I Murdered My Library (Kindle Single) Read Online Free PDF Page B

generation
don’t want old books – they don’t seem to want books at all.
    This
is very painful to me.
    Something
came over me then, a rage of dismissal, because what began as the careful
consideration of the question of literary merit at the top of a set of library
steps ended in a kind of conflagration, but without the fire. I pruned
ruthlessly and remorselessly. I began an orgy of getting-rid-of. I became the
book-dealer in the Tel Aviv apartment, flinging to the floor.
    Once
all the donated books had gone, and there was some comfort in the thought that
they would begin life again in someone else’s hands, I looked around at my
bookcases in shock. There were massive gaps, whole empty rows.
    When
the removal company came round to give me an estimate, we discussed the matter
of the books, and of the bookcases. I had decided to take four of the latter with
me. ‘Are they built in?’ Yes, they are built in. ‘Then you’ll have to get
someone to come and unattach them from the walls because I can’t see how they
are fixed.’
    I got
in a handyman called Paul. It cost me £110 for him to work out how Crispin had
built in the shelves and unscrew them. Then they wouldn’t move because they
were screwed to each other and bound further together by paint.
    On
the day I moved, the Polish removal men wrenched the bookcases from the walls,
where they released with an ominous cracking sound. They were so old-school
they had been built from plywood, not modern MDF. The ones I wasn’t taking with
me were moved outside for collection by the bin men.
    Looking
at my study, I saw the patterns of the old paint pre-Crispin. I saw the sagging
old telephone cable that had been threaded around the back, I saw terrible
amounts of dirt and dust. The room was completely filthy.
    Then
I shut the door for the last time and took the keys to the estate agent,
collected the next set of keys, and began another life.
    ***
    The
flat I moved to has a second bedroom 12 feet by six feet, a sort of corridor,
occupied by a child’s cot when I came to view. This would be my office.
    This
flat has no landings – just a narrow entrance hall, which its previous owners
used to house their only bookcase, filling the single space where there is room
for one. The building is on a ridge in north London looking down on the city.
Through this study window, in a gap between two sinister mansion blocks
opposite – the repository (I hope) of several novels’ worth of speculative
day-dreaming – the sharp pyramid of the Shard is framed, and at the back the
kitchen overlooks a row of gardens. Like James Stewart in Rear Window ,
his leg raised in a cast, here I sit, hopeful that the mansion blocks will
sooner or later yield a murder. So far all I’ve seen are people washing up and
people staring at the screen of a computer. No-one is playing the piano or
conducting an affair. But I will sit and wait it out until they do.
    A
sense of light and space and other people’s lives to feed my voyeurism is
terribly important to me; spending so much time at home, I must have something
to look at out of the window. That’s why I bought the place. I didn’t think
about my books, my soon-to-be dead children, my murdered soul-mates for which
there would not be enough room.
    The
two bookcases in the office had to stay in the middle of the 12-foot-by-six-foot
room for several days until the electrician came to install two new power
sockets under the desk by the window, using the socket from the other side of
the room as a spur.
    Two
bookcases went into the living room, to the left of the fireplace alcove. The
third took up its place in the hall where the previous owners’ single bookcase
had stood.
    The
books could not be unpacked for several weeks. First, a fifties monstrosity of
a fireplace made out of shiny liver-coloured tiles had to be taken out, exuding
suffocating concrete dust, then a new floor was laid over the gappy boards, and
finally redecoration was undertaken.