The Book, III

III

WEEKS PASSED, and my distress subsided and was quieted. But an image of The Book continued to burn with a bright flame in my soul — a great rustling Codex, a billowing Bible with a wind blowing through its pages, plundering it like an enormous, scattering rose.
    Seeing that I was calmer now, Father cautiously approached me, and said in a tone of gentle encouragement: ‘Really, there are only books. The Book is a myth in which we believe when we are young; but in the course of years one ceases to take it seriously.’ But I already held a different belief by then. I knew that The Book is a postulate, a task. I felt the burden of a great duty on my shoulders. Filled with contempt and obstinate, gloomy pride, I made no reply.
    For at that time I had already come into possession of that shred of a book, those wretched remains that had been smuggled into my hands by a strange turn of fortune. I had carefully hidden my treasure from all eyes, aching over the profound ruin of that book, its decrepit remains that I could not have gained the least sympathy for. It happened like this:
    One day that winter, I came across Adela in the course of her housework, brush in hand, leaning against a reading desk, upon which there lay some torn paper fragment. I leant against her arm, not so much from curiosity as to be able to be stupefied all over again by the scent of her body, its youthful charm, which had not long been revealed to my awakened senses.
    ‘Look,’ she said, submitting without protest to my embrace. ‘Could someone really grow their hair to the ground? I should like to have hair like that.’
    I looked at the illustration. There on the large in-folio page was a picture of a woman, somewhat brawny and plump of shape, with a face that hinted at vigour and experience. An enormous sheepskin of hair streamed from that lady’s head, and tumbled heavily down her back, the ends of its thick locks trailing on the ground. It was surely some improbable prank of nature, that abundant, waving cloak spun from the roots of her hair. It was hard to imagine how its weight did not cause her intense pain, did not render immobile that head that was laden with it. But the owner of that magnificence seemed to wear it with pride. And the text printed in heavy type alongside told the story of that miracle, beginning with the words: ‘I, Anna Csillag, born in Karlovice in Moravia, had a meagre growth of hair...’
    It was a long story, similar in construction to the story of Job. It was by a decree of Providence that Anna Csillag had been stricken with her meagre growth. The whole village pitied her for this affliction, which they forgave her for, on account of her irreproachable life, notwithstanding that she could not have been entirely blameless. And as a result of their fervent prayers, lo and behold, the curse was lifted from her head. Anna Csillag had attained the grace of enlightenment. She received signs and instructions, and she prepared a specific, a wonderful medicine which restored fertility to her head. Her hair began to sprout, and as if that were not enough, in the succeeding days her husband, brothers and cousins too were ergotised with huge black pelts of beards. On the opposite page was a picture of Anna Csillag six weeks after the revelation of her formula, surrounded by her brothers, brothers-in-law and nephews, mustachioed men with beards falling below their waists. And one could only look in admiration at that veritable explosion of unfalsified, bearlike masculinity. Anna Csillag delighted the whole village, upon which a veritable benediction flowed in the form of colossal crops of wavy hair and manes, and its inhabitants swept the ground with their beards, as broad as brooms. Anna Csillag had become the apostle of the hirsute. And now, having delighted her native town, she wished to delight the whole world, which she invited, encouraged and begged to accept as its salvation her divine gift — that wondrous medicine, the secret of which she alone knew.
    I read this story over Adela’s arm, and suddenly a thought struck me, from the impact of which I stood all in flames. This was The Book — its final pages, an unofficial supplement, a tradesmen’s entrance full of litter and debris! Splinters of a rainbow revolved in the swirls of the wallpaper. I snatched the fragment from Adela’s hand. In a voice I could barely control, I breathed: ‘Where did you get this book?’
    ‘Fool,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders. ‘It always lies here. We tear pages from it every day, to wrap up cuts of meat and for your father’s breakfast...’

> -IV- >