The Empty Grave of Edgar Allan Poe

THE LIBRARY OF THADDEUS TRIPP

7. The Bibliophobe

I think that authors’ ghosts creep back
Nightly to haunt the sleeping shelves
And find the books they wrote.

                             (from Authors’ Ghosts by Muriel Spark)

          “Do you think books change when we’re not reading them?” It was an unfair question since what I really wanted to know was whether films changed when you weren’t watching them but it was pointless asking Thaddeus about films and so I had to start my enquiries at a tangent. That afternoon I’d watched a Don Siegel film, The Hanged Man which I hadn’t seen for years. In fact I remember quite clearly where and when I had seen it - in a cinema in Dublin during a summer holiday I spent there when I was fourteen years old. I remember the cinema because it was next to a railway bridge and the place vibrated when the trains went by, and I remember the film because I remember films. I also remember the ending when Robert Culp walks off with the young gypsy girl and happy endings ensue. This afternoon I watched it and Robert Culp walked off with Norman Fell - someone else got the girl.
          Now this was made in the olden days when there was no such thing as a director’s cut, so either my memory was playing tricks (which, I must admit did seem to be happening with more regularity nowadays, the little minx) or the film had changed in the intervening years.
          But it was no use asking Thaddeus whether he thought films could change when you’re not watching them, so I cleverly adjusted my query to books. Same difference. Even so, the fat man caught me completely unwares with his answer.
          “Funny you should say that,” he said. “They’re knocking down Unity House.”
          Now, if the rules and conventions of conversation mean anything, then if I ask a question I expect an answer. Or at least a dismissive wave of a podgy finger. The fate of Unity House, whether amusing or not, did not follow on from my asking if books (or films, tacit) changed when you chucked them up the loft. I expressed my chagrin with this breakdown in communication by lighting another cigarette and letting it kill me. After a minute’s silence, I asked him again: “Do you think books change when you’re not reading them?”
          “I saw one today, they’re becoming more common.”
          “What? You saw what today? And what’s that got to do with books changing?”
          “Everything. I saw a bibliophobe.”
          “A what?”
          “A bibliophobe. A person who has an irrational fear of books. He was gibbering outside Webberley’s window. The constables had to drag him away.”
          I still felt that the point had been missed somehow. All I wanted to know ... and then he told me.
          “I met a bibliophobe once. He was standing outside Sainsbury’s ripping the labels off tin cans and then drawing little pictures of their contents in black felt tip. I enquired as to what he was doing - I surmised it was some new recycling procedure and I like to keep up with such developments - but he told me he wouldn’t let any printed matter into his house. So as soon as he bought his food he would remove the packaging and throw it away. He even did it with his fish fingers, emptying them into a plastic bag. I realised then that he was a bibliophobe. They were quite rare back then and I had never encountered one before. Essentially harmless of course, just a little crazy. Not like the biblioclasts. They like to destroy books. Bibliophobes on the other hand daren’t go near them.
          He interested me, especially since his phobia had progressed to such an extreme degree, and so I invited him for a drink at a nearby hostelry. He refused at first since he was not too happy about being inside any commercial establishment since there were always advertisements and labels and, of course, signs. But it was a pleasant day and there were tables outside, so I suggested we enjoy the clement weather. When I had him settled, I asked about his condition and he told me a very strange tale.
          Apparently he used to work at Hanley Library, of all places, but this was before he contracted bibliophobia. He was a cleaner with extra handyman duties and one day he and a young lad called, if I remember rightly, Carl, were summoned to the fourth floor and given an assignment. The Chief Librarian ordered them to take some boxes of books over to Unity House for storage. As you know, Unity House is just behind the Library, and it had been lying empty for years. When the Council left it and moved their offices back to the Civic Centre, it lay dormant. No one wanted to buy it. No one wanted to rent office space. No one wanted to knock it down and build something better. It turned out the only people using it were the librarians of Hanley who stored their excess stock in a couple of rooms on the ground floor.
          As you know the purpose of the modern library system is to remove as many books from their premises as they can. It is thought that this practice originated with the advent of CDs and videos and now DVDs, and was concurrent with an alien virus which removed from the general population the ability to read more than two badly written sentences about the latest scandal involving a woman off the telly. That, of course, is what they want you to believe. According to my friend, the bibliophobe, there was another concern among librarians - they genuinely believed that books could kill.
          “We have passed this way before,” I interrupted, recalling our discussion about The Showdown at Chimney Rock.
          “Ah,” said Thaddeus, “that is a different matter. Whether a book can kill because of what it may contain, a form of words, something created by the writer, that is one thing. This is entirely different. This concerns the book itself, independent of who wrote it, or what words are in it. Not that the Chief Librarian of Hanley Library told my bibliophobe friend of this perceived danger. They were just told to take the boxes down to Unity House and place them in one of the rooms set aside for the library’s use. If the librarian had not been unduly pernickety regarding his intructions then my bibliophobe and his friend Carl would not have suspected a thing, but he went on at such length, repeating certain phrases - ‘Do not place the boxes directly adjacent to other boxes.’ ‘Take care not to open the boxes.’ ‘Leave adequate space between the boxes.’ ‘Make sure that the boxes remain closed at all times.’ - and so on, that a suspicion began to arise in the bibliophobe’s mind. I wish I had asked his name. I shall henceforth refer to him as Bob.”
          “Bob the Bibliophobe.”
          “Exactly. Unfortunately Bob and Carl had to perform the task immediately, they had no time to consider the possible reasons for the Chief Librarian’s strange behaviour. And of course they were not the type to indulge in research despite working in one of the City’s cathedrals of knowledge.”
          “Being thick buggers of working class origin, you mean,” I just threw that in. Thaddeus let it go.
          “If they had been inclined they would have found many examples of the biblioclast.”
          “Hitler.”
          “Of course, but there have been others and it still goes on today over in the Americas. But the biblioclasts tend to be fueled by religious or political or moral fervour. The bibliophobe on the other hand cannot come to terms with the idea that what is printed on the page remains immutable. He cannot grasp how a certain squiggle, the circle of the ‘o’, the extended triangle of the capital ‘A’, can come to join together into words and how those words can represent things or ideas. He can see no sense in it and so he fears that the words may change when we are not looking. And if they have the power to do that, then what other tricks may they play behind our backs.
          “So Bob and Carl collected the boxes of books from the basement of Hanley Library and placed them on a trolley and pulled it over the grassy bit and across the road and through the padlocked gate, for which they had a key, up to the front door of Unity House. Once inside they found the library’s storeroom and Bob was just about to open the door when Carl said, ‘What's up with ’em.’ Bob told him that they were merely surplus to requirements but because people kick up a fuss if you just chuck them away or, God forbid, burn them, they just had to be put into storage. Carl persisted in his query, suggesting that maybe these were ‘dirty books’ that weren’t fit for the shelves of the library in case little kiddies got their hands on them. Bob told him not to be daft and turned the key in the lock and opened the door to the storeroom.
          “When they stepped inside Bob thought he heard a whisper. Or, as he explained it, an echo of a whisper. The room, of course, was empty, apart from the books, but Bob had this odd feeling that as the door opened, many whispering voices suddenly fell silent. It unnerved him a little and he told Carl to hurry up and unload the boxes from the trolley. But Carl had other ideas. For one thing this was easier work than polishing the floor in the Reference section, which was his next assignment, and for another he believed he had discovered the reason for the Chief Librarian’s odd behaviour, and so he got out his Stanley knife and opened one of the boxes. He was disappointed to find it only contained a selection of romance novels, several by Philomena Fairfax. He opened a second box and found a number of car manuals. Bob began to remonstrate with him, but Carl was now a man with a mission. He was intent on finding the dirty books. And so, he opened one of the old boxes which lay on the floor of the storeroom. The box he chose had obviously been there for some time and the damp had gotten to it. The cardboard had become soft and there were odd traces of black mould and the sides of the box had become deformed and twisted out of shape. As the knife went in Bob swore he heard a faint whisper.
          “Of course we only have Bob’s word for what happened next. Frankly I don’t believe it at all. My own view is that Bob suffered some kind of nervous breakdown and chose to divert the blame to the books. It is true that Carl did not return to the library that day. There was an investigation of sorts and Bob was hospitalised for a while, but no charges were brought and the whereabouts of Carl remain a mystery. Maybe Bob snapped, killed Carl with the Stanley knife and hid the body so well that it could not be found. Better to believe that than the story Bob told the police. When Carl opened the rotting box, Bob saw what he called ‘sort of flies’ swarm out. They proceeded to engulf Carl and it was as though he was being eaten alive. The strangest thing as far as Bob was concerned was that Carl made no attempt to escape. He just stood there as the things reduced him to dust. And Bob noticed that all the time Carl’s eyes were moving left to right and back again, and there was a smile on his face, right up to the moment when the little black squiggles blotted him out.
          “So, do books change when we’re not reading them? Ask a bibliophobe. Personally I doubt it. The memory plays tricks, that’s all. Still, it is odd that they’re not going to blow up Unity House in some festive way. You’d think the Council would like to make a big fuss, invite some woman off the telly to press the button. Instead they’ve announced it’s going to be dismantled brick by brick. But first of all they have to prepare the interior and that will take a matter of months. Dangerous materials were mentioned and everyone assumed asbestos, but, who knows?”