The Vanishing Stacks, Jim Kemp

For years I visited the library as faithfully as others attend a place of worship. Its cracked stone steps, its heavy doors of clouded glass, the pervasive odor of decaying but still living paper felt more intimate to me than my own apartment. I could not have said why I went; I often left the books unopened before me, as if my true purpose were merely to sit among them and listen to their quiet breathing.

One autumn day I noticed that the Geography section had been sealed behind a plywood wall. A sign read Under Reorganization, though hard as I tried, I could not hear either hammer or saw. I asked the attendant, a pale young man with hair the color of pencil shavings, when it would reopen. He looked at me as though I were asking about a country that had never existed and replied, “There is no such section.”

The following week the entire east wing was missing. I circled the building twice, certain I had mistaken the entrance, but each door opened only to the central hall. My library card—my small proof of belonging—now bore a strange smudge where my name had once been printed. I tried to rewrite it in ink, but the letters bled and would not hold their shape.

Soon the card catalogs began to empty themselves. Drawers slid open to reveal blank cards that smelled faintly of mushrooms. When I put in a request  for a specific title, the librarians glanced down at their cluttered desks and said, “We no longer carry that subject.” Their voices were courteous, but their eyes seemed to pity me, as if I were confusing them with someone else, someone who might recognize me.

In the world at large I discovered similar erasures. A neighbor greeted me by an unfamiliar name that did not sound entirely wrong, though it startled me. The mirror in my foyer reflected a face I recognized only in outline. I searched my pockets for evidence of my identity—keys, a scrap of handwriting—but found only a folded slip of library stationery on which nothing had been written.

One morning I arrived to find the library’s entrance door replaced by a smooth wall of stone. I pressed my palm against it, searching for a hidden latch. Behind the stone wall I was certain I detected the faint sound of turning pages, like the rustling of leaves blown across a dry dusty floor.

I lingered until dusk, waiting for someone to let me in, but no one came. As the streetlights flickered on, I felt the night air touch my skin with a gentle insistence, as though it too were searching for my name and could not quite remember it. When I looked up, the library I had cherished had receded into shadow, tantalizingly out of reach, finally beyond all memory.