Steven Millhauser - We Others - New and Selected Stories

But even those men and women who serve the demands of daily life spend every spare moment bent over a book, since all of us have been trained to arduous study during our first fifteen years. Thus it may truly be said of us that even outside the highest domain of learning, we are all, in a very real sense, people of the book.

Because of our fervent devotion to books, my dear ones, it is necessary that our relations with them be clearly established by law, so that the spirit of excess, so visible in the history of our people, so desirable in all matters pertaining to the higher realms of existence, shall not be applied harmfully to the physical forms that bear upon them the outward signs of the indwelling spirit. You are all familiar with the vast Book of Laws. You have all memorized many passages. You know that the Book of Laws contains prohibitions which govern the relations between human beings and books. Now, the First Prohibition is this, that thou shalt not destroy, or mutilate, or in any way injure, a book, or any portion thereof. And this law, my dear ones, has been taught to you from your earliest years. But there is a second prohibition, which you do not yet know. And the Second Prohibition is this, that thou shalt not copulate with, or perform any manner of procreative act upon, a book. For although the books of our time no longer possess the capacity to engage in acts of copulation, as they did in ancient days, as recorded in the seventh volume of the Book of Legends, still it happens that a young person, or less frequently a person of mature years, feverish with the desire to learn, conducts himself or herself improperly with a book, as, for example, by laying the body with lascivious intent upon or beneath a book, or the open pages thereof, and must be punished. Now, the punishment for violating the First Prohibition, or the destruction of a book, is death. For a book is a living thing, as I have said. And the punishment for violating the Second Prohibition, or copulation with a book, is mutilation of the sexual parts. It therefore behooves you, my dear young scholars, to maintain proper relations with books, which is not to say that you should tame your fervor, but that you should direct it toward its proper end.

And having mentioned death, I would like to speak to you for a moment about the meaning of death, for us who burn with a desire to find our way to life, to the breath of the Creator breathed into the First Book of all. My dear young people, listen. Today you have completed the thirteenth year of your lives. And yet, if I may put it so, you already lie on your deathbeds. Your hands shake. Your eyes grow dim. Your ears admit no sounds. You are old, my dear ones, you are old. Birth, it is said, is the beginning of death. But it is not only the beginning of death. It is also the continuing of death, the continuing of all the deaths of all those who have come before you, since the sixth day of creation. When you are born, you are older than Adam, who lived nine hundred thirty years. You are older than Noah, who lived nine hundred fifty years. Methuselah, compared to you, is a baby who shakes his rattle. You are old, my dear ones. You are dying. You are already buried in the ground. You are born wailing, and why? Because when you open your eyes, Death grins at you from your mother’s face. You come into the world with a knife in your neck. Your mother rocks you in your coffin. You learn to crawl inside a grave. The worm is your brother. Dead men’s bones are your sisters. Who is the bridegroom? Who is the bride? Behold the two skeletons, kissing under the canopy. What is life? A sickbed in a hospital. The nurses are busy. The doctor is dying. No one will ever come.

Why then, my dear ones, should we live at all? What is the meaning of this dying that surrounds us on all sides, that lies in wait for us, day and night? And when you are mindful that it is not you alone who will die, but all those who are dear to you, your mother and father, your sister, your brother, your beloved friends, your revered teachers, your unborn sons and daughters; when you are mindful that all those who once were living are now dust in the wind; then it seems difficult, not simply to bend your mind to a lifetime of study, but even to rise from bed in the morning, in order to begin a new day.

But, you ask, can we not take pleasure in multiplying our kind? Can we not delight in passing on to the next generation our special task? For we do not live for ourselves alone: we live for our people, for all those who have yet to come into the world. Alas, in the Book of Prophecies we read that our people, so rich in wisdom, so rich in suffering, chosen above all others to find the undiscovered words, are destined to come to an end. There we read that the mountains will fall. The sky will grow dark. All mankind will cease. And a time will come when it is the seventh day, and then the sixth day; the fifth day, and then the fourth day; the third day, and then the second day; and behold, the last day of all; and thereafter it will be as it was before the beginning of days. That is what we are told in the Book of Prophecies.

Why then should we not despair, my dear ones? Why should we continue for another day? Another hour? Why should we devote ourselves to a long life of spiritual striving, in the full knowledge of our inevitable nothingness? My dear young scholars, I will tell you why. I will tell you that in the same Book of Prophecies, we learn of a way through the darkness. The cellar has a stairway. The grave has a door. Yes, my dear ones: yes. For just as that First Book, filled with the breath of the Creator, can never cease to be, so is it with all books touched by that life-giving power. My dear ones, my lovely ones, listen to me. Listen as I tell you of the Paradise of Books.

In the twelfth volume of the Book of Prophecies, we learn that books, like all things on earth, live out their years and die. Now, when a book dies; when, that is to say, a book crumbles to dust, or is destroyed by fire, or by water, or by pestilence, or by any of the innumerable accidents that can befall the creatures of this earth; when, for any reason, a book ceases to sustain its material shape: then, in the space of a single breath, it ascends to the Seventh Paradise, which is known to us as the Paradise of Books. There you may find the eternal and unchanging shape of every book that has ever been born. There you may find the generations of descendants of those first Twelve Tablets, whether they be of stone, or papyrus, or parchment, or paper, or any other word-receiving form. There, we are told, if you are among the most fortunate, you may come upon the First Book of all. Now, the Paradise of Books is the Seventh Paradise, as I have said. It is the place to which only scholars and writers of the highest spiritual striving can ascend. But all of us, by virtue of our origin, are entitled to approach the judgment seat, at the gates of that heavenly place. Therefore study diligently, my dear young scholars, and bend your minds away from worldly things, so that when you complete your dying, you will ascend to the Paradise of Books and live in joy forever.

And now you will understand me well, my dear ones, when I say unto you: Welcome to death! — by which I mean, Welcome to life, welcome to the breath that blows through all things, welcome to the Paradise of Books. The study and the library, in which you will spend your days, are emblems of that Paradise to which we all aspire. For though the way is dark, the end is dazzling bright. And I say unto you, my dear ones: Remember well the words I have spoken to you on this day, when you have completed your thirteenth year of life, of death. Now, let me ask you to close your eyes. Let me ask you to close your eyes and see . See the study-room. See the long tables. See the scholars at their books. Do you see them, the scholars in their clothes of black and white? They do not move. They make no sound. My dear ones, I ask you: What do they look like, when you see them there? What do they resemble? Are they not, by their stillness, by their inwardness, the very sign and symbol of a living book? Are they not tablets of breathing stone? For these are your people, whose origin you now know.