Her Librarian turned, that easy grace, the gorgeous flash of skin at the knee. The doors opened and it took all of Ella’s energy to seem impassive when what she wanted was to race after her, ask where she was going, why she was leaving her post. A captain stayed with the ship, and when Ella glanced out of the window she could tell they were sinking. The water lapped up past the wooden walkway and sucked at the grass of the hill. The river was rising quickly.
***
Stepping out into the walkway, the sound of the rain was fat and resonant. Ella stood for a moment, blinking as if into a bright light. People were racing away from the building. She stood and peered over the edge of the balcony to the causeway where a small child in a red dress stood with a teacup raised in her hands as if offering it up to a god. The weather god groaned, or perhaps it was the sound of the river finding an even stronger hand-hold as it hefted itself up and out of the bank, crawling on its slithery belly up the side of the grassed hill. The little girl looked directly up at Ella, opened her mouth. Ella leaned forward, smiling for the first time that day. She raised her hand to wave but the child was swept up into the arms of some passing adult and bundled off and out into the downpour.
Alarm. An electronic scream. Ella watched as the people began to jog and then run. Children were swept up and away, and lovers dragged each other by the fist. Library staff turned in small circles just like the ant on the desk. Ella held the willow-patterned notebook to her face and smelt the acid death of the insect on the cardboard cover. The alarm changed from a clang to a whoop, a small child running and shouting to the sky, the sound of a bird calling for its mate. Whoop whoop whoop. And she found herself smiling again. The tapping in her chest like a little patter of laughter. Or like rain.
She leaned as far over the balcony as she could but Ella couldn’t see her Librarian anywhere. She took a deep breath. There was grit between her teeth. Sand. There had been so much sand shifting. Ella ran her tongue over her lips and swallowed.
She would be downstairs. Sometimes her Librarian stopped to talk to the security guard and then disappeared into the elevator behind him, where the shining silver doors closed to reflect Ella’s disappointment at losing sight of the woman once more. She hurried to the lift, pressed the button. The alarm changed again, a bell to call children to dinner or to their studies. The lift was too slow. She ran around to the stairs, scrambled down, two at a time, her short legs stretching awkwardly. Ella wasn’t used to running and she slipped, catching herself on the wooden banister, checking her pace to an easy lope. She stopped, stared at her foot and the scatter of long furred legs beside it. She bent to peer at the spider, a huntsman probably, but with a luminous patch of green on its fat back. A beautiful creature, rare and unexpected. Ella stepped around it. She was going down, the spider was climbing. A strange crossing of paths. She looked back as it scuttled up the stairs, its hairy legs sure and quick on the concrete. It knew what it was doing. Ella’s own anxiety seemed to increase with every downward step.
There was no security guard. Ella stood where he normally sat. There were signs of his presence: a packet of mints, open. He was always chewing on mints. The whiff of tobacco that seemed to emanate from his skin. The twitch of the screen where security camera images, grainy and grey, flickered, scanning each room of the labyrinthine building one by one. She peered at the screen. On it, the room where she had sat only a few minutes before. She saw the willow vase, the rose resting inside it. The chair pushed out from the bench, perhaps still warm from her Librarian’s body. The image blinked and changed: the great void at the heart of the library, a stray woman furiously buttoning up her coat.
All visitors to evacuate the library area immediately. Last city council bus will leave from the library bus stop in fifteen minutes. All visitors to evacuate the library area immediately.
Then the whooping sound again, the song of joy, and Ella grinned as she watched the security camera flicker and change to reveal her Librarian, bending, the back of her neck so white in the grainy picture that Ella had an urge to press her tongue to the screen. She was swan-like. She was a bird. She was the soar and uplift of her heart, her breath on the air. The alarm sounded Ella’s joy. The woman was reaching behind a stack of papers, shelves with books to either side. She seemed frantic, looking around, pulling on something–a book?–something. Small white letters in the top right corner of the screen spelled out Basement 1. Ella turned and crossed to the impassive metal doors of the lift. She pressed the button. Waited.
***
Outside, the river ate the grass. Earth, stones, bitumen. A man stood on a hill and watched as a boat drifted by. The boat turned a slow circle and it was only then that he realised there was no one on board. A big metal drum floated past. A water tank. The man recognised the irony and he pulled his raincoat around his shoulders, sweat gathering inside in the heat, rain thundering on the outside of the yellow plastic. So odd to watch the river grabbing up great hunks of earth, reclaiming land. A pontoon floated by, a huge thing with tall, white-topped wooden pillars that people tied their boats to. Now the whole pontoon was a boat, bobbing, straining against the wash of the current.
The end of the world. This one thought had taken hold and was being turned around in the minds of a thousand people who stared out and into the river, broken now, cracked from the hot wind. A slow creeping end. And, with it, a hush. No traffic now, just the constant note of water, a deep bass-note underpinning the hiss of the rain like a crowd in a stadium waiting for gladiators to fall.
The alarm switched from whoop to wail and Ella pressed her ear against the metal doors. Perhaps they had stopped the lifts already. Is that only in the event of a fire? Is a flood just as dangerous? Were there stairs somewhere? But no, she could hear the hum of the lift descending, the beep and judder as it found her floor and paused, the exhalation of stale air. Ella rushed into it, pressed the button for the basement seven times. Somewhere down there. She pressed the button again. The doors closed. The lift seemed to pause. She held her breath. The lift began, slowly, to trundle downward.
It was wrong to go downwards. This was something she felt in her chest. It was a heaviness, a threat, a physical warning, her body urging her not to breach the waterline. Odd how your body prepares you for survival. As the lift descended, she closed her eyes. She saw the legs of the spider, long, hairy, each one propelling it ever upward. The crazed steps of the ant making circles on the table before she put an end to its dance. She found it difficult to draw breath. The downward motion was drowning her. When the doors opened onto a dark corridor she gasped, but it seemed her lungs were clamping down, stopping her from taking more than a tiny cupful of air. Ella breathed dampness. A hint of gardenia. Her Librarian was close.
It was too dark to see clearly. Light came from the end of the corridor, a thin line of it spilling out from under a door. The lights flickered on, a splutter, blinding Ella for a second before plunging her back into darkness. She held out her hand and the wall was there at her fingertips. Damp concrete, warm to the touch. It was as if she had stepped down into a sauna. She felt a bead of sweat gathering under her bra, the spill of it tracing a line down her belly and easing out into the fabric of her knickers. Everything hot and wet. Ella paused. Took another thin breath. She felt light-headed; she was wet between her legs, the heat perhaps. And yet she was enveloped in an odd excitement that hummed in counterpoint to the sound of the alarm as it switched from horn to bell, a thrumming in her cunt. She closed her eyes. A spider crawling up the steps, faster and faster, legs scrambling. When she opened her eyes it was just as dark and her skin felt the tiny creep of sweat.
She would be behind this door. There would be no one but the two of them. Together. For the first time all day, Ella felt vaguely frightened. She had never been alone with her Librarian. There was always the safety-net of some other person, some student, some old woman researching her family history. Another librarian, like that Sammi with her bright red lipstick still traced on her Librar
ian’s cheek. Now, here, they would be alone. Ella felt sweat in her palm. The door handle was cool and her fingers slipped against it. She wiped her hand quickly against her dress before trying the handle once more. She twisted it, her fingers trembling slightly. Ella was the kind of girl who leaped into cold water suddenly, running at life, hoping to outskip the worst of it. She braved train carriages full of bogans with their foul mouths and their teasings. She stepped onto the dance floor at nightclubs knowing that she was dancing to a different rhythm, a counterpoint to the writhing crowd, a target for ridicule. This was her way of surviving life, quickly leaping amongst it. It would be easier now to rush into the room. Here I am, arms wide, waiting for her Librarian to turn and smile or, more likely, frown. She didn’t like to creep, and yet she crept, the door opening a fraction at a time.
Inside were shelves, a maze of them. The light shone down onto piles of old books, yellowed pages sticking out past leather spines, cracked and dusty. She took a breath, hoping for gardenia. Instead there was just the must of ages, parchment sweating in the unnaturally damp heat. The sound of the alarm became muffled as the door shut behind her. Inside, here in the bowels of the library, was a strange sense of calm. A sound, a vibration. Ella turned and noticed a moth flinging itself frantically against the ceiling. Its wings shed brown dust as it hurled itself towards its own destruction.
***
Outside, a crowd gathered on the high ground. The rain had eased off. The little girl in the red dress reached down into the grass where a Christmas beetle kicked its legs, desperate to be up and away. She flicked it with her finger, jumped back. The great lumbering thing loped towards the top of a blade of grass and spread its wings. Its fat body lifted awkwardly into the air and it was gone. The child clapped, grinned, looked up towards the river that was lapping against the glass panels of the library: its eyes, held open to the water. The river was finally clambering up the corpse of the concrete and metal beast. The girl pointed the chubby fingers of one hand at what looked like a piece of a building, wooden walls, ivy-covered. It performed a perfect pirouette before it was sucked down into the swell.
***
Ella crept down aisles of newspapers bound in leather volumes. She let her fingers tag the pages they contained. Traffic accidents, missing children, suicides, murders, elections, and all the ills of their city captured and pressed between the pages. Life made history. History shelved and forgotten. At the end of the aisle was a wall, covered by a heavy drape of gold velour curtains. She reached out and stroked the fabric. She felt her way towards a break in them, and parted the velour, holding the softness gently between her fingers. Behind the curtains there was only glass. An aquarium. Books like bright fish floated by, bubbles of air escaping from their spines.
The room beside her was filling with water.
It was already so high, the waterline on the other side, that Ella could only reach it by rising up on her toes and pushing the tip of her finger onto the glass. A light was on in the room and it spilled down through the water. Chairs were like sharks racing through the churn, the sharp fins of their legs circling. Her Librarian was in there. Ella pressed the palms of her hands against the glass. Of course her Librarian was there. Suddenly it seemed like today was the turn of a key, unlocking the mysteries of the world. All her life she had been preparing herself for this moment. They were alone, here, finally, but of course there was no need for words. Ella had no reason to ask about Freud or Wilhelm Reich or any other excuse for interaction. They were stripped bare: Ella in the air, and her Librarian, alone with her, her legs kicking out as she fought to stay afloat. She spun like a ballerina in a music box.
Ella had a music box at home. The ballerina still turned round, but slowly, and the music came fitfully, a few notes in a run, then a pause as the ancient mechanism battled to continue along in its dance. Ella loved the slow bursts of sound and silence. She loved the way her Librarian performed this same dance. Ella stood with her hands pressed to the glass and her forehead leaning into the cool surface.
One of the Librarian’s shoes had fallen off. There was something quite beautiful about this. If she were on dry land she would walk with a gentle limp, a lilt, a skip. Ella loved this idea. But of course her Librarian was not walking on dry land. She was spinning in slow circles, her long legs kicking out, her hands circling in the water like Catherine wheels, making clouds of bubbles. Ella watched a book swim by, as her Librarian’s single shoe kicked out at it. The book changed course, thrashed aside, swimming now towards the glass. It thudded against the wall near where Ella’s hand was pressed. A body on the cover, naked, almost obliterated by scratches to the daguerreotype photograph: The Story of the Eye. Ella vowed to read it. If she did not drown today, here in the basement of the library, she would make her way straight to a bookstore. She would buy this book. She knew that somehow it was a message, a symbol of their love.
They were in love. The water level rose in the aquarium and her Librarian danced, her socks still pulled up to her knees, the stretch of flesh above. With the waves of her skirt obscuring her thighs, Ella could admit it.
‘I love you.’
She could say it aloud. Ella pressed her lips against the glass.
‘I love you.’
And, as if to express her love for Ella, the Librarian floated closer to the glass. Kicking, her skirt floated up and away from her body and there it was, the curve of those perfect cheeks, the hair, wild and luscious. She wasn’t wearing underwear. Ella felt herself blushing. She pushed her own dress against the glass.
‘I understand,’ Ella said. ‘I love you, too.’
Ella took off her underpants. They were damp already. She pressed them up to the glass for her Librarian to see. Damp at the crotch. It was an expression of her bodily love, this flood, this desire. She pressed the knickers high and she wasn’t sure if her Librarian could see her at all before the dancing ballerina of her body was swept away from the glass and disappeared behind a school of books. The water was rising. It was almost at the ceiling.
‘Wait here.’
Ella turned and looked around. There was nothing but shelves and books, nothing to stand on. She ran back along the aisle. Surely, somewhere. A chair. She needed something taller, a table, a filing cabinet, something. But there was only this one chair. Ella picked it up and raced back to the aquarium. She dragged a large bound volume of the Courier-Mail and rested it on the seat of the chair. She found another, four, five. She piled them up and used the back of the chair to balance as she clambered on top.
The floor was damp now. Water seeped in from the corridor. She wondered, suddenly, why the room next door was filling with water when the floor here was merely damp. In the other room, the water level was still over her head. Ella waited for the tidal pool to whisk the woman back to her, the circling of it an inevitability. She was coming closer. Ella raised her hands and waved up above the waterline in the next room. It was odd, this gesture, so often used by the drowning to alert the living, used now by the living to attract the attention of the soon-to-be-drowned. Ella felt herself grin as the Librarian saw her hands. Her head was butting against the ceiling now. Ella watched as she tipped back her head, filled her lungs with precious air and then pushed off the ceiling and plunged down. Ella watched her legs scissoring. She felt a rush of blood to her loins at the flash of pale skin in the thick hair of her crotch, the pale protrusion of the lips there. She felt it in her body. The woman banged her fists on the glass. Ella pressed her body against it, letting the vibrations course through her. She lifted the skirt of her dress. This nakedness: she let her Librarian see it. Her own damp lips parted, her own thatch of dark hair.
‘I am like you,’ Ella said.
She took off her dress.
She was like the Bullmer doll, the Surreal girl in pieces. Without her clothing, her Librarian would see that Ella was imperfect. This is what love is, a reveal that is both horrible and exquisite. She reached behind herself and unclipped her bra. She let he
r breasts escape their cotton casing. Her breasts, the nipples tight with her excitement. The Librarian kicked at the glass and Ella watched, the little slit, the peek of red, the flare of love. Ella smiled. She pressed her chest against he glass and the Librarian thumped at them with her fists. Ella closed her eyes briefly to enjoy this touch, the shudder of glass against flesh. The first time someone touched her breasts, the first time, and just as she wanted it to be.
‘My first time,’ she said. ‘It’s with you.’
***
These things happened. She would remember them. Ella would lie under the covers and press her fists between her legs and it would be quick. Sudden. Perfect. Every time it would be the same, this moment repeated. They were from two worlds. The water only accentuated this fact. She had always known it. She had peered across the divide as Romeo might peer at Juliet: the Willow Pattern lovers, divided by circumstance. The Librarian’s hair took on a life here in the water that it couldn’t in the air; it writhed, it groaned under her caresses. Ella traced the swirl of her locks on the glass. The Librarian stared at her, eyes widened, a desperation to take in every drop of Ella. And she provided herself. She lifted a leg and placed it on the back of the chair and spread her cunt with her fingers. This. Here. She pointed.
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