Мэтт Хейг: The Midnight Library

Mrs Elm had held her, stroking and smoothing the back of her head like a baby, not offering platitudes or false comforts or anything other than concern. She remembered Mrs Elm’s voice telling her at the time: ‘Things will get better, Nora. It’s going to be all right.’

It was over an hour before Nora’s mother came to pick her up, her brother stoned and numb in the backseat. And Nora had sat in the front next to her mute, trembling mother, saying that she loved her, but hearing nothing back.

‘What is this place? Where am I?’

Mrs Elm smiled a very formal kind of smile. ‘A library, of course.’

‘It’s not the school library. And there’s no exit. Am I dead? Is this the afterlife?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Mrs Elm.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Then let me explain.’

The Midnight Library

As she spoke, Mrs Elm’s eyes came alive, twinkling like puddles in moonlight.

‘Between life and death there is a library,’ she said. ‘And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be different if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?’

‘So, I am dead?’ Nora asked.

Mrs Elm shook her head. ‘No. Listen carefully. Between life and death.’ She gestured vaguely along the aisle, towards the distance. ‘Death is outside.’

‘Well, I should go there. Because I want to die.’ Nora began walking.

But Mrs Elm shook her head. ‘That isn’t how death works.’

‘Why not?’

‘You don’t go to death. Death comes to you.’

Even death was something Nora couldn’t do properly, it seemed.

It was a familiar feeling. This feeling of being incomplete in just about every sense. An unfinished jigsaw of a human. Incomplete living and incomplete dying.

‘So why am I not dead? Why has death not come to me? I gave it an open invitation. I’d wanted to die. But here I am, still existing. I am still aware of things.’

‘Well, if it’s any comfort, you are very possibly about to die. People who pass by the library usually don’t stay long, one way or the other.’

When she thought about it – and increasingly she had been thinking about it – Nora was only able to think of herself in terms of the things she wasn’t. The things she hadn’t been able to become. And there really were quite a lot of things she hadn’t become. The regrets which were on permanent repeat in her mind. I haven’t become an Olympic swimmer. I haven’t become a glaciologist. I haven’t become Dan’s wife. I haven’t become a mother. I haven’t become the lead singer of The Labyrinths. I haven’t managed to become a truly good or truly happy person. I haven’t managed to look after Voltaire . And now, last of all, she hadn’t even managed to become dead. It was pathetic really, the amount of possibilities she had squandered.

‘While the Midnight Library stands, Nora, you will be preserved from death. Now, you have to decide how you want to live.’

The Moving Shelves

The shelves on either side of Nora began to move. The shelves didn’t change angles, they just kept on sliding horizontally. It was possible that the shelves weren’t moving at all, but the books were, and it wasn’t obvious why or even how . There was no visible mechanism making it happen, and no sound or sight of books falling off the end – or rather the start – of the shelf. The books slid by at varying degrees of slowness, depending on the shelf they were on, but none moved fast.

‘What’s happening?’

Mrs Elm’s expression stiffened and her posture straightened, her chin retreating a little into her neck. She took a step closer to Nora and clasped her hands together. ‘It is time, my dear, to begin.’

‘If you don’t mind me asking – begin what ?’

‘Every life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations. These books are portals to all the lives you could be living.’

‘What?’

‘You have as many lives as you have possibilities. There are lives where you make different choices. And those choices lead to different outcomes. If you had done just one thing differently, you would have a different life story. And they all exist in the Midnight Library. They are all as real as this life.’

‘Parallel lives?’

‘Not always parallel. Some are more . . . perpendicular . So, do you want to live a life you could be living? Do you want to do something differently? Is there anything you wish to change? Did you do anything wrong?’

That was an easy one. ‘Yes. Absolutely everything.’

The answer seemed to tickle the librarian’s nose.

Mrs Elm quickly rummaged for the paper tissue that was stuffed up the inside sleeve of her polo neck. She brought it quickly to her face and sneezed into it.

‘Bless you,’ said Nora, watching as the tissue disappeared from the librarian’s hands the moment she’d finished using it, through some strange and hygienic magic.

‘Don’t worry. Tissues are like lives. There are always more.’ Mrs Elm returned to her train of thought. ‘Doing one thing differently is often the same as doing everything differently. Actions can’t be reversed within a lifetime, however much we try . . . But you are no longer within a lifetime. You have popped outside. This is your opportunity, Nora, to see how things could be.’

This can’t be real , Nora thought to herself.

Mrs Elm seemed to know what she was thinking.

‘Oh, it is real, Nora Seed. But it is not quite reality as you understand it. For want of a better word, it is in-between . It is not life. It is not death. It is not the real world in a conventional sense. But nor is it a dream. It isn’t one thing or another. It is, in short, the Midnight Library.’

The slow-moving shelves came to a halt. Nora noticed that on one of the shelves, to her right, at shoulder height, there was a large gap. All the other areas of the shelves around her had the books tightly pressed side-by-side, but here, lying flat on the thin, white shelf, there was only one book.

And this book wasn’t green like the others. It was grey. As grey as the stone of the front of the building when she had seen it through the mist.

Mrs Elm took the book from the shelf and handed it to Nora. She had a slight look of anticipatory pride, as if she’d handed her a Christmas present.

It had seemed light when Mrs Elm was holding it, but it was far heavier than it looked. Nora went to open it.

Mrs Elm shook her head.

‘You always have to wait for my say-so.’

‘Why?’

‘Every book in here, every book in this entire library – except one – is a version of your life. This library is yours. It is here for you. You see, everyone’s lives could have ended up an infinite number of ways. These books on the shelves are your life, all starting from the same point in time. Right now. Midnight. Tuesday the twenty-eighth of April. But these midnight possibilities aren’t the same. Some are similar, some are very different.’

‘This is crackers,’ said Nora. ‘Except one ? This one?’ Nora tilted the stone-grey book towards Mrs Elm.

Mrs Elm raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes. That one. It’s something you have written without ever having to type a word.’

‘What?’

‘This book is the source of all your problems, and the answer to them too.’