Library of Unrequited Love Read Free

Inevitably. They put the books back in the wrong place, they steal them, they muddle them up, they dog-ear them. Some people even tear out pages. Imagine, tearing pages out when photocopies are only seven centimes a shot! It’s men that do that, every time. And underlining like crazy, that’s always men as well. Men just
have
to make their mark on a book, put in their corrections, their opinions. You see the pathetic comments they write in the margin: “Yes!”, “No!!!”, “Ridiculous”, “Very good”, “O.T.T.”, “Wrong”. It’s forbidden to write on the books, that’s in the Library Rules. You don’t remember? Every borrower has to sign the form, when you get your reader’s ticket, but everyone forgets about it, they don’t respect anything. Well, men, readers, are just trouble, trouble full stop. And since I dislike anarchy, I’ve drawn my line in thesand. I prefer the company of books. When I’m reading, I’m never alone, I have a conversation with the book. It can be very intimate. Perhaps you know this feeling yourself? The sense that you’re having an intellectual exchange with the author, following his or her train of thought and you can accompany each other for weeks on end. When I’m reading, I can forget everything, sometimes I don’t even hear the phone. Not that the phone rings all that often at home, just my mother calling once a week, but if I’m really deep into a book, I don’t even hear that. It’s a marvellous feeling, very stimulating, but it does call for a minimum of effort. Intellectual effort, I mean. Making an effort has never scared me. And reading my books in silence like that, I’m at peace: my favourite authors are all dead. They’re not likely to come along and rearrange my slippers or scribble in the margins. I feel really calm then. Quite calm. Well, to tell the truth, if I can be totally honest with you, there’s this boy over there, in the History section, much younger than me, he is. He’s doing research, for a thesis, or a diploma, I don’t know, something like that. He comeshere to study. I watch him. That’s all, it doesn’t go any further. He’s very intelligent. He’s doing some serious research. I only have a first degree. Anyway. I was thinking (you have plenty of time to think in this job) and I told myself that I could never fall for someone who was less well educated than me. The men who carry the books from the stacks for us, for instance, they can still make the odd remark to me, well in fact they don’t do that so much now, but even when they did, just little remarks or winks, I tell you, I hardly bothered looking at them. Not intellectual enough. To appeal to me, a man can be shorter than me or taller, richer or poorer, older or younger, nothing’s an obstacle, I’m open-minded, you see. But he has to be more intelligent. And he has to be clean-shaven, no stubble, I hate scruffy people. My young researcher is very well turned out. His name’s Martin. The first time I saw him, I’d just got off the bus at my usual stop, avenue Salengro, and I was walking along the pavement towards the new entrance to the library, opposite the little shopping centre. At first, I didn’t pay any attention, it was just someone walking ahead of me,probably going to the shopping centre to work or shop, like all the wasters who join the rat-race to sell, or make, or buy any number of pointless consumer goods that don’t contribute in any way to the edification of human knowledge. So, I just saw this young man ahead of me, but I didn’t pay any particular attention to him. But as it takes five minutes to get to the wretched entrance now, I went on looking at what I could see, his back, his legs, the nape of his neck. Not that I spend my time looking at young men, not my style, O.K., you agree, but I didn’t have anything