I glanced down into the pocket anyway, indeed empty. My father was a man who would have cared deeply about the Patriot Act and its implications for American citizens, privacy, and freedom. But instead of going into that, I told a half-truth, a truth that five years earlier would have been intact. I said, “We have that information on the computer now, Dad.”
He nodded. Désirée took the book, thanked me. Said the last book she read was months ago. These hospital shifts are killing her.
One of the most striking stories I read when I was in college was Borges’s “Library of Babel,” and on occasion I have thought myself the proprietor of that very library. Borges envisions a metaphysical marvel, a library that essentially comprises the whole of the universe — the universe as library. Its volumes are random and contain every possible permutation of text, from gibberish to the complete works of Shakespeare. Within the library that Borges conjures, not only is every book ever written shelved somewhere but every possible book, every conceivable configuration of the alphabet. The conceit is too dizzying to think about for very long, but it serves as a good antidote to certain fundamental realities: funds are limited, books go unread, tumble out of print, serve as doorstops — all too effectively, I might add; the greatest libraries of civilizations burn down, suns collapse, abandon planets without child support. And each life is limited — there is only so much reading that one can consume in the course of a lifetime, and the guests are waiting for the ham. No, that’s my brother Aidan’s life, and his line, too — once we were speaking in his bedroom, and he was expressing concern for me, my solitude, the dearth of female companionship in my life. I had just broken off an apparently blossoming relationship shortly before coming for Thanksgiving. At some point, despite my brother’s better intentions, it became apparent that there was nothing more to be said — we could both hear the mirth below, the hubbub of Aidan’s kids and those of the neighbors who were over, the clatter of dishes being hoisted from the kitchen to prime spots on the table, sloshing sauce. And Aidan, at last, smiling at the futility of his words: “Well, the guests are waiting for the ham.”
Désirée had called me and warned me my dad wasn’t doing well, that he seemed less cognizant of his surroundings. He was talking about Lake Superior and hunting lodges and a mother bear. She said that, by the way, she had read the book, and while she wasn’t sure she had understood most of it, and it was unlike any other book that she had ever read, she’d found it to be “powerful and very, very emotional.” I thanked her without quite knowing why, and added, “I bet he’d be glad to know that.”
She said, “Oh, I told him. I told him I particularly liked the part about bats.”
“Oh, yes,” I shot right back, perhaps a bit too eagerly. “Where he goes into the whole thing about insideness and outsideness, and how we are becoming more batlike as we spend more and more of our lives indoors.”
“Yes.” I could hear her smiling over the phone as she noted that I had read it, perhaps concurrently with her. “I could identify with that. I never seem to get outside these days.” She paused for a moment. “Some of that stuff was strange, though.”
“About the proportions of the bat’s head to its body?”
“That’s it,” she said, and I could sense her nodding and even laughing.
“My dad’s a strange guy,” I said. “He has some strange notions about the world.”
Later, when I arrived at the hospital, and Désirée had left the book behind with a note, he came awake. He couldn’t really gesture, lacking the facial control to do so, but I could sense that inwardly he was motioning to it as he said, “She liked it.”
“So I hear.”
Then, 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?