Bibliophage, Part IV

At first, it was shocking to see Martin--but she called him the Bibliophage--eat her books.

First, he would inhale, savoring each part of the book, sometimes individual pages. Then he would remove the pages--either with a scalpel or by hand, keeping the edges as neat as possible--a sensual purr of torn fiber. And then, while he soaked the binding in a mixture of warm water and salt, he ate the pages, tearing them into bite-sized pieces, almost absent-mindedly, while chatting with Marina about books he had eaten, books only he remembered now.

There didn't seem to be any magic involved.

The first book he had eaten was, naturally enough, a children's primer, back in 1943, its pages already warped from the drool of his two older brothers (whom he had not seen in years). The best book he'd eaten was a copy of the Bible, too common to itself disappear, but populated with the family tree of one of the women killed in Salem, Massechusetts, as a witch; it had also contained pressed wildflowers and a few lines of erotic poetry addressed to another girl's boy-friend, rhyming skin with sin and again and again.

The Chandler?

Marina felt the book--that is, the book's name, which was all she knew of it--lift out of her, like a bird in flight, somewhere between the mastication of pages 107 and 108. But the memory of her husband, handing her the book, smiling, kissing her forehead, etc., etc.--all of that remained, as liminal and pervasive as ever.

Marina knew then that Martin must be killed.

Bibliophage, Part III.

"A burglar? Of a sort," the man whispered. His voice was as worn as Marinas, but rougher. "My name is Martin. I'm here to kill you and eat your books."

"My books?" she asked. "You're going to eat my books?" At that, she stepped forward, flicked on the lights, and took a good look at the man, in case she should need to describe him to the police.

He was tall and spare; both his cheeks were scarred and hollow, as if his babyfat had been cut away with a dull knife and patched back together with a soldering iron directly onto live flesh. His fingers were like divining rods, long, wide-spread, and jerking toward the floor at odd moments, making the light flash (laboriously) from the rusty chef's knife as he talked.

"I am a book-eater," he said. "I steal into houses and kill the owners; then I take the books I want and steal them away to eat them. Of note: they must be rare books. Forgotten books. Because when I eat a book, it stays eaten, unless it is a common book. I have been passionately fascinated with Pride and Prejudice, but its taste is hollow, overstretched.

"A certain book dealer tells me which houses I want...he often has the pick of everything I'm forced to leave behind."

"Samson," Marina lisped under her breath.

The man nodded.

But a plan had already formed in her mind. "Follow me," she said, and led him toward the guest room, and the Chandler.

Bibiophage, Part II

Marina's voice had faded years ago; for days at a time she was completely silent. She coughed, and the stranger, a dark man half-buried in shadows, glanced at her: the whites of his eyes flicked at her, flicked away.

"The drawers are all full of books," he said. "Where are the knives?"

Marina lowered herself down the stairs as if into a slippery bath. "To the left. Bottom drawer. Under By the Light of the Fairy Moon, by Arthur Miller. Poetry."

The man opened the drawer, pulled out the book, ruffled its pages. His nostrils may have widened to take in the scent of its slowly decaying pages. "First edition?"

Marine nodded, and the intruder set the book aside slowly, brushing its cover with his fingers, as if promising it to himself for later.

The knife was old and, shamefully, spotted with rust.

"Don't you have--?"

Marina shrugged. "I'm old. Two orderlies bring my meals to the door, already hot. And I never liked to cook. I keep it around in case I need to cut the tape on a package."

"He said you'd have a lot of books, but--" He gestured with the knife.

"This is--yes, it's 1984. The year I finally admitted I was old and no longer needed to go through the motions of fussing around in here."

"1984?"

Marina explained about the years. "Not many books in this lot I would mind losing, to tell you the truth," she said. "Sometimes--but what are you doing here? Are you a burglar?"

Bibliophage, Part I

Marina's library was organized by date. The date she had acquired the book, the date she had first read it, the date of the last time she read it, the date she had last lovingly run her fingers down its spine, wondering whether she'd have time to read it again before she died. As you might imagine, the books' positions changed over the years, with some books completely forgotten, stacked helter-skelter in the cellar's former wine racks.

Or almost completely forgotten.

It was a dark and rainy night, and Marina was lingering in the guest room, next to the shelf of 1957s, wondering whether she would be able to work up the courage to finally read the last book her husband, Rinaldo, had given her before his death (an obscure black comedy by Raymond Chandler, called The Wax Museum, published in 1956 by Auden Press), when she heard the glass shatter in the kitchen downstairs.

Glad of the interruption, she discovered an unusual figure (but what burgalur is usual?) rummaging through the drawers--in search of a knife, as it turned out.

"Excuse me?" she whispered.