When she came to, the bookshop was empty except for the man who had been reading. With concern he asked her how she felt, and then introduced himself as Luca. He was sitting next to her on a folding chair. She was propped up in a soft leather chair behind the counter. The voices had disappeared along with the audience members, but she was so exhausted she couldn't get up.
Luca told her to relax and take all the time she needed. In a soothing voice he continued to chat about everyday things: the bookshop, the readings they had in the evenings, various books, even the weather, until he suddenly asked her how long she'd been hearing voices.
The question took her aback, and she forgot her vow never to mention it to anyone; she told him everything. Luca turned out to know an astonishing amount about her condition, asking her how strong the voices were, whether she was able to shut them out, when she had heard them for the first time and whether she knew anyone else with the same experiences. She answered as best she could, and for the first time she sensed that someone understood her, that she was being taken seriously. In his relaxed manner, which she would grow so fond of in the coming years, Luca explained that she was not the only one – at least half of the people who had been at the reading possessed the same abilities.
Katherina had never regarded it as an ability. For her it was the voices that sought her out, forcing her to pay attention; she was not the one who tuned into them. But that was also possible, Luca explained: she could tune into the channel that opened whenever people read, whether aloud or silently to themselves.
In a matter of fifteen minutes he taught her a technique that enabled her to turn down the volume of the voices so they no longer bothered her. Even though the technique would require practice, the effect was so extraordinary on her first attempt that Katherina burst into tears from sheer relief. Luca comforted her and invited her to drop by as often as she liked to improve her technique. Of course she could try muting the voices without his supervision, but he implored her never to try to amplify them or alter them in any other way until she'd had more practice. Katherina would later find out why.
The customer in Libri di Luca wasn't focusing. Among the small glimpses of images conjured up from the excerpts he was reading were pictures that had no relevance to the books. That was a residual effect of her powers. In addition to being able to hear the text that was being read, Katherina could often see the images it evoked in the reader. And if he or she happened to be thinking about all sorts of other things at the same time, they would pop up like brief sequences inserted into a film. That was a side effect that had required training, but over the years Luca had helped her with this as well, and she was now able to sense what an unfocused reader, such as the man with the horn-rimmed glasses, had on his mind.
Apparently he was supposed to meet a girl later in the day because pictures of the girl kept appearing along with an image of where they were supposed to meet (at the Town Hall Square), where they were going to have dinner (Mьhlhausen), plus his strongly erotic hopes for the rest of the evening. Katherina felt her cheeks flush.
It was by no means everyone that Katherina could read in this manner. Iversen claimed that it had to do with the individual's imagination, how clear the images were that came from the text and the person's subconscious; but it was also a matter of the reading style. People who skimmed the words produced a swift series of pictures which in the most extreme cases became a stylized cartoon that would flicker before her eyes. Other readers took their time – so much time that the images were razor-sharp and so saturated with information that she could go exploring in them, zooming down to the smallest details, as if in a spy photo from a satellite.
'I'll take these,' said a cautious voice, and Katherina opened her eyes. The man with the horn-rimmed glasses stood at the counter holding out two books towards her. He gave an apologetic shrug of his shoulders.
'Eighty kroner,' said Katherina without looking at the paperbacks he had selected. They had already revealed themselves asThe Big Sleep andMoon Palace, which cost 30 and 50 kroner respectively. She stood up and found a bag under the counter while the customer rummaged through his pockets for the money. He paid and left the shop with a black plastic bag printed with the name 'Libri di Luca' in gold letters.
In some cases Katherina's Lector powers compensated for her dyslexia, and in many situations she was able to completely hide her handicap. For a while that was how she'd appeared to show 'noticeable improvement' in her reading classes in primary school. But when the teacher or other pupils weren't following along in the text, she would be cut off from the meaning of the letters. That had produced a setback at exam time.
Luca thought there was a connection between her dyslexia and her abilities as a Lector. During their practice sessions he quickly discovered that she had powerful talents, and in his opinion this was because of dyslexia, not in spite of it. So he tried to get her to regard her abilities as a gift and not a punishment, which was how she had previously thought of them. Even though he himself was a Lector, he was not a receiver and thus could not fully understand everything that Katherina had to endure.
She thought it must be even worse for her mentor's son, who was now being initiated into the secrets of the Lectors in the room beneath her. The scepticism she had felt when Luca explained things to her had soon disappeared, because she had already felt it in her own body. Here was an explanation, incredible though it might be, and yet it was an explanation she could accept. But she couldn't even imagine how it would all sound to someone who was a complete outsider. How would he react?
At that moment Katherina heard the stairs creak, and a few seconds later Iversen came into view. He was sweating and his face was a bit red, the way it always was whenever he got excited or upset by a discussion.
'He wants proof,' he said, out of breath. 'Could you give a demonstration?'
6
Which one should he choose?
Jon walked along the shelves in the basement, looking for a book to use in the demonstration. He could choose any volume he liked, Iversen had said, like a magician challenging a spectator to pull a card at random from the deck. As Jon understood it, the plan was for him to read an excerpt from the book while Katherina tried to influence his perception of the text to such a degree that he would have no doubts that such a thing was possible.
As Iversen had explained, Katherina was a receiver, which meant that she was able to hear and to a certain extent see what other people were reading. What seemed even more unbelievable was that she was capable of accentuating the reader's experience of the text at will. In this way her abilities resembled those he himself possessed, according to Iversen, but whereas he should present a text in order to charge it, Katherina was able to affect the reader directly, even if that person was reading silently to himself.
Iversen had seemed very convincing, but when he had hinted at outright mind-reading as a consequence of Katherina's talents, Jon had demanded proof. The fact that the old man had immediately agreed to his request planted a seed of concern in Jon's mind. If there really was something to these abilities, he wasn't sure he cared to have other people rummaging about in his brain as he read.
The way Katherina entered the library hadn't made the situation any better. She emanated neither the flamboyant style of a magician nor the secretiveness of a mystic – it seemed more as if she were a bit embarrassed to be there, and she hardly gave him a glance as she sat down in one of the leather chairs with her hands in her lap. Even so, Jon felt that he was being observed, not only by the two other people present but by the walls of books, which seemed to be studying him with bated breath.