Рэй Брэдбери: Exchange

She looked around, slowly, at the thousands of books. She felt her heart move quietly. «Did you really call me what you just said?»

«Mrs. God? Oh, yes. Often. Always.»

«Come along,» she said at last.

They walked around the rooms together and then downstairs to the newspaper files, and coming back up, he suddenly leaned against the banister, holding tight.

«Miss Adams,» he said.

«What is it, Captain?»

He exhaled. «I'm scared. I don't want to leave. I'm afraid.»

Her hand, all by itself, took his arm and she finally said, there in the shadows, «Sometimes-I'm afraid, too. What frightens you?»

«I don't want to go away without saying good-bye. If I never return, I want to see all my friends, shake hands, slap them on the back, I don't know, make jokes.» He stopped and waited, then went on. «But I walk around town and nobody knows me. Everyone's gone.»

The pendulum on the wall clock slid back and forth, shining, with the merest of sounds.

Hardly knowing where she was going, Miss Adams took his arm and guided him up the last steps, away from the marble vaults below, to a final, brightly decorated room, where he glanced around and shook his head.

«There's no one here, either.»

«Do you believe that?»

«Well, where are they? Do any of my old pals ever come visit, borrow books, bring them back late?»

«Not often,» she said. «But listen. Do you realize Thomas Wolfe was wrong?»

«Wolfe? The great literary beast? Wrong?»

«The title of one of his books.»

«You Can't Go Home Again?» he guessed.

«That's it. He was wrong. This is home. Your friends are still here. This was your summer place.»

«Yes. Myths. Legends. Mummies. Aztec kings. Wicked sisters who spat toads. Where I really lived. But I don't see my people.»

«Well.»

And before he could speak, she switched on a green-shaded lamp that shed a private light on a small table.

«Isn't this nice?» she said. «Most libraries today, too much light. There should be shadows, don't you think? Some mystery, yes? So that late nights the beasts can prowl out of the stacks and crouch by this jungle light to turn the pages with their breath. Am I crazy?»

«Not that I noticed.»

«Good. Sit. Now that I know who you are, it all comes back.»

«It couldn't possibly.»

«No? You'll see.»

She vanished into the stacks and came out with ten books that she placed upright, their pages a trifle spread so they could stand and he could read the titles.

«The summer of 1930, when you were, what? ten, you read all of these in one week.»

«Oz? Dorothy? The Wizard? Oh, yes.»

She placed still others nearby. «Alice in Wonderland. Through the Looking-Glass. A month later you reborrowed both. „But,“ I said, „you've already read them!“ „But,“ you said, „not enough so I can speak. I want to be able to tell them out loud.“»

«My God,» he said quietly, «did I say that?»

«You did. Here's more you read a dozen times. Greek myths, Roman, Egyptian. Norse myths, Chinese. You were ravenous.»

«King Tut arrived from the tomb when I was three. His picture in the Rotogravure started me. What else have you there?»

«Tarzan of the Apes. You borrowed it…»

«Three dozen times! John Carter, Warlord of Mars, four dozen. My God, dear lady, how come you remember all this?»

«You never left. Summertimes you were here when I unlocked the doors. You went home for lunch but sometimes brought sandwiches and sat out by the stone lion at noon. Your father pulled you home by your ear some nights when you stayed late. How could I forget a boy like that?»

«But still―»

«You never played, never ran out in baseball weather, or football, I imagine. Why?»

He glanced toward the front door. «They were waiting for me.»

«They?»

«You know. The ones who never borrowed books, never read. They. Them. Those.»

She looked and remembered. «Ah, yes. The bullies. Why did they chase you?»

«Because they knew I loved books and didn't much care for them.»

«It's a wonder you survived. I used to watch you getting, reading hunchbacked, late afternoons. You looked so lonely.»

«No. I had these. Company.»

«Here's more.»

She put down Ivanhoe, Robin Hood, and Treasure Island.

«Oh,» he said, «and dear and strange Mr. Poe. How I loved his Red Death.»

«You took it so often I told you to keep it on permanent loan unless someone else asked. Someone did, six months later, and when you brought it in I could see it was a terrible blow. A few days later I let you have Poe for another year. I don't recall, did you ever-?»

«It's out in California. Shall I―»

«No, no. Please. Well, here are your books. Let me bring others.»

She came out not carrying many books but one at a time, as if each one were, indeed, special.

She began to make a circle inside the other Stonehenge circle and as she placed the books, in lonely splendor, he said their names and then the names of the authors who had written them and then the names of those who had sat across from him so many years ago and read the books quietly or sometimes whispered the finest parts aloud, so beautifully that no one said Quiet or Silence or even Shh!

She placed the first book and there was a wild field of broom and a wind blowing a young woman across that field as it began to snow and someone, far away, called «Kathy» and as the snows fell he saw a girl he had walked to school in the sixth grade seated across the table, her eyes fixed to the windblown field and the snow and the lost woman in another time of winter.

A second book was set in place and a black and beauteous horse raced across a summer field of green and on that horse was another girl, who hid behind the book and dared to pass him notes when he was twelve.

And then there was the far ghost with a snow-maiden face whose hair was a long golden harp played by the summer airs; she who was always sailing to Byzantium where Emperors were drowsed by golden birds that sang in clockwork cages at sunset and dawn. She who always skirted the outer rim of school and went to swim in the deep lake ten thousand afternoons ago and never came out, so was never found, but suddenly now she made landfall here in the green-shaded light and opened Yeats to at last sail home from Byzantium.

And on her right: John Huff, whose name came clearer than the rest, who claimed to have climbed every tree in town and fallen from none, who had raced through watermelon patches treading melons, never touching earth, to knock down rainfalls of chestnuts with one blow, who yodeled at your sun-up window and wrote the same Mark Twain book report in four different grades before the teachers caught on, at which he said, vanishing, «Just call me Huck.»

And to his right, the pale son of the town hotel owner who looked as if he had gone sleepless forever, who swore every empty house was haunted and took you there to prove it, with a juicy tongue, compressed nose, and throat gargling that sounded the long October demise, the terrible and unutterable fall of the House of Usher.

And next to him was yet another girl.

And next to her…

And just beyond…

Miss Adams placed a final book and he recalled the fair creature, long ago, when such things were left unsaid, glancing up at him one day when he was an unknowing twelve and she was a wise thirteen to quietly say: «I am Beauty. And you, are you the Beast?»

Now, late in time, he wanted to answer that small and wondrous ghost: «No. He hides in the stacks and when the clock strikes three, will prowl forth to drink.»