Fading, Like the Stars

The place that they all called ‘the library’ turned out to be an enormous underground complex. There was much more to it than the room that was hidden behind the heavy metallic door, with the books and sculptures. Visiting it all would take us an entire day, the old man, Arnaud, informed with a proud smile. But there would be time for that later…. He still took me through the first five rooms, to show me what exactly it was all about. All rooms were similar to the first one in shape and size, but completely different in decoration. The general shape of these rooms was a square one, with high ceilings that easily made you forget that you were underground. The light came from large chandeliers that hung from the ceilings. The pieces of crystal that hung from those chandeliers reflected the light, distributing it across the rooms like tiny droplets. The whole place had been hidden underground, so there was no window, no natural light distributed in the rooms. Yet, we did not seem to suffer from the lack of it. The artificial light was bright enough, though I could imagine that, in the long run, it could become a difficult thing to live with, although it did not seem to bother Arnaud too much, from what he said. When I asked him where the power to light all those lights came from, Arnaud just let out an amused chuckle.

“We have our ways,” he said eventually, when I asked him again. “Take a bit from them, take a bit from nature, wind and sun and water… It’s all a bit complex, but thankfully it was all settled before I came. I don’t worry about it, or even understand. I’m just thankful that it’s so.”

That was about all that I could get from him. When it came to talk about the things that had been assembled in the library, however, he was unstoppable.

There weren’t just books, in the library. It was much more than just a place to store books. Of course, there were many of them. It was from all those books that the place had gotten its name. There were more books than I had ever seen before. I had never even thought that there could be so many books published and printed in the world. It was stupid of course, there were so many books printed in so many languages and over such a long time that it was obvious that there had to be an immense quantity of them that had existed, but yet the sheer enormous quantity of the books that were contained in each different room of the library had something maddening. It would certainly take several lifetimes to read them all.

Some rooms were entirely dedicated to books. The shelves covered ever inch of the walls, and they went up to the ceiling. On these shelves, there were dozens of books, neatly aligned, some very old, some that looked much newer. Then, where there was no space enough, there were books lying flat on the lines of other books, and books on the tables, and books on the chairs and in the couches of those rooms. There were in one room more books than I had seen in my life, and then as I thought that this was why it was called a library, because there were hundreds of books assembled in the room, we walked into another room to discover exactly the same thing. I had thought that I had seen so many books already that it had to be all that this was, but then there were more. And the rooms were not all on the same level, so we had to walk over a few steps to get in the next, and even on those steps there were books. Even in dreams I would not have dared to imagine something like this. There wasn’t a particular order which these books followed. They weren’t stored in an alphabetical way, or by subject, or style. They’d tried to do it, at first, Arnaud said, but then as the number of books raised, it became impossible to rearrange things every time a new book was added to the collection. So they just ended up stored wherever there was room for it.

“Besides,” Arnaud added very seriously, “I don’t think the books mind it. I think that they like to travel from one room to the other, depending on where their readers leave them.”

I was not sure whether he meant it, or whether he was only saying it because it sounded right, because it was a nice story to tell. So I replied nothing. Rufus and Daniel said nothing. They were obviously already familiar with the library, and they were following Arnaud’s tour only to amuse themselves with my astonishment and my enthusiasm at everything that I discovered. And perhaps also, I suspected, because the library was so vast, a built like such a maze, that they were afraid that they would never manage to find their own way without Arnaud.

Added to those books, there were many other things. Some rooms were only filled with books. Others, like the first one that I had seen, also contained paintings and sculptures. Others were only filled with paintings, or only filled with sculptures. Others still contained music instruments, or hundreds of music pieces, of many different styles, on various medias, along what they needed to be played on. Or films and recordings of plays, or tv shows. Thousands of them.

“That’s because it’s not just a place for books,” Arnaud said, when I remarked it. “It’s about every work of imagination that men ever created.”

This made much more sense, of course. There was art and fiction, and all things that people had, at one point in time, found beautiful or pleasurable, or useful or interesting in any way.

“And where do all these things come from?” I asked, curiously. “And… and who brought them here? When were they brought here? Who started to collect them?”

“I can’t provide an answer to the latter part of your answer,” Arnaud said patiently answering every question that I had about the place that he was guarding. “I don’t know who started this, and when exactly. I can only suppose that at some point someone began to suspect what was going to happen to all these things. There must have been clues, of course, and some people at least must have been cautious enough to pick up on them. I can’t be certain, but I think that someone, or more likely a group of people decided to hide some works to protect them from neglect and destruction. But again, it’s just a guess, and I can’t know for certain. What I can tell you, though, is where they come from, and who brings them here. They come from a bit of everywhere. People’s homes, museums, and no doubt many other places. There was only half of it here when I first arrived. I don’t know where these pieces came from, or who brought them here. As for the others, mostly books, sometimes something else… Well… you and your friends aren’t the only ones who know about this place. You’d be surprised how many people actually know it. Some of them come back every once in a while, other I never see again. And sometimes these people who stop here, they brings things in their bags, and as it isn’t safe for them to carry them out there, they leave their possessions in my custody, and those things join all the other things, because they’re better here. Even now things get added.”

“But you’ll run out of place,” I said softly, shaking my head as I thought of the five or six full rooms that we had already crossed.

Arnaud smiled, amused. “Run out of place? My dear, you’ve only seen a tiny part of all that this place has to offer. There’s much more to it, and there are still plenty of rooms waiting to be filled with treasures to come.”

The tour ended almost too quickly to my liking. Of course, I would have plenty of time, as we stayed here, to visit the rest of the place. But it wouldn’t feel the same without Arnaud’s stories. On the other hand, the long walk to here had been tiring enough, and no matter how interesting everything was, walking through rooms and rooms and having to remain standing all the time wasn’t the best thing. Since we were going to stay here for a little longer, I wouldn’t say no to a bit of rest.

Arnaud wasn’t the only one to live in the library. I learned it as he offered to show us to the bedrooms he was giving us for the duration of our stay. Not only did he share the place with various works of art and imagination and produces of the human mind, as he liked to call them, he also shared it with his granddaughter, a quiet young woman, a very young woman named Cécile, with red hair and big brown eyes. She was the one who showed them the way to the room, and she was very quiet all the while. Apparently, she had already met Daniel and Rufus, but it didn’t seem to make her more at ease in their presence. She seemed to be extremely shy. She kept the words short, but she smiled pleasantly at them, and her company wasn’t that disagreeable, although it was not nearly as interesting as that of her grandfather.

After Arnaud had introduced her – with a flicker of pride in his eyes –, Cécile showed us the way to several bedrooms that were situated somewhere behind all the rooms filled with books. The three rooms that were given to us were situated on both sides of a thin and rather dark corridor.

“I’ll leave you to rest,” Cécile said in a quiet shy voice. “Take all the time you want, there’s warm water and all that you might need. I’ll come knocking when supper’s ready. Should take an hour or so…”

I wasn’t sure of what to expect when I opened the door. The corridor didn’t seem that promising, and that was why I was surprise by the size of the room. It was larger than expected, and brighter, also. The same kind of chandelier that was hanging in every other room, and even though it seemed strange to find such a thing in a bedroom, it did give a nice bright light. The furniture was rather old, a dark brown wood that seemed like it had seen better days, but I sat up on the bed, and it immediately felt comfortable. Much comfortable than I had imagined it to be. And also much more comfortable than everything that I had slept in a while. And then there were the books, of course. There were books in every room of the house, it would have been surprising that there were none in the bedrooms.

I simply sat on the bed for a long moment, thinking. I was just trying to make sense of everything that had happened. Not just the incredible discovery that the library had been, but everything that had happened before too. The incredible journey that had brought me here. Everything that had happened since the circus. Good things, a lot good things, but then a few bad things too. And also some things that I wasn’t sure how to react to. It seemed incredible, that all of that had happened in what was after all a rather short space of time.

I don’t know how much time I spent pondering about that. I don’t know what my companions were doing. Resting, probably, or showering or taking a bath, now that we had the occasion, after traveling for all those days.

I only realized that it had lasted much longer than I had thought when there was a knock on the door, accompanied by Cécile’s voice that floated through the door and informed me that supper was ready, if I wanted to eat.

Daniel and Rufus were already waiting in the corridor, and unlike me, it seemed that they had taken advantage of the time that we’d had to clean themselves a little. It made me feel a little embarrassed about my own appearance, but not as embarrassed as I felt when we arrived in the dining room. Arnaud and Cécile had obviously made a very big effort for us. The whole room was decorated as if it were a party. It was brilliant, with candles, and all.

I didn’t say much during the time that we spent there. I had already asked Arnaud all that I wanted to know about the library when he was showing it to me, so there was nothing more that I could think of saying. I thanked and congratulated our hosts on the feast that they were giving us, and then I let the others do all the talking. It was obvious that both Daniel and Rufus had paid more than one visit to the library in the past, because them and Arnaud quickly fell into a sort of routine, with the same subjects coming back in the conversation. From the way it went, it seemed that they were simply picking things back from where they had left it the last time that they had left. I let them talk. I ate, and listened. Cécile did the same. She barely said five words there. I wondered, as I watched her from the corner of my eye, what it had been like, to grow up in such an environment. It must have been different from any other life. It must have taught her to see things differently, think differently. I would have liked to know how all that had felt. But she didn’t seem like she was very keen on sharing, and I wasn’t going to bother her right now. It was too early to find something to create a bond, and I wasn’t fit enough to find the energy to try.

Daniel, Rufus and Arnaud, however, seemed to have enough energy to last through the whole night. They kept talking all the time. Every now and then, they made an effort, to include Cécile or I in the conversation, but after a few words from us, it ended up being them who finished the conversation anyway. They talked about everything. About the world, about the weather and about themselves, about books, and about Félix and the circus, and about the plays.

It could have gone on like this forever. It was going to last late into the night. It didn’t seem like there was anything in this world that would be able to stop them.

It was Daniel who brought up politics into their conversation first. This caused a bit of a stir. Politics were a touchy subject. Politics were a dangerous subject, in the world that we lived in. Not something that you talked about over the dessert. And, in truth, our host didn’t seem very enthusiastic at the idea of discussing the way our society was managed. It was very easily understandable. It was easy to disagree on that subject, and it was even easier to say something that you would regret, or that, in the wrong company, would get you in trouble. But Daniel was quite enthusiastic about, and it would take more than Arnaud’s reservations about the subject to dim that enthusiasm.

I already knew what Daniel’s take on this was. He did not believe in a world that would change from itself. He had told me so himself, once. He thought that simply hoping for a change was a weakness, and that change had to be actively fought for. To say it as it was, what Daniel believed in was in revolution, and in change brought up by force. I knew it already, so what he said then did surprise me at all. What surprised me was the strength of his engagement in that matter. Everybody has got opinions, but most of the time it is just passive thinking. I had thought he just believed this, like we all believed something, but it was more than this. It was serious, it was a real engagement.

“Easy on the revolution, boy,” Arnaud said quietly, helping himself to another slice of apple pie.

Daniel had a quiet smile. “I know,” he said, “neither the time nor the place, I guess… But tell me this, Arnaud, do you really believe that this change that you’re all hoping for, is going to come tomorrow, magically?”

“It’s not my place to say,” Arnaud replied cautiously, “and it’s certainly not my place to impose my vision on others.”

“I take that for myself, then. Let’s not talk directly about politics, then. But let’s talk about all these works, all these beautiful works that are around us. It’s a shame, isn’t it, that only you can enjoy them. Shame that they can’t be out there for others to enjoy. But that’s not possible, because they’re subversive. Books, especially. They carry ideas, and those ideas do not please everyone. And it’s not true what they say. You can kill an idea. You can condemn it to oblivion very easily. So tell me, doesn’t the world need to change?”

“It’s not just that,” the old man said solemnly. “All true, what you say, m’boy, but it’s not just that. You don’t see the bigger picture. Agreed, fiction can be subversive and can make people aspire to be more than they are, it’s something that allows to question the world without giving the impression that you’re actually doing so. But it would be sad, really sad, if that was all that there was to it.

There’s so much more to a book, be it a work of fiction or not. Books have a soul. They have a meaning that goes beyond the words that are written. Just taking them for the vessels of an idea would reduce them to much less than they actually are. What they do carry are emotions. To make them just the tools of your revolution would be unfair. They’re not destined to widen people’s eyes. Their primary purpose is to make them live.

And books are a part of culture, also. All that you see around us here is a part of that wider thing called culture. And of course there is nothing more important than culture. It defines who we are. It reflects our choices, our hopes, our dreams. It’s us, and it’s all the people who came before us. It’s their lives and their choices, it’s their hopes and their dreams too. It’s their political fights, and it’s our legacy. It’s who we are, and who we chose to be.

Culture is what defines us, as a society, as a civilization. It’s made of little pieces that, brought together, form a whole wider picture, a history. And the most beautiful about it is that you can chose which piece you decide to use. Culture is something that we can all take part of, something that we can all relate to, in one way or another. We should, therefore, know it, and appreciate it, not for itself, but for ourselves. Not as something selfish that exist only in a few people’s minds, but as something that exists within us. We should know about it because we can use it, as a tool. A tool to know ourselves, to build ourselves, with pieces that we decide to identify with, and with pieces that we decide to reject. But either way, it brings food for our thoughts and it increases our capacity to reflect on the society that we live in. It adds perspective to our understanding of what surrounds us. It’s important in so many ways that it would take a lifetime to list them all.

Culture is the cement of a civilization. It’s what keeps it together. It’s a part of us with roots that go very deep. And the reason it is so beautiful is that it’s changing, it’s evolving, it never stops evolving, and if it’s nourished well enough, it changes for the better. But then, like everything, if it is neglected, it can also die. And it’s very easy to neglect it. It’s easy to just not care about it.

So books are more than just something that you can use to plant your own ideas in the minds of others. They’re part of that whole wide thing that is culture. They’re not just important for their ideas. Most of all, they are important for the emotions that they carry, and what they mean to the readers, regardless of the meaning of the written words.”