“Not in the least. Thank you for being so kind.”
The bookseller gave a tight smile that contained no joy in it whatsoever and nodded his head. “I am truly sorry this happened.”
Annette shook her head. “I shouldn’t have taken the book from under the bell jar.”
The bookseller held up a hand in protest. “No, that was my fault. I should have taken the book as soon as it appeared. At the very least, I should have made sure the CLOSED sign was in place and the door locked.” He looked once again toward the two books at the end of the counter: the new one under the bell jar, and the volume of Fitzgerald whose pages had so cut Annette’s fingers and hand.
She leaned forward and touched the bookseller’s arm. “What was in there? What did you and Uri see?”
The bookseller nodded toward the bell jar. “That. It was on a lovely oak table in the corner of Steiner’s office. There was a book inside, in Arabic. The paper was old, thick, and stiff. Neither Uri nor I ever knew what the book was. It was filled with symbols and writings in verse that Uri thought might be incantations. It felt like something evil that was being imprisoned under glass. And it was the only book there.
“The floors of the Gruppenführer’s quarters were littered with the bodies of those prisoners who had been taken there the night before the Nazis fled. They were not only decomposed, they were . . . deflated. Their flesh was gray, drained of any moisture. I remember how Uri knelt down next to several of the bodies and shook, pointing to their wounds. Hundreds, thousands of tiny cuts—paper cuts. And not a single drop of blood anywhere. I think Uri knew then what unholy rites the Gruppenführer and his Thule had been practicing on those nights of singing and soft glowing lights. But I couldn’t grasp it. I felt sick and dizzy and more afraid at that moment than I had been during the years I’d been in the camp. I tried to turn and run out, to find an American who would give me a drink or a taste of his K-rations, but as soon as I turned around the world went black.
“I awoke in a makeshift hospital, inside a massive tent. The Americans had established a camp just outside Lambach, not that far from Gunskirchen itself. I opened my eyes and saw glass bottles hanging next to me, saw clear tubes running into my arms. I turned my head and saw Uri sitting on the floor next to my bed. He was sleeping, his head resting on his bended knees. I reached out and touched the top of his head. He shuddered, made a terrible wet sound, but then lifted his head and blinked his eyes. I could see that he had been in the midst of a nightmare, and the phantom images of it still reflected in his eyes told me how horrible it must have been. I never asked him to recount any part of it.
“He gave me a sad and tired smile—his teeth were now gone, having been removed by an American dentist; what an old man he looked like! But I loved seeing that old-man smile. Did I mention that Uri was only nineteen? He looked fifty, and stayed that way until the day he died.
“He took hold of my hand and kissed the palm, then held it against his cheek. ‘I have secured the evil vessel,’ he whispered to me. ‘It can harm no one ever again.’
“I asked him how he’d done this, how did he know it was evil, and several other questions that seemed to confuse him as much as they did me. He told me that an American soldier had helped him to remove the bodies of the prisoners and give them a decent burial, and that this ‘Yank’—that’s what Uri called the Americans—had helped him to find a crate and blankets and secure the bell jar and its contents. ‘The Yank will help me send it to what family remains to me in the States,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what the Yanks did when they saw the interior of the quarters. If it ever was reported, I never heard anything about it. In my letter I will ask my family to not open the crate, and I know they will honor my wishes.’ He then squeezed my arm. ‘When we get to the States, my friend, you will be with me. I have told them that we are brothers, and we are—if not by blood, then by choice, by loyalty, by our having survived this madness, by our love and friendship.’
“ ‘Brother,’ I said to him. ‘My brother. Thank you.’ ”
“How could Uri have had such strength when he found you? Didn’t you think it was odd that—?” Annette cut off her words before the question could be completed. Looking at the bookseller’s expression, she knew the answer.
“Yes,” whispered the bookseller. “Uri had become a kapo. He did so in order to ensure that I would not be harmed. He never told me what acts he participated in, and I never asked.
“He never left my side after that day in the hospital. I remember when I awoke, it was V-E Day. The war was at last over. I felt almost reborn.” The bookseller looked up at the clock on the wall. “My goodness, I’ve been talking your ears off for a while, haven’t I.”
“I don’t mind,” said Annette.
“If your friends didn’t mention it, this is not the type of neighborhood where one wants to be caught on the streets after the streetlights come on—if the streetlights come on. It’s always something of a crapshoot around here.”
“Please,” she said, “tell me the rest. I have to know. I’m the one who bled on the thing. It’s because of me that another book’s appeared. I saw the expression on your face. You were terrified . . . and a little sickened, I think.”
The bookseller gently took her unbandaged hand in both of his and said: “Do you believe in such a thing as evil? Wait, before you answer, I’m not talking about evils like starvation, or genocide, rape, torture—as horrific as those things are; I’m talking about a power that transcends what we know as ‘nature’ to dwell in a space not only that we cannot comprehend, but that our five senses are powerless to recognize in its purest form.”
“Are you asking me if I believe in supernatural evil?”
“I suppose I am, yes.”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I mean, I guess I’ve wondered like everyone else if there’s something more than just this life, a force that guides everything, holds all matter together, but I never . . . I never tried to imagine much beyond that. It scares me. Usually I have a hard enough time just getting through the day, you know?”
“Don’t you have friends?”
“Not any close ones, not really. I’ve always been a bit solitary. That’s why I love books so much. I can lose myself in another world, another time, another person’s adventure. I always liked pretending when I was a child, and I guess that hasn’t changed much over the decades. I read a book and it’s like it actually comes alive. The story’s a living thing and the pages are . . . I don’t know . . . like the thing that gives the story its voice. Does that make sense? Probably not. I just love reading.”
“Don’t you find it lonely?”
Annette considered the question for a moment. “I try not to think in terms like that. I figure as long as the same old sun rises to greet me, and the same old moon is there at night, then things are okay. It helps.”
The bookseller nodded his head and patted her hand. “I really like you. You’re quite sweet and kind.”
“I think you’re a pretty nice person yourself. Colorful, but nice.”
The bookseller laughed. “Oh, you’re a quick study, you are. Hey—why did you come in here in the first place?”
“I want that copy of Reflections in a Golden Eye in your display window.”
“Ah, McCullers! Exquisite writer. Died far too young.” He rose from his chair. “Come on, then. Let’s get your book while I finish my story. You know, it’s interesting that you talk about books like they’re living things. What would you say if I told you some of them are?”
We savored the sensations of every moment as we were cut into dozens of large, heavy sections and loaded onto gigantic flatbed trailers; we admired the world our human bodies had not lived to see as our pieces were driven to mills, where they were split into logs; we drank in the cool goodness as the logs were treated in a steady flow of chemically enriched water made steady and constant by grindstones; we tingled with wild, unbound excitement as the logs were turned into wood chips and
then treated under pressure with a solution of sulfurous acid and calcium sulfite, followed by caustic soda, carbon, and sodium sulfide; we centered our collective consciousness and began to focus our thoughts as the lignin contained in the chips decomposed, allowing f-dextrose to form as our cellulose was purified; we briefly flashed on the smug expressions our executioners wore as they staked us, dismembered us, blinded us with bodkins or acid, but those images vanished and were replaced by exhilaration as the wood chips were pulped and then immersed in water; the water molded the pulp into fibers; the fibers were felted together as the water was purposefully agitated; then, at last, after centuries of patient waiting, the felted fibers became sheets as they were lifted from the water by a wire screen.
And we lived again as the mammoth rolls of virgin paper were loaded onto trailers and hauled away to the waiting presses and binderies. We were given our new forms. Words were imprinted on us, emblazoned on the covers used to hold us together. We lived the stories on our new flesh, every word, every feeling, every dream and pain and agony and glory and triumph and defeat and tragedy. They made it easier to wait a little longer.
Because eternal life means eternal, whether you live inside a puppet of meat or the materials used to produce the pages of a book. Eternal life means eternal.
And our eternal life means the hunger never goes away. We have been very, very hungry. We’ve waited. And some of those meat puppets have helped to find more of our brothers and sisters of the night. And we wait. And wait. And wait.
But something about this night, this night, vibrates deep within our yearnings and whispers, “Soon . . .”
Annette stared at the volume of Fitzgerald on the counter, now back to its original size and thickness, and then glanced at the book now inside the bell jar: Heraclites’ Theory and Modern Social Thought.
“You seem . . . stunned,” said the bookseller.
“It’s just . . . you’re right, if you had told me this earlier, I would have thought you were crazy.”
“Imagine my reaction when Uri first showed it to me. We came back here to live with his aunt and uncle, who owned this bookstore, and after a decade and a half, when his uncle grew too sick to continue working, the bookstore was passed to us; then he finally opened the crate and removed the bell jar and the book inside. ‘Living demons,’ he told me. ‘Something evil was scattered into the earth, and became part of the trees and plants that were used to create certain books. These books are demons. They live. I have seen what they can do. They hunger. They demand a blood sacrifice.’ Yeah, I nearly ran screaming from the premises myself. And then he proved it to me.
“He lifted the bell jar, opened the book, and I saw its pages bend, I saw the corners turn into teeth, and I saw them bite into his flesh and drink his blood. I don’t know what kind of monsters these things were when they walked the Earth, but just because their bodies were burned and buried and became part of the trees that were used in the making of these books . . . good God, I sound crazy to myself right now. But that’s the truth. I don’t know how—Uri and I were never able to agree on a theory, we argued about it until the day he died and left this store to me—but when one of these books feeds, it somehow . . . it somehow communicates with others of its kind, acts as a kind of beacon, and another of them follows its . . . its signal, and appears on the display block. That is why anyone taken into the Gruppenführer’s quarters was never seen again. Steiner and other members of the Thule Society were sacrificing them to these demons—or whatever they are—in order to ensure victory for their supreme Führer. When I trick one of those books into appearing here, it remains beneath that bell jar until it feeds and another of its kind arrives to take its place.”
“H-how . . . how do they feed?”
The bookseller held up his hands. For the first time, Annette noticed the dozens of healing paper cuts on the old man’s fingers.
“I feed them my own blood,” said the bookseller. “It doesn’t take that much to slake one of them, but I’ve never given one more than a few drops. About the same amount the Fitzgerald took from you.”
Annette took a step back from the book. “What do you do with them? How do you protect yourself—protect others—from them?”
“When Uri and I realized what we were dealing with, we had a vault installed in the back of the store. There are banks in this city that don’t have vaults this impenetrable. When you came in I was back there, saying a protection prayer as I unlocked it. I was going to put the Fitzgerald in there as soon as it fed and then close and seal it again. You beat me to the first part.”
Annette stared at the small man with the Wild Turkey voice and wondered if, like her, he was alone and isolated in his own skin. She felt a sudden, surprising rush of affection for the bookseller that she could not find the words to express.
“Why?” was all she could manage. “Why do this?”
The bookseller’s eyes seemed to be looking at something a thousand feet away, something filled with misery and desperation and hopelessness and, perhaps, near its edge, a hint of redemption, a dim, nebulous promise of salvation. “When I was a child, I watched men in crisp black uniforms and shiny dark boots stomp the faces of people I loved into the mud. I watched them bury sick children in deep graves of feces and gore. I watched as these men laughed and drank and goose-stepped their way across continents in a zealous effort to turn this planet into a graveyard filled with the bodies of those they deemed less pure, less worthy, less deserving of life and dignity than their own blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan ideal. I watched this evil and was powerless to do anything to stop it. All I could do was watch, and weep, and pray to a God I wasn’t certain was even there any longer. ‘Make it stop,’ I would pray. ‘Please, make it stop. Make them see the evil they do.’ ” He shook his head and wiped at his eyes. “Never again. I promised myself that I would never again watch as evil took the blood of the innocent. I promised myself that I would never allow that kind of suffering to continue, not as long as I have strength in these hands and breath in this body.” He looked at Annette, his gaze nailing her to the spot. “So I do this. I don’t know what it is I help to prevent by these actions, but I know—I pray—that I am, in some small way, as only one old, weak man can, preventing another evil from being set loose upon the world.
“I can sleep at night, and the nightmares aren’t as frequent or as terrible as they once were. So I think maybe I’m doing the right thing.”
Annette nodded her head. “May I . . . may I come with you and watch you put this book away?”
“Of course. It would be an honor for me. Since Uri’s death, I have had no one to share this secret with. Sometimes it weighs on me. It will be nice to have a friend with whom I can share this, if just for one evening. I thank you for it.” He removed a large, pristine white handkerchief from his pocket. The material was heavy, thick, and when he snapped it open, the smell of starch was almost overpowering. He placed the handkerchief over the cover of the Fitzgerald book and quickly folded it around until the entire volume was enshrouded in cloth.
“Blessed by a rabbi,” he said, picking it up. “Here, take this, please.” He offered her a thin gold necklace from which dangled a lovely but oddly shaped charm of some sort. “It’s called a hamsa. It protects against forces of darkness.”
Annette smiled her thanks and put the hamsa around her neck, hoping he wouldn’t see the crucifix she wore and possibly be offended.
The bookseller nodded. “Now we are safe. Come, you really must see the vault. It’s quite impressive.”
“I’ll bet it’s fuckin’ impressive,” said a voice behind them.
Annette and the bookseller turned to see a tall, thin, and pale young bald man pointing a gun at them. Annette didn’t know much about guns, but she’d read enough detective novels and seen enough movies and television shows to recognize that whatever its make, it was equipped with a silencer.
“Just give me the money, old man, and I won’t hurt either one of you.”
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The bookseller calmly walked over to the register, hit a few of the keys, and the cash drawers popped out with a loud ding! He stepped back from the register and pointed at them. “There’s about three hundred dollars there, maybe another twenty in change. Please take it and leave.”
The gunman moved toward the register and began yanking out the bills, stuffing them into the pockets of his black leather jacket, never moving his gaze from the bookseller. When he finished emptying the drawers, he slammed them closed and pointed the gun directly at the bookseller’s chest; it was only then that Annette noticed all of the tattoos that covered the gunman’s neck, but the one that stood out among the images of blood and violence depicted on his flesh was the large, dark swastika.
“Now,” said the gunman, “how about we all go back and take . . . take a look at that vault of yours?” He was shaking and seemed to be in pain.
“Are you all right, son?” said the bookseller, taking a step toward him and reaching out, his sleeve moving up to reveal his prison camp number.
The gunman looked at the number and sneered. “I ain’t your son, you fuckin’ kike!”
The bookseller stopped moving. If he was afraid, it didn’t show on his face or in his eyes.
“ ‘Kike’?” he said to the gunman. “You’ve got to be kidding me. ‘Kike’? That’s the best you can do? Oh, I admit, it has the tinge of nostalgia to it, but really? ‘Kike’? Is that all you’ve got?”
“Don’t,” said Annette. The gunman momentarily spun in her direction, pointing the gun at her shoulder, but then turned back to the bookseller.
“You r-really don’t want to mess with me, heeb!”
The bookseller clapped his hands together. “Heeb! Now we’re getting someplace. What’s next—oh, wait, don’t tell me, let me guess—um . . . how about ‘himey’ or ‘shylock’ or ‘matzo-gobbler’ or—oh, no, I’ve got it! ‘Arbeit Macht Frei!’! Haven’t heard that golden oldie since my camp days!”
Seize the Night Page 13
