mosoon

A reading room kept open after closing.

There is no door, only a long descent of stairs that smell of camphor and damp linen. The lamps are turned low, and the lamps are turning lower still. Welcome, reader; sit where you like. The shelves will recognise you in time.

§§ vide marginem dextram ¶ — a hand, faint, in violet ink † *

‡ scholion ad loc. § — cf. monsoon, n., damp inks ¶

— on the practice of marginalia —

A method of reading.

The marginalia is the truer text. It records what the reader thought, against what the writer wrote — a small disagreement, often, never the large one. Drift the cursor into the wide margins, and the whispered hand begins to surface.

Each glyph holds a position kept by some reader long since put away. We have left them where they were found.

— the librarian, by candle, ca. ii.iii.

§ — pull the third spine ¶ † a hollow behind the books

— or, the fourth shelf, lower ‡ vid. infra, fol. v & vi § ¶

— the secret compartment —

Every shelf conceals a hollow.

Behind the cloth-bound spines and the goat-leather quartos there is, in this library, always a small dark space. The shelves are made of pine; the pine has knots; the knots are doors.

In the compartment we have so far recovered: a pressed iris, the colour of violet that has forgotten itself; a slip of paper bearing the word still, in a hand we do not recognise; a single brass key, untried.

— inv. no. iv.iii.α

§ — nota bene the iris ¶ † cf. fol. iv supra ‡ a rain-streak, here, only §§ *

scholia minora ¶ — the key fits, lower drawer † — ink, faded, recoverable ‡ videantur fol. vi & vii §

— annotations on the recovered papers —

Reading what the rain has not yet taken.

The first paper is a list. It does not say what of. It runs to forty-three items, of which thirty-nine have been crossed through, two have been underlined twice, one has been underlined three times, and the last is illegible. The triply-underlined item is the only one we have tried to follow.

The second paper is a fragment of a letter, in violet ink. It reads, in part: — and so I have left for you, in the place we agreed, the small thing you asked for, and a larger one you did not. The rain has been falling on the roof for some hours, and I think the librarian suspects.

The third paper is blank. It has been blank for a long time. It is, however, watermarked, and the watermark suggests a particular printer in the Low Countries, ca. 1631.

The fourth paper has not yet been opened. It is folded into eighths and sealed with a thread of waxed silk the colour of monsoon water. We have agreed to wait.

— the cataloguer, fol. v. r°, ca. ii.iv.

§ — arrived at the shelf ¶ a quiet, proper, deep † cf. fol. iii, on marginalia ‡ the lamp, here, is enough §§ — we are not in a hurry

* in praise of slow looking ¶ — rain, again, on the glass † — six folios in ‡ videatur fol. vii ult. §

— the shelf you came for —

Six folios deep, the shelf is reached.

Here is what was always promised: a shelf, badly lit, in a room kept open by no one in particular, holding a small number of books that have been waiting for a long time and will wait a little longer. None of them are for sale. Several of them are not, strictly speaking, for reading.

On the shelf, in order of arrival: a quarto bound in faded indigo, its title-page missing; a duodecimo of pressed botanical specimens, all of them iris, all of them violet; a slim octavo whose spine reads only mosoon, n. in tooled silver letters; a folio that opens onto another shelf entirely; a commonplace book, kept by a reader who appears to have read everything in this room before us.

Take any of them. Bring them back when the rain has stopped. The lamp will know.

There is, finally, a small green-cloth notebook on the shelf's far end. It is empty, and we believe it is meant for you. Whatever you write in it, leave it on the table when you go; the next reader will, if they are patient, find it among the other folios in due time.

— the keeper of the lamp, ca. ii.v.

§ explicit feliciter ¶

‡ — the reader, here, may rest †

— colophon —

This manuscript was set in Commissioner, in seven folios, by lamp-light, on a night when the rain did not stop. Composed for no one in particular, kept for whoever finds it, signed only with a small mark in the lower margin.

— mosoon · an open library · mmxxvi

— the rain has not stopped.