and with their air of achieving God knows what, they flick the balls of wax amongst printing paper where they become long translucent splotches as they run through the drums. I have worked as a print worker and I know these things; come and see, if you like, just how many you can find in a single volume. This is their vendetta against society.

  “Now listen to what happens, because I would see this every day with my own eyes; the boss would call them over and say, ‘This book is full of earwax; who is responsible?’ The faces of the print workers, true to their way of doing things, expressed their incomprehension, and they said, ‘What? Whose ear?’ The boss pulls out a copy of the book, leafs through it to show the great quantity of blotches and stains, and said, ‘This is not a book but a mortadella.’ The print workers bend over the book to inspect it, they raise some doubts and they say that generally this is the fault of the
paper mill or rather the workers in the paper mill, who are repulsive: such blacklegs and so intent on their work that they never bother to blow their noses; what can you expect of people so deeply in thrall to their employers.

  Besides that stuff doesn’t come from ears, but, in their opinion, from noses. There ensued a long debate, they looked at the pages against the light and someone summoned the shop stewards’ committee which decreed that the offending substance definitely came from a nose.

  The boss however counted on his long experience and said, ‘No, I know earwax when I see it. I’m not a fool.’ And looked at all those long nails on little fingers and saw them as an open challenge. This stage in a dispute rarely resolves anything: one side says nose and the other side says ear, and you would have to have the marks analysed by a chemist to establish the real answer, and then by a biologist who could identify the DNA and therefore the guilty party. These are all procedures that are long and very sensitive, and require calm and common sense which are never present in real-life situations.

  “So the owner, who was enraged not so much by the damage as by his workforce’s slyness and trickery, and by those provocative nails they flaunted as a symbol of their resistance, decided to hide in his office and spy on the production process. From his position he could look at the rotary-press operator from the side, and was able to ascertain that that nail got just about everywhere, and was put to the most base and vile services. It was a receptacle for all kinds of secretions and scabs, starting at the operator’s head and working all the way down to his toes.

  He found this incredibly irritating as, in his opinion, you should work at your workplace and not scratch yourself, and a clause to this effect would have to be included in all future agreements between the union and the company management, for reasons of hygiene and clean air: corporeal grooming, whether carried out with instruments specifically designed for that purpose or with improvised means adapted for the same, is expressly prohibited; and this prohibition shall also apply to delays incurred by selfgratification relating to an itch and similar time-wasting phenomena… And look! All of a sudden, he saw the worker sticking that nail into his left ear and move it around in a vorticular motion, while the drums of the rotary press started to turn and move the paper. He therefore prepared himself to leap out at the critical moment. The print worker, however, appeared not to want to stop, and he prodded and turned his hand and little finger at different speeds without a care for the printing process and all the imperfections that could arise if the machinery was not properly monitored. He stood there as though enjoying this long auricular operation, and the owner quivered with rage. He would have liked to rush out with a cane and cane that hand; and then take an axe and cut that finger off at the root to display it as a warning and a threat to all that gang of miscreants. His contempt was at boiling point, and he too felt a certain itch inside his ear, which he blamed on the unpleasant scene he was witnessing and its contagious effects. While he was scratching it, he thought up another regulation for the workers’ statute to protect them from excessive noise and the resulting risk to their hearing: