Morning arrived on her doorstep one day with a strange new day in tow.
Her house was like before. Chores done, half done or waiting to get done.
The radio in the kitchen nattering away. A newspaper fluttering beside the breakfast plate and cup. A hum in the air anticipating another busy day.
On her hands however, as in the days preceding it, there was time. She noticed that she had more than she needed, and it made her feel vacuous. She would look up from some task or the other and wonder. A dot in the air before her would claim her eyes. A lop sided smile would begin but fail to stretch her lips.
The children she observed had little to say when they came home from school. They were two of them, and one was already a teenager. It was not that they did not talk. They had things to share too. But each one’s life had become more solidly defined than before. There were picket fences, and sometimesthick and tall hedges through which she could see little, in spite of the chatter carelessly tossed up from the other side.
At their age, she had been a voracious reader. She thought nothing of finishing three hundred pages at a single sitting, often staying awake until dawn. She still bought books and held them lovingly, kept them at her bedside table for days, unread, though cared for. Books were everywhere. Coffee table books in the parlour. A rotating book shelf held more of the same, and some encyclopaedias as well.
Nobody read them. They preferred Google and Wikipedia. Shelves and book cases creaking with books sat in every room, like brooding hens. Even her kitchen had a shelf with sliding glass doors for cookbooks and recipe notebooks. When was the last time she had flipped through the pages?
The taller book cases reminded her of angry cliffs with bases so eroded, they threatened to come crashing down any minute, and bury her under her own books in the most brutal way imaginable. Would anybody find her? She felt estranged.
The day confronted her. It spoke of books unread and the spirits of books past, whispering into her head, nudging at her elbow. As if it wanted her to get into the book shelves and flatten herself among the covers and pages. This time the feeling was far from ominous; it was delicious exhilarating and liberating too. But she still couldn’t bring herself to begin reading again.
She lay down on the couch and watched TV. Perhaps she fell asleep. She could not remember afterwards. The house had grown quiet. The air felt thick, as if a fog had slunk in through her windows and gone out through them again, leaving behind thickened air molecules. She got up and closed the shutters.
The telephone rang. It was him. He would not be home for dinner. He had to take a client out. Was his client a she? Was she pretty? The thought drifted in and out. She was not sure she cared. It was just a niggling sort of feeling. She was annoyed at herself for being niggled. She kept a good house. She wore good clothes. They went out regularly on weekends. They had their annual holidays, two full weeks spent abroad, with rows of pictures for her friends and relatives on WhatsApp and Facebook.
That morning she had found an old book on a shelf, among her handbags, the unlikeliest of places! She could not remember how it had gotten there. It was a book of poems. She had not read one for years. The thought that she used to read poetry at one time embarrassed her. There was something written on the first page, right below the author’s name, but the ink had faded. She could barely make anything out. Endearments? Someone had written them to her. Who? When? The unknown discomfited her.
How could her past keep secrets from her?
She made herself tea, looked around, and suddenly felt violent towards the house. It was always eavesdropping on her. It had grown round on her thoughts. She needed absolute privacy. She glanced at the book cases. But the books kept themselves shut. Their covers looked coldly back at her. She felt they were accusing her of ignoring them and all the ideas they had planted in her head when she had been a reader. She could not bear to look at them directly. She was sure they were raising their paper fingers at her and whispering about her shallow heart, her fickle mind. They were hopping about on their stiff gummed spines and baring the side where the pages were clamped together like teeth.
“She can’t hold a single sentence in that head of hers,” they seemed to say to each other. “She’s like a giant silver fish chewing words without comprehension.”
She was certain she heard them snicker as she went by, and the tune she was humming collapsed inside her throat. One minute she was at ease, taking the cake out from the oven, but the very next instant she thought she saw something streak past behind her, a flash of glossy paper or perhaps leather. She pretended to look for something, when in reality she was waiting to catch the little sneak. She waited.
Nothing happened for so long that she forgot about the whole thing. But they refused to let her be. Just when she got busy with something, a book fell flat on its face, like a baby that had lost its balance or was about to throw a tantrum. She could hear soft titters from the rest of them, lined up on the shelves, eager for their turn. She set the fallen book right, exasperated, sad, and angry too. She knew it would happen all over again. They were intent on making her feel brainless. Empty of everything but the most frivolous of thoughts.
It was no use. She could not bring herself to be with them anymore. They had grown apart. The distance appeared unbridgeable. She put her face in her hands, but could not weep. She felt hollow inside. Her hands trembled. The tea was worse than cold sugar water, utterly flavourless. She went out to the balcony. The world was full of sad unknown people, even though they were all familiar. She came inside and switched on the TV and surfed for a while. It made her feel no better. She finally got up, picked up her purse and left the house.
She drove aimlessly around the city. She got off at a swanky mall and walked past the shop windows and the stylish mannequins. She ignored the shop assistants desperately trying to catch her eye. She loitered near the multiplex where a variety of movies were being screened - something for everyone. She stood in the queue, but turned away again. Nothing seemed to be working for her.
Why was she so jobless today? What was wrong with her? She ought to return home. She could always find something to do there. It was her own place after all. She could even lie down if she so wished, close her eyes and keep still until she fell asleep. She could daydream until the real dreams began. There was adventure in that, though not always pleasant. Nonetheless, dreams brought variety into her life. And that was something.
She left the mall and drove towards the road that would take her home. She took a turn. A building caught her eye. It was a square steel and glass thing, with a manicured garden in front and a parking lot to the side. There were bars of brilliant orange painted like gashes on its façade, as if to make up for the otherwise sober exterior. She drove into the parking lot, took her ticket from the attendant and parked the car. The ground floor housed a children’s play area and a coffee shop. It also had racks and rack magazines from every part of the world, or so it seemed to her. The main library was on the second and third floors. Large halls, carpeted in beige, with rows of dun coloured shelves stocked with books. There were chairs and tables, upholstered arm chairs for lounging, grouped together and placed at intervals across the halls. She filled in her particulars at the reception counter, paid, took her temporary card and stepped in.
The books were quiet. They did not seem to be making faces at her behind her back or whispering about her. She liked that. It was a start. She walked from row to row at a leisurely pace, from the light romance section, to the thrillers, to the science fiction and fantasy, to the management books, poetry, science, philosophy … . Her journey among the books seemed endless. They remained still, but now their quietness was beginning to unnerve her. She decided to touch them and see what happened. She moved to the section that said sci-fi, fantasy and speculative fiction. She had always loved the genre, from a time when they had not been given that label, but were simply books that dished out enjoyable, memorable stories, entertaining grownups and children alike. She stretched out her hand until the tips of her fingers touched a book’s spine - the colour of a moody sea.
The book hesitated, and then it moved imperceptibly, returning her touch ever so lightly. She felt buoyant. The book began to draw her in, coax her out of the library and lead her to a secret place.
She carried the book to an upholstered chair and settled down to read. The story was interesting, but she was still attached to her surroundings. A part of her mind tinkered with unrelated thoughts. Another part of her mind sniggered at her fractured attention. But surprisingly, the part of her mind that was engaged with the book could make sense of what she was reading.
Suddenly she remembered what an old lady, a writer, had once told her. She’d said not without condescension that sci-fi books were light, to be read and tossed aside. The memory annoyed her. Now the book lay sullen and inert upon her lap, refusing to go along when she returned to it. But she persevered.
The part of her mind that was busy with other things dropped before her a sudden vision of him, home early because his meeting had been cancelled, pottering about her kitchen, looking for something to eat. She saw him turn with a start as something flashed past. She put her hand to her mouth to suppress a giggle.
When she looked at the open page before her again, the story in the book reached up and pulled her down by her nose. Just the way her children did when they were little, and she had been momentarily distracted from the book she was reading aloud to them.
End