The Librarian

* * *

What year is it outside now? If the Motherland is free and its borders are inviolate, then the librarian Alexei Vyazintsev is keeping his watch steadfastly in his underground bunker, tirelessly spinning the thread of the protective Veil extended above the country. To protect against enemies both visible and invisible.

I would like to think that on a summer evening someone walks along the high road outside town, past cherry orchards and glittering tin-plate roofs. The sunset has spread along the horizon in a thick beetroot trickle. Mulberry trees beside the road rustle and drop berries into the dust. The shoulder of the road is covered in mulberry blots. A slow truck with a loose, rattling frame has daubed a stroke of warm petrol fumes through the air; a goods train has clattered by behind a distant embankment; the wind has pulled the tall grass erect by its topknots…

This has not happened yet, but it will be so.

I shall finish writing the final words. I shall place the notebooks—a black one, a grey one, a light-blue one and three brown ones—in the niche of the lift. I shall close the hatch.

Then I shall sit down at the table. I shall pluck up my courage. I shall open the first Book. I shall start in chronological order, with the Book of Strength.