Impossible Stories

by Zoran Zivkovic

  On reaching the top a surprise awaited her. There was no door where she was sure she had seen the musicians entering the building. Instead there was a flat yellow wall of massive stone blocks, faded from long exposure to the sun. An inscription was written across the four columns spaced along the entire lateral façade, but she was unable to read it as she didn’t know Greek.

  Seeking the entrance, she rushed to the right along a cobbled path. She went all around the rectangular temple but could find no opening, except for a row of slits at the very top of the long sides of the building, probably serving to admit light. Certainly, only a bird could enter there. Returning to her starting point, she stopped in confusion, not knowing what to do. The concert might start at any moment and she was very keen not to miss it.

  As if to confirm her apprehensions, music started to pour out of the temple. It came from high up, probably through the illumination holes. At first she was frustrated at having been unable to enter the building in time, but then, quite unexpectedly, another feeling displaced her exasperation. Her soul was filled with anxiety, although she didn’t understand what was causing it. The sounds from inside grew steadily louder over several long moments before she realized that they were actually what was upsetting her.

  There was something deranged about the sounds. She couldn’t determine exactly what it was, but she was overcome by a strange certainty that something in addition to music was issuing from the instruments of those hooded figures who had magically passed into the doorless temple. Whatever it was, it was as intangible as the sounds, but by no means innocuous. Spurred by a dark premonition, she ran towards the long side of the building. One look at the illumination slits was enough to confirm her fears. Tongues of flame were darting from the narrow windows.

  Panic seized her. The fire could not harm the thick stone walls, but something much more inflammable was inside the building, and it was now in danger. She did not wonder what it might be, nor how she knew of it—none of that mattered now, and she could think about it later. First she had to find a way to put out the blaze. She was the only one available to do it.

  Yes, but how? She set her mind feverishly to work, biting her lower lip as she always did in times of great tension. She needed water. Where could she find water in the desert? And then she remembered the waves she had heard while down in the flatland. A quick survey of the terrain surrounding the hilltop was enough; there, indeed, was the sea, its blue surface dotted with crests of foamy white.

  It wasn’t far, just a short walk away, but for her needs the sea might as well have been infinitely distant. Even had the temple been built right on the shore, there was nothing she could do. How would she carry the water to extinguish the fire? All she had were her cupped hands.

  As if mocking her helplessness, the music and the fire grew louder and stronger. Flames were now flickering wildly out of the openings at the top of the wall, forcing her to step back from the heat to the very edge of the hill’s flat summit. The music had grown so loud she was forced to place her hands over her ears. It was of little avail. The ground around her soon began to shake, evidently from the force of the vibrations, at first slowly and then with greater and greater intensity, as if in the grip of an earthquake. She lost her balance for a moment and fell to her hands and knees, but managed to avoid plunging down the hillside.

  She was filled with horror as she saw that even the stone temple could not resist the destructive impact of the music. Completely deafened, she watched mesmerized as the columns swayed and toppled into cylindrical segments. One of them started to roll towards her, but all she could do was stare at it, unable to move. It passed so close it almost grazed her, then continued down the steep slope, picking up speed as it went.

  For a moment she hoped that it was all over; then the heavy stone roof collapsed into the interior of the building with a tremendous crash. Pandemonium ensued. She felt not the slightest compassion for the musicians, who were presumably crushed beneath. It served them right. It was all their fault. Without their demonic music none of this would have happened. But the music didn’t stop. It could still be heard rising from the fiery ruins, even louder now when there was no roof to dampen the sound; the collapse had hindered the musicians not in the slightest.

  The fire now reached high into the sky. She was overcome with deep despair when it became clear that there was no way to save the delicate, fragile thing somewhere inside. She still didn’t know what it was, but nothing could survive such infernal conflagration. It had been lost, inexorably and forever, leaving behind an emptiness as gaping as the tomb. She had not been able to do a thing, and now it was too late.

  It was also too late for her to get away. The wall, with its large stone blocks, started to swell like an inflatable balloon. Only a few more moments and it would yield before the unimaginable pressure from within. Suddenly she realized she had no shelter. There was not even time to flee headlong down the hillside. All she managed to do, as the sounds rushed inexorably toward their demented crescendo, was to raise her hands instinctively to her face and close her eyes tight. Darkness swallowed the terrifying sight, but nothing was able to banish the final explosion of music.

  Mrs Martha did manage to fall asleep again, but not until broad daylight. This time there were no dreams. She simply sank into a lake of black ink that absorbed her into its blind, deaf sanctuary. She could have stayed there a very long time, but Constantine didn’t let her. He reached for her, gently shook her shoulder, and pulled her to the surface. She tried to resist, not wanting to emerge, but he was merciless.

  Her dream remained behind, in the inky lake. She hadn’t the slightest memory of it after waking up the second time that morning. When her husband asked why she had overslept, she answered with a shrug. It seemed odd to her, too. She was usually the first one out of bed. She was vaguely aware of some sort of anxiety, but even though she tried to discover its cause, it remained unfathomable.

  At breakfast, when Constantine put slices of fresh toast on the table, she glanced with hostility at the striped surface. She liked toast, but for some reason didn’t feel like any today. Her husband gave her an inquiring look, seeing her push the empty plate away, but said nothing. She drank a full cup of coffee, blowing at it even though it wasn’t hot. She knew she would have trouble with it on an empty stomach, but still wasn’t able to eat a thing.

  When they left for work, Constantine turned on the car radio. He had been doing this regularly for a long time, although he wasn’t very interested in music. It was the best way to alleviate the strained silence that would otherwise engulf them during the half-hour ride. After more than twenty years of living together they were running out of topics for conversation. This had bothered her at first, but later she had got used to it, and even come to like it. Better to talk when they had a genuine reason rather than by the dictates of convention. She, too, was not always in a mood to talk.

  Now, however, her hand extended itself; first she turned the music down, despite the fact that it wasn’t loud, then she turned it altogether off. She said nothing while doing so, and when she had done it she couldn’t have said why. The radio was tuned to a station specializing in light instrumental music, one she had always enjoyed before. This morning it seemed somehow irritating, although she would not have been able to give the reason. Constantine turned his head briefly towards her. She endured his inquisitive look, thankful that he did not ask her anything. They continued driving in silence, the traffic around them growing denser as they approached the city centre. When they got close to the library where Mrs Martha worked, her attention was drawn to something she would probably not have noticed previously. Two fire trucks were trying without success to make their way through the multitude of cars inching forward in the morning rush-hour traffic. Their sirens were blaring and their blue lights flashed, but to little effect. The cars in front of them simply had nowhere to go to let them pass.

  Mrs Martha became suddenly anxious and started to breathe rapidly,
as she always did in that state. The thought that the huge red vehicles might not get where they were needed in time filled her with unusual discomfort. She had no idea where the fire had broken out, but that did not seem to matter. Regardless of what was burning, the damage would be enormous. Fire left an utter wasteland behind it, and this might be threatening something truly unique, something that could never be recreated.

  The fire trucks turned left at the first intersection and drove out of sight. Their sirens could still be heard for a while, until they were gradually drowned out by the surrounding noise. As though emerging from a daze, Mrs Martha wondered confusedly why this was having such an effect on her. Fires happened every day in large cities such as this. It was inevitable—just as it was inevitable that many people ended their lives daily, people who were also unique and could never be recreated. But one should not allow oneself to be overly burdened with the irretrievable losses of every day; that would turn life into a real inferno.

  Before she got out of the car in front of the library, Mrs Martha kissed Constantine—just a light touch of the lips that seemed barely more intimate than a handshake. They didn’t say anything to each other, there was no need. He would drive on as he did every morning to the insurance company where he had worked for almost a quarter of a century. At the end of the working day he would wait for her at this same spot. Then they would kiss again, without a word. The radio would already be on in the car, freeing both of them from the obligation to talk about the arid monotony of their daily working lives.

  As soon as she turned on the computer in her office, as she did each morning, she realized that something was wrong. A picture appeared immediately on the screen. That should not have happened; it always took about half a minute for the system to boot up. During that time a rapid sequence of vertical text filled with sundry abbreviations, signs and numbers would pass across the screen. They moved far too fast for her to read and their meaning had never interested her; she understood very little about computers. She could find her way around the basic library program, and that was quite enough for her. She hadn’t the slightest desire to learn in more detail how the thing worked.

  Now it looked as if she had turned on a television set. The picture was not the computer’s usual coarse representation, which she had never liked; it was a very high resolution picture of the outside of an ancient building. She stared at it in confusion. It seemed vaguely familiar, yet she could not recall where she had seen it before. Four large columns ran at regular intervals along the façade, and between the two at the centre stood an imposing rectangular entrance, its double doors wide open.

  Above the columns was some sort of inscription. She moved her head a bit closer to the screen to get a better look, but this was not necessary. As if in response to her wishes, the camera started to zoom in on the carved letters. The letters were in Greek, but still she managed to read them. For some reason this did not surprise her very much. It was certainly the lesser of the two wonders confronting her just then. The second had to do with the inscription itself. Although it was most certainly impossible, she could nonetheless clearly read: Great Library.

  She stared in momentary disbelief at the letters. Then she came to her senses, realizing she should do something. She had to call someone—maybe the computer maintenance department. This was certainly some kind of breakdown. These machines went on the blink from time to time, although she had never heard of anything like this before. She reached for the telephone, but didn’t finish because that same moment the camera came back to life. It glided down from the inscription, went to the open door and floated inside.

  Not much could be seen at first. The only light came from a row of slits near the top of the long lateral walls, but this was not enough after the bright sunlight outside. When the picture quickly started to get lighter, Mrs Martha thought her eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom, although she knew it was only an illusion. The camera was adjusting to the weak light. Then it began to rotate, slowly revealing the interior.

  There was only one large space, resembling a hall. Its central part contained a row of wooden tables surrounded by simple chairs without backs, stretching all the way to the far end. The tables were placed in such a way as to catch the rays of light slanting from the high openings. That was enough to read by without straining one’s eyes during the day, particularly if it was sunny. There did not seem to be any artificial light. There were no oil lamps or candles. Nothing that would burn. The Great Library clearly could not be used at night.

  All four walls were completely covered with deep shelves from floor to ceiling. Ladders were placed at frequent intervals. These were connected to the shelves, giving access to their upper reaches. There were things on the shelves that Mrs Martha did not immediately recognize. Having expected books, she stared in bewilderment at the tube-shaped objects that formed a vast honeycomb on all sides.

  And then it dawned on her. If the inscription above the entrance were to be believed, there could be no conventional books here. It was too early for bound books. Documents were written on papyrus when this building existed. On the screen in front of her stretched an enormous repository for scrolls. She had never been good at making rough calculations, but she could not be mistaken in this case. Along the walls were thousands and thousands of scrolls.

  It was an impressive sight; the first thing that crossed Mrs Martha’s mind when she realized what she was looking at, however, was quite practical. As someone who was proud of her profession of librarian, she couldn’t resist wondering how it was possible to find one’s way about this multitude when there were not even spines to help distinguish one papyrus from another. How could someone quickly find the desired scroll among the countless others that looked identical?

  As if following her thoughts once again, the camera moved up close to one section of a shelf. The screen was now filled with only some fifty scrolls. Suddenly they were covered by a porous network of letters. This time they were in the Roman alphabet so Mrs Martha no longer had to count on a miracle in order to read them. It also did not take her long to realize what it was all about. After all, she had spent her whole life cataloguing books.

  Authors’ names were written in somewhat larger yellow letters and under them, in smaller blue letters, were the titles. It wasn’t clear whether they referred to the works contained in the few scrolls currently visible in the background, but if this were true then the total contents of the papyrus rolls was significantly greater than she might have guessed. What an incredible treasure was to be found in the Great Library! Mrs Martha’s breath grew shorter for the second time that morning.

  The camera glided smoothly to the next section of the shelf. The catalogue disappeared, but a new one soon took its place. This time Mrs Martha concentrated on the text. She combed through her memory but could not recall ever having encountered some of the names written on the screen. She tried from the inventory of works to figure out who the authors might be—literary writers, historiographers, natural scientists, mathematicians—but was not certain of anything.

  And then she saw a name she recognized. Her own library had recently received a new edition of his tragedies which she herself had placed upon the shelves. She well remembered that only a small number of this author’s works had been preserved, only seven or eight, and yet before her ran a much longer list. She counted thirty-six dramas. Owing to the small size of the letters she had to count by drawing her finger across the screen. When she passed over a title, its light blue colour immediately darkened.

  Led by a sudden thought, she raised her index finger to the screen again and placed it on one of the titles that did not seem familiar to her. The letters first changed shade, and then a moment later the catalogue page disappeared and one of the scrolls began to emerge from the shelf. When it was all the way out, the scroll unrolled, covering the screen completely. Before Mrs Martha was the original text of a long-lost tragedy.

  The instincts of an experienced librarian hus
hed her mounting excitement. She had to try to do something. That was uppermost in her mind. All the rest could wait for a more suitable moment—all the disturbing questions that were trying to pour out of wherever she had tucked them away for the time being. Yes, but how? What should she do to save this invaluable treasury that had somehow surfaced from the depths of oblivion? She thought it over with care, but all that came to her mind was to resort to the customary way of recording data on the computer. She didn’t think it would work, but what else could she do?

  The moment she touched the first key on the keyboard, the papyrus scroll rolled back up and returned to its place in the honeycomb. Mrs Martha jerked her hand back as though scalded. She had made a mistake. There was no opportunity to try anything else because the camera suddenly moved back from the bookshelf and withdrew to the furthest end of the room, high up under the roof; now it showed the entire Great Library, with the brightly lit entrance at the other end.

  Nothing moved for several moments, as though the screen held a photograph. And then the speakers, which had been silent until then, came to life. The music they started to emit was barely audible at first, as though coming from outside, from a distance, so she did not recognize it right away. When the volume began to increase, however, Mrs Martha felt an icy shiver crawl up her spine. Streaming out of the inky lake where it had lain submerged, the forgotten dream slapped her violently in the face. She knew who she would see even before the procession of musicians reached the entrance. Lit from behind, the hooded figures began to slip inside like faceless ghosts, as if not touching the ground. When they left the bright rectangle at the door, they melted completely into the surrounding darkness. Their presence could only be discerned by the unceasing music. When the last musician entered the Great Library, the tall double doors closed soundlessly behind him, leaving no trace that they had existed.