Chapter 52 Sand Book

...your rope of sand... george herbert A line is made of a series of points; an infinite number of lines make a surface; an infinite number of faces form a volume; a huge volume contains an infinite number of volumes... No, these geometric concepts are definitely not the best way to start my story.When people tell a fictional story these days it is always claimed to be true; but my story is not false at all. I live alone on the fourth floor of a house in Via Belgrano.One evening a few months ago, I heard pecking on the door.I opened the door and a stranger entered.He was tall and his features were indistinct.Maybe I'm nearsighted and can't see clearly.His appearance was neat, but there was a shabby look.

He was dressed in gray and was carrying a small gray suitcase in his hand.When I first met him, I thought he was a foreigner.At first I thought he was old; then it turned out that was not the case, only his thin, Scandinavian, almost graying blond hair gave me the wrong impression.We talked for less than an hour, and I knew from the conversation that he was from the Orcada Islands. I ask him to sit down.It took a while for the man to speak.He exuded sorrow, as I do now. "I sell Bibles," he told me. I replied, not without showing off: "There are several English Bibles in this room, including the original John Wycliffe edition. I also have Cipriano de Valera's Spanish edition, Luther's German edition, from Literally, the worst, and Vulgatta's Latin edition. You see, I have no shortage of Bibles here."

He was silent for a moment, then spoke up: "I don't sell only Bibles. I can show you another holy book that might interest you. I got it around Bikaner." He opened the suitcase and put the book on the table.It was an octavo-sized, cloth-bound book.Apparently many people have read it.I picked it up and looked at it; the unusual weight surprised me."Holy Book" is printed on the spine, and "Bombay" on the bottom. "Looks like a 19th century book," I said. "I don't know. I never know," he replied. I opened it casually.The text inside is unknown to me.The pages were worn and poorly printed, like a Bible, with two columns per page.The layout is segmented and crowded.There are Arabic numerals in the upper corner of each page.The arrangement of the page numbers caught my attention. For example, one page of every pair is printed with 40,514, and the next page is 999.I turned the page, and the page number on the back had eight digits.Like the dictionary, there are illustrations: an anchor drawn in pen, clumsily, as if it had been drawn by a child.

Then the stranger said to me: "Look carefully. Never again." The tone is very peaceful, but the words are very strong. I remember the place and close the book.Then it opened again.Despite flipping through the pages, the anchor pattern was nowhere to be found.To hide my confusion, I asked: "Is it some kind of Hindustani version of the Bible?" "No," he replied. Then he lowered his voice as if to reveal a secret to me: "I got it in a village on the plains for a few rupees and a Bible. The owner of the book was illiterate. I think he took the holy book as a talisman. He belonged to the lowest caste; whoever stepped on his The shadow thinks it is bad luck. He told me that his book is called "The Book of Sand" because that book, like sand, has no beginning and no end."

He asked me to look for the first page. I pressed my left hand on the cover, with my thumb almost touching my index finger to peel off the pages.In vain: there are always several pages between the cover and the hand.As if it came out of a book. "Now look for the last page." I still fail; I'm so dumbfounded that my voice doesn't sound like my own: "This is impossible." Still the Bible salesman whispered: "Impossible, but it is. The book has an infinite number of pages. There is no first page and no last page. I don't understand why this absurd coding method is used. Perhaps to show that an infinite series allows any number item appears."

Then, as if talking to himself, he said: "If space is infinite, we are at any point in space. If time is infinite, we are at any point in time." His thoughts upset me.I asked him: "You must be a Christian?" "Yes, I'm a Presbyterian. I have a clear conscience. I'm sure I wasn't cheated when I exchanged my Bibles with the Indian for his wicked book." I advised him that he had nothing to blame, and asked him if he was passing by.He said he planned to return home after a few days.Only then did I know he was from the Orcada Islands in Scotland.I said I had a special fondness for Scotland out of my fondness for Stevenson and Hume.

"And Robbie Burns," he added. I continued to rummage through the infinite book while I talked to him.I pretended not to be very interested, and asked him: "Are you going to sell this strange book to the British Museum?" "No. I'll sell it to you," he said, asking a high price. I told him honestly that I couldn't afford the money.After thinking about it for a few minutes, I had a solution. "I propose an exchange," I said to him. "You got this book for a few rupees and a Bible; I'll give you now my pension and the Wycliffe Bible in cursive script which I just received. The Bible is My ancestors."

"Wycliffe in cursive!" he muttered. I fetch money and books from the bedroom.Like a bibliophile, I reluctantly turned the pages of the book and admired the cover. "Okay, it's settled," he told me. To my surprise he didn't bargain.Later I realized that when he entered my house, he was determined to sell the books.He took the money and put it away without counting. We talk of India, the Orcada Islands, and the Norwegian chiefs who ruled there.It was night when the man left.I never saw him again, and I don't know his name. I was tempted to put the book of sand in the gap left by the Wycliffe edition of the Bible, but ended up hiding it in the back of an incomplete set.

I went to bed, but did not fall asleep.At three or four in the morning, I turned on the light, found that strange book and read it.One of the pages has a mask printed on it.There is a number in the corner, I can't remember how much it is now, but it is as big as the ninth power. I never show this treasure to anyone.With the bliss of possessing it comes the fear that it will be stolen, and then the fear that it is not truly infinite.I was originally withdrawn, and these two worries made me even more abnormal.I have a handful of friends; now we don't.I became a prisoner of that book and hardly ever went out on the streets anymore.I inspected the worn spine and cover with a magnifying glass and ruled out forgery.I found a vignette every 2,000 pages.I copied them from an alphabetical blotter.The notebook will soon be used up.None of the illustrations are repeated.At night, I mostly suffer from insomnia, and occasionally I dream about that book when I fall asleep.

As the summer drew to a close, I realized that the book was a horrible monster.I also imagined myself as a monster: I stared at it with wide eyes and stretched out ten fingers with claws to fiddle with it, but to no avail.I feel it to be the root of all troubles, an obscene thing that denigrates and corrupts reality. I want to burn it, but I am afraid that an infinite book will burn endlessly, making the whole earth a miasma. I remembered someone wrote such a sentence: The best place to hide a leaf is the woods.Before I retired I worked at the National Library, which had 900,000 volumes; I knew that a curved staircase to the right of the foyer led down to the basement, where newspapers and maps were kept.When the staff were not paying attention, I secretly put the book of sand on a dark shelf.I try not to remember which shelf is on and how far it is from the door.

I feel a little more at ease in my heart, and I don't even want to go to Mexico Street where the library is located. The above is translated from "The Book of Sand"