The Reader

    "The only truly natural things are dreams, which nature cannot touch with decay." These words rang hard and true as he sat quietly at his desk, staring down at the blank sheet of paper. On the edge of literary defeat, he stood and grabbed his olive coat from the rack freely standing in the corner of his room. The man placed the jacket on top of his heather grey sweatshirt, and slid into his favourite shoes, black and leather designed for formal occasions. However, he wore them anyways. Stepping outside, he was met by a chilling breeze. Taking a few steps ahead, he left behind his desk and the empty sheet of paper.

    The clouds had overtaken the afternoon sun and the blue was scattered about, like dots on a cow's hide. It had not rained in a few days so he hadn't bothered to bring an umbrella. A ten minute walk and a similarly timed bus ride later, he found himself at the library. The neighbourhood one that rarely brought in visitors, mostly children and elderly. They sat at tables, played the foosball machine, lounged on the couches, stared outside the windows, the noise had been kept at a minimum; just as a library should be.

    He passed a child with curly locks of red hair that spun endlessly onto his shoulders, his quick movements making each strand bounce like stones skipped on the still surface of a lake. They exchanged smiles, or so he thought they did. Stepping inside the main area, he was met by seemingly eternal isles and straits of cliffside novels that hung perched on top and lodged beneath, a majority of them in between. Here lay the knowledge of tens of thousands of lifetimes, contained in single pieces of paper bound by cloth and leather. Broken hearts, redeemed souls, enlightened minds, this place had it all. And he was here. So he sat and read.

    At the conclusion of each novel, he stood and searched, then sat and read again. This went on for quite some time. The afternoon became the evening, which turned into the night, and passed into morning. Still, he read. He lost himself within each world that the book presented to him, and asked him, "Will you come and spend some time with me?" He recognized their yearning for it was a yearning that resided within him as well. It was a loneliness shared, and he understood.

    In one story, he'd be in Barcelona during the year 1945, and another he would be in a distant planet thousands of years into the future. The lifetimes were coursing through him and the experiences of the author became the experiences of the reader. Before he knew it, the week had passed. Still, he read; now a pile of unread books that almost equaled his standing height stood silently beside him as he rested his back onto the baby blue wall. His hair had grown longer but he did not know. His clothes had begun to smell but he did not pay it any attention.

    Soon enough, people began to recognize him. "The Reader," they called the olive coat and dress shoes wearing man at the local library. A few months later, the library staff put up a sign at the main entrance which read this title. He had become an exhibit, an unnatural phenomenon. It was as if a tornado had somehow landed in the middle of a volcano, spewing lava in every direction yet not losing any of its speed. The books formed walls around his castle, watchtowers of fiction and moats of memoirs, the man had built himself a kingdom. Still, to his dismay, he remained unsatisfied. With every book that he finished, there was another to be read. This soon became tiring, even for him. Still, he pressed on—firm in his belief that he had yet to stumble upon that one novel, those characters, that place, those words; it would all be perfect, and it would all be worth it. He never found this.

    He scoured and searched endlessly, what he dreamt was a perfect novel had become a perfect chapter, which became a perfect page, and turned into a perfect line. He never found any of these and he was broken. The grey had grown on his beard, his hair spun and twisted down to his chest, his eyes carried heavy bags, his feet were blistered, the leather on his shoes had decayed, his sweatshirt was now tattered, and his heart was spent. He had lived the lives of thousands but never his own. The library had been abandoned until it was just him and the books. All of which he had read by now. A tear fell down his cheek and he sobbed. The silence was unbearable.

    Then, like a clap of thunder from a shifting sky, a curly red-haired man entered the building. The fire on his head caught the reader's attention, and immediately he knew. Wiping away his tears, he stood. Then they faced each other for quite some time before the familiar stranger pulled him into an embrace. As if in a dream, the moonlight glimmered in the window up above on the ceiling: its source hung and shone like a firefly in the meadow. The sun had set but he knew that the morning would come. And that this time when he left, he would not be leaving alone.

Lyonel Feininger, Bauhaus Dessau, 1929