My Father’s Books

A Boarder in Babel

47 A ­ Boarder in Babel Mr. K. al­ ways came to visit my ­ father ei­ ther very late or very early in the day. He al­ ways ar­ rived with a new book, a new doc­ u­ ment, a map; it was as if he ­ pulled books out of his very self, from out of his body, from out of thin air. In his hands he al­ ways held the first book he ­ wanted to show my ­ father. Ab­ sorbed with the books, he did not pay at­ ten­ tion to any­ one until he en­ tered my ­ father’s li­ brary. He would begin by tell­ ing my ­ father of some great dis­ cov­ ery, as if he had found some val­ u­ able man­ u­ script from the lost con­ ti­ nent of At­ lan­ tis. When he ­ worked at the uni­ ver­ sity, he would ­ search with his stu­ dents for any books and for­ got­ ten doc­ u­ ments in their ­ houses. When he left the uni­ ver­ sity, his faith­ ful stu­ dents con­ tin­ ued to bring him old, yel­ lowed doc­ u­ ments their par­ ents no ­ longer ­ wished to keep. Until his re­ tire­ ment he was al­ lowed to work in the In­ sti­ tute of Folk­ lore. He was given a small of­ fice, lo­ cated above the other rooms, a space under the roof ­ between two slop­ ing walls that had been par­ ti­ tioned off just for him—a hang­ ing bower of Babel. When some­ one en­ tered this lit­ tle room, some­ one who did not know how to get ­ through, books and ­ papers fell every which way. Some­ one once told him that his books would ­ squeeze him out of the room, and he re­ plied that such was his ideal, his ul­ ti­ mate dream. A new book was an oc­ ca­ sion for which Mr. K. could inter­ rupt my­ father’s work with­ out up­ set­ ting him. Once my ­ father was inter­ rupted, it was dif­ fi­ cult for him to re­ turn to the ­ thought that had oc­ curred to him while read­ ing. Mr. K. often whis­ pered to my ­ father his pre­ dic­ tions about where dan­ ger would come from next. Their mu­ tual love of books, ­ unique in our city, had ­ created tre­ men­ dous trust ­ between them. 48 Long into the night, while they ­ worked out their daily strat­ egy for the sur­ vi­ val of their fam­ i­ lies, they would dis­ cover which way the wind was blow­ ing. At night, Mr. K. usu­ ally lis­ tened to and inter­ preted the news on the West­ ern radio sta­ tions, while my ­ father lis­ tened to the East­ ern ones. On ­ through the night until dawn they ­ pieced to­ gether the truth from the two ­ sources they had ­ reached in­ de­ pen­ dently. The books gave them the ­ strength to wait fully pre­ pared for any new ca­ pri­ cious blows of that Bal­ kan fate that could come from any­ where at any mo­ ment. Yes, the books ­ guided their lives, and they them­ selves had to adapt so as not to end up as mis­ under­ stood Bal­ kan Don Quix­ otes, as Bou­ vard and Pé­ cu­ chet. ...