Books Do Weep!

One day I decided to pay a visit to the local library to register myself and to check out some books. Well, my experience was of a singular nature and it shocked the very soul of my being. As I entered the library, a thought occurred to me that I had come outside the working hours of the said library because there was no one in there save a lady sitting in a chair near the entrance.

“Excuse me! Is the library open?” I asked the lady who was enjoying some day-dream.

“Yes, it is! But what’s the matter?” she asked me as if I had entered the wrong domain.

“I want to register and if it is possible, I would like to check out one or two books at present.”

She shot a staring glance at me as if a hen stares at a duckling she has just hatched. Her expressions clearly conveyed that she took me for a fool.

“Okay! You can have a look at the collection and, then, if you desire I can register you as a member.”

“Thanks a lot!” I said and moved towards the book-shelves. My mind was still trying to untangle the mystery of the lady’s strange facial expression but I got it straight, automatically, towards the end of my tour de force.

I moved to the shelf marked Classics and tried to get some materials for reading. It was an amazing scene. All the books in this section, as well as in all other sections that I visited later on, to my surprise, were fairly protected with a thick coat of dust in the first place and with a curtain of cobwebs in the second place.

“Does nobody pay them visit?” a thought occurred to me at the back of my mind and, once again, the lady’s face at the reception came to my imagination. I placed my hand on a bulky volume and tried to pull her down but she was stuck there. A little show of strength helped me getting out the book but I also found myself getting up from the floor. A successful first attempt! I cast a glance about to see if somebody noticed the great fall but, thanks God, there was not a single soul in that big hall. Once again the lady’s face and her expressions started swimming before my inward eye.

“Who is weeping here?” as I heard a low moan, I reflected. My good God! The book in my hand was trembling and her moan had changed into a distinct wail by then. When I opened her, I saw her name inscribed on the forehead—it was War and Peace.

“Why do you weep my darling?” I asked her in my amazement and I sank into an armchair to listen to her story.

“Dear me, you are the first one in years to touch me”, she started in a very heart-breaking tone and the tears in her deep eyes lay very near to the surface, “since the time I was brought here, nobody bothered to listen to what I tell. During these years I was totally ignored and dust filled my eyes, ears, nose, mouth and all my body. Different types of insects have been eating my very being over these years. You can see for yourself. Besides, cobwebs were fabricated to suffocate me. My sister Anna Karenina is also with me. She is also in the same pathetic condition. Our father Tolstoy didn’t bring us to this world to bear such humility and onslaughts of cruelty. We were created to breathe in fresh air. For God’s sake have pity on us and tell the rest to treat us with pity, love and kindness.”

She could not stop her tears any longer and I promised to try my best so that her voice reaches a sympathetic ear.  

“Please have a look at the rest of us to get a firsthand knowledge of our plight”, she implored again.

I placed her at her residence and moved to another delicate beauty. Her name was Jane Eyre and she seemed to be very sensitive like her mother Charlotte Bronte. Next to Jane Eyre was her darling sister Wuthering Heights. Both these cousins repeated the same story as that of War and Peace. I could not forget the hope in their eyes which they had developed owing to my visiting them. Wuthering Heights was very well aware of her bewitching beauty and I think she was fully justified in her complaint against the cruel world which has lost aesthetic sense. Sons and Lovers looked at me in a way which was full of disappointment and contempt. I believed that she had lost all hopes of winning admirers. I consoled her and promised to take her on a trip. Don Quixote and Dr. Zhivago were gracefully resting on the shelf to die. When I asked about their feelings, they jointly issued a statement which said: “We shall die here on this scaffold with honour because we are not ‘Bromides’ i.e. commoners, but we shall not beg these dead people to help us to get out of this suffocation. We have great things to tell but if someone does not want any wisdom from us, we are too respectable to bow under the heavy weight of shameful negligence.”

And there she was! Sitting in the most elegant posture, which was full of pride in her talents and magnetism, Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell was looking at me satirically.

“The entire world acknowledges my talents and knows my worth. They praise my elegance in almost all the major languages of the world but you people, in this part of the world, are either bore or ignorant of my real worth. I feel it my insult to look at you because you are one of them”, and the words refused to come out of my mouth to reject her arguments.

Once again I recalled to my mind the strange expressions of the dear lady at the entrance. Things were getting square I reckoned.  

Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Stowe, Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky, and From here to Eternity by James Jones all were suffering from severe attacks of asthma. I promised with a heavy conscience that I would arrange for them an able physician. Lie down in Darkness by William Styron, The Return of the Native and Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy were almost at the verge of death. They were being consumed by acute consumption. I could do nothing about them at present so I tried to steal myself away from them. Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer and Moby Dick by Herman Melville had both gone mad because of the continuous years of neglect. They were even laughing at me for they had not seen the like of me in decades.

I crept to another part of the library. By this time the residents of all the other shelves had become aware of my presence and everyone started crying for help. They were telling their stories of misery. I sought shelter from this babble and almost hid myself behind another shelf. No sooner did I straighten out my breaths than the daughters of Shakespeare called me out and begged to listen to them. All were crying at the top of their voices but I could distinctly hear those voices having the highest pitch: they were Hamlet, Tempest, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night’s Dream and Shakespeare’s model girl Romeo and Juliet. I, once again, gave them my word that I would take their case to a higher court for securing them justice. Hamlet asked me something which left me ashamed as well as blank before her:

“Why have you forgotten the great genius of our father, William Shakespeare? Don’t we deserve respect and acknowledgement in the name of our great father in this part of the world? Fie upon thee if you say No”.

The families of Bernard Shaw, Ibsen, Marlowe, Keats, Milton and many more great families were all living in the neighbourhood of Shakespeare’s daughters but they only kept their silence as a token of their respect for the greatest playwright the world has ever produced.

“What should we say to you? You yourself seem to be helpless in improving our lives.” This was the silent message that they seemed to convey to me.

I was confused beyond mind and memory and measure by all this and felt myself sinking into an ocean of regret and shame. My brethren have, if I have not, shattered their dream of a happy life. I could not justify their cold attitude towards these fair dolls. Also, I could not help bringing people back to the world of these beautiful young ladies I have mentioned above. I was almost at the verge of losing my conscience when, at once, I felt a sudden rub against my legs.

“Who’s there?” I thought to myself. Shocks upon shocks! A cat, along with her four lovely kittens, was staring at me as if I were an intruder in her peaceful world. At about the same moment, a huge bat flew in a circle and hooked itself to one of the ceiling fans in that big hall.

“Oh God! Is this a library or a haunted house-cum-zoo?”

The mystery of the lady’s strange expressions had almost come to a logical conclusion in my mind.

“You are the first one in years to touch me” these words of Miss War and Peace echoed in my mind and untangled the mystery.  

I walked with heavy steps to the reception. My dear young lady was by then fast asleep.

“Excuse me!” I attempted to bring her back to reality show, “I have decided to register NOW if you can help me, please!”

“Very well! Come after three days to get things straight.” She informed me in a sleepy voice with the most boring expressions in the world on her face.

“Why after three days? Why not now? I want to check out some books.” I protested in an inquiring way.

“Gentleman! I have to arrange for membership procedure, you know documentation, forms and other necessities okay! Right now, I don’t have any such thing because you are the first one in many years to visit this library with a demand for registration.”

I got out of the library with a clear mind about her first expressions. My dear Miss War and Peace said absolutely the right thing.