My Father’s Books

The End of Time

57 The End of Time To Prof. Anton Po­ lansh­ chak It seems that the peo­ ple who build li­ brar­ ies through­ out their lives die twice: most often their li­ brar­ ies die with them. Mar­ cel ­ Proust In dis­ cov­ er­ ing the works of Mar­ cel ­ Proust in the Bal­ kans, Pro­ fes­ sor Po­ lansh­ chak ac­ tu­ ally dis­ cov­ ered the rich­ ness of read­ ing in his own life. The nov­ els of ­ Proust that make up the cycle In ­ Search of Lost Time oc­ cu­ pied the cen­ tral place in his li­ brary, which took up the en­ tire wall space in his house. He spent a great deal of ­ thought on the ar­ range­ ment of his books. His order made the books alive, ready to ra­ di­ ate their en­ ergy. Among the books, in what con­ sti­ tuted at the same time a sep­ ul­ chre of his era, of his time, one’s at­ ten­ tion was drawn to the skull of a for­ mer Roman le­ gion­ naire that had been ex­ humed some­ where in the very heart of the Bal­ kans. The skull was ­ nearly de­ com­ posed with age, but it had mi­ rac­ u­ lously pre­ served its teeth se­ curely in place, and in among them shone two new ­ crowns, along­ side other teeth sport­ ing new fill­ ings. Pro­ fes­ sor­ Polanshchak’s li­ brary told the most about his life. He had ded­ i­ cated his life to the read­ ing and inter­ pre­ ta­ tion of the works of Mar­ cel ­ Proust. If­ Proust had dis­ cov­ ered his past time, his child­ hood, and his youth in the eter­ nity of art in the heart of Car­ te­ sian and Berg­ so­ nian Eu­ rope, Pro­ fes­ sor Po­ lansh­ chak ­ wanted to ar­ rive at this same dis­ cov­ ery in the Bal­ kans. The skull, with its ­ filled teeth, gro­ tesque and bi­ zarre, was wit­ ness to times lost and times found in his Bal­ kans. ...