You've been waiting anxiously for the conclusion of this saga of the Old Library, and its pending demolition. In our last episode, Art Guy in Jeans broke into the top floor of the building to find a secret stash of lost literature. Believing this secret to be the reason for the developers' demolition plans, our hero was about to escape with some evidence, when all of a sudden...
"Who disturbs the fiery night of the Library at Old Oak Lane?" says a wiry voice from deep within the library.
Art Guy stumbles and falls from a bookshelf he is climbing in order to reach the air vents. He hears footsteps quickly approaching. Our hero kills his flashlight and hides behind one row of stacks.
Peering through the bookshelves, Art Guy sees a terrifying sight. A gruesome old witch, holding a candle, has made her way into the secret room.
"Who's there!" she says and swings her candle around. She's hideous enough to have been a donor for Masaccio's Trinita, and she looks old enough too.
Art Guy watches carefully as the witch searches the stacks for a sign of life. She enters the Art History section. She loses focus on her task and starts browsing the literature. What is she up to?
She pulls out the lost copy of Vasari, the one Art Guy had been looking at earlier and so eagerly wanted to take home, the only version he had ever seen that fairly praises Duccio and the rest of the Sienese school. Now our hero looks on with horror as the witch holds the book against the candle flame and slowly incinerates it.
Art Guy puts his knuckle in his mouth to stop from screaming. Vasari will continue to go on in history as a biased storyteller with nothing better to do than whitewash the frescoes for which he feigns praise and build monumental corridors onto historic bridges. The witch then pulls out the comprehensive text on landscape architecture.
"Stop! Please stop!" our hero hears himself say.
"You there," says the witch. "Nobody has disturbed our fiery nights since this building was first built. Explain yourself and I'll decide how long you have to live."
Art Guy looks at the monster and realizes that her threat is a weak one. She stands at about 4 foot 6 and carries no weapon. Art Guy, on the other hand, possesses his state-of-the-art razor sharp Florence museum pass.
"Burn one more book, and you'll have to answer to the Galleria dell'Accademia, you bitch!"
Our hero flings his museum card at the witch and hits her right in the jugular. However, nothing issues from the ghoul's withered neck. It is clear that she is inhuman.
"I'm undead," she says, pulling the card from her neck. "And I'm afraid this pass does not grant you access to the building."
Fifteen minutes later, our hero finds himself bound up in rope in the depths of the old library. A furnace is going full blaze. It now makes sense why he saw smoke coming out of the chimney when he first entered the air vents. Art Guy can do nothing but pray that somehow Gus will come in after him.
Many witches are bustling about the furnace room, moving large cart-loads of books towards a big pile by the furnace. Three witches feed the fire with books. It's terrible.
Suddenly, several witches pick up our hero's chair and march him towards the furnace.
"Wait! Stop!" he says.
They do not listen. The vile old women bring our hero closer and closer to certain doom.
Suddenly, our hero has a thought.
"You want fire? I've got news for you pretty young ladies. They're gonna blow this building to smithereens. That's fire!"
The witches stop.
"What are you talking about, little boy?" asks the ugliest of all the witches.
"If you don't let me out of here, the demolition will go on as planned. I'm going to a hearing in town hall next week to stop the demolition. It's your only chance for survival."
"What makes you think they need you to vote down the demolition?" says the ghoul.
"I'm an art historian. I give our generation of art viewers a critical voice," our hero says.
"That voice sounds to me like, 'Please don't kill me, please don't kill me, I don't want to be burned, I don't want to be fried alive!'"
Art Guy steams as the witches laugh in riotous unison.
"Why is it that you burn books, old woman?" says our hero.
"We inhabited this building as librarians when it was first built and found that it was perfect for our secret rituals. The roof area is made inaccessible to your average suburbanite, so we take advantage of the tinted windows and mysterious architecture to hide away and burn the books that nobody reads anymore. The treasure trove you found was not treasure to the generation before yours. This art history gobbledeegook is better off in the atmosphere than on the shelves."
"What rituals?" says our hero, ignoring the latter comment.
"Why, sacred rituals you wouldn't understand. You live in a world of the secular."
"Try me."
"Well, we like to act out the Last Judgment. Are you familiar with that event and how it is portrayed in art?"
"Yes," says our hero.
"We try to act out the hottest inner circles of Dante's Inferno. Do you know this book?"
"Yes," says our hero, getting slightly more annoyed.
"Well, we judge the books and cast them into Hell. The books that are still on the shelves downstairs are still part of this world. The shelves we found you in are a sort of Purgatorio. But every book is eventually destined for the Inferno."
"What does this have to do with art?"
"Because we are the same agonized faces tumbling down in the Sistine Chapel. We are the rejected in Giotto's Scrovegni frescoes. We re-enact the circles of Hell, kind of like a play. We dance in the heat of Lucifer, as all the lost literature we burn is hurled down to the same destination where we are bound to live in Eternity. We know we cannot enter Heaven. So instead we are Hell's literature collectors, if you will, thriving on the heat of Dante's Inferno."
As Art Guy looks around him, the witches begin to moan and thrash their bodies about. It is a cruel drama they perform. They claw at each other and put out their candles in each others' skin.
Once again, the witches pick up our hero's chair and move him towards' the fire.
"Heat!" says our hero, fearlessly. "What heat! In Hell, there is no heat. Dante's Hell is the coldest place imaginable, the farthest place from God's warmth."
Every witch stops what they are doing.
"I didn't know that," says one witch, turning towards the hideous leader.
"You didn't read your Inferno closely enough," says our hero, all the while slicing the ropes behind his back with his museum pass. "And there are Last Judgments between Giotto and Michelangelo that you've forgotten about! What about the Black Death, and the Camposanto frescoes? You think your little skit can hold a candle to that? What does burning books have to do with human guilt? Where's your guilt?"
The witches back away, wide-eyed and disillusioned.
"Millions saw those frescoes and were moved to convert or repent. Who has seen your little play? What are you trying to achieve?" our hero says, rising from his chair, suddenly free from his ropes. "What is art without an audience? Nobody ever critiqued you. You've been living a joke."
No witch answers.
"Alright, I've gotta jet," says Art Guy. Our hero books it, no pun intended, out of the furnace room. He hurries through the air vents, rappels down the face of the old library, and finally greets Gus, who is relieved as can be to see his old friend again.
"Wow, Mr. Guy," Gus says after hearing everything. "You're completely full of it, but incredibly creative."
Come next Monday, the hearing is very interesting. Our hero tactfully decides not to mention the witches or the treasure trove. When asked to state his opinions on the historic significance of the old library, our hero says that nobody goes to the library anymore. The intentions of Brutalist architecture are mysterious and impenetrable. It's an art form without audience and a proven failure. If the will of the people is to tear it down, so be it.
The townsfolk, on the other hand, stand in defiance of Art Guy in Jeans. It turns out they don't want to part with it. They never saw much in it while it was standing, but in the face of demolition, they don't feel the town would be the same without it. It adds texture, variety, a certain unexpected quality to the city. The town hall votes down the demolition.
"Why did you say all those horrible things about the library?" says Gus later that afternoon, rather upset and astonished.
"I wanted to see if the town actually liked it or not. There's no sense in letting art go un-critiqued. Otherwise it's just a hiding place for witches," says our hero.
So ends the saga of the Old Library. It still stands proudly in the Northwest corner of Bumsville to this day. No one has ever re-entered the top floor of the Library at Old Oak Lane, but after our hero's strange encounter, smoke ceased coming out of the chimney late at night.
***
Art Guy in Jeans is sleeping on the train back from Bumsville. All of a sudden, the phone rings.
"Hello," says Art Guy.
"Ciao, Guy! Sono Giacomo, di Firenze!"
"Giacomo, come vai?"
"Bene, bene."
They continue in Italian, and our hero's friend from Florence finally gets to his point.
"They're going to destroy the old Piazza."
Our hero's blood runs cold.
"Which one, Giacomo? Piazza della Signoria? Piazza Santissima Annunziata?"
Giacomo is silent for a moment.
"Good Lord, Giacomo! Which one!"
"Piazza della Repubblica."
"Oh," says Art Guy in Jeans. "Oh dear. Anything but that."
1 comment:
¡bien hecho!
a thoroughly enjoyable story.
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