Library of Unrequited Love

THE LIBRARY OF UNREQUITED LOVE

SOPHIE DIVRY

Translated from the French by Siân Reynolds

First published in the French language as
La Cote 400
by Les Éditions Les Allusifs, Montréal, 2010

First published in Great Britain by

MacLehose Press
an imprint of Quercus
55 Baker Street
7th Floor, South Block
London W1U 8EW

Copyright © Les Éditions Les Allusifs, Montréal (Québec), 2010
English translation copyright © 2013 by Siân Reynolds

The moral right of Sophie Divry to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Siân Reynolds asserts her moral right to be identified as the translator of the work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN (HB) 978 0 85705 141 7
ISBN (Ebook) 978 1 78087 052 6

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

You can find this and many other great books at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk
and
www.maclehosepress.com

To all those men and women who will always find a place for themselves in a library more easily than in society, I dedicate this entertainment

Reading is, with friendship, one of the surest contributions to the work of grieving. It helps us, more generally, to grieve for the limitations of our life, the limitations of the human condition

DIDIER ANZIEU
,
Le Corps de l'Oeuvre

WAKE UP! WHAT ARE YOU DOING LYING THERE?
The library doesn't open for another two hours, you shouldn't be here at all. If it isn't the limit! Now they've started locking readers into my basement. Honestly, there's no end to what I have to put up with. No, no point shouting, it's not
my
fault … But I know who
you
are, you know your way round the library. You mooch about this place all day, so sooner or later you were bound to end up spending the night here. No, don't go away, now you're here, you can give me a hand. I'm looking for a book they want upstairs.
Existentialism Is a Humanism
, you know, book by Sartre, they've somehow lost it down here, so take a look on the shelves, please. What? You don't recognize me? But I work in this room every day. So I must be completely unnoticeable.
Nobody sees me, that's my problem. Even in the street, people bump into me and say, “Oh, sorry, didn't see you.” The invisible woman, that's who I am, the invisible woman, the one in charge of the Geography section. Ah, yes, now you've remembered who I am, of course. Oh there it is, thanks very much, that was quick of you.
Existentialism Is a Humanism
has no business down here in my basement, we don't have philosophy on this level. It suits the eggheads on the ground floor. I'll give it back to them, they'll be pleased, they've been looking for it for ages up there. See, you really are a big help. Anyway, I'm not allowed to open the doors for you, it would mean calling the security people, it's too dangerous. Yes, it is, it's dangerous, because it would be unprecedented, first time ever. And in a library, one should never draw attention to oneself. If you attract attention, you'll disturb people. You can just stay here with me, while I get my reading room ready. I've more books to shelve. And since you're so efficient, can you take out of the History section all the geography books that readers have shoved in there? Go on, don't complain: sorting, rearranging,
not disturbing people, that's what I do all day long. Taking books off shelves and putting them back on, over and over, ad infinitum. No, it's not that fascinating, sorry about that. Because to put a book back in the right place, I don't even have to look at the author's name. I just have to read the numbers here, on this little label stuck on the spine, and slip it in with the others that have the same shelfmark. There, you see, that's all. And I've been doing this job for twenty-five years now, twenty-five years, with the same rules, it never changes. Even if they call me upstairs to the Loans desk, it's no better. Checking books in and out, making the bar codes go beep-beep, think that's fulfilling? Beep-beep, “Back on twenty-sixth September, goodbye”; beep-beep, “Back on fourteenth May, thank you”. Being a librarian isn't an especially high-level job, I can tell you. Pretty close to being in a factory. I'm a cultural assembly line worker. So what you need to know is, to be a librarian, you have to like the idea of classification, and to be of a docile nature. No initiative, no room for the unexpected; here, everything is in its place, invariably in its place. Did you
sleep well, at least, down here? No? You were scared? Oh, but it's very quiet. I like the peace and quiet, I find it reassuring. But that's how I am, I need precision and routine. I could never work in a railway station: too much going on and the very idea that a train was going to be late would give me a panic attack. Anyway, I never take the train nowadays, I'm too old for that. I don't drive either, it's too dangerous and I hate car parks, I like old-fashioned beauty. Just the very idea of getting on the slip road to a motorway gives me palpitations. Don't stay standing up like that, I'll get you a coffee. I always bring a Thermos of coffee when I come in early. Drink up, it'll make you feel better. Believe me. Now just sit down there and don't bother me again, or I'll get stressed. Even in small-town libraries like this, people make terrible mistakes in their shelving. It drives me up the wall, it's a sign of how pathetic they are. Not only do they shut absent-minded readers into my basement at night, but they shelve the books all wrong as well. Because, theoretically, whether you're in Paris, Marseille, Cahors, Mazamet or Dompierre-sur-Besbre, you ought to be
able to find the same book in the same place. See, take a classic work of sociology, Émile Durkheim's
The Division of Labour in Society
. Well, there it is, shelfmark 301. Next to
Suicide
. That's another great classic by Durkheim:
Suicide
. Same author, same shelfmark: 301 DUR. Works every time. Can't go wrong. The man who invented this system, his name was Melvil Dewey. He's our founding father, for all us librarians. Just a little guy, from a poor family somewhere in America, and he was only twenty-one when he thought up the most famous classification system in the world. Dewey is the Mendeleev of librarians. Not the Periodic Table of Elements, but the classification of areas of culture. His stroke of genius was to divide up the areas of knowledge under ten broad headings he called “classes”: 000 for general works, 100 for philosophy, 200 for religions. 300 for social sciences, 400 for languages, 500 for mathematics, 600 for technology, 700 for fine art, 800 for literature, 900 for history and geography – and everything else they couldn't classify ends up here in the basement too. Yes, sorry, my coffee is always too strong, that way I don't get
my colleagues scrounging it off me. Well, Dewey called his system “the Dewey decimal classification”. Simplicity itself. It was over a century ago. He had a right to be proud of himself: he had methodically arranged all human knowledge. That wasn't to be sniffed at. Because before that, let me tell you, it was completely erratic. They didn't just classify by author, they sometimes put books on the shelf by size, or date of acquisition. Now I come to think of it, the confusion it must have caused. Glad I didn't live then. I couldn't have put up with that kind of anarchy. Already my Geography section, as I was saying, is a sort of dustbin. They chuck in books on numismatics, military medals, genealogy, psychoanalysis, the occult … It's a catch-all category. Which bothers me. I like nice clear-cut categories. See, over there, on the right, that's History. Personally, I like that section, in fact, I love it. But I was appointed to manage Geography and Town Planning, over here on the left. And let me tell you that between Geography and History, that is between the shelfmarks 910 and 930, there's a great gulf fixed. A symbolic line, not to be crossed. In
fact, History takes up most of the space. It has virtually the whole of the 900s. Oh, I don't hold it against history, because I'm fond of it. But I only get 900 and 910 for me, quite little ones. Not a lot, but just see what Dewey does with them, even if there are only a few books. Incredible. 910: General works of geography. 914: Geography of Europe. Then after the first three figures you put a decimal point, so the more detailed the idea is, the longer the shelfmark. Do you follow? And by the way, please don't drink the whole Thermos. So here we have 914.4: Geography of France. 914.43: Geography of the île de France region. Next along: 914.436: Geography of Paris. I could go on, nothing slips through the net of this classification. It's infallible. So to sum up, a shelfmark is between three and six figures long, after that you add the first three letters of the author's name.
Existentialism Is a Humanism
= 194 SAR. If you just remember that, your night will not have been wasted. To know your way round a library is to master the whole of culture, i.e. the whole world. I'm scarcely exaggerating. In any case, it's my belief that Dewey was totally megalomaniac. Well,
obsessed at any rate. I'm sure he was one of those people who can't get to sleep unless their slippers are neatly lined up at the foot of the bed and the kitchen sink has been completely scoured. I understand him, I'm the same myself. This was someone who devoted his entire life to libraries, his existence revolved around books, that was it. Since he was American, and you know how practical they are, Dewey set up a cabinet-making firm to manufacture library furniture, the
Library Bureau Company
, pardon my English pronunciation. The company still exists today. Oh, that's so American. It sells really good quality furniture. They have a few pieces in Paris, at the library at Beaubourg, the Pompidou Centre. This library can't afford them, of course, our furniture is shoddy stuff. I've told the Librarian, and indeed the Mayor, that cheap deal bookcases aren't good enough, but what can I say, they couldn't care less. Anyway, I don't count for anything. No-one listens to me. I'm totally invisible. In fact, if I hadn't deliberately made a noise just now when I arrived, you'd still have been fast asleep, you wouldn't have been disturbed. I'm sorry to have interrupted
your snooze, but perhaps you think it a matter of little consequence that it was an American who dreamed up the ambitious plan of classifying the whole of human knowledge? Well, don't be naïve. When that fanatic Dewey classified literature, he set up a monument of ethnocentrism: 810, American literature; 820, English literature: two whole divisions for the English-speakers. 830 to 880, European literature: six divisions for the whole of old Europe. And what about the hundreds of other languages in the world? Just one division: 890. Just one heading, see? So Dewey's classification has been modified. They decided it would be more politically correct to increase the space for non-aligned countries. O.K., not a bad idea. But then there were more tendentious changes. Graphic novels for instance, they've been taken out of 741.5, because they were crowding out Fine Arts. They get a special section now, near the door. I was against it, I didn't approve of that at all, but well, what did they care? The Religion section, where there are fewer and fewer books, has been tacked on to the end of History – Dewey would have been O.K. with
that. But what really gets me, a huge mistake, is moving Languages from 400 to 800. What have they put there instead? Nothing. So shelfmark 400 is now unoccupied, it's just empty. You agree with me, don't you, it's ridiculous. It makes my head spin, having a vacant shelfmark. What's going to be put there? What domain of culture and human knowledge that we haven't properly valued is going to take it over in the future? I prefer not to think about this unoccupied shelfmark, it frightens me. Like swimming far out to sea. I've only done that once, in the days when I was still taking holidays. More than fifteen years ago. Nowadays I don't go on holiday, not even weekends, I can't stand leisure. There's no space for leisure in life. You're either going up or down, end of story. And at a certain point in your life, you have to decide what you want to do with your time. Well, as I was saying, I was younger then. I'd been dragged onto a boat, I was taken sailing, and suddenly they were all in wetsuits and over the side. I jumped in too, because I didn't want to be the only one left on deck. But I wasn't happy, we were out of sight of the coast. And suddenly,
thinking how deep it was under my feet, I had a panic attack. Brr, I nearly drowned, it still makes me shiver. Ghastly things, holidays! Give me some of that coffee, that'll make me feel better. The idea of leaving an empty shelfmark is so abysmally stupid. It really upsets me. They should never have laid a finger on the Dewey system. Because now, instead of calling it the Dewey decimal classification, they call it “the universal classification”. That gets people going, I can tell you. Some of my colleagues spend their lives working out tiny nuances in the shelfmarks, classifying, numbering, declassifying, de-numbering. And all for the sake of order, hierarchy, tidiness. Oh, don't think I'm complaining. I like my job. Well, O.K., I confess, when I began studying, I didn't mean to become a librarian. I wanted to be a secondary school teacher, but I failed the teaching diploma. So now here I am, an assembly line worker, shelving books, issuing them, beep-beep. I'm nobody, nothing at all. But no, no, I'm not complaining. At least I don't have to shout all day at a lot of out-of-control schoolchildren. I have a quiet life. I work here Tuesday to Saturday, ten till five,
with a lunch break between one and two. Yes, I agree, the opening hours aren't anything like long enough for the readers. But it's no good complaining to me, go and see the Mayor. The rest of the time, I'm at home. I live in the rue Victor Hugo, between the cemetery and Pratier, the butcher's. I live on my own. I'm fine. Nobody bothers me. No, I'm not that old, but I know at my age, my career's pretty well over, so I'm just waiting till I retire and trying not to draw attention to myself. I read a lot. I do what the people upstairs tell me. I say good morning politely to the Librarian. I do the necessary. I do get a little bored … As for men, I've given up on them. It's just impossible in a place like this, impossible. It's not exactly the sticks, but if you're a sensitive, cultivated soul like me, it's … well, it's very provincial. And I need wider horizons. So men, no, that's all over. Love, for me, is something I find in books. I read a lot, it's comforting. You're never alone if you live surrounded by books. They lift my spirit. The main thing is to be uplifted. That's why it's particularly painful to have to work in the basement, it's really dark here, don't you think? Architects never
think of those of us who have to work down here. Architects never think of anything, in my opinion anyway. I know quite a bit about architects, because I see them regularly poking about in this section. I never offer to help them, no, never. The first architect, or student of architecture, who comes along, with his silly glasses and portfolio, pays the price for the rest of them. They won't get any advice, not a smile,
niet, nada
. I believe in collective punishment. It's only fair. Whoever designed this stuffy basement condemned me, arbitrarily and definitively, to live in a dungeon, so I persecute them all in return. I get my revenge when I make them go up and down to different floors a few times, before finding the right book, or when I annoy them with my trolley while they're trying to concentrate on their work, or when I keep trying to open one of their badly designed windows, or turn the air conditioning on or off. I harass them, yes, that's right. Don't look at me with those big eyes, I know when to stop. Nobody notices my little game. And anyway, you can't trust the readers an inch. I don't mean you personally, I'm speaking in general: