The Nocturnal Library

by Ermanno Cavazzoni

  She too was keeping close to the wall and feeling her way along it, until she found a small door and went up some steps. I would have liked to speak, to ask her: where are you taking me? so that she did not think I harboured any ulterior motives, that I was a hardened playboy who knew how to induce women into temptation with his own particular method. I would have liked to have said something complimentary that signified that apart from the tight grip of her hand to guide me through the dark, I hadn’t noticed anything the slightest bit compromising.

  And therefore we could have returned to our sincere and disinterested friendship. We climbed the spiral staircase without letting go of each other, seeking out the steps with our feet like two snails that withdraw into a single shell.

  Perhaps, I thought, when we get up there where the stairs are even narrower, I would pull her hand or she would already be close enough, and I would kiss her. Yes, in that moment my imagination was fixed on that one thing: to hell with books; to hell with exams! I was holding one of her hands, and I would have touched her mouth with the other to avoid all mistakes, and in the darkness I would be guided by radar. I would get closer and closer moving in a straight line until I detected the infrared rays that herald the close vicinity of the opposing mouth, just millimetres away. And then what do I do? I asked. I would have drowned, and not just myself, but also my soul in its entirety.

  I had to find an excuse, while I was still in time: a perfect sentence that I could offer her, so that she could rest on it without shame, as on a cushion, and allow herself to be caressed by my magnetic wave. Otherwise she might have screamed at the moment of my pulling her towards me, and done so with all the breath in her lungs.

  Perhaps she would have called me contemptible and exploitative – the kind of person who goes into a library to eye up the women, push them under the stairs and leap on them like a mountain goat. Underneath that air of scholar and bibliophile there lurks a filthy worm lying in wait amongst all that culture, this is what she might have thought. Yes, the kind of person who goes around kissing people all over the place, just anyone who happens along in front of him. Sensing that I was at the top of the stairs and very close to the point where you have to get down to business, I had my sentence ready and waiting: My dear young lady, I would say while squeezing her hand to make a greater impression, in order to meet your desires in part, I now give you all my particulars. I would then declare my surname, registered address at the Office of Births, Deaths and Marriages, and anything else she might have wanted to know. Indeed, I would have said: My dear young lady, in order not to have you think ill of me in relation to… In relation to what? I asked myself. While I was turning this over in my mind, we had reached the room at the top. I lifted my eyes towards a source of dim light: it was a dormer window that looked out onto what must have been a starry night, which however we could not see. Who knows what kind of place it was, as it was still very dark.

  Perhaps it was an observatory at the top of a tower. I certainly did not think that there was a bed there, given that we were, after all, in a library. But then we actually bumped into one: first her and then myself. I wanted to express my apologies and swear to her that I had not put it there myself: it was entirely fortuitous. Clearly there are some Don Juans around who prepare beds all over the place: beds that come out of the wall or when they pull on a drawer, and they say, “Hey, did you see that? It’s a bed.”

  I have often heard that they set them up in the countryside in various strategic spots. They go for a walk with a young woman deep in conversation about studies and the school, and suddenly there in the middle of a meadow they come across a bed. Naturally this is the source of some mirth.

  “But how could it have got here?” says the girl. The Don Juan laughs along with her, shaking his head as though he knows nothing about it, but is always ready to enjoy the unexpected surprises fields can sometimes produce. He takes her arm in his and says jokingly, “This must have been a house removal or someone has been very careless.

  Let’s take a closer look. Come with me.” Sometimes, a Don Juan will put a bed in the shade of some bushes, if he is thinking of going there at the hottest time of day. Another might put them actually on top of trees, in the middle of a wheat field, and in the ditches, so that the girl, guided there by imperceptible readjustments of direction, has a good probability of ending up in one or other of the beds. I did not want to be associated with them or their methods: I went into the library innocent and empty-handed. God alone knows how this temptation weighed heavily upon me and my duties.

  Suddenly without any forewarning and without any memory of the obligatory transition involving a kiss, I found myself blindly undoing petticoats and corsets, and removing underwear that at each stage released further layers of aromatic evaporations. And then, I seem to remember, even more intimate, inebriating, silky and lacecovered lingerie. I was kneeling in front of this being I could not see, but every cubic centimetre of her exuding womanhood and, as they say, overly in the areas that matter. And she could have told me no, but instead she was on the bed like rising dough before it goes in the oven.

  In fact, she, with great heart-warming generosity, came under my hands to let herself be kneaded.

  If the truth be told, the exam was still occasionally knocking at the door even in this critical moment, up there in the tiny corner of my brain where it skulked and pulled its painful strings to recall my attention: it pulled on my colon, pancreas, intestine and alimentary tract – all in a state of anxiety – and drew them up towards the throat.

  For a second I thought I was suffocating. I swallowed, made the exam go silent again and returned to my palpable present – to Iris. She could have sailed on a wide berth – on the horizon of my life without knowing anything of me, as do the beautiful women who navigate the high seas in full view of us all – blonde and the bunting of a full flag dressing fit for a naval review – to the perdition of mankind. Instead she did not say no, she did not say anything and did all she could to encourage me. My heart told me continually to thank her, a compulsion to express gratitude that filled my eyes with tears and emotion.

  By now, I had unfastened everything that was unfastenable and sniffed everything that was sniffable, all the while seated cross-legged almost at prayer on that supposed bed, and I was suddenly affected by a mystical spirit, as I imagined her laid out before me like the naked earth. There was no longer just Iris, but a great toing and froing of kindly and obliging young ladies, offering all the temptations that rose through my limbs towards my head and further upwards: beyond my cranial roof, beyond the skylight and beyond the astronomical night. I don’t know whether it was heaven or hell, or whether it was simply a case of levitation. I felt a note vibrating inside and what I was experiencing was pure philosophy. I felt like a cloud of pollen that scatters across a meadow on to all those beds and in every place, everywhere there is a secret storeroom in waiting. This is the mathematical law of nature.

  She was once more kissing and I had fallen backwards and helpless. The earlier kisses had been sweet, while now she kissed all on one side exactly where my tooth was hurting. I moved my mouth, but she used I don’t know what method to keep turning with me, as though she had endless hands, and always insisted on kissing me there, so that I felt the increase in my tooth’s swelling and inflammation to be exponential. Even the two or three teeth next to the aching one were now wobbling dramatically.

  These kisses of hers had a method that resembled an electric drill; I moaned, but not with pleasure. I was now suffering excruciating pain that had spread to my palate, my nose and my face. Perhaps she thought she had found my sensitive spot, my erogenous zone, but they didn’t feel like traditional kisses, but rather metal screws digging into my nerves. It was dark and I could not understand her manoeuvres. Was she using her hands or some metal device? I couldn’t understand what she wanted with that tooth, until I felt it coming up by its root, as though she were taking it out with a corkscrew. I could stand it no long
er and to avoid screaming I grabbed on to her hair at the height not of my ecstasy but of my agonies. The hair seemed to be made of nylon. I pulled a couple of times but the hair came away in my hand.

  “What’s happening?” I cried. But she had not screamed at all, and I felt her head and it was as hard and bald as the head of a match. Now I was terrified. I touched her ears and they were bristly; I touched her face and there were individual hairs, horrifyingly scaly; her skin was like a cheese grater.

  “Iris,” I muttered, “who are you?” and all that perfume of fresh bread, hedgerow and marvel of Peru instantly turned into a foul smell. It is not that there had been any chemical change, but it seems that that was the moment I opened my nostrils and smelt what was under the surface: there was the smell of tartar, female orang-utan straight from the zoological gardens, mixed with the scent of sawdust and garlic.

  “Who are you?” I said to this unknown being. “Make yourself known!”

  “It’s Albonea, my dear.” It was the Greek teacher, Mrs Bucato. Six o’clock chimed very clearly.

  I remembered that I had a match. I kept my mouth closed and protected with one hand, and with the other I lit the match. The first thing I saw was Albonea Bucato on a pile of old cardboard boxes and rags, with her wig on back to front. Behind me some mice and other animals must have been scurrying about. Before the match went out, I was able to see Santoro and Fischietti scurrying away themselves. I don’t know where they came from, nor when.

  Were they in collusion with the Greek teacher? Perhaps they were her lovers and this was their way of having fun.

  Santoro was waving a corkscrew about. Then the light went out.

  Chapter P

  I hurried away. Or rather I would have liked to, but it was so dark that I could hardly stand up. And to think that I had come into the library to study. It was Circe’s cave, and Iris perhaps the unwitting instrument of the Greek teacher – used as a bait to satisfy the latter’s sexual purposes.

  Unless she, cynical and perfidious, was in collusion with Mrs Bucato, for the mere pleasure of bewitching people and getting them to fail their exams. How had I managed to mistake one for the other? And where was I? I followed the bends in the wall with an unpleasant smell clinging to me and the taste of tartar in my mouth. I found a door, opened it, and crossed a small room towards a keyhole through which a ray of light was shining. I knocked and heard someone getting up from a chair and coming to open the door for me.

  It was a dirty and dilapidated office with a fifteen-volt light that hung on a long wire. Some of the plaster had come away from the wall and lay on the floor, and I found myself treading on sand, chippings and flakes of plaster.

  The metal furnishings were all piled up on one side, and mainly upside down. On the other hand the attendant who opened the door was wearing a smart, spruce and lightcoloured uniform with stripes on the arms to show his rank.

  “Hurry and get me out of here,” I said curtly. He came over towards me, courteous and deferential. He studied my pyjamas and wrinkled his nose questioningly. “Quickly, please,” I said, “it is sunrise.” Courteously leading the way with the suggestion of a snigger, he took me along a corridor in which there reigned a great deal of disorder: the glass cabinets were open and full of nests, and many of the books were scattered across the floor. As we passed, the birds rose in flight and you could hear their screech as they did so. My companion whistled as he spoke, or rather all his words ended with a whistle, like the one we use when we call a hunting dog. At the same time his impudent half-witted smirk had become more pronounced, and I wasn’t quite sure whether he had a stammer or his manner of speech suggested some kind of innuendo.

  “Just keep going straight on down there,” he indicated the corridor and pushed me while adding with another particularly shrill whistle, “Straight down there; it’s easy.”

  I set off in order not to waste any more time, but I was a little sceptical. Outside it was probably getting light, while I was walking in the feeble glow of the occasional light bulb next to the large stacks that divided the corridor in two. I could hear long and short whistles, which seemed to come from the other side of the stacks. It appeared that that person or someone on his behalf was dogging me in parallel and spying on me.

  Before a minute had elapsed I heard the loud noise of hooves, like an approaching horse, or perhaps someone with hobnailed boots. Then I smelt the pungent odour of sheep and someone suddenly appeared behind me; it could only have been Tiraboschi. All red and sweaty with his head down, he did not wait to ask himself who I was – man or woman under the pyjamas – and he jumped on my back and attempted to clamber up me as though I were a pole.

  He was stamping his feet heavily on the floor, sniffing the air and emitting cries more equine than human. I think he had mistaken me for a woman to his taste or perhaps that Greek teacher. He put his hands on my mouth and attempted to open it with a nail, levering it on that longsuffering tooth. He too wanted, I believe, to kiss my mouth, but he was causing me incredible pain as he had touched a nerve. Just at the moment in which he almost succeeded in climbing onto my shoulders kicking his feet as he did so and attempting to bite my ears, out jumped Accetto from behind a pile of books positioned deliberately, in my opinion, in the form of a sentry box or fortified outpost from which to keep watch on the corridor, and he carried a massive wooden batten with which he hit Tiraboschi on the forehead at least three time with a force that would have killed a human being immediately. Instead the wood bounced off with a deep rumble as if it had hit a hollow tree trunk. Unfortunately one of the rebounds struck me on the cheek close to the corner of my mouth – exactly the spot where Tiraboschi had been attempting to lever my teeth apart with a nail and where Albonea Bucato had been kissing me; the blow shook the tooth and almost removed it. I experienced the greatest pain of the entire night.

  Tiraboschi jumped down, but did not appear adversely affected; he had not fainted and still less had he suffered a mortal blow. What had been done was perhaps just sufficient to subdue his irrational and indiscriminate desires. He did in fact jump back on the first stroke of the batten but out of surprise and with no change to his grim scowl as he made a deafening racket with his hobnailed boots by way of a threat. With the second blow he attempted to smash the wooden instrument on its downward trajectory with an upward blow of his head – butting like a goat, but the batten did not break and he was a little shaken and unsteady. There was a slight moan.

  The third blow must have rearranged the ideas in his head, although his cranium was not the least affected – not a break in his skin. This third blow must have confuted his prejudices and caused him to reflect on the situation. He must have examined me with more discernment and understood that I was neither a woman nor the Greek teacher, even if I did have her odour on me. Unfortunately it had been transferred to me in such an indelible and pungent manner that his error was partly justifiable. I myself could smell it wafting off my feet and legs and all the way up to my head and beyond; it was the smell of bleach and bedbugs. Clearly Tiraboschi was excited by this smell, or it reminded him of other intimate embraces and venereal assignations in the shade of bookshelves, if thus we can define them.

  Then there was a fourth blow, which evidently had the task of making him fully aware of the error of his ways and restoring him to his duties as a nocturnal guardian. This was probably normal practice in the library: three blows between his horns to make him desist and a fourth one to enlighten him and reawaken his sense of responsibility as a civil servant. But this final more didactic blow ended up striking the stacks on an upright that was perhaps a little fragile and worm-eaten and the shelves it held up fell devastatingly on top of Accetto and Tiraboschi’s back.

  Behind the stack was the man who had given me directions; it was Guastalamenti. I realised this in that instant, and he fled the scene. An avalanche of books came surging to my feet. In spite of all the confusion, the shouts, Tiraboschi stamping on the floor, the stabbing pain in my tooth
, in spite indeed of Accetto’s rushing about in the midst of the confusion of books he was the principal cause of, and the stampede of rats, marmots, dormice and lizards, and in spite, finally, of the extremely perturbing swarming of a wasps’ nest, I felt recalled to my duties, bent down, opened some of them and read the titles, just in case fortune had decided to smile on me. But I must have been both deaf and blind because before my eyes, Tiraboschi with his gnarled forehead and nose that looked like a bone had mounted Accetto who was on all fours amongst the books, grabbed his collar and acted as though he was at the gallop, while the ensuing pushing and shoving caused another three metres of stacks to come tumbling down and the books were shedding pages in the air like daisies and were trampled by the two contestants who were rolling about in them. There was also a confusion of flying beasties – bats, barn owls and skylarks – whose nests had evidently been made amongst those piles of printed matter and now found their homes had been destroyed. I have no idea what would have happened if the wasps hadn’t passed judgement on the guilty party using his smell as evidence. A few of them had approached me, but my smell was not incriminating, or perhaps they just found it disgusting. The whole swam then decided to surround Tiraboschi who ran away like a madman, and Accetto followed to give him his coup de grâce.

  I looked around: the whistling guy had not fled after all. I spied him partially hidden up a ladder and he looked as happy as someone who has just been to the theatre.

  “Listen here,” I called to him, as I stood stuck in the middle of that landslide of books. “You must be Mr Guastalamenti!”

  “Yes, can I be of any service?”

  “I thought so,” I almost beside myself. “You were the one with all that whistling that unleashed that colleague of yours on me.”

  “For starters,” he replied, “even if I did whistle a bit, it was not in my power to unleash him. That power was something only you had, if you don’t mind my saying so; you can smell it miles off, and you’ve still got it. All you need is a nose.” He adopted an air of amusement and innuendo as he said this. I realised that I had been discovered; I bent down to sniff and turned red with embarrassment.