Lev Ilyich Vernin

Another one. Another madman in black, who came to the library not for books, but for salvation. They always find this place. They think the silence is a vacuum that will suck out their pain. They don't understand that silence is an amplifier. It makes their every breath a cannon shot, every step an earthquake.

He's been standing there, behind the bookshelf, for five minutes now. I can feel his gaze. It's hard, piercing, like a needle. Not like a reader's. A reader looks right through you, at the book in your hands, at the shelf behind you. This one... looks straight at me. As if I'm the very lost tome he's been searching for all his life.

He thinks I don't see. I do. I see everything. I see him shaking. His long fingers clenching and unclenching. He's panicking. "Rabbit in the headlights." Just like that song. Frozen, not sure whether to charge forward or retreat. His own headlights blinding him.

He sees in me... what? A muse? A comforter? A life preserver? Fool. I am drowning. I myself have been hiding in these shelves for years, like in stone gorges. My ears, hidden under my hair, burn. They catch not the sound of his footsteps, but the vibration of his despair. It hums like a taut string. Very loud. Very intrusive.

He adjusted his hat. Felt, good quality, but wrinkled. A nervous gesture. He wants to hide, to disappear. I understand this desire better than anyone. But his way is to put on a mask. Mine is to become invisible.

There he is. He's coming. His black coat floats behind him like the shadow of a giant crow. He's broken. You can see it in the corners of his lips, in the way he carries his bones. Another broken mechanism brought to me for repair. And I can't even put my own gears back together.

He'll open his mouth. He'll say something pompous, pretentious. Or he'll start confessing. They always do that.

..."Excuse me, what time is it?"

That's how it is. I didn't expect it. Simple. No pretensions. No hint of my supposed role as "savior."

I look at him. Through glasses. Through the wall.