Bookmarks

Not very long ago, when I was still in London, I went to Acton Library before the time at which the books close, and I was attended by a one-handed man.

From the room I had rented in Hoylake Rd. it was a twenty minutes walk, five of which through a park, to the Library.

I think it was Cicero who said that if you have a garden close to the library you don’t need anything more. In London, I had five minutes of garden in my walk of twenty minutes to the books.

It was a corner building, made of red brick that the time has turned yellow, and of new books that the time has turned used.

It is important that the libraries have corners within. That, at the end of their route, two rows of books which seems to be independents meet in a common edge. It is important to have books in different directions in every library, even perpendicular between them.

It is also important that, to the hard floor of a library, someone brings in the feet a few blades of grass which have hidden in the soles of the shoes as if they were bookmarks which remind us which way we are going around.

Hello, sir.

The one-handed man, whose name I think I do not remember, did not look to have lost the use of the left hand in a battle though his country not very long ago had a colonial empire which only existed in the used books already.

How can I help you?

These books are to return, I said.

And I left them on the counter. He opened one by one, registered and turned to close them. I looked at the watch. It was late. It was almost the time at which all those books used to close.

I used to go to Acton Library those days that I was really alone. Another option could have been take a cab in order to talk a little bit. But to take a cab and make conversation, one has to do well about the weather, be up to date of sports, or know vocabulary of times in crisis. Nevertheless books give conversation even you have nothing to talk about.

The man dressed in black and was very white. Some might say that that arm did not serve at all, that even could be a nuisance. I think that that dead arm balanced that man, as a bookmark in the middle of a story balances what we already know and what we don’t know yet.

It is easier to make conversation asking for a Chekov’s book at the counter.

Do you have The Lady with the little dog?

But no, he didn’t have it. She didn’t change Yalta for East Acton.

Perhaps that evening, I don’t remember very well, I took advantage of the last hours to the time of closing the books. Put like that it seems they were all open until quarter to eight, when their day ended. And, to my sadness, as if all were on the first page, because I hadn’t read most of them –from the few known to the many unknown- not even close.

Going back to the street, I overtook the bookmark of my life.

It is important that, going out from a library, even with empty hands, we have overtaken one page.
It is also important that, for the return path from a library, feet drag a story which has hidden in the soles of the shoes as if it was a bookmark which reminds us which way we are going around.

For example, a story like that of a man who I suppose handles the essays with the awake hand; and with the sleeping one, fiction books.

Good morning –I remember he had said on a former occasion. But, realizing that it was one past twelve, he had rectified: Good afternoon.

In London, as elsewhere in the world, there are streets which have neither parks nor gardens. Streets where it is unknown whether it is spring or autumn. That’s why I used to go to that building. Libraries are the gardens of the streets without trees.

I came back from London and I have started to forget things such as roof shapes, bus routes, frequencies of radio stations, or the name of the bicycle garage close to the level crossing. Lines that lie behind the position of the bookmark become blurred as a stone sinking in the water. But we never completely return borrowed books in a library. I know that books are the end of the hands of those who, like me, when we return a book which it is not ours, feel that we are missing something –and all the things we take begin to drop- that Acton Library one-handed man has.