The Glister (9 page)

Of course, the opposite of school is books. Me, I love books, but I can't afford to buy them. Nobody round here can, except maybe the business people over in the Outertown. But then, the Outertown kids all go to college somewhere, and they probably don't read anyway. I heard Suzie What's-her-name is doing Business Studies now, whatever that is, and little Steven Fuckface whose dad has the nice midnight-blue Mercedes is away at some fancy school where they dress up in funny clothes and toast muffins all day. I don't imagine it involves much reading in either case. It's so typical of how the world works: the people who love books, or whatever, can't afford to buy them, while the people with tons of cash do Business Studies, so they can get more money and keep the book readers powerless. All us poor folks have is the public library. Though I keep seeing in the papers that Brian Smith and the other bigwigs gave loads of money, tax-deductible, for that, so I suppose that trickle-down crap works after all. I mean, hardly a day goes by when I don't thank my luckies that the Brian Smiths of this world have enough money to spare to maintain the public library in the Innertown. Hardly a day goes by when people don't ask themselves how the Brian Smiths of this world got all that hard-earned in the first place, but there's a whole ecology of cash flow and accounting to ensure we don't work
that
out. And to keep us sweet, they build libraries and sponsor charities.

So they built a new public library, right next to the old snooker hall— and a very fine building it is, by Innertown standards. I imagine they even bought some new books but, for a long time, I didn't see them. Most of the books in the library are crap, romances and thrillers and cowboy stuff, because that's what the people of the Innertown like, right, moronic books about cowboys and nurses and spies that are all scuffed and old. What new ones they have are even worse: fucking self-help books and novels about rich people having mad passionate affairs with their tennis coach and shit, books about home improvements—really useful to us Innertown folk, what with all our disposable income—and folkloric hemstitching or whatever. How to make a patchwork quilt from leftover sweaters. Novels by former politicians who were never that good as politicians, or television celebrities who need a sideline to pay for their alimony settlements. Cookery books by ex–rugby stars and models, books about Pilates by former soap actors, books about traveling around France or Bolivia on a donkey or a motorcycle, books about plastic surgery, books about how you ended up hating yourself and why you should love yourself in case you, like the celebrity author, develop a cocaine habit and a seven-figure debt. These are the books we have in the Innertown library, mostly, because this is what morons like us like to read. This is what we need to know. How some celebrity did ten years of barbiturates and vodka, then saw the light. How some fucking millionaire made his money. How some government minister fought his way out of the inner city so he could take bribes with the best of them.

Almost, but not quite. Nowadays, there's this mad librarian called John, a big fat bloke with bad hair and worse glasses, who sneaks a few good things in under the radar every now and then. I didn't like John when I first met him. Now I think he's all right—though I imagine he could do with getting laid sometime in the next fifty years. I mean, I love books, but John is a pathologically compulsive reader, which mostly means that he can turn up for work in the morning with egg yolk on his tie and hair out of a Godzilla movie and he hasn't even noticed. To begin with, I thought he was wrapped too tight for the Innertown, but I more or less like him now. He loves books, and he knows everything there is to know about music. That's all the life he has.

When I first met him, though, I have to admit that he got up my nose. I'd been browsing the shelves, looking for something new and coming up stumped. I'd read all the Dostoyevsky they had, the complete fucking works in some ancient edition with red-and-yellow dust wrappers, so they looked like boxes of cheap sweets. I'd read Virginia Woolf's
To the Lighthouse,
which was the only book of hers they had managed to acquire. Not much happened, but I liked the way she looked at things, and I'd have liked to read more of her stuff. I'd have enjoyed knowing what she thought of the Innertown; that would have been an amazing book. I read
Nostromo
and
Heart of Darkness
and
Lord Jim,
and I'd try to imagine what it would have been like to have Joseph Conrad as a mate, or maybe an uncle, when you were a kid. I'd read F. Scott Fitzgerald's
The Great Gatsby
and I'd almost cried at the end, around about the point where Gatsby's dad turns up. I'd read fucking Hemingway's
A Farewell to Arms
and wondered why nobody ever bought the guy a dictionary. I'd read
Diary of a Nobody,
and all the Charles Dickens stuff they had, and they were great, but I couldn't get on with Trollope. I'd read the anthology of poetry from 1400 to 1945. I'd read some history books, some biographies, and a book about English folk music that looked like it had been used as a doorstop for fifty years. By the time John arrived at the library, I was running out of stuff to read, next step sniffing glue and juvenile delinquency. Or worse still, celebrity memoirs.

That was when I found Marcel Proust.

It was a nice edition, almost brand-new and nice colors, all dust-wrapped and smelling of the printers. Blue on the cover, like some French song about
la mer.
Weird titles. When I saw the complete set on the shelf I almost cried, it was so beautiful. I grabbed the first four volumes, the limit of books I could borrow on my ticket, and carried them off to the checkout desk. That was when I met John. He had just arrived, to take over from the stuck-up cow who used to be head librarian, and he was working what budget he had for the Greater Good of all. That's the wonderful thing with nerds: they're enthusiasts. Not having a life means you get to love things with a passion and nobody bothers you about it. And every now and then, you get to pass something on.

John looked at me a bit snooty, that first time, when I wandered over to the checkout desk clutching my prize. I think he was a bit of a snob; he probably figured he'd ended up working in the Innertown library because of some cruel twist of fate. “You'd do better to read these one at a time,” he said, picking up the first volume, which was intriguingly called
Swann's Way.
“It's slow, but satisfying reading. Definitely not Rider Haggard.”

Of course, I'd never heard of Rider Haggard, though it was a pretty good name for a writer. Too good really. Maybe he'd made it up. “Is it good?” I asked.

“Good?” He looked at me over his wobbly glasses. “Yes. It's good. It's better in French, though, it has to be said.”

“French?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have it in French?”

“Why?” He smiled slightly. “Can you read French?”

“Not really,” I said. I was doing languages in school, but I was pretty sure Miss Lemmon's French classes hadn't quite equipped me for
this
yet.
“Un petit peu,”
I added, hopefully.

“Not much point, then,” he said.

I was a bit annoyed by that. “So,” I said, “have
you
read it in French?”

He nodded. Smug fucking bastard.

“What, all of it?”

“It's a real page-turner.”

“I thought you said it was slow.”

“Definition of a page-turner,” he said. Then he grinned, and I knew he was just mucking about, and I kind of liked him from that moment on. It was John, after all, who made me go back and read Herman Melville. I'd consumed some kids' version of
Moby-Dick
they had in the junior library, but not the real book. For some reason, the powers that be decided many years ago that
Moby-Dick
is some sort of kids' book, and they put it out in all kinds of weird editions, all abridged and illustrated and gutted to the bare bones of an “adventure.” Worse still, they had Melville down as a one-book wonder, so I didn't even know about
The Confidence-Man,
or
Bartleby the Scrivener
or
Billy Budd,
until John came along. Nobody should ever forget the debt of eternal gratitude they owe to whoever it was who first got them to read Herman Melville properly. According to John, the real version of
Moby-Dick
was a page-turner, too—and he was right about that, just as he was right about Proust and all those others. The definition of a page-turner really ought to be that this page is so good, you can't bear to leave it behind, but then the next page is there and it might be just as amazing as this one. Or something like that. Of course, as right as he was about all things literary, John was wrong about pretty much everything else.

After that first meeting, I spent as much time as I could in the library. Before John arrived, I'd just gone in, browsed the shelves, picked four books, got them checked out, and ran home. Some woman my dad's age, with the same gray skin as his, only upright and walking about all by herself, would stamp them for me, looking like she'd rather call the police than let me borrow these particular fucking books. Once, she'd stopped midway and looked me in the face, possibly for the first time ever.

“Do you actually
like
Henry James?” she said.

I nodded. “Can't get enough of him,” I said.

“You know, we've got some great books for teenagers in the Young Adults section,” she said.

I shook my head. “Not really my kind of thing,” I said.

She frowned then and stamped my copy of
The Turn of the Screw.
“I hope you enjoy it,” she said. “Henry James
may
be just a bit old for you.”

I smiled happily. “Well,” I said, “I only read him for the sex scenes.”

I thought she'd crack a smile then, but she didn't.

So I was pretty happy when the old cow suddenly retired and John showed up. I tried to imagine his life: where he lived, what he did. I thought maybe he wrote books in his spare time. If he did, I can't imagine they were any good. He liked books too much. Though I sometimes wondered what he liked them for. There was one night, for example: I was in late, and John was sitting at the desk, reading a book with a bright, gaudy-looking cover. It was quiet, and he was completely absorbed in whatever it was he was reading. That made me curious, so I went over and tried to sneak a closer peek at the cover, to see what the title was. But as soon as he saw me, John laid the book flat on the desk and started reading out loud.

“When engaged in hand-to-hand combat”
he said,
“your life is always at stake. There is only one purpose in combat, and that is to kill your enemy. Never face an enemy with the idea of knocking him out. The chances are extremely good that he will kill you instead. When a weapon is not available, one must resort to the full use of his natural weapons. The natural weapons are
—” He looked up at me. “What are the natural weapons, Leonard?” he said.

I shook my head. I didn't want to interrupt the reading.

John shook his head likewise and went on.
“One”
he said.
“The knife-edge of your hand. Two: Fingers folded at the second joint or knuckle. Three: The protruding knuckle of your second finger. Four: The heel of your hand.
” He gave me an amazed-and-happy look. “Isn't it great, Leonard? This is a book that actually tells you how to kill people with your bare hands.”

“What the fuck is it?” I said.

“The Anarchist Cookbook”
he said. “Listen.” He went back to reading from the book.
“Attacking is a primary factor. A fight was never won by defensive
action. Attack with all of your strength. At any point or any situation, some vulnerable point on your enemy's body will be open for attack.”
He flicked the page, then went on. He'd obviously been reading this for a while. “This bit is good,” he said.
“There are many vulnerable points of the body. We will cover them now: Eyes: Use your fingers in a V-shape and attack in gouging motion. Nose: (Extremely vulnerable) Strike with the knife-edge of the hand along the bridge, which will cause breakage, sharp pain, temporary blindness, and if the blow is hard enough, death. Also, deliver a blow with the heel of your hand in an upward motion, this will shove the bone up into the brain causing death. Adam's Apple: This spot is usually pretty well protected, but if you get the chance, strike hard with the knife-edge of your hand. This should sever the wind-pipe, and then it's all over in a matter of minutes.”
He grinned at me. “Et cetera, et cetera,” he said. “Isn't it fantastic?”

“Why's that then?” I say.

He looked at me. “This book teaches you how to kill and maim people,” he said. “I mean, at last a book that is actually useful.” He quoted again.
“Ears: Coming up from behind an enemy and cupping the hands in a clapping motion over the victim's ears can kill him immediately. The vibrations caused from the clapping motion will burst his eardrums, and cause internal bleeding in the brain.”
He genuinely was excited. “I didn't
know
that,” he said. “Did you know that, Leonard?”

I didn't say anything. I hadn't realized John had such a deep and abiding interest in fucking people up.

“Here's a good bit,” he said. “Listen:
There are many more ways to kill and injure an enemy, but these should work best for the average person. This is meant only as information and I would not recommend that you use this for a simple High School Brawl. Use these methods only, in your opinion, if your life is in danger. Any one of these methods could very easily kill or cause permanent damage to someone.
” He was so happy. “This guy tells you how to kill people, and then he tells you not to do it.”

“Well,” I said, “that's very
responsible
of him.”

John snorted. “Hell, that's not going to make any difference,” he said. “Once you've got stuff like this at your fingertips, you're going to use it, right?”