Library of Unrequited Love (2 page)

readers only come into a library to cause mayhem. So if you want to limit the damage, you have to watch them like a hawk. My mission can be reduced to that, yes: stopping the readers perverting the overall arrangement of my basement. I don't always manage it. They do stupid things all the time. Inevitably. They put the books back in the wrong place, they steal them, they muddle them up, they dog-ear them. Some people even tear out pages. Imagine, tearing pages out when photocopies are only seven centimes a shot! It's men that do that, every time. And underlining like crazy, that's always men as well. Men just
have
to make their mark on a book, put in their corrections, their opinions. You see the pathetic comments they write in the margin: “Yes!”, “No!!!”, “Ridiculous”, “Very good”, “O.T.T.”, “Wrong”. It's forbidden to write on the books, that's in the Library Rules. You don't remember? Every borrower has to sign the form, when you get your reader's ticket, but everyone forgets about it, they don't respect anything. Well, men, readers, are just trouble, trouble full stop. And since I dislike anarchy, I've drawn my line in the
sand. I prefer the company of books. When I'm reading, I'm never alone, I have a conversation with the book. It can be very intimate. Perhaps you know this feeling yourself? The sense that you're having an intellectual exchange with the author, following his or her train of thought and you can accompany each other for weeks on end. When I'm reading, I can forget everything, sometimes I don't even hear the phone. Not that the phone rings all that often at home, just my mother calling once a week, but if I'm really deep into a book, I don't even hear that. It's a marvellous feeling, very stimulating, but it does call for a minimum of effort. Intellectual effort, I mean. Making an effort has never scared me. And reading my books in silence like that, I'm at peace: my favourite authors are all dead. They're not likely to come along and rearrange my slippers or scribble in the margins. I feel really calm then. Quite calm. Well, to tell the truth, if I can be totally honest with you, there's this boy over there, in the History section, much younger than me, he is. He's doing research, for a thesis, or a diploma, I don't know, something like that. He comes
here to study. I watch him. That's all, it doesn't go any further. He's very intelligent. He's doing some serious research. I only have a first degree. Anyway. I was thinking (you have plenty of time to think in this job) and I told myself that I could never fall for someone who was less well educated than me. The men who carry the books from the stacks for us, for instance, they can still make the odd remark to me, well in fact they don't do that so much now, but even when they did, just little remarks or winks, I tell you, I hardly bothered looking at them. Not intellectual enough. To appeal to me, a man can be shorter than me or taller, richer or poorer, older or younger, nothing's an obstacle, I'm open-minded, you see. But he has to be more intelligent. And he has to be clean-shaven, no stubble, I hate scruffy people. My young researcher is very well turned out. His name's Martin. The first time I saw him, I'd just got off the bus at my usual stop, avenue Salengro, and I was walking along the pavement towards the new entrance to the library, opposite the little shopping centre. At first, I didn't pay any attention, it was just someone walking ahead of me,
probably going to the shopping centre to work or shop, like all the wasters who join the rat-race to sell, or make, or buy any number of pointless consumer goods that don't contribute in any way to the edification of human knowledge. So, I just saw this young man ahead of me, but I didn't pay any particular attention to him. But as it takes five minutes to get to the wretched entrance now, I went on looking at what I could see, his back, his legs, the nape of his neck. Not that I spend my time looking at young men, not my style, O.K., you agree, but I didn't have anything else to do. Because I don't go round with those earphones bombarding tuneless rubbish straight into your brain. Not my cup of tea. Not at all. On the bus, I see all these zombies. One with his iPod, another on his mobile, number three fiddling with his tablet. None of these morons reads a book on the bus. Never. That would be too much effort. And then you expect them to come round here looking for education? No, not a chance, just look at them, brains switched off. As it happened, luckily, Martin was walking ahead of me without a mobile or earphones. I noticed that right away.
Yes, that was a good point, I admit. I hadn't seen his face yet, but I was already imagining that he had a high forehead, dreamy eyes and a determined mouth. When we reached the market place, he didn't turn off to the shopping centre: no, he kept on going towards the library, like me. Then I realized it was the back of his neck that had captivated me, right from the start. Because is there anything more fascinating about a person than a beautiful neck seen from behind? The back of the neck is a promise, summing up the whole person through their most intimate feature. Yes, intimate. It's the part of your body you can never see yourself. A few inches of neck, with a trace of down, exposed to the sky, the back of the head, the last goodbye, the far side of the mind? Well, the back of Martin's neck is all of that. His square shoulders are a perfect setting for the upward sweep of his head, his curly hair caresses those few inches of skin, as if to soften his apparent solidity: a gentle and promising balance, so one already senses the strength of the body and the intelligence of the soul. How I admired him that day. Then, of course, I got to see his face. It's a marvellous
face, if a bit severe: I like boys with strong eyebrows, they're reassuring. When he comes in here, Martin sits on this chair. He's right, it's the calmest, quietest corner of the room and you get a bit of natural light. Between us, it's just “good morning”, “good evening”, nothing else. But I admit, this boy seems to me … how shall I put it? Well, it's not really physical, no, he's very polite, and I like that side of him too, but, well, he just seems … very intelligent. That's it. And exactly the kind of intelligence that I appreciate. Someone who spends his time reading books, taking notes from books, selecting books, and all that so as to write another book, it's really admirable. At the same time, he's not pretentious, not at all. Very modest. I'd be quite ready to invite him home for a cup of Darjeeling. Why not? He could sit on my sofa. That's what sofas are for: sit down, drink a cup of tea, talk about literature. At least that's how I see it. I'm sure he and I have heaps of things in common, I just sense it. Like me, Martin isn't very high up the hierarchy, he's a foot-soldier of research, another assembly line worker, an anonymous toiler in the vineyard. But alas,
I don't dare invite him. I'm afraid I never will have the courage either. I don't want to disturb him in his work. And anyway, he doesn't come all that often, about once a week perhaps. The rest of the time, he must be at the University Library. Well, naturally, a local council library isn't a cultural El Dorado. Mind you, we've done well to get this far: more than two hundred thousand books available to borrow, it might never have happened. To get a public library in a little provincial town like this took centuries. And his nibs the Mayor isn't over-fond of us either. We never see him here, in fact, or anyone from his family. So apart from people like you, who are capable of falling asleep in a reading room, who comes here? Not that many people. They're so ungrateful. When you think of all the trouble it took to reach this point. Because if you care to look more closely into the history of libraries, who could have collected all these books so methodically? Not country bumpkins like you, let me tell you. You don't work on a farm, do you? Sorry, thought you did. But anyway, I don't need to see your tax return to see that unlike those kings and monks and
nobles, people with power, in short, you wouldn't have been able to collect thousands of books. Take Cardinal Mazarin for instance, seventeenth century: he had forty thousand books in his personal library in Paris. Nice little collection. And one day, he decided to open it to the public. That was pretty good going, for a cardinal. Still, we shouldn't be fooled: what mattered most to him was the prestige it brought him. The building got to be called “the Mazarine”. He was as proud as punch, our cardinal. Well, after all, books are like carriages, the whole point is to show off. True culture for rich people doesn't come till later, it creeps up on them, and it's not well regarded. In his case, it took the shape of an admirable man called Gabriel Naudé. A talented little commoner, who started off wanting to be a doctor, but he fell in love with the cardinal's books, so he became his head librarian. When the weather was overcast, you couldn't see a thing inside the poky Mazarine, it was worse than here. But they had an excuse, it was early days. Impressive early days. Gabriel Naudé there and then defined a dozen categories: theology, philosophy, history and so on, and
about thirty sub-categories.
Pre-Melvil Dewey!
Which proves the Americans didn't invent anything. Well, isn't an American a European who missed the boat home? I don't go anywhere nowadays, myself. Oh, let's not even mention boats, I'll get a hot flush. Aeroplanes? Are you kidding? Never! No, I don't go anywhere these days. I ask you, what's the point? You never have enough time to understand what you're seeing, and I can't stand only half knowing things. Trying to visit an art gallery in a couple of hours is stupid. Two hours, that's hardly enough for me to take in a single painting. No, I'm not exaggerating. Oh, well, perhaps you, when you look at a picture, you're just happy to let your feelings respond to colours arranged in a certain order. That kind of romantic swooning isn't my cup of tea. No, no. I have to have all the possible information, about even the tiniest picture. That's the way I am, I have to know everything; the painter's biography, where his studio was, what were the technical conditions, who commissioned the painting, the political context, the aesthetic quarrels of the day, how the paints were chemically composed –
everything. No, I can't stand having just a smattering of superficial knowledge. So tourism, no, out of the question. I used to go to Italy, time was. Now I just read the books in the Fine Arts section. I learn more and it costs me less. I'm sure Martin would agree with me about that. A perfectionist, a workaholic, an obsessive. In fact he must be writing a thesis or something. I told myself that, when I finally peeped discreetly over his shoulder and managed to read: “Peasant revolts in the Poitiers region in the reign of Louis XV”. Written on the outside of a big blue folder. I assumed that was the subject of his thesis.
Peasant revolts in the Poitiers region in the reign of Louis XV
. I'd have preferred it if he'd been working on the reign of Louis XVI or the Revolution. Because Louis XV – kind of a nothing reign. Louis XIV or Louis XVI, yes, no problem, but Louis XV is just a black hole. Look under 944.655, and you'll see, we don't have anything. Whereas in 944.75, history of the French Revolution, there's much more. My favourite shelfmark. And there are nine sub-divisions in it. You really can't imagine. For instance, 944.755 is the Terror. With that kind of
shelfmark, the librarian can have really interesting conversations with the readers. In 1989, the Bicentennial, these books were flying off the shelves. They're lucky, the people in charge of History. Because if you're working in Geography you can wait for ever for a reader to ask you to suggest a book for holiday reading … “Peasant revolts in the Poitiers region in the reign of Louis XV”. Not easy to start a conversation about that. In any case, French history before the Revolution – I might have read about a hundred books on it, but I can't get my head round it. Well, is there anyone who can? Really? Charlemagne a bit, Joan of Arc perhaps, but honestly before the Revolution, nobody actually cares about it. It all seems a very long time ago, all that old stuff. Go on, admit it, I won't blame you. And yet the people who lived in the
ancien régime
, they weren't stupid at all, they respected books, especially after the Renaissance, with the invention of printing, not to mention the Reformation, and all those monomaniacs with their translations of the Bible, but it was all very elitist. The peasants, the poor, the Third Estate, the public, nobody bothered about them. That's
why people like me, from humble backgrounds, we don't feel concerned about anything much before the Revolution. That's how it was. And it could have stayed that way. No movement. Apart from, excuse me while I have a little laugh, a few peasant revolts in the Poitiers region. And then wham! The Revolution. What I admire about our revolutionaries is their capacity for organization. Robespierre was the least head-in-the-air person in history. Him and his colleagues, they were quite right to issue all those thousands of laws and decrees and orders. Because it really needed a good clean-out. Before that it was all privileges, tithes, salt tax, plumed hats. With their holy days for Saint Eustace and Saint Eulalia, different weights and measures in every parish in France, people speaking dialects nobody could understand ten miles away, it was total chaos. And if you were faced with that anarchy, you needed some beautiful, clear and popular rationality. So they went right at it, no shilly-shallying. My greatest regret is that they gave up on the republican calendar, when it was perfectly rational: instead of our fifty-two weeks that never work out the same from year
to year, the revolutionaries decided every month would have three ten-day weeks, to be called
décades
, with a day off every
décade
, thirty-six
décades
in the year – plus the metric system, France divided into 80
départements
, and the kilo at ten times a hundred grams: now that's what I call organization. But these days, are we grateful to Robespierre? Have you ever seen a Robespierre Square or a street named after Saint-Just in France? No? It's a scandal. Yeah, yeah, I know, don't tell me, the guillotine, the Terror, etc. Oh stop, it really annoys me. What it is, Robespierre is everyone's bad guy. Not a good thing to be, the bad guy, it doesn't get you points in the opinion polls. Well, I'd like to see you have a go. A thousand years of monarchy to get rid of, you needed more than a few wimps to do that job. They weren't going to get anywhere by sitting around being nice, were they? It's only because they