I was going to tell her that she was a beautiful girl and she shouldn’t feel bad about it, that she was all wrong in denouncing herself, but then I changed my mind instantly.
That was not what she wanted to hear and that wasn’t really what I wanted to say. After all, I have a little more sense than that. We both didn’t want to hear what I first thought of telling her.
‘What’s your name?’ I said.
‘Vida. Vida Kramar.’
‘Do you like to be called V-(ee)-da or V-(eye)-da?’
That made her smile.
‘V-(eye)-da.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Nineteen. Soon I’ll be twenty. On the tenth.’
‘Do you go to school?’
‘No, I work at night. I went to State for a while, then UC, but I don’t know. Now I’m working at night. It’s OK.’
She was almost looking at me.
‘Did you just finish your book?’ I said.
‘Yes, I finished it yesterday. I wanted to tell how it is to be like me. I figured it was the only thing left for me to do. When I was eleven years old, I had a thirty-six inch bust. I was in the sixth grade.
‘For the last eight years I’ve been the object, veneration and butt of at least a million dirty jokes. In the seventh grade they called me “points”. Isn’t that cute? It never got any better.
‘My book is about my body, about how horrible it is to have people creeping, crawling, sucking at something I am not. My older sister looks the way I really am.
‘It’s horrible.
‘For years I had a recurrent dream that I got up in the middle of the night and went into my sister’s bedroom and changed bodies with her. I took off my body and put on her body. It fitted perfectly.
‘When I woke up in the morning, I had on my own true body and she had this terrible thing I’m wearing now. I know it’s not a nice dream, but I had it all during my early teens.
‘You’ll never know how it is to be like I am. I can’t go anywhere without promoting whistles, grunts, howls, minor and major obscenities and every man I meet wants to go to bed instantly with me. I have the wrong body.’
She was staring directly at me now. Her vision was unbroken and constant as a building with many windows standing fully here in this world.
She continued: ‘My whole life has just been one torment. I, I don’t know. I wrote this book to tell how horrible physical beauty is, the full terror of it.
‘Three years ago a man was killed in an automobile accident because of my body. I was walking along a highway. I had gone to the beach with my family, but I couldn’t stand it any longer.
‘They demanded that I put on a bathing suit. “Don’t be bashful, just relax and enjoy yourself.” I was miserable with all the attention I was getting. When an eighty-year-old man dropped his ice-cream cone on his foot, I put my clothes back on and went for a walk along the highway up from the beach. I had to go somewhere.
‘A man came driving by in his car. He slowed down and was gawking at me. I tried to ignore him but he was very persistent. He forgot all about where he was and what he was doing and drove his car right into a train.
‘I ran over and he was still alive. He died in my arms, still staring at me. It was horrible. There was blood all over both of us and he wouldn’t take his eyes off me. Part of the bone was sticking out of his arm. His back felt funny. When he died, he said, “You’re beautiful.” That’s just what I needed to make me feel perfect for ever.
‘When I was fifteen a student in a high-school chemistry class drank hydrochloric acid because I wouldn’t go out with him. He was a little crazy, anyway, but that didn’t make me feel any better. The principal prohibited me from wearing a sweater to school.
‘It’s this,’ Vida said, gesturing rain-like towards her body. ‘It’s not me. I can’t be responsible for what it does. I don’t attempt to use my body to get anything from anyone and I never have.
‘I spend all my time hiding from it. Can you imagine spending your whole life hiding from your own body as if it were a monster in a Grade B movie, but still every day having to use it to eat, sleep and get from one place to another?
‘Whenever I take a bath I always feel as if I’m going to vomit. I’m in the wrong skin.’
All the time she told me these things she did not take her eyes off me. I felt like a statue in a park. I poured her another glass of sherry and one for myself. I had a feeling that we were going to need a lot of sherry before the night was over.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ I said. ‘I’m just a librarian. I can’t pretend that you are not beautiful. That would be like pretending that you are someplace else in the world, say China or Africa, or that you are some other kind of matter, a plant or a tyre or some frozen peas or a bus transfer. Do you understand?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘It’s the truth. You’re a very pretty girl and you’re not going to change, so you might as well settle down and get used to it.’
She sighed and then awkwardly slipped her coat off and let it hang on the chair behind her like a vegetable skin.
‘I once tried wearing very baggy formless clothes, muu muus, but that didn’t work because I got tired of looking like a slob. It’s one thing to have this fleshy thing covering me but it’s another thing to be called a beatnik at the same time.’
Then she gave me a great big smile and said, ‘Anyway, that’s my problem. Where do we go from here? What’s next? Got any more candy bars?’
I pretended to get one from my pocket and she laughed out loud. It was a pleasing thing.
Suddenly she turned her attention upon me in a very strong way. ‘Why are you are here in this funny library?’ she said. ‘This place where losers bring their books. I’m curious about you now. What’s your story, Mr Candyman Librarian?’
She was smiling as she said these things.
‘I work here,’ I said.
‘That’s too easy. Where did you come from? Where are you going?’
‘Well, I’ve done all sorts of things,’ I said, sounding falsely old. ‘I worked in canneries, sawmills, factories, and now I’m here.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘Here,’ I said.
‘You live here in the library?’ she said.
‘Yes. I have a large room in the back with a small kitchen and toilet.’
‘Let me see it,’ she said. ‘I’m suddenly curious about you. A young-old man like yourself working in a creepy place like this doesn’t show that you’ve come out too far ahead of the game either.’
‘You’re really laying it on the line,’ I said, because she had really got to me.
‘I’m that way,’ she said. ‘I may be sick, but I’m not stupid. Show me your room.’
‘Well,’ I said, dogging a little. ‘That’s a little irregular.’
‘You’re kidding,’ she said. ‘You mean there’s something irregular for this place? I don’t know how to break it to you, but you’ve got a pretty far-out operation going on here. This library is a little on the whacky side.’
She stood up and stretched awkwardly, but it’s hard to describe the rest of it. I had never in my life seen a woman graced with such a perfect body whose spell was now working on me. As certain as the tides in the sea rush to the shore, I showed her my room. ‘I’d better get my coat,’ she said. She folded her coat over her arm. ‘After you, Mr Librarian.’
‘I’ve never done this before,’ I said, faraway-like as if to no one.
‘Neither have I,’ she said. ‘It will be a different thing for both of us.’
I started to say something else, but abstraction clouded my tongue and made it distant and useless.
‘The library isn’t really open now, is it?’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s after midnight and it’s only open for special books, latecomers like myself, right?’