The Library of Forgotten Books

by Rjurik Davidson

  The mechanical birds drop from the sky, headless, their complex inner workings uncovered, the intricate lacework of their feathers almost fragile. But the gusts of air they produce are torrential, swirling around the workers' hairless heads.

  Bikrim and the others step wearily, heads down, into the baskets. The mechanical birds grasp the baskets with their vices and lift them all up into the freezing air.

  “This is no way to live,” says Bikrim but the others don’t hear him, or if they do, they ignore him. No one wants to be reminded of the truth.

  When I looked up from Ister’s book, I said to the Guardian, “I was there.”

  The darkness shifts around me. “He’s latent, of course.”

  “Latent?”

  “Ister—he’s a latent thaumaturgist. He’s a weaver. That’s why you were there. He projected you into the world. He created that world. I can feel the power surrounding you as you read.”

  I looked at my hand and there seemed to be the slightest scar running ragged across it. “But a weaver who can invoke like that: there hasn’t been one in what, a hundred years?”

  We left the room and the Guardian led me through the labyrinth until we entered an ancient corridor, the stone walls crumbling, statues cut from white marble in the style of the Ancients along its walls. An open archway let to a tiny grotto at its end.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  The Guardian stood before a statue of a short man with a proud face, handsome in its own way, with accusing eyes. The statue looked off into the distance, as if it was searching for someone. Carved into the base was a name, “Amacus.”

  “It’s me,” said the Guardian. “And in that grotto are my poems.”

  “Amacus. You’re an Ancient?” I said. “Why did they ban your books?”

  “Oh, they didn’t,” he said. “Before the rise of the Directorate, this really was a Library for forgotten books—books which had gone out of print. It was a treasury, you know. My books were...” He stopped and breathed heavily. “If only people still read them: then there’d be something left of me.” Amacus made a noise, like the sound of water gurgling down a hole. I walked away, appalled; and he remained, shifting and morphing in front of his statue. He was crying.

  Some time later, he said to me, “Your task is to smuggle my poems out of the library and publish them. Tomorrow we will return here, and you can take the books.”

  The wooden wheels clattered on the cobblestones. Agee held onto the bars of the prison-cart. His fat face was empty; its flesh was smooth and relaxed. Instead of crying, he seemed exhausted. Dragged by two horses, the cart slowly made its way to the centre of the square where a machine—a complex construction of scaffolding and harnesses—stood on a platform, surrounded by engineers and mechanics. And behind them the thaumaturgists in their sharp suits, their faces cold and cruel, like the sciences they controlled.

  The crowd of a thousand or more watched, some grinning toothless grins, others whispering excitedly. Yet others shifted on their feet in nervous anticipation. The smell of sweat drifted around in the summer heat.

  Treskoti had closed the library for the day, so that we could all witness the transmigration. Across the square I could see his calm acquiescence, as if everything was in its place—the demeanour of a Head Librarian.

  “They’ve drugged him,” said a voice. Ister was next to me, his neck craning towards the stage.

  “They’ve come to watch like vultures eyeing carrion.”

  “And yet you’re here too,” he said.

  “They don’t even know what he has done, they haven’t read his books, they’re just here for the entertainment.”

  Ister looked on. “It’s not their fault is it? What have they to look forward to? They are degraded, but by...” he waved his hands around, gesturing to everything around us, “this.”

  “It is their fault,” I said, “They have chosen to become...mechanical men.”

  He looked at me sharply and then back to the stage, where Agee was being suspended in the centre of the machine, his hands taken by great metal gloves, his head placed in a helmet, his legs in boots.

  “It’s dangerous to read books that should be forgotten,” said Ister.

  “It’s dangerous to write them.”

  “Not to write them, to distribute them—to hide them from the Directorate.”

  “How can you be so...passive?” I said.

  He smiled and looked at me, as if to say, “And you act as you wish?”

  A lever was turned and Agee was raised up into the sky, and still his heavy-lidded eyes drooped. Across the square Treskoti watched the prisoner rise calmly.

  “Agee thought that way too,” Ister said, as if that was an argument.

  The thaumaturgists placed their hands on the screens and power coursed from the Other Side, and light like a sun glowed around Agee, who screamed, pitiful and horrible. The light enveloped him, and it seemed somehow dark also. He shimmered, in and out of existence, first his arm warping and bending and disappearing, then his leg, now his neck elongating and his body becoming squat and flabby, then his hips shimmering and rolling. The entire effect was as if he was beneath shifting water. His screams were now more like gurgles, and they echoed as if from a distant and empty hallway. His face changed. His forehead bulged and shrank, his eyes swelled in their sockets and his cheeks shrank over his cheekbones. The flesh became liquid and blackened, as if he was aging. The cheers of the crowd went up. I turned away from his horrible visage, melting before my eyes, becoming ever more like an unnatural cadaver, a composite of a horse and a dog and a man.

  Then arms were around me and I clung to Ister. I could no longer hear Agee’s cries, only the cheering of the crowd, the victorious “Look at that!” and “His face, oh his face.” When the transformation was almost complete, the crowd fell silent and even they looked away, frightened.

  “Let’s get away from these barbarians,” said Ister.

  We left as Agee was lodged between life and death and the crowd looked on and turned away and looked again, themselves trapped between life and death in their own way.

  My body shook uncontrollably as we took the train away from that terrible place, through tunnels into the air on winding bridges, smoke billowing from the engine ahead. We came to the edge of Varenis, where the city had spilled out over the walls, like froth from a bubbling pot. In a circular tower Ister had an apartment. He sat me down on his couch, and brewed Tortili tea made from a seaweed calmative brought up from Caeli-Amur.

  “There is no justice in this city,” he said.

  I walked over to a desk, under a window. The rattle of the city, of carts and street-vendors, came through the window. On the desk lay a half-finished manuscript.

  Ister rushed over, opened a drawer and placed the manuscript within it.

  “What are you working on?” I asked.

  “Oh, it’s nothing.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “After the first nouvelle roman, my work has been banned. No one read the first one anyway.”

  “You’re not the first person to say something like that to me. Anyway, I’ve read some of your work,” I said.

  “You shouldn’t have.”

  “You’re latent, you know. You’re a weaver.”

  He looked at me, puzzled. “It’s only writing.”

  “No!” I said, “It’s as if I’m there, as if I am Bikrim.”

  He grabbed my arm. “Listen to me. I have no power. It’s only writing.”

  “Let go of me,” I said.

  Shocked at himself, he released me. I grabbed the hair on the back of his head and pulled him forward and kissed him. And then I was on him with my rage and my need, his long legs beneath me. My hand still grasping the hair on the back of his head, we found another world.

  As I lay in his bed (small with a lumpy mattress, its bedclothes all askew) and drifted to sleep, feeling like I was floating in water, I realised I’d forgotten to visit Amacus. I ha
d broken my agreement. Perhaps I’d done it on purpose.

  The following morning Treskoti sent me to the northern wing to re-shelve books. A dark shape waited half-way up; I kept my head down as I climbed the stairs at the base of the second level of the library. But a blast of cold air stopped me, and Amacus was in front of me.

  “Aren’t you going to look at me?” The voice did not belong to Amacus.

  The Guardian made a sniffing sound as I passed it and then broke into its horrible laughter. “Oh I remember you, dutifully taking away my books, happily consigning me to oblivion, as if nothing was your fault.”

  “Mister Agee?”

  “Mister! Oh how ironic. How much of a Mister am I now?”

  But the Guardian left me alone as I climbed more stairs. Some time later, as I teetered on the ledges, my back to the precipice, a face materialised next to my right cheek; its lower eyelids sagged like those of a bloodhound, its wild and angry eyes were marked by hundreds of black veins—eyes empty and soulless.

  Amacus hissed like a cat and then his face appeared on the left side of mine, pressed close.

  “Where were you yesterday...? I thought we had a...bond.”

  “I’m sorry...I–”

  “Just like a woman,” he said. “You’re not the first to betray me.” Again his head appeared close to my right cheek. He moved so quickly I could barely make out his form.

  I closed my eyes. I grasped the pendant and held it tight.

  He hissed again and the shelves shuddered from his movement. “Come on then.”

  I followed him in silence to the labyrinth and our secret room, all the time. As I sat in the reading chair, I said, hoping to defuse his anger, “I don’t understand, how did this woman betray you?”

  “She promised that I’d be poet laureate: that the people would toast me. She fed me spiced fruit and hard cheeses, sweet port. She touched my hand, just so, lightly. After the poems were ridiculed by the critics, the books were pulped. She refused even to see me. And all the time I never had the courage to tell her, I had written those poems for her.” He stopped for a moment and then added, “At least I have you now. If I thought you were going to leave me...But you can’t even look me in the face.”

  “I can,” I said defiantly.

  “You cannot.”

  I brought my face up, but my eyes didn’t follow.

  “I missed you, yesterday,” he said softly. Some time later he added, “Go on, read.”

  Bikrim steps from the air shaft that blew him up to the seven-hundred and fifteenth level. The tunnel is all wires and pipes, like the inside of some great machine. The walls are made of millions of pieces of interlacing metal, all different shapes and sizes, pressed together as if by some gigantic force. Sometimes he can make out recognisable objects—spoons and forks and tools and flattened chairs—and at other times, from the corner of his eye, he sees faces in the interlacing metals, though when he looks again they are gone.

  He walks along the corridor leading from the air shaft and into the grotto. People lie around the room lethargically, sucking on pipes coming from the walls before collapsing back into the deep red cushions.

  Lukis lies in one corner, his face deeply etched with lines. He places a coin into the slot in the wall when he sees Bikrim arrive and takes a deep drag on the pipe.

  Bikrim sits next to him and waits for Lukis to come back. Finally Lukis says, “It’s wondrous. Won’t you try it?”

  “I’m not interested in these fantasy lands”, says Bikrim. “I don’t want to reach heaven in my mind, but here, in the world.”

  “But it’s not in your mind. You really travel to Var-Enis, back in time before it turned into this—before it turned into...”

  Bikrim turns away: “I want a solution to this state of affairs, not escape.”

  Lukis shrugs. “I’d better introduce you to the seditionists then.”

  Bikrim follows Lukis into the tunnels, some so small that they have to lower their heads, or bend at the waist. Sometimes they have to crawl up passageways at odd angles. At other times they step into the air shafts and drop several levels. To their left and right cavernous rooms open up, where screens flicker with unnatural light and sects chant in guttural tongues.

  “Look at this,” says Lukis. “Look at the petty things people use to distract themselves.”

  “They are searching for another life,” says Bikrim.

  “From a man who just said he wouldn’t travel back to ancient Var-Enis!”

  Bikrim smiles an angry smile, lacking in warmth. “I don’t chant either. The seditionists are organised?”

  “Yes,” says Lukis. “Organised and ready to tear things down, to rip the very wires from the walls, to pour the liquid metal back into the ground.”

  The tunnel narrows and Lukis is on his knees, crawling.

  “I approve of this,” says Bikrim following him. “It will take more than desire to find these dark and hidden places.”

  In the blackness, the tunnel loses shape and form. The wires and the pieces of metal become a patchwork of dark, though Bikrim can feel the metal floor beneath his hands.

  “Lukis, is it far?”

  No answer comes.

  “Lukis?”

  Still no answer. Bikrim crawls further forward. There is empty space beneath his hands. He falls forward, into nothingness. He plunges down and cries out. He hits something hard.

  When I came out of the book I was dizzy and nauseous. It took a long time for me to stagger slowly back to the upper levels of the library. That night I was struck by a fever and I lay in some delusional state, with images of corridors made of metal and wire, and the craggy face of Lukis before me. The following day I had not the strength to read and I talked only briefly with Amacus, assuring him that I had a plan to smuggle out his books, but that it could not be done immediately.

  Ister did not make his deposit that week. At first I waited for him. Then I looked for him, in the bars and clubs. With each passing day my anxiety increased. Finally I took the train to the edge of the city, climbed the tower, and knocked on his door. No one answered, but I continued knocking, like the relentless beat of a drum.

  The door swung open, and Ister stood, wild-eyed, his hair askew. “I cannot see you,” he said, but he left the door open as he walked back inside. Clothes were scattered across the floor, the bedclothes hanging over the bed. There was the faint smell of sweat.

  “Look what you’ve done to me,” he said.

  “What I’ve done to you!”

  “I can’t write. I can’t think of what comes next.”

  “You’ve ignored me, as if we’ve never met!” I yelled.

  “I have my art, don’t you understand?”

  “You’ve got nothing. You can’t have anything if you’re locked away from the world. To have something, you must be able to lose it.”

  “Oh, and you know about that?” he said angrily.

  “If anyone does, I do.” There were tears in my eyes, and then on my cheeks.

  “Why are you crying?” he shouted. “What do you know about being alone?”

  I turned from him and left that room and that tower. I returned to my own apartment, empty and cold, and spent a sleepless night, tossing and turning and thinking of the things I should have said, the things I would say next time, but in the morning it seemed useless and I looked forward to arriving at the Library, to losing myself amongst those books. In some strange way I looked forward to seeing Amacus. At least I had something. And I needed to be Bikrim—like an addiction, pressing upon me like a great weight that needs to be lifted.

  In the reading room the next day, Amacus shifted around me. “There’s something wrong, I can tell. You think you can fool me, but remember how old I am, remember all the things I have seen.”

  “How many people have you taken? How many have you...drained?”

  He shifted, as if uncomfortable, and said briskly, “None.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Seve
n.”

  “What were they doing?”

  “It’s always the same: some petty thieves or some political idealists, or some petty thieves in the employ of political idealists, some political idealists trying to be thieves. The last one, well, he was fourteen. He was so...sweet.”

  Angry at him, at Ister, at myself, I said, “Can I read now?”

  “You don’t understand,” he continued. “We have so little. They make us do it. You can’t even look at me, you hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you.”

  “I hate myself. You can’t even look at me.”

  “I can.” I felt his gaze upon me.

  “You can’t.”

  I turned and brought my head up, my eyes fixed, up along those warping limbs, those grey muscles, elongating and then shortening, yet always too long for the body, up along the wiry ribcage, like a skinless corpse, up to the protuberant jaw, with the teeth too large, the lips pulled back as if in a snarl, up to the cheeks, tight over the cheekbones like skin over a drum, up to the eyes, bloodshot and horrid, with the sagging lids drooping down so that the bloodied undersides were plain to see. I stared into those eyes, filled with rage and sorrow, and I held the gaze though my body started to shake. Amacus stared back at me.

  “I love you,” he said. “I’ll do anything for you.”

  I looked back at the book in my hands.

  Bikrim awakes. All he can feel is pain. He struggles. Something is holding him. He opens his eyes. He’s in a deep red room, fleshy stalactites above him. Blue veins run along the walls, which are occasionally scarred, or marked with pustulant sores, yellow liquid dribbling from them. Released, he gags and falls to his knees. Lukis stands back from him and eyes him warily.