forbidden room
“The Room”
Tall double doors, sprawled open: two columns of glass panels painted over bone-white. Inside, I peak a glimpse of grandfather, stern, abstruse; thick woolen pants, rumpled shirt, limp collar spread like weary bird wings; his face, a crag of seriousness, high cheekbones, gray eyes and hair. He talks briskly into the dull black phone. But behind his authority hides a life of sighs, and a back slumped from the hazards of time. Lips hovering over the mouthpiece, he takes and places orders. I don’t dare reach out toward him, but hidden in my pocket, I press between thumb and forefinger, his business card: “M. Merlyn: Rare Books and First Editions.”
His voice hovers back and forth around the receiver. Bits and shreds of queries: Back orders, bulk orders, discount orders, repeat orders, return orders. A hundred demands from places spread across an unknown geography inhabited by strangers who do not know or care how he endures to keep the house alive.
Dusk falls tautly, activity ebbs, he rises from his seat, and I make haste across the living room, irreproachably sit watching the pigeons swoop through the tenement corridors before he catches that I’ve been spying. A nod to me, but barely, he retreats to the bedroom and shuts the door. I approach warily and peek through the keyhole, watch him lie flat—fully clothed, although now slippers substitute for shoes.. Hovering above his head and held in outstretched hands, he regards
The New York Times. Over him, its winged pages cast a moth-like shadow.
I watch him, a vision thief, my eyes intent to catch a glimpse of the soul I hope will be revealed as he casts off the burden of his work, to confront in secret the man behind the bone; the mood behind the mask. But even as he disengages himself from his labor, I see how our parallel universes abut but never merge. Suddenly the turgid phone beside his bedside rings an alarm, and with a clank, he picks up the receiver, draws it to his face. He scrutinizes as he listens, his lips purse, grow into a pout as though words are inscribing themselves into an internal ledger. He mumbles, annoyed, nods to the unseen caller, casts his wearied body upright with grave deliberation. He murmurs numbers; calculations spring from his brow. Urgently, he grasps his closet door and grabs his overcoat, and once again I dash back into the living room, merge into the sofa, feigning innocence. The bedroom entrance opens and he’s on his way, jacket slung over shoulder, hauling a strapping suitcase, hastily casts out my name like an afterthought. The front door slams. Suddenly quiet permeates the air, as though an electric charge has been disengaged from its current.
Alone now, I require less stealth, although his overarching eyes seem to lurk everywhere. I enter the room of books, and stand just inside the silence. The expanse of his desk is covered with flapping papers that seem to hover like ghosts, rising from a breeze from the window crack. Scattered about them notebooks and pads. A bottle of mucilage, its rubber spout crusted. Coffee cup stains have drained areas of the mahogany top, leaving bleached crescent moons. The smell of ink is everywhere. I lower into his ancient chair, creaky and hard, vertical slats bark at my back as though to warn me of this off-limit space, his place, reserved for when he’s huddled in his work.
I arise and take another step inside; the walls of books seem to whisper. Sounds issue within their ancient bindings, their mystic script transfigured into voice. Their talk weaves across boundaries of cloth: stern, murky tones, covert as the dust that’s settled on their pages. The books: old men speaking from their graves, opened coffins spouting streams of meanings unharnessed and incomprehensible, free to roam now that I am alone among them, for I count little. These are his brethren, and like he who toils in realms of dream, hunched over, scribbling with an intensity that makes things dire, flow forth streams of words I can’t understand: hieroglyphic in their mystery. In his absence, his progenitors rise where he toils.
I approach a wall, look upward at an expanse of volumes so long they seem to recede into the distance like vertical railroad tracks. Treading tentatively, I stretch out a hand and touch a binding. Its deep red hue enthralls and beckons. Its attraction mysterious and magnetic, like a dare. Its texture moist like formaldehyde. I breathe through my fear, and grasp it in my hand. Suddenly the book seems to dance, then erupts into a discordant rhapsody, then transfigures into words that stream into air like a flock of squawking birds. They traverse the room in wild elliptical swoops and turns, pulling up fast, approaching the white plastered walls, then change direction. They encircle me and I’m captured in their embrace. Shaking and teasing, they roar in mockery at this little fool, whom they ridicule because they contain the wisdom of ages of which I know nothing. How I desire to battle their wisdom, in an impossible effort to split meaning from their boundless sounds and streaming script. To hold them in a struggling embrace so that they value my power, my voice, which is so narrow and reedy, not like theirs--or his. But mine nonetheless and I won’t settle until they respect my presence not as one of them but me, who I am.
I scream, resolute to show them my determination: to make up with forcefulness what I lack in understanding. The words suddenly lie still in air—abruptly stationary—regard me--then in growing comprehension, smirk. Then confoundedly they disperse, unglued they rush back into their containers, coffins slamming shut, safely harbored.
I hear the outer door open and urgent footsteps reverberate in my direction.
What were you doing in the room? Grandma yells. It’s not a place for you. And her telling me with her eagle eyes, her black hair in a bun, her stern eyeglasses that fall to the bridge of her nose backs me away until I run out the door into the street where squat Ely walks by waving his hat.
--My hat, he says. Waves it like a flag. A motor roars. Some local kids. One sticks his head of greased-black hair out the window, blurting in sadistic glee: “R E T A R D.”
Ely stares at the fleeing car, its image shrinking, the body half out the window turning to miniature . Ely raises his hand in triumph: “My hat.” And turns to me for approval, but I just stare, in part envious for his lack of care.
