a few minutes later: “Who’ll have it next?”
I said, “I’ll bring it back to the library.”
“Hmm. Then?”
“It will go back on the shelf.”
“Then?”
At what point does one recognize that the truth is precisely the wrong instrument for a task? I was in charge of circulation. A slowness, a quasi-geological time governs the circulation of books: the punctuation of frantic movements as a book takes on a buzz, gets reviewed, followed by years of stillness, silence, neglect. Perhaps a motion picture is commissioned, produced, released; the book stirs, reenters the commerce of the world, mingles and becomes inebriated in the gala of its success, and eventually tapers off, only somewhat reluctantly, into a second retirement. Envision a remake thirty years later—it happens. There is always hope, you see.
But imagine if one could speed up time, fast-forward and rewind over longer intervals, see at once all the permutations of a book’s lifetime. From this vantage point, the Director of Circulation might appear the ringleader of a circus—coordinating acrobats, elephants, fire-breathing ladies, third-rate clowns, contract renegotiations. Books would fly off the shelves in a blur, leaving gaps like children’s debut teeth, making their forays out into the world, and swooping back to their perches eventually like osprey. Indeed, sideways and spines up, with their covers spread out, would they look like anything other than birds? I paused, though, as I realized that what was missing from this vision were the temporary habitations of the book outside, its journeys through the neighborhood. Or, as I knew all too well from the day-to-day job, throughout the world. How laughably common is it to hear “I returned that—I’m absolutely positive!” only to receive a sheepish note from a return address far away—New Mexico?—that reads, “This turned up while unpacking. Sorry!” One would have hoped for a jar of salsa, at least.
I thought, inevitably, of that Other Book. The Atlas. Unwritten, perhaps unwritable. I pictured the ideal version of that book; once one has admitted the impossible, one might as well usher in its unruly companions. Picture a tracer placed in the book that would record its travels to and fro. No, too much of a concession to the regime. Rather, render a version of the book itself that includes a sheaf of blank pages and empty maps. These would be pages reserved for the recording of the book’s own journey, not merely where it went but what went on in the lives of those around it while it was in their abodes. I foresee, and you do, too, that gradually the journal grows and grows, till it subsumes the book, essentially becomes the book. Worry about that then.
I was the Director of Circulation. I said, “It is checked out by a boy.”
He seemed pleased with this answer. But not satisfied. Perhaps he, too, at that moment was thinking of The Atlas; perhaps he never ceased thinking of it; perhaps it was error to think that it was a book at all, that it was anything other than the very medium of thought itself. “And then?” The machines pulsed and bleeped; the room waited for more. The Hula-hoop froze, though it did not tumble; it hovered around the waist of the girl—did I neglect to mention that she was there?
I continued: “He needs it for school.” It was all I could think of. The hoop was still poised. “For earth science class.”
He laughed. “Required text?” he said.
My father didn’t mind imaginative leaps, but he was no Panglossian. “Nope,” I said. “For extra credit.” The story pushed on. With these minimal legs, it somehow staggered to its feet, however awkwardly. “They’re . . . not covered in the regular curriculum. The teacher . . . gave them a list. ‘Topics Not Covered,’ it read. Passed it around the room.” Somehow with the contrivance of that list, the story started to plod forward in my mind, then to lumber forth with increased momentum as the sheet worked its way around the room. I didn’t know where any of these images, which had the materiality and authority of memories, were coming from, except in the vaguest sense. I could see my father was transfixed. “The kid, he signed up first . . . for avalanches. He wanted avalanches, desperately. Who wouldn’t? He was overjoyed when the list came around . . . and the four people ahead of him hadn’t signed up for avalanches. What were the odds?
“So he signs his name. But when the list comes around and the teacher wants to double-check . . . she reads off Billy Fletcher’s name for avalanches. He wants to protest; he can see from where he’s sitting that Billy has crossed off his name—it’s Heath, and he—gets mocked for it sometimes, especially next year when they’re doing Macbeth. Anyway, it’s crossed, blatantly, off, but Billy’s bigger, more developed, works out, football player. So Heath keeps his mouth shut. Caves is left, still. Anybody want caves? He shoots up his hand. He needs the extra credit way more than he needs avalanches. He’s fallen behind, barely passing the class. He doesn’t mind earth science, rather enjoys it, actually, but it’s . . . a lot of memorization. Doesn’t have time. Most of his free time is spent over in . . . the hunting store where he works, helps out his dad, exhausting.
“So he gets one day off, the start of actual hunting season. Everything’s closed, but . . . for some reason the library’s open. Let’s say . . . the librarian there is antihunting. Heath heads for the library and finds your book on caves. Takes it out. Takes out a couple of other books. But he knows the project has to be good. He doesn’t have a lot of time, though—next day it’s back to the store. He’s strapped in math class, too, where Mrs. Clayman is going over the Cartesian graphs. He doesn’t get functions. So . . . he copies a bit, more than a bit, in truth, three pages.”
As I related this, a part of me was observing myself, and that part wanted to discern where the details were coming from. They seemed conjured from anywhere and nowhere at once, at first trickling, then gushing forth as though from some reservoir of necessity. A thought that I had vaguely had before crystallized in my mind: nonfiction could be pinned down, assigned its plot of shelf real estate, where it could reliably be located in the continuum of knowledge, in any library in any country in the world. But fictions were like transient, shifty renters—all we could do with them was alphabetize them by the arbitrary condition of the authors’ last names and hope they stayed put.
“So,” my father murmured. “He get away with it?”
The tip of my tongue rooted around between my lip and the top of my gums as I pondered, as though the answer were wedged there like food caught in teeth. It was a good question, and it felt like any answer was irrevocable; somehow, too, it needed to be dictated by the book. “He gets caught . . . when his teacher asks him about the part about ‘uterine walls.’ The class snickers . . . so she knows it is her professional duty to do something, and when she confronts him, Heath is stymied, tongue-tied.” I paused for a moment here. My dad was not Pollyannaish, but why I had been lured into such a cynical cavern of possibility, a seeming dead end? Somehow, glancing over at his sallow cheeks, I felt I needed to push around this.
It came to me all at once, and I said it as quickly as though I was on a fading phone connection. “But he will read the book later for a literature class and understand it much more and look back in disgust and pathos on his younger ways. And he will write his college essay on the book and the whole experience, and it will get him into his second choice.”
I looked over at my father; he appeared to be in something akin to a trance. As for me, I’d gotten so caught up in the story that I hadn’t even seen Désirée come into the room.
“This is what happens next to the book,” I explained, as if this explanation would make sense to her. But if it didn’t—I shrugged—so be it; I’d realized something that my father, perhaps, had already known: that delirium is a form of understanding.
As
