The Book on Fire (2 page)

Do you love to read? I’m not referring to plots and characters,
however compelling. Nor to fancy words, turns of phrase. I’m talking about
nestling in a pool of candlelight and cradling a book like a baby in your lap
and nudging the corner upward with your thumb, the whorls snagging the grain of
the paper, and hearing the soft sizzle as the page turns. Do you love to read?

****

Spend
a day with me.

I wake into the pale afternoon and call for a coffee, which Abdallah
brings in a jiffy, smoking in its long-handled copper kanaka. He tips the thick
liquid into a black-and-gold demitasse and I go onto the balcony and watch the
glitter on the sea. I light a cigarette, the air so still in the forenoon that
I can watch the smoke a long time as it gently swerves and burgeons into the
sky, elegant as Diwani script. It’s important to wake up slowly, to keep your
dreams about you as long as possible. After a while, I go inside and pull on a
pair of tea-colored trousers and a cotton shirt with shell buttons and my
thief’s shoes. On a wicker chair outside the Trianon, I sip a macchiato and
smoke another cigarette and nibble the corners of a croissant and watch the
passersby.

Then back to my rooms, where I work at refurbishing my loot;
binding, resetting, mending rips, scappling away library stamps. Those I’ve
finished with I parcel up in cotton and brown paper and address to my
co-conspirators across the globe, who will sell them at exorbitant prices. You
may have bought one of my tampered volumes, or coveted it at any rate, gazing
through iron grills and bulletproof glass to where it stood, paper grail.

At dusk I walk along the corniche, slowly, because the enormous
cobbles are uneven. Lovers sit at intervals along the embankment. The girls are
crying, the boys looking away or trying to explain. Peasant girls sell ragged
roses pilfered from municipal gardens. Sometimes I buy a flower and carry it a
while, then hand it to a child. If I’m sad, I pull a volume of poetry from my
pocket and sit above the shattering waves and read those worn words. When
you’re sad you must not run, because sadness, despite its doleful eyes, has a
mouthful of rusty teeth and a hankering for blood. Instead, walk toward the
beast and curl within its paws and let its rough tongue lull you. It is good to
be lonely at dusk, as the day falls away in a tinsel mosaic. Then, turning your
back on the sunset, you watch longed-for nightrise.

I walk across to Midan Saad Zaghloul. Children play in the empty fountain.
The moon, old gold coin, floats free of the minarets and tarnishes to silver,
alabaster, at last fragile as a sand-dollar. Swallows crosshatch the sky into
darkness.

****

Imagine
a sleeping city, a city of mussed sheets and creased quilts, of pillows
embraced and mattresses stained by inadvertent filth. Imagine all the dreams
seeping up like iridescent mist. And then imagine a silent tribe, clad in
ultramarine, skipping across rooftops, through side streets. In their hands are
lock picks, matchsticks, daggers, blood.

Some say sleepers lose their souls, that when we shut our eyes and
curl to a pillow our inner animals sneak forth from nostril or ear hole to
dance on rooftops and make love to strangers. If so, thieves are dreamers
reversed. We’re demons on the loose, abroad in night cities, while our souls
slumber, invisible, under the sheets. You will be my companion tonight, as we
seek books.

Two a.m. A great villa in Moharram Bey. Locked houses are unread
books: lift the hinged lid and you’re within, sidestepping somnambulists and
late-night urinators, eavesdropping on sleep talkers, stroking cats.

As you ease into the shadows, use your ears, your nose. Listen for
snores and sighs, the moans of lovemaking. Often, as soon as I enter a house,
still blinded by streetlights and the moon, I’ll know if it contains books, and
even how lucky I might be, because my nostrils are tuned to that odor of rust
and saddlebags native to old bindings and ancient ink. That scent—nothing to
match it. Feel the talons at your groin, the sudden blossoming of your heart.
You can almost smell the words entering your brain like motes, gusting and
prancing as if they’ve entered a sunbeam. Wait, wait. Though you know from
which room or hall the odor comes, first you must step through the house,
scouting the terrain. Walk catlike, on padded soles, movements liquid, eyes
wide. Touch nothing. You’re an ultramarine sirocco, wafted in from the sea,
leaving no traces, only rearranging objects a little. Here are the parents,
raucous as garroted pigs on rutted sheets, here a child adrift on a raft of
dreams. Do not linger. Even the sleeping can feel the weight of eyes.

When you’ve marked exits and danger zones, move to where your nose
has told you the bookshelves are, in some hallway or, in the largest houses, in
a room of their own, a room paneled in dusty spines, tooled gold, baroque
colophons. You work swiftly, tickling oil into hinges with a dove feather,
drawing curtains, bunching silk scarves beneath doors. You light your candle and
come at last to the shelves. You can’t resist running a finger along the banded
leather, tipping down a plump volume, hearing the seashore sigh and gravel
crackle as it opens. You read a line, a page. Careful now. This is where a book
thief’s work is more dangerous than that of other thieves: too easily we lose
ourselves in our loot. Many a night I’ve buried myself in some Russian romance
or Arabic ode and only realized as I raised my eyes that a bird’s vibrato was
not that of a St. Petersburg lark or Yemeni falcon but a hoopoe in the
Alexandrian dawn, that I’d been submerged too long and must make haste that I
not meet a maid brewing coffee or the bread-delivery boy on his bicycle.

Off to steal I stride along sidewalks swinging my satchel, like a
blue-suited businessman walking home from some late-night meeting, but
returning from work, if my swag bulges, I exit the house from the top story and
step out onto the rooftops of Alexandria, haloed by moths, bat shriek bouncing
from my skin, saluting the muezzins seated in their towers, who watch the east
for the first bead of dawn. Sometimes, sidestepping dead gulls and sleeping
asps, dreaming poets and fallen kites, I encounter another thief returning
likewise from an early morning escapade and we greet in the pre-dawn chill and
chat about our hauls, as any two colleagues might exchange pleasantries on a
street corner, but this is four a.m. and we are far above the skein of dark
streets and the firelit scallop of the bay.

Then back to the Pension Scheherazade. I swing onto my balcony from
the crenellated eaves. Inside, I lay out my loot, read a few pages in each
book, note torn endpapers, slipped bindings, slack stitching that will have to
be mended. I take a bath, soaking away the thrill in jasmine foam. As the first
call to prayer shimmers into the darkness, dragging a swelling cacophony in its
wake, I don cotton pajamas and carry a glass of wine to the balcony, waiting
for the sea’s slow rupture, the blister of flame. And then to bed.

II. Communion of Thieves

Midsummer.
In the day, men slept in the shade, melting into their shadows, a little smoke
trickling from their forms. The light fused objects. Palm leaves flimsy as
seaweed. Nothing moved between the hours of two and four, even the waves
glutinous. In the gulch of my mattress I tried to sleep, the sheet a mashed
python I wrestled, the pillow a drowned and fetid rodent. I splashed my face at
the sink, but the taps were warm, the water scalding. Somewhere a radio was
playing Oum Koulsoum, the heat thickening the words, her voice struggling
through honey.

Light lay on the tiles in thick solid panes. Dreams came, though it
seemed they bypassed sleep. Dreams of empty glasses, dunes, bones. The
afternoon mosque call was swallowed by the haze. And then, as the sun dropped,
a cat stirred, a horse flicked its ears. A shopkeeper, face crumpled as a paper
bag, began sprinkling water in front of his doorway. Bay leaf and barley
perfume of damp dust. Brushing the dreams away, I ordered coffee, which soaked
instantly through my skin.

The nights brought no respite. Midsummer nights in Alexandria, the
fairies grounded with sodden wings, or slain by heatstroke. Addicted to my
profession, I stumbled into the sweltering night, among the listless bodies.

But this night I could not shake the sensation that eyes watched
from every crevice, from mashrabiyya interstices and perforations in lace
curtains, from the crystal teardrops of chandeliers. Like you, I’m always on
the lookout for the beautiful book: intricately textured, with music to break
your heart, a typeface to sink your teeth into, a story that grips your throat.
On this night I had the notion that the book I craved was just out of reach,
that I’d walked unwittingly past the chamber where it stood or that another,
more talented thief had rifled the shelves moments before. Prying the books
apart, I peered behind them. Shadows. The heat had addled my mind, I guessed.
It was so hot; my hands moved within the darkness as though within liquid.

Wallowing in the melancholy of a barren break-in, I walked back
along the corniche. The minarets were melting like tapers, alabaster pooling
about their bases. The moon still lay beyond the curve. The reflection of the
lighthouse beacon quivered like oil on the waves.

I entered my rooms. Too hot to read. On sopping sheets, I longed for
dreams. Whether sleep arrived I do not know, but during the night I had a
dream. In my dream, the moon was low over the eastern horizon. My waterpipe
with its bowl of curdled glass stood on the table, its shapely shadow, smudged
with blue lights, smeared across the tiles. And as I watched, that shadow
peeled itself free, curling upright, then took a step. Mute and lissome, it
moved through the room. Cords of horror bound me to the bed, a horror heightened
by the silence of the figure and the absence of a face. In the distance, a tram
gnashed, the sea lisped. The shadow—baroque hourglass, goblet of
ultramarine—slipped into every corner, bent over my seachests, then moved to my
bed.

“What do you want?” I whispered, and a parched voice named a title.
The night of my arrival I had been able to resist her, but this night I knew I
would succumb. I was afraid, of course, but I desired to lift that veil. And I
had the notion that my currency might buy something more than her body; lifting
her blue cover would, I hoped, allow me not only into her body, but beneath the
skin of the city. So I entered the wardrobe and pulled the book she desired
from the shelf and returned to my bed. But the shadow was gone.

Laying the book on the bedside table, I stood in the puddle of
moonlight, resting my gaze on the sea, which the huge soft winds ruffled and
stroked, uncertain whether I slept or woke.

Then, like a deadly minnow, a blade emerged from the dark and
shivered across my shirt. Buttons popped around the room, rattling like shaven
dice to repose. Whether she led me to the bed, or I walked there of my own
volition, I could not say.

She was clotted kohl, veil, blade: all exterior, except for her
cunt, like sticking a finger into the guts of a slit ferret, like fucking a
wounded ferret. Her garment contained her reek, harsh as a laborer’s—aniseed
and ammonia, vanilla, dunghill, alley cat: odors particular to her but also to
the city. The odors of Alexandria, as if she had borrowed her perfume from the
bell towers and alleyways and littorals. She blasphemed in her orgasm, and we
lay panting in unison.

I could not remember having woken, and could not remember returning
to sleep. The memory of her voice, the fringe of bells, her curses, had the
texture of a dream. But, waking at last into daylight, I clutched in one fist,
like my own rumpled shadow, an indigo niqab. The sheets were stained with semen
and blood. My blood. Standing before the mirror I traced the red spider web
across my chest. The book was gone, and within my ribcage was a book-shaped
hollow. I hung the niqab in my wardrobe. Gathering the buttons from the tiles,
I sat on the balcony and sewed them back onto my shirt. I knew the wounds were
a warning, a redprint for future catastrophe. And maybe these scabs will heal
to the vaguest chart lines. Or maybe this story will end with your narrator
prettily polygoned.

****

Sitting
on my balcony that evening I picked up, through the crowding scents of
Alexandria, a whiff of burning paper, and knew at once it was no ordinary
notebook or newspaper, but the finest laid linen weave. Looking down, I spied a
girl on the corniche wall, a book in her lap, a light in her hand. She sat with
her legs dangling to seaward, breeze toying with the hem of her niqab. I cannot
look away from a reading girl, so I leaned my elbows on the balustrade and
watched. But in turning the page, as an extension of that motion, she tore it
free. Then, with a gesture like that of a dancer or a priest, she lifted her
other hand to the paper. Entranced and aghast, I watched the flame trickle
along the edges, then blossom. She released it. Borne aloft on a feather of
fire, the page spun and swam to my balcony, eased over the balustrade, and lay
fuming and twitching on the floor. I stamped it to death and picked up the
shard: five words, trimmed by a charred margin. But, reading those words, my
mind’s tongue spoke on, and I knew precisely the place she’d reached. In an
instant I was running down the stairs, through the midan, carriage horses
rearing as I dashed across the street. I vaulted onto the corniche wall beside
her and she turned to me, eyes shadowed within their slots: “I wondered if this
would call you out.”

“What are you doing?” I shouted. “I gave you that on the
understanding it would be preserved for eternity!” I tried to snatch the book,
but she held it at arm’s length, plucking the knife from her garments. The
passersby glanced at us mildly: another couple quarreling over a book.

She twinkled the blade at me. “You gave me this book in exchange for
my services.”

“But now it’s gone. No one else will read it.”

“The fish can read the ashes. Maybe you’ll find a fragment in the
belly of a whale one day.”

I could hardly light a cigarette, my fingers shook so. I have
witnessed violence in my trade, certainly. My hands have marked certain pages
with blood—my own and others’—but I have seldom been so shaken at the sight of
destruction.

“You’re distracting me,” she said.

I realized that the book was lost. “Oh, go ahead,” I told her. “Rip
away, veiled fiend.”

I chain-smoked a ten-pack, staring out at the bay while she finished
the book. On the waves floated leaves and cobs, pistachio shells, rose petals,
ash. She tossed the burning binding into the sea and brushed her gloved hands
together as if she’d just eaten konafa. “Excellent,” she said. “First-class
read. You have a connoisseur’s taste. I’m impressed.”

“How selfish you are.”

“Oh, there are plenty of books. Believe me, I know.”

“How many books have you burned?”

“A book a day, mostly. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Who are you
to whine, book thief?”

“You’ve been shadowing me.”

“Every night.”

“All right, I’m a thief. But someone will read the books I steal. I
take forgotten books and post them to someone who will cherish them. The books
you take are gone forever.”

“No.”

“I watched you burn it.”

“Have you ever burned a book?”

“Of course not.”

“Then you don’t know what you’re talking about.” She caressed her
gloved palm with the flat of her knife.

“But why burn a beautiful book? Burn a paperback, burn a newspaper.”

“Surely you’d agree that reading a beautiful book, printed in
hot-metal Bembo on handmade Limoges, is so much more satisfying than reading a
mass-market paperback.”

“Well...”

“Of course. And in the same way, burning that book is more
satisfying than burning a newspaper. Ah, the pleasures of burning incunabula,
papyrus, vellum. Nothing to match it.” Her laughter sounded like bones under
tram wheels.

We sat a while, watching the scurf of ash in the foam. “These traces
will not dissolve,” she murmured, “for they are woven by the north and south
winds.” Then she swung her legs around and slipped off the wall. “Come. Would
you like to meet some real thieves?”

****

She
led me westward along the corniche, then across the road, past the memorial to
the unknown author and the equestrian bronze of the turbaned Albanian. We
entered the snarl of tiny alleys behind Ras al-Tiin, like negotiating the bases
of gullies, their sides ornately eroded.

At the end of a cul-de-sac, she whispered: “Aftah, ya simsim,” and a
wooden door swung open. She stood aside to let me enter.

Immediately the holy stench was in my nostrils—ancient incense,
apple tobacco, bat shit, candle wax. For a moment, I glimpsed a vaulted
interior of muted reds, shadowed greens, dark gold, with a waist-high speckling
of candle flames. Then the frame filled with an enormous form, voluminously
bearded, forearms tattooed with arcana like a devout sailor. He gathered me
into his church without hesitation, curling an arm across my shoulder. Inside,
he extracted me from his aromatic armpit and held me before him: “What’s your
trade, son?”

“I ... I deal in books.”

“I see. Well, you’ve come to the right city for that. And the right
church. This is the Kanisa Prometheus. Come. Meet my little flock of black
sheep.”

He trundled me across the mosaics to the low tables where his
congregation bent over chessboards and waterpipes, under the gaze of St.
Isaiah, St. Will, St. Ursula, St. Vladimir.

At the first table sat a girl in black, phosphorescent crosses and
virgins strung around her neck. Her skin as well, in the spangled dusk, seemed
phosphorescent, so pale, washed with lavender. A dark-skinned man was gripping
her wrist and sketching on her arm in oil pastel. His face was stippled and
slashed with scars, so at first I thought he’d been the victim of a terrible
disease, then saw that they were carefully arranged in concentric circles,
stacked stripes. His clothes were a crushed calico of smudged patterns. As I drew
nearer I saw that the crook of the girl’s elbow was flecked with bruises, each
with a purple stigma, and that the man was engaged in joining the marks,
forming an off-kilter ankh or seagull. The girl looked up, then smiled and
stood. She was older than I’d thought at first, too thin, her eyes huge. She
took one of my hands in both of hers, and I could feel her small bones.
“Welcome,” she said. “I’m Nura. Abuna Makarios will fetch you a drink. And this
is Koujour. An artist, as you see.” She held out the arm he’d been decorating.