The Book and the Shade

The lights have just gone out in the restaurant I was passing by. The last waiter left and locked the door. The chairs, taken to the tops of the tables resembled antlers of baby deers. I was almost past the dark window when a long shadow stepped out into the street. It crawled higher and higher, and I had to lift my head to watch the thing grow.

Second, third, fourth floor. I see in the shadows something that looks like a head now. A bald head with a fleshy aubergine-like nose, a chewed-up face and maize for the hair. The creature smells like roasted sesame seeds, Aleppo chillies, and barberry. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wonder if I woke it up by causing a scandal here in the café today, while carrying THAT book in my backpack. The man who handed it to me said that it was filled with ‘Arabic recipes and other interesting records’. But I sensed that something was wrong with it.

More important: what does this thing want and what should I do next? Is it just a disembodied spirit that has to remind me of something, or should I start to panic?

I crossed the road just in case. Shadows showed me that the Shade followed me. I looked around. Restaurants and barbershops used to make the lane very busy during the day. But now it was the other way round. Not a single residential building. Not a single window is lit, not a single sign, just a few streetlamps. No sound except for the creaking of cars a mile away, and here only the rustling of rubbish from the wind and my own heavy breathing. 

And I didn't even seem to be running. Or was I? I begin to realize that the shadow of the Shade is constantly growing, and I am continually speeding up my pace. But where was I going? Stop! I'm going deeper into the lane, farther away from the light and echoes of the streets, closer to complete darkness in a dead end. 

And the stench. It becomes so sharp, irresistible and overpowering. Not only fried oil and spices. The rot of discarded vegetables, the flytrap of stale minced meat and the completely artificial note of some detergent are blended into this stench. It might have been called ‘sea breeze dishwasher’, but it was more like clothes that were worn for a week. Something has to change, otherwise I'll just suffocate. I start to feel pieces of rotten meat in my throat. It has to be stopped!

I stopped and turned around to face the Shade. Now it is no longer just an amorphous figure with a head. It is a giant parody of a human made of vegetables and fruits, with arms, legs and neck connected by pieces of meat and grey slime, like the gastric juice of some alien. It's as if someone grew a meter-long zucchini and a half meter-long corn and made a human figure out of them. Then diluted it with vegetables, fruits, meat and fat. And then breathed life into this creature, like Pygmalion into his Galatea.

As I supposed, the figure is holding a mop, also made of giant vegetables and herbs on a bamboo handle. Of course, the morning's argument in that café caught up with me in this... incredible way. But screw psychoanalysis! This thing is coming at me. A few more steps, and I'll find out if it's spirit or flesh. But if it's flesh, then this will be the last mystery in my life that I've solved. This thing will just squash me like a cockroach. What the heck do I do? I look around, but I don't see a way out. I can only run into a dead end. Fight? With a creature as big as twenty men?

I am still running back. Maybe there is going to be an opening to the next street, some open doors... But there's only a brick wall with no ledges and about four meters high. There's no way I'm going to reach its top. I'm weak. A sickly bookworm who lives behind a computer and in an armchair. Why are you even fighting with anyone, you weakling? If you didn't mess with the cleaner, you wouldn't feel guilty when you passed a café with the Book, you wouldn't smell the spices... Oh, God! 

My backpack off my back, come on! Open, you bloody zipper! The scarf, the book, there they are, rustling! A pack of onion rings for tonight's beer! Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze them. I squeeze the onion rings in the pack and open it. I shove them into my mouth, but don't swallow, I have to taste them. I shove small pieces into my nostrils. First the right, now the left. It burns the mucous membranes! It feels great!

The smells of spices and fried food disappear, stop squeezing my throat. I lift my head. The man with the mop is slowly turning into an amorphous Shade. The Shade blurs and eventually dissolves into thin air.

I think I realized what had happened just in time. All day long I was tormented by a sense of guilt for that savage scream at the cleaner. He had just hit a set of spices. He was most likely also pushed by someone else. Oh, I went to a meeting smelling like chili, turmeric and barberry. So what? Yes, I was sleep deprived and had just had an unpleasant conversation. But what the hell did the cleaner have to do with it? Or his Jamaican heritage? I'm not some kind of arsehole! Or am I? Am I the right person to get hold of the Book?

I put some more onion ring crumbs in my nose: I have to pass the café again. I called a taxi. At home I washed my face and hands with soap and water and then thought about what to do with the Book. To be honest, I should destroy this leather-bound thing written in Arabic script. Who knows what other monsters it can summon. And from whose head but mine. 

On the other hand, I don't have many things left from my father. 

Or maybe it's just some kind of perverse curiosity? I have to sign up for Arabic lessons tomorrow. Then we'll see.