It's library o'clock

She looked at him sitting across her, under the warm light of the hanging lamps, settling into his book, his cheekbones angled handsomely in his reading gaze.

She was young after all; too young for such big feelings, she thought. But she had room in her arms for big books, big thoughts, big sighs.

* * *

The student year had ended, the dissertations handed in frantically, evaluated, the grades just received. They had returned this afternoon to campus to tie up a few loose ends. They had gone to his department and handed in an application to continue as a research assistant to his supervisor. Then they sauntered to one of the cafés for a quick bite. He selected a panini. She peered at the rows of snacks behind the glass, her heart sinking. She had bitten her inner lip accidentally, and then re-bitten the sore spot a few times and now the spot had swollen; it was large and painful and did not look pleasant. Eating anything was a challenge. “I won’t be able to eat any of these, they’ll all be too hard.” He looked at her with concern. “Is it that bad?” She grimaced, nodding. He walked closer to her and placed his thumb on her chin. “Let me see?” She shook her head. She did not want him to see that scary-looking icky swelling. After all the almosts they had danced around, this shan’t be an image he had of her. “Let me see.” he insisted. She kept her lips sealed and signalled “No” with her eyes. He sighed. “Soup?” he suggested. “You won’t have to chew it.” She selected a cup of soup and they picked a sunny table to eat at. Cold days were here, but sunny afternoons in November can be special.

They let the afternoon sunlight at the café window warm their elbows. She wished she didn’t have to interrupt the cosy hour, but it was time. “Let’s head to my department now? I need to get in by 3 PM.” She needed to pick up some documents from the office. The busy-looking lady at the office window had them ready for her.

“That was quick!” he mused. “Is there anything else you need to do here?”

She considered it for a moment. She didn’t know when or if she would come back again to the department. With their Master’s degree completed, this capsule of time away from home had reached its time of dissolution. Now, they were all dispersing, heading to new jobs or old homelands. Now, no more would they be neighbours, sharing life’s quotidian details and great epiphanies. As with her other friends, his degree would take him somewhere different from hers.

“Come, let me show you something!” she smiled and led him out of the building and around to its back.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“To the department library.”

“What is this library?” he asked her, puzzled. “I didn’t even know it exists.”

“Well, you didn’t need to!” This is the School of English library for postgraduate students only – it has some niche books. Come, I’ll let you take a peek.” She opened the building’s rear entrance door and led him up the stairs to the second floor. The corridor was empty, nobody seemed to be in any of the rooms. They paused at a closed door. He noticed it had a key pad on it. She punched in a 4-digit code and the door buzzed; she pushed the heavy door in and smiled, “Welcome.”

“Oh wow, a secret code and everything! This is some secret library!”

It was a large rectangular room, with tall shelves of books on both the short sides while large tables and chairs were arranged along the longer sides – the windows flooded the room with the light of the afternoon sun.

“Would you come here often?”

“Yup, I would actually. I found many interesting books here. Do you remember, a couple of times you bumped in to me on the road near the bus stop and asked me where I was coming from – I was returning from here.” She smiled. “When I told you it was the library you would look at me a little skeptically because that was not on the path back from the main Library.” 

His eyes lit up as he grinned and nodded. “Does anyone else come here?”

“I guess people do, but I never met anyone. Which is why I loved coming here. It would just be me sitting here by the window – and I’d make sure to come in the afternoons – and I would read, make notes, and” – she pointed to the large machine in the centre table – “scan all the pages I wanted to hold on to. You can’t borrow these books; you can just read them here.”

“Ah. Not so convenient then. But I guess it’s a good thing – makes you commit to what you’re reading then.”

“Indeed. And it’s so peaceful here.”

“Is the building always so quiet?”

“Yes! Can you believe it? Maybe it’s this rear wing of the building. I don’t see anyone here, in the corridors. Just once, I saw another person in the ladies washroom.”

They chuckled together.

She ran her eyes over the scanner. I scanned your calligraphy here in this scanner. So I still have it. She thought back to how she had searched all the shelves for just the right book to use as a background to scan the piece of calligraphy – she needed a cover with no designs, no print, or writing, but with a strong monochrome colour. She had finally found a red clothbound book with just the title emblazoned in gold on the top-front, so she was able to use its back. The piece of calligraphy was a narrow slip of paper – a calligrapher’s interpretation of his name, a souvenir from one of his travels; she had used it as a found object of art in one of her papers. I studied your name, wrote a paper on it. Call me pedantic, or call me a romantic.

“This is it. Good bye Secret Library” she said with a little wave of her hand. They stepped out and she pulled the heavy door shut; it buzzed to signal it was locked again.

“What’s next?” she asked him.

“Now I have to go to the main Library! I need to return these last two books.”

“Hahaha! The best. We couldn’t have left the campus without paying one last visit. Let’s go!”

*

She couldn’t help herself – whenever she walked into the Library, she would take her time browsing the aisles, noting all the titles, thumbing spines, going back a few spaces to recheck the book she had just reconsidered in the lower shelf… And she would assemble a high stack, every time, then look for a nice spot to settle in. While she delved into one, the rest would be stacked patiently next to her, or sometimes, she would have a few open around her; she liked the companionship of the stack, knowing that they awaited her, knowing they were there for her, picked by her to share this time, and spend it together.

She always went to the Library by herself; if she ever allowed her friends to come with, it was because they were merely going to return some books, or were definitely going to be in another section. She preferred being there by herself, moving at a pace she elected, pausing wherever and as often as she liked, having whatever expressions naturally came upon her while speed-dating the spines, sitting where she felt like, and reading for as long as she liked, and then walking home still awash in the mood-scapes her books had painted for her. The Library was expansive enough for her to find a relatively empty corner, and she delighted in trying out the different desks and chairs in every visit.

*

Now, here they were, at the main Library. He pulled out his books. But once there, the old charm beckoned. It was impossible to merely walk up till the return drop boxes behind the turnstile and return from there.

“Let’s read awhile?”

They were both in.

It was early on a weekday evening and there were a lot of people inside – reading, browsing, working. They ambled up to the back of the ground floor; it was quite busy there too. She knew there were some shelves that side that were interesting for her. As she browsed briskly, she was happily surprised though, to find a book she had somehow not come across; it was a collection of essays by theorists she had been studying, curated and edited by some newer critic she hadn’t encountered before. Today, she didn’t take a while to assemble a stack: We wouldn’t be here that long, would we? She held the big maroon book close to her chest and walked to the sofas in the centre. There were multiple long rows of wooden frame sofas, set up such that pairs of rows faced each other. Almost all the seats were full, and he had saved her a spot opposite his. “Hurry” he mouthed quietly, waving his hand and pointing to the empty seat. She quickly sat down and smiled at him. Looking around, she took note of how packed it was. I’m glad I came to this section though, or I wouldn’t have found this book. She glanced at the contents, and picked an essay about H.C and the topic of time. I never really read about her properly.

She looked at him sitting across her, under the warm light of the hanging lamps, settling into his book, his cheekbones angled handsomely in his reading gaze.

She was young after all; too young for such big feelings, she thought. But she had room in her arms for big books, big thoughts, big sighs.

She returned her attention to the essay. The passages were referencing texts within texts, and reading them against H.C.’s writing. She found a section where H.C. elaborated on the folly of the o’clock. Reading fast, she looked up at him; then she resumed to read. Most strangely, it was as if the essay was referencing this little episode of theirs, and offering up an analysis; it described her state of mind, the landscape and movements of the past year, as if it had hovered above them like an omnipresent observer, and it pulled out – like a magic trick – a white rabbit of truth for her to stop in amazement. It was like a ticking clock ticked itself into a gong that reverberated between her ears.

She felt her insides wanting to explode with this recognition, with this information. When someone sees something massive in the papers, they grab their friend next to them and point to it – “Here, check this out! Can you believe this is true?”

She couldn’t grab him and exult while pointing out the passages that made her gasp. She wanted to, because who else would get it – and yet, he was exactly the one who won’t. She couldn’t show him the pages that painted a star-shaped picture of love, that showed her something she had felt but not recognized under all those layers, that reflected a frame, the exact frame they were sitting in right then. Right then, and all the time they had had. Like a star, pointing outwards, in all directions, going everywhere – their time.

She had to hold herself, and her breath. She looked over the edge of her book at him, consuming this face to which she had grown so familiar. What these passages are talking about – I did this all along. She savoured the picture in her eyes, she savoured sitting two knees apart from him as he read a book, comfortably engrossed, while her heart leapt – both sitting quietly; so much happens across a book, so much of a supernova can explode in silence.

She felt like she was immersed in a dream pop bubble bath, a haze of full moon bubbles and kaleidoscopic clouds. And simultaneously, the stark clarity that is the light of a library.

It is both, isn’t it? she mused.

Outside the large windows, it had turned dark – November dark. She wondered if they would have to leave soon, if they would go on reading, she wondered when they would put a stop to this little moment of expanded time, a moment that seemed to have fallen out of the hours – just the two of them, sitting quietly, two knees apart, and reading, as everyone else dissolved around them.

*

What time is it, what time is it, what time is it yet not?



And now I hesitate to ask you what we’re doing next because it would be a form of ‘what is it o’clock’. And that will rupture this time we hold. But I will ask you. Because this matter of the o'clock is not shared with you anyway so you would not see it, hear it the way I know it might sound. Ah. How, though, to do this? I feel like I am lying. By saying it would be all right because you wouldn’t know, it feels like a lie. How to do this? Especially when, comfortingly, you look like you won’t ask me the question yourself.

It is time to stay. Maybe the only time to, in the time we have left.