Jane found a pile of several books, all of which constituted The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. Emily came across The Story of Mankind by Hendrik van Loon. Michael put Das Kapital down and wandered to another shelf, where he picked up The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler. Ernest was trying to read some of Utopia, but he found it hard going and had to rest.
“I’m hungry,” announced Horatio. “While you clever people are having fun, I would like to eat something.”
“It is time we all ate,” said Jane. “We can still look at the books while we are eating…. It really is wonderful—I mean finding the library and all these books. I do wish I could read properly. Ernest, you are going to have to help me a lot.”
There was a look of almost comical sadness on Ernest’s face. “Help you!” he said wistfully. “Dear Jane, I’ll have all the trouble in the world, just helping myself.”
Emily shared out the sandwiches and apples. The light was getting poorer, and it was hard to read even the large print on the title pages and book covers. Michael began to use his electric torch.
“Don’t flash that thing about too much,” said Horatio. “It will be visible from outside. No need to advertise our presence too much to any inquisitive drybones.”
“I know what I’m going to do,” said Ernest excitedly. “I am going to make a little collection of books that I think I can read, then I’ll take them home. When I have finished them, I can bring them back and get some more.”
“Do you think that is wise?” asked Emily.
“Why not? Nobody comes here. That is obvious. Nobody wants the books, except us.”
“Have you got a safe place where you can hide them?” asked Michael.
“No, but I’ll find one. It won’t be difficult.” He munched an apple and strained to make some sense out of Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson.
Michael walked across the floor of the library, his footsteps echoing on the wooden blocks. For no apparent reason, he suddenly remembered something he had said to Ernest on Waterloo Bridge. In the country of the mad, the sane man is crazy.
He looked around the large and darkened room at the piles of dusty books that seemed as if they had been placed on the shelves in a hurry and just left there to rot. He looked at his four friends, eating sandwiches and apples, surrounded by millions of recorded words that could only be deciphered with great difficulty. He thought of the river that was not a river and of parents who were entirely different from their so-called children…. Truly, it was the country of the mad. But the important question was: Who could define sanity? And if, indeed, anyone could remain sane in such an incomprehensible world, how long could they remain so?
His head ached with thinking and with trying to read. He was tired of mystery and conflict and the odd isolation of the fragiles, the loneliness that drove them to try to be brothers and sisters and teachers and even parents to each other. He was tired of being responsible for the Family. And he was tired of the fact that he would have to go on being tired for a long time.
He sighed and flashed his torch idly at a pile of books. One caught his attention. He picked it up. Slowly, laboriously he read the title. And then suddenly his tiredness was forgotten. His heart began to beat fast enough for him to be aware of the beating. He knew—he knew beyond any shadow of doubt—that the painful process of teaching himself to read would be proved worthwhile. The title of the book he held in a trembling hand was: A Short History of the World. The author was someone called H. G. Wells.
Michael sat down on the floor and flicked through the pages lovingly. Here and there a word caught his eye—a word that he could understand. He was oblivious of the library, oblivious of the Family. This was the book. He knew it. This was the book. A Short History of the World! The very words became an incantation. Now would secrets be revealed and mysteries resolved. He felt drunk. Drunk with anticipation and excitement.
Suddenly, he realized that someone was talking to him, someone was tugging his arm. It was Emily. Even in the semidarkness he saw that there was a very puzzled expression on her face.
“Sorry, Michael. I didn’t realize you were in a trance…. I gave this book to Ernest and asked him to tell me what it was. He looked at it, then he seemed very surprised. He wouldn’t tell me about it. He told me to ask you. Don’t you think that is odd?”
Michael stood up and automatically pushed A Short History of the World in his pocket.
He took the book that Emily held out and shone his torch on the title page.
Hesitantly but accurately, he read: “Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.”
16
Michael gazed at the book in his hand as if it might explode. Emily Bronte! It had never occurred to him—so many things had never occurred to him—that there could be more than one Emily Bronte. And that this other Emily could be sufficiently clever to create a book consisting of thousands and thousands of words—the knowledge confounded him.
He opened the book and shone his torch on a page headed Chapter One. Then, with some difficulty, and making a mess of words such as “neighbor” and “situation,” he read the first few sentences aloud: “I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbor that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country. In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society.”
He closed the book and looked wonderingly at the Emily Bronte who now stood by his side.
“What does it mean?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I would have to read some more words and get familiar with the way they are being used.”
“I don’t mean the book. How does someone else come to have my name? I thought names were special.”
Michael sighed. “I don’t know that, either…. Sorry, Emily. I’m the expert on not knowing…. I don’t know why but I never imagined that more than one person would have the same name.” He laughed bitterly. “For all I know, there could be a large number of Emily Brontes somewhere. I only specialize in ignorance.”
“Perhaps she is dead,” suggested Ernest.
“Who?”
“The Emily Bronte who made the book. It looks a very old book. She could have died a long time ago.”
“I suppose so.”
“Perhaps,” said Emily, “perhaps there is some reason—some link between my name and her name.”
“I wonder if she was a fragile,” said Horatio. “Probably not. Not if she could read and write and put a lot of big words together to make a book…. I bet she—it—was one hell of a drybone.”
Michael had a sudden, intuitive conviction. “She was not a drybone. None of the people who wrote these books were drybones. The drybones don’t care about reading and writing. They don’t need books. Only fragiles need books or care about them.” He was suddenly inspired. “We have company, here. Company of our own kind. A company of minds. Now that we have found books, we will all learn to read properly. Then we shall be able to understand what these other fragiles thought and hoped and did…. Emily is right, though. There may be some link.”
“Let’s look for names,” said Ernest. “We had better look together. It is too dark now to see clearly without the torch.”
Horatio was beginning to be bored. “While you people look for names, I’ll nose around and see if there is anything else of interest…. I don’t think you are going to get much out of these books.”