The Library of Shadows

by Mikkel Birkegaard

  Finally they were allowed to enter the politician's office, where the group was received by a middle-aged man with steel-grey hair wearing an equally grey suit that fit snugly around his lean body. From under a pair of bushy eyebrows that stuck up like little horns, his stern eyes stared at them. They shook hands with him as they entered, one by one, and Katherina had to lower her glance when it was her turn. The handshake he gave her was crushing, and her hand still hurt several minutes later.

  The spokesman for the reading delegation briefly explained why they were there and then handed the signatures and declaration to the grey-haired man, who had taken his place behind a big, completely bare desk. With his elbows propped on the armrests of his desk chair, he regarded them through half-closed eyes. He pressed his long, gnarled fingers together to form a tent.

  The declaration was delivered in written form, but it was also supposed to be read aloud. That was Luca's task. Huffing a bit he stepped forward and began his presentation. As expected, the politician immediately picked up his copy, either to follow along in the text or to conceal his lack of interest.

  The first part of the declaration was a mishmash of introductory nonsense about the background of the reading classes – a sort of warm-up they could use to home in on their subject's ability and willingness to focus on what was being read.

  Katherina sensed how Luca was only slightly accentuating the text, like a painter who starts his work with delicate strokes of the brush that barely touch the canvas. The text had been meticulously prepared in advance, and Luca's presentation was flawless, but it was the minor accents that elevated the experience so that it didn't just feel like a reading but more like a performance.

  To enjoy it, the listener had to pay at least a modicum of attention to the words, an honour that the politician had no intention of granting.

  Katherina shut her eyes and noticed how he was leafing through the declaration, stopping at random places and reading short excerpts without really comprehending what they said. A wealth of other thoughts dominated the images that the text and Luca were evoking, ranging from other meetings to family members, from rounds of golf to visits to Tivoli, to a dinner party that presumably was going to be held that very evening.

  She took a deep breath and let herself drift along with the stream of images issuing from the subject's consciousness. Every time he read a word from the text, she reinforced it just a bit, stimulating his attention by holding onto it just a bit longer than the politician himself had intended. Soon the text began to occupy more of his thoughts, and he started to read longer, more cohesive excerpts, which Katherina did her best to strengthen and maintain.

  For a receiver this was rather a trivial exercise. Katherina had countless times sat in trains and buses and used her talents merely to help a nearby reader focus on the text instead of everything else. Many commuters read on their way to and from work, but their concentration would often waver as they read, and Katherina frequently noticed how they would stop reading, only to turn back a few pages to read the section again. For her it was clear what had happened. She could follow along as images from the text were blocked out by all sorts of other thoughts, drowning in worries about a job, a love affair or grocery shopping. Sometimes she would intervene. If she found a good story, she would help the reader keep his focus on the text, a few times so effectively that the person in question would miss his station or bus stop. Other times, if it was a dull text or Katherina just wanted to keep the voices at bay, she would sabotage the reading until the reader became so unfocused that he or she would give up.

  The politician, helped out by Luca and Katherina, suddenly became very interested in the text and started turning forward to the place that Luca had reached in his reading of the declaration. Katherina ensured that he maintained his focus – a very easy task since Luca used his accentuation efforts to do the same. She opened her eyes and saw how their subject was now sitting up straight in his chair and studying the documents he held in his hands with visible interest. Now and then he nodded to himself, almost on cue from Luca, who was turning up the emphasis on important sections of the text.

  The effect of a transmitter on the listeners was not directional, and if anyone else had been in the room who previously doubted the justification for the reading classes, they too would have been convinced by the time Luca read the last word of the declaration. Katherina smiled when the politician looked up. He clearly had no idea how to react, as if he were embarrassed to say anything at all after Luca's presentation, but finally he managed to stammer a few clumsy, polite platitudes and his reassurances that he would look into the matter again.

  The effect was not lost. A few days later the politician declared that the reading classes were fully warranted.

  But it was one thing to influence a career politician who had no idea about Lectors or readings; it was quite another matter when the targeted subject had a suspicion about what was being done to him.

  *

  'Isn't it too late to read for Jon now?' asked Katherina after Iversen's statement had sunk in. 'He'll notice right away.'

  'Yeah, why didn't we give him a reading right from the start?' Pau punched his fist into his open palm. 'Bam! No warning. Then we could have made him do anything we liked.'

  'This is still Luca's son we're talking about,' replied Iversen. 'He's a good boy. Jon deserves our respect and should at least be given a choice. Besides, he would have found out about it anyway if he became activated. And how would it look then?'

  'But what if he doesn't want to participate? What if he chooses… wrong? What then? Are you going to force him?' asked Katherina.

  'Perhaps,' replied Iversen. 'It's been done before. Not recently, but there have been examples when a reading was carried out against the listener's will. In the old days it was used to constrict members in our own ranks who opposed the Society. Not something we're proud of, and it looked like a real torture scene, using straps and gags.' He sighed. 'We just have to hope that it won't go that far.'

  'That might be really cool,' exclaimed Pau, who then hastened to add, 'I don't mean with Luca's son, but with someone else, not a volunteer. Reading for ordinary people is too easy; they're like cattle that just need a little shove. But to try it on someone who offers real resistance…'

  'You're too much, Pau,' Katherina told him.

  'Hey, maybe you'd like to volunteer? I could find something to read to you, maybe even something romantic?'

  'I'm sure you could, but shouldn't you be doing the exercises that Iversen gave you first?'

  Pau's crooked smile vanished and he muttered something unintelligible.

  'All right then,' Iversen interjected. 'What do you say we close up for the evening?'

  For once the other two were in agreement and quickly disappeared out of the door while Iversen made one last round before he too left Libri di Luca.

  *

  Katherina pumped hard on the pedals of her bike as she rode away from the antiquarian bookshop. With a shake of her head she reproached herself. She ought to know better than to let herself be provoked by Pau, but just like siblings, they both knew which buttons to push to rile the other, and a defensive response quickly turned to attack after the first words were uttered.

  Her mountain bike carried her from the Vesterbro district towards Nшrrebro. Nimbly she rushed along in the late evening traffic, meticulously timing her speed to the changing of the traffic lights and taking the corners largely without slowing down.

  Maybe the sibling comparison was more apt than she wanted to admit. In a sense she had been an only child in the shop with Luca and Iversen until Pau turned up like an unwanted little brother. It hadn't been easy for her to cede territory, and deep inside she felt a bit guilty about not giving him a warmer welcome.

  In the area around Elmegade she rode the wrong way along a one-way street, keeping close to the parked cars or moving onto the pavement when a vehicle appeared, heading in the opposite direction. Several times she cast a
glance over her shoulder, but she couldn't see anyone following her. At Sankt Hans Torv she cut across the square in front of the cafйs and tuned off Blegdamsvej down Nшrre Allй.

  No doubt their squabbles also had something to do with age. Pau was seven years younger than she was, but mentally he was even younger, in her opinion. Everything centred around him and his needs. His training came before everything else. She shook her head again. Maybe she was just jealous.

  Katherina swerved onto the pavement and stopped a couple of metres further along, in front of a grey building with white window frames. There were lights on in only two of the flats; in one the curtains were drawn, but through the other windows she could catch a glimpse of a white plaster ceiling from which hung a big chandelier with real candles.

  The fact was that a lot had changed since Pau had started coming to Libri di Luca. The balance had shifted. Nowhe was the baby of the family while she, not without some pride, had become someone they could count on, and someone who could take care of herself. But the balance would shift again with Jon's return – the question was: to which side?

  After parking her bike in the entryway, she checked once again that she wasn't being observed before she pushed open the front door and disappeared into the stairwell. Without switching on the light she headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. On the fifth floor she stopped outside a panelled door painted grey. The brass plate was clearly legible in spite of the dark, and even though she was unable to read it, she knew what it said: Centre for Dyslexia Studies (By Appointment Only).

  Katherina pressed the bell twice, the first time longer than the second, and waited. In a moment she heard footsteps behind the door, and then the sound of a bolt being slid back. The door opened slightly and a strip of light shot out into the hall, capturing her in its glare. The light seemed especially bright since her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark in the stairwell and she blinked, holding her hand up to her face.

  'Come in,' said a woman's voice, and the door opened wide.

  Katherina stepped into a long, beige-coloured hallway with rows of brass hooks lining the walls. They were almost all taken by jackets and other outdoor garments, but she found an empty hook for her coat.

  The woman who had let her in closed the door and turned to face her. She was in her mid-forties and a bit stout around the waist, which she tried to hide under a black dress. Her face was dominated by a pair of sturdy glasses and framed by light-brown hair which seemed a little artificial in the sharp glare coming from a row of halogen spotlights.

  'Well?'

  Katherina caught the other woman's glance and nodded. 'He's going to be good – better than his father.'

  8

  Jon woke a few seconds before the clock radio switched on.

  At first he wasn't sure where he was. The bedroom's bare white walls and ceiling merged into one, looking like a dome of snow as he lay on his back inside an igloo. It was cold too. The duvet had slid off onto the floor during the night, and the crumpled sheet bore witness to a night of uneasy slumber. He remembered he'd had trouble calming down. For a long time he had lain in bed pondering what had happened in the antiquarian bookshop. Right now Iversen's explanation, the demonstration and the visions that had overwhelmed him when he was alone in the library all seemed unreal and far away. At one point he'd got up to find the book,Fahrenheit 451, which was in his jacket pocket. Tangible proof that it had all happened, but it was just an ordinary book that didn't presume to be anything else.

  It was a long time since he'd read stories in bed. As a child he had loved it, an experience surpassed only by having Luca read a goodnight story to him – preferablyPinocchio, and preferably in Italian. This copy ofFahrenheit 451 was a Danish translation, and when he read through the first chapter again, he discovered that the text was significantly more choppy and jolting than was his impression during the demonstration. The colour of the girl's hair wasn't mentioned at all; it wasn't red, as he had so vividly pictured it.

  Jon turned his head towards the nightstand where he had placed the book. It was still there, bulging a bit because of the worn pages. The time on the clock radio next to the book shifted at that moment to 7:00, and the voice of a tired DJ seeped out of the speaker, reciting the latest news. Unrest in Israel, absurd political arguments in the debate about immigrants, a post office robbery. Not until the monotone voice began summarizing the results of a study about children's reading abilities did Jon raise himself up on his elbows to listen. Danish children were apparently worse readers than children in neighbouring countries – a development that the Minister of Education found worrisome and unacceptable. Jon sank down onto his back and closed his eyes with a sigh. Next week they would come out with another study proving just the opposite.

  The DJ was replaced by another, a cheerful morning-type who started spewing inanities that roused Jon to get out of bed. He turned on the coffee-maker and went through his morning routine: showering, shaving, drinking coffee, ironing a shirt, knotting his tie, and more coffee. The habitual tasks calmed him, and on his way out it was the day ahead of him that preoccupied his thoughts rather than what had happened the night before.

  It was only when he was sitting in his car, rolling along with the morning traffic slowly flowing through the city, that he noticed how many people around him were reading. Passengers on the buses were reading books, people sitting on benches were immersed in the morning paper, schoolchildren on the pavement were reading through their lessons as they moved cautiously along like tightrope walkers, placing one foot in front of the other. Signs in the shop windows were read by passers-by, bus adverts were glimpsed by drivers, flyers were scanned and tossed aside by mothers with prams. It seemed to him that everywhere words and sentences had invaded the facades, windows, signs and buses for the purpose of enticing him to decipher their messages, a decoding process he could no longer be sure he controlled.

  Jon drove the rest of the way to the office with his eyes fixed straight ahead on the road in front of him.

  He had barely opened the glass doors to the reception area before Jenny, the secretary, came running towards him with a newspaper in her hand. She was a blonde and what might be called a cheerful, plump young woman.

  'Listen to this,' she said merrily, waving the newspaper.

  Jenny arrived at the office significantly earlier than he did, and they had worked out a routine: she found articles in the daily papers that were either relevant to their work or were simply funny. Then she would present what she'd found to him, often reading them aloud over a first cup of coffee. Frequently he didn't even need to bother looking through the papers himself.

  Jon glanced at the newspaper and then at Jenny. He saw how her eyes, full of anticipation, looked down at the paper as her lips began forming the first sentence.

  'I'll read it later.' Jon abruptly cut her off and continued on towards his office.

  'Okay,' murmured Jenny, clearly disappointed, letting her arms fall to her sides.

  Jon stopped and turned around. 'Sorry, but I didn't sleep well last night. Give me half an hour.'

  Jenny nodded and slowly folded up the paper.

  'Nice tie,' she said and retreated to her desk.

  Jon waved his hand in thanks as he continued through the open-plan room towards the Remer office. At the door he fished out the keys with the Smurf figure and let himself in. Safe inside, he leaned his back against the closed door.

  He took a couple of deep breaths before an annoyed grimace appeared on his face. It wouldn't do him any good to go about in a constant state of paranoia. It was impossible to do his job without reading, and it wasn't realistic to think he could move around freely without anyone else reading in his presence. He shook his head. If Lectors had ever used him before, he hadn't noticed it, and considering his present position, they couldn't very well have put obstacles in his way – on the contrary.

  There was a knock on the door, and he hastily took a few steps forward before it opened.

/>   Jenny stuck her head inside. 'Halbech wants to talk to you,' she said in a businesslike tone. 'In his office in ten minutes.'

  Jon nodded. 'Okay. Thanks, Jenny.'

  She closed the door without making a sound.

  'Of all days,' he muttered to himself.

  He'd been expecting this conversation. A week had passed since the Remer case had been transferred to him, and he knew that at some point he would have to present his plan as to how the defence should be carried out. Even though one week was an inhumanly short amount of time to familiarize himself with the extensive case files, he really hadn't expected to be given much more time before he was tested.

  Jon opened his briefcase and took out a thin dossier containing five or six typed pages, which he hurriedly skimmed. The pages held his proposal for a strategy regarding the Remer case in accordance with all the rules. But he knew that Halbech wanted creative solutions which, without being directly illegal, would simplify the defence. The short cut in this instance was to win a two-month postponement, which would mean that two of the initial charges in the case would fall outside the statute of limitations. Not a particularly brilliant solution, but it would spare them from the most vulnerable sections in the defence, which was the status of the first companies that Remer had purchased. On the other hand, they would have to find a reason for having the case postponed, or even better, persuade the prosecutor himself to request a postponement. But that meant they needed to toss new information onto the table.

  Jon put the documents back in the dossier and left his office with the plan under his arm.

  'Campelli,' said Halbech from his chair as Jon entered his office. 'Have a seat.' He pointed towards one of the Chesterfield armchairs that stood in front of his desk.

  Jon nodded and sat down with the dossier in his lap.

  'Things going well?' asked Halbech routinely.