The Book, III

III

WEEKS PASSED, and my distress subsided and was quietened, but an image of the Book continued to burn with a bright flame in my soul — a great rustling Codex, a billowing Bible through whose pages a wind blew, plundering it like the petals of a huge, scattering rose.
    Father, on one occasion, seeing that I was calmer, cautiously approached and said in a tone of gentle encouragement: ‘As a matter of fact, there are only books. The Book is a myth we believe in when we are young, but in the course of years one ceases to take it seriously.’ 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 I was already by then in possession of that shred of a book, those wretched remnants that a strange turn of fortune had smuggled into my hands. I carefully hid its treasure from all eyes, aching over the profound ruin of that book, for whose decrepit remnants I could not have gained the least sympathy. This is how it happened.
    One day that winter, I came across Adela, brush in hand, in the course of her housework, leaning against a reading desk on which there lay some torn fragment of paper. 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, whose youthful charm had not long been revealed to my awakened senses.
    ‘Look,’ she said, submitting without protest to my embrace. ‘Can someone really grow their hair to the ground? I should like to have hair like that.’
    I looked at the illustration. There on a large in-folio page was a picture of a woman, rather brawny and plump of form, with a face full of energy and experience. An enormous sheepskin of hair streamed from that lady’s head and tumbled heavily down her back, the ends of her thick locks trailing over the ground. This was some improbable prank of nature, a voluminous and abundant cloak spun from the roots of her hair, and it was hard to imagine that its weight was not causing her intense pain, that it would not paralyse her head, which it made enormous. But the owner of that magnificence appeared to wear it with pride, and alongside, printed in thick type, the text 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. Anna Csillag had been afflicted with her meagre growth by a decree of Providence. The whole town, who forgave her on account of her irreproachable life, pitied her for this handicap, notwithstanding that it could not have been entirely undeserved. And lo and behold, as the result of fervent prayers, it transpired that the curse was lifted from her head. Anna Csillag attained the grace of enlightenment; she received signs and instructions, and prepared a specific, a wonderful medicine which restored fertility to her head. Her hair began to sprout; and not content with that, her husband, brothers and cousins were also ergotised day by day with a huge black pelt of beard. On the opposite page, Anna Csillag was shown six weeks after the revelation of her formula, surrounded by her brothers, brothers-in-law and nephews, men with beards falling past their waists and mustachioed, and one could only look in admiration at that veritable explosion of unfalsified, bear-like masculinity. Anna Csillag thrilled the whole town, upon which a veritable benediction flowed in the form of colossal crops of wavy hair and manes, and whose inhabitants swept the ground with beards as broad as brooms. Anna Csillag became the apostle of the hirsute. Having delighted her native town, she desired to delight the whole world; she invited, encouraged, and begged it to accept as its salvation that divine gift, that wonderful medicine whose secret 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 last pages, its 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, and 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, and we tear out its pages every day to take to the butchers’ stalls for the meat, and to make breakfast for Father...’

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