The Book on Fire Read Online Free

and brushed her gloved hands
together as if she’d just eaten konafa. “Excellent,” she said. “First-class
read. You have a connoisseur’s taste. I’m impressed.”
    “How selfish you are.”
    “Oh, there are plenty of books. Believe me, I know.”
    “How many books have you burned?”
    “A book a day, mostly. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Who are you
to whine, book thief?”
    “You’ve been shadowing me.”
    “Every night.”
    “All right, I’m a thief. But someone will read the books I steal. I
take forgotten books and post them to someone who will cherish them. The books
you take are gone forever.”
    “No.”
    “I watched you burn it.”
    “Have you ever burned a book?”
    “Of course not.”
    “Then you don’t know what you’re talking about.” She caressed her
gloved palm with the flat of her knife.
    “But why burn a beautiful book? Burn a paperback, burn a newspaper.”
    “Surely you’d agree that reading a beautiful book, printed in
hot-metal Bembo on handmade Limoges, is so much more satisfying than reading a
mass-market paperback.”
    “Well...”
    “Of course. And in the same way, burning that book is more
satisfying than burning a newspaper. Ah, the pleasures of burning incunabula,
papyrus, vellum. Nothing to match it.” Her laughter sounded like bones under
tram wheels.
    We sat a while, watching the scurf of ash in the foam. “These traces
will not dissolve,” she murmured, “for they are woven by the north and south
winds.” Then she swung her legs around and slipped off the wall. “Come. Would
you like to meet some real thieves?”
    ****
    She
led me westward along the corniche, then across the road, past the memorial to
the unknown author and the equestrian bronze of the turbaned Albanian. We
entered the snarl of tiny alleys behind Ras al-Tiin, like negotiating the bases
of gullies, their sides ornately eroded.
    At the end of a cul-de-sac, she whispered: “Aftah, ya simsim,” and a
wooden door swung open. She stood aside to let me enter.
    Immediately the holy stench was in my nostrils—ancient incense,
apple tobacco, bat shit, candle wax. For a moment, I glimpsed a vaulted
interior of muted reds, shadowed greens, dark gold, with a waist-high speckling
of candle flames. Then the frame filled with an enormous form, voluminously
bearded, forearms tattooed with arcana like a devout sailor. He gathered me
into his church without hesitation, curling an arm across my shoulder. Inside,
he extracted me from his aromatic armpit and held me before him: “What’s your
trade, son?”
    “I ... I deal in books.”
    “I see. Well, you’ve come to the right city for that. And the right
church. This is the Kanisa Prometheus. Come. Meet my little flock of black
sheep.”
    He trundled me across the mosaics to the low tables where his
congregation bent over chessboards and waterpipes, under the gaze of St.
Isaiah, St. Will, St. Ursula, St. Vladimir.
    At the first table sat a girl in black, phosphorescent crosses and
virgins strung around her neck. Her skin as well, in the spangled dusk, seemed
phosphorescent, so pale, washed with lavender. A dark-skinned man was gripping
her wrist and sketching on her arm in oil pastel. His face was stippled and
slashed with scars, so at first I thought he’d been the victim of a terrible
disease, then saw that they were carefully arranged in concentric circles,
stacked stripes. His clothes were a crushed calico of smudged patterns. As I drew
nearer I saw that the crook of the girl’s elbow was flecked with bruises, each
with a purple stigma, and that the man was engaged in joining the marks,
forming an off-kilter ankh or seagull. The girl looked up, then smiled and
stood. She was older than I’d thought at first, too thin, her eyes huge. She
took one of my hands in both of hers, and I could feel her small bones.
“Welcome,” she said. “I’m Nura. Abuna Makarios will fetch you a drink. And this
is Koujour. An artist, as you see.” She held out