The Librarian

“Your daughter in my reading room was…” I began and immediately regretted it. The old woman might not know that Selivanova had been killed, and the bitter news could be a blow for her.

“They told me Margo was no longer alive. I’m not suffering. I’ll go completely out of my mind soon and lose the ability to grieve. I wouldn’t want you to hold a grudge against her. I was the one who advised Margo to keep you on as the Shironinites’ librarian…” The old woman flinched as if from cold. “It’s drifting over my thoughts,” she complained. “White and suffocating, like cotton wool. Soon it will smother them altogether. The illness is taking its toll… Would you mind not squinting at my body like that! I find it offensive.”

I hastily turned away to look towards the wall and asked:

“Valentina Grigoryevna, it was you who sent me the Book of Meaning, wasn’t it?”

Knots of muscle tensed, swelled up and disappeared under the gelatinous, trembling skin on the crucified arms.

“The Book was found in ninety-four. I had quite a large team of uninitiated agents working for me. The usual mercenaries. We didn’t explain anything to them. It was easier and safer that way. Katerina Cheremis, who worked in the Moscow archives, phoned me: ‘Valentina Grigoryevna, I’ve got a Gromov for you. A Meditation on Stalin Chinaware. A lucky find: the entire edition was pulped, but this copy was miraculously preserved in the publishing house’s museum.’ I was sure it was the wrong Gromov. There wasn’t any book with that title in the bibliographies. But even so I went to Moscow. And what a surprise…” The old woman shifted restlessly. A baleful, damp flame blazed in the almost lashless eyes, the thin, bloodless lips filled with veinous sludge and swelled up like overtaut tendons. “You’ve read the Book and you know that it’s a temptation. I couldn’t resist either and I read it. And instead of a revelation I was given just one single word…” The old woman started breathing more rapidly. The wrists restrained by straps swelled up under the subcutaneous impulses of demonic energy. “Can you imagine how many people have died and how much blood has been spilled for the sake of three syllables that sound like a Russian merchant’s surname—‘Vyazintsev’? Not very much, is it? Not at all what I and fifteen hundred ‘mums’ were expecting. No, I decided not to destroy the Book. I eliminated the dangerous witness Cheremis. And then I set about transforming the clan. It had run to seed. We managed to dump almost all the superfluous ‘mums’ at Neverbino. After the battle Margo sent me a list of the new reading rooms, including the one that she had joined. I came across the librarian Vyazintsev…” The captive body strained at its bonds and the parchment cleavage of breasts that had mummified long ago appeared in the dangling neck of the nightshirt. “I didn’t tell Margo about the Book of Meaning; she was only supposed to keep an eye on developments in the region. For many years I was consumed by frustration. Why some Vyazintsev or other? What if I defied the Book of Meaning and killed its incarnation? What then? How would the Books wriggle out of that?” The dry, desiccated nostrils fluttered as if the old woman had caught the scent of a quarry, the fine membrane of skin on the hollow of her throat trembled sensitively. “Vyazintsev was eliminated. But the Book kept on speaking his name. Margo reported to me that a nephew had shown up… I told her that she had to keep a close eye on you…” The old woman suddenly thrust her rump hard down into the metal mesh and jerked forward abruptly, and only the straps held her back. “It’s nothing to do with you, you little bastard! Even the fact that you received the Book—that’s a pure coincidence! My reason was clouded! I was obviously starting to lose my mind! You’re not special! You’re just one of a set of circumstances!” If she hadn’t been speaking, I would have said that she was simply clacking her jaws, trying to take me by the throat with her gums, as pink as an Alsatian’s. “The Book is free to choose its nominees! To point to anyone drawn into its range of influence! If you’re not here, it will name someone else!” The old woman suddenly ran out of strength, fell back onto the pillow and half-closed her eyes. “But Margo didn’t understand that. She was afraid that Lizka would kill you…” The old woman yawned benignly. “That’s all now. I’m tired. I’m finished. Go away.”