The Library of Shadows Page 5

  'But let's not go into that,' Iversen went on. 'Though I'd like to say that since things are the way they are, I'm proud of the fact that I'm the one who is privileged to tell you what you're now going to hear.'

  Iversen's voice quavered a bit, and he took a deep breath before he continued. 'You've experienced personally how unusually good your father was at reading stories aloud, just as his father was. I myself, in all modesty, am rather good at it, but nothing in comparison with Luca.' Iversen paused. 'So what do you think makes someone good at reading aloud, Jon?'

  In spite of all the intervening years, Jon still knew Iversen too well to be surprised by the question. He felt himself carried back in time to all the occasions when Iversen, enthroned in the green leather chair behind the counter, had asked Jon about the stories he had heard read aloud. Always penetrating questions about what Jon thought of the stories, the descriptions, the characters.

  'Practice, empathy and acting skill, to a certain degree,' he replied without taking his eyes off Iversen's face.

  The man across from him nodded. 'The more a person reads, the better he gets at finding the tempo and knowing how to pause at the right moments. As he gains more experience, the language flows more easily from his lips, and he can devote more attention to the two other traits you mentioned: empathy and acting skill. It's no coincidence that actors are often the ones who read stories on the radio.'

  Iversen leaned towards Jon. 'But some people have an extra card to play, so to speak.' He paused for dramatic effect.

  'Being able to read a text is not an innate skill. The ability to decipher letters of the alphabet is not in our genes. It's unnatural – an artificial skill that we acquire during our first years in school; some people with greater success and talent than others.' He cast a glance at the ceiling and the shop above them, where Katherina was most likely still strolling about among the bookshelves. 'When we read, many different areas of the brain are activated. It's a combination of recognizing symbols and patterns, connecting them to sounds and gathering them into syllables until we're finally able to interpret the meaning of a word. In addition, the word has to be set in relation to the context in which it's found, in order to produce meaning…'

  Jon caught himself wiggling his foot impatiently and stopped.

  'Of course, what I'm telling you is quite banal,' Iversen said in apology. 'But it's something we don't usually think about, and it's merely meant to emphasize what a complicated process reading is, going from the word on the page in front of you to the sound that leaves your lips. Many areas of the brain are involved in the translation from symbol to sound, or to comprehension if you're reading silently to yourself. And it's there, in that interplay, that something amazing can occur.'

  Iversen's eyes shone, as if he were on the verge of unveiling some unseen work of art.

  'For a very small number of us, that brain activity includes areas of the brain that make us capable of psychically influencing those who listen.'

  Jon raised an eyebrow, but apparently that wasn't enough of a response to make Iversen go on.

  'What do you mean?' Jon asked. 'That you can make people feel moved by what you read to them? Isn't that just a matter of technique?'

  'That will have some effect,' admitted Iversen. 'But this goes beyond that. We're capable of influencing people without them being aware of it, influencing their view of the text, its theme, or something else entirely.'

  Jon intently studied the man sitting across from him. Either he was crazy or else this was a joke, yet Iversen wasn't the type to make fun of literature.

  'If we want to, we can change people's opinion of the subject matter. To take an extreme example, we could get a Catholic priest to approve of abortion.' Iversen broke into a smile, but there was still no indication that he was not completely serious.

  'But how?'

  'Well, I'm probably not the best person to explain it, but I can tell you about the general principle and then others can fill in the details.' He cleared his throat before continuing. 'As I understand the matter, it has to do with the fact that when we – and this applies to everyone – receive information, for example through reading to ourselves or listening to readings, or through films, TV, pretty much anything at all, a sort of channel is opened that examines, classifies and distributes the information. It's also here that an emphasis is added by comparing the received data to the presentation and one's previous experiences, attitudes and convictions. In fact, it's this process that determines the extent to which we like the music we hear or agree with the arguments of a speaker.'

  'And this… emphasis is something you can control?'

  'Precisely,' replied Iversen. 'Those of us who practise the art are calledLectors, and when we read aloud from a text, we charge it with whatever emphasis we like, thereby influencing the listener's experience of and attitude towards what is being read.'

  Jon was starting to feel a little annoyed. He wasn't used to dealing with emotions, sensations and undocumented claims. In his world a case wasn't worth dealing with if there was no reliable testimony or facts or very strong evidence. This seemed like a case of faith, and that didn't appeal to him at all.

  'Can you prove any of this?' Jon asked firmly.

  'It's not an exact science, and there are many things we don't fully understand. For instance, it turns out that certain types of text are better suited than others. Fiction is more effective than nonfiction, and the quality of the work is also significant. Even more remarkable is the fact that the potential of the text may depend on whether it's read from a monitor, from a cheap photocopy or from a first edition – and the last is far more powerful than the others. It also appears that certain books becomecharged when they're read, so that the next presentation of the text becomes stronger – more effective at communicating the message and emotions it contains. Older and frequently read volumes are therefore more powerful than new, unread copies.' Iversen shifted his gaze from Jon, allowing it to slide over the bookshelves surrounding them.

  Jon got up and went over to the nearest shelf. 'Are these books charged?' he asked sceptically, pulling out a volume at random.

  'Many of them are. You can actually feel it when you hold the most powerful copies in your hands.'

  Jon placed his palm on the book he had taken from the shelf. After a couple of seconds he shook his head, put the book back and repeated the process with another.

  'I don't feel anything,' he finally said.

  'You would need to possess the ability,' explained Iversen. 'Plus a certain amount of practice.'

  Jon put the book back in place and turned to face Iversen. 'So how does someone gain the ability? How does someone become a Lector?'

  'It's something a person is born to do. It's not something you can learn, or for that matter even choose. Your father inherited the ability from his father, Arman, who got it from his father, and so on. Therefore it's highly likely you've inherited the ability from Luca.'

  He fell silent and then hammered home his point. 'You can be a Lector, Jon.'

  Jon stared at Iversen. The smile on the old man's lips was gone and his expression was filled with a solemnity that seemed quite unsuited to the otherwise jovial man. Jon threw out his arms towards the bookshelves surrounding them. 'But I told you I didn't feel a thing.'

  'In most people the ability is latent,' said Iversen. 'Some never discover it, others are born with an active talent, while still others can become activated by chance. But most demonstrate some form of talent in that direction, either through their choice of profession or in the way they perform their job.' He gave Jon a searching look. 'What about you, Jon? Have you ever experienced situations where your reading aloud has influenced or spellbound people?'

  Even though Jon had the feeling he was affecting people when he presented his closing arguments, he had never noticed anything special about this. No channels or energy or charges of any kind – it was merely a reading technique, nothing more.

  'Maybe I'm bette
r at reading aloud than most people,' Jon admitted. 'But that doesn't necessarily mean anything.'

  'You're right. A person can have a talent for reading aloud without being a Lector.'

  Jon crossed his arms. 'Luca was a Lector?'

  Iversen nodded. 'The best.'

  'And the friends of Libri di Luca… Are they Lectors?'

  'Most of them, yes.'

  Jon pictured the congregation in the chapel and tried to imagine them as a silent crowd of conspirators instead of the motley group that he had perceived. He shook his head.

  'There's one thing that I don't understand,' he said. 'If it's all about being able to read… what is a dyslexic doing here?'

  'Katherina?' said Iversen with a smile. 'She's a whole different story.'

  5

  Katherina sat down on the top step to the balcony and drew her legs up so that she could rest her chin on her knees. From here she had a view of the whole shop and, more importantly, the front door. Even though it was now a week since Luca's death, she still expected the door to open and the diminutive Italian to step into the bookshop with a contented look on his face, as if he were coming home instead of starting a work-day. For the past couple of years she'd had that feeling too when she pushed open the door and heard the bells welcoming her inside. The sound of those bells put her in a different frame of mind, a state of calm and peace, and she imagined the same had been true for Luca.

  But now all that was going to change.

  Her gaze fell on the section of railing that had been replaced. The carpenter, who was a friend of Iversen's, had done his best to match the tone of the wood with the old railing, but it was still obvious that repairs had recently been made. It would take a couple of years before the difference was no longer discernible.

  Katherina couldn't hear the voices of Iversen and Luca's son from the basement any more, and she surmised they had withdrawn to the library. She'd heard about the son for the first time after Luca's death, and it was news that took her completely by surprise. After ten years in the bookshop and, she thought, a close friendship with both Iversen and Luca, the news had suddenly made her feel like an outsider. Iversen claimed that Luca had had his reasons for keeping the information secret – even Iversen didn't know what all the reasons were – but it had apparently had something to do with his wife's death.

  At the funeral Katherina had had a chance to study the son closely. He looked like his father, though he was significantly taller than Luca had been. The facial features were the same, the dark eyes, thick eyebrows and almost black hair, all of which confirmed her assumption that Luca must have been an attractive man in his younger days.

  Katherina was not the only one who was surprised to learn that Luca had a son. When Iversen presented the situation to the Bibliophile Society, the news was evidently as much of a shock to many of them as it was to her. The meeting had lasted a long time, and afterwards the only thing Iversen was willing to reveal was that they had decided to include the son. Katherina gathered this went against Iversen's own wishes, but she hadn't delved any more deeply into it.

  Downstairs he was most likely in the process of discussing the whole matter. It was no easy task to explain how everything fitted together to an outsider, but Iversen was the best person to do it. She wondered which explanation he would use this time. Probably the one about the channel. A bit too technical for her taste. Katherina had been forced to come up with her own explanation until years later she finally found others who suffered from the same affliction – or gift, depending on how you looked at it, or rather at what moment you happened to ask her.

  Iversen had a different perspective on these abilities because he was a transmitter. Katherina was a receiver. Two sides of the same coin, he would probably tell Jon, but for Katherina there was a significant difference that could not be explained by either reversing polarities or flipping coins. As Iversen was in the process of explaining, there were two types of Lectors: transmitters like himself, who could influence those who listened to a reading and were thus able to affect the listeners' perceptions of and attitudes towards the text.

  The other type were receivers, like Katherina.

  The first time she became aware of this, she was barely conscious. She had been in a car accident and was badly injured, as were her parents. For several days she lay under anaesthesia in a big hospital bed with her small, fragile body broken in pieces and held together with screws and plaster. It was in this state that she experienced someone reading aloud to her. Through the drug-induced fog she heard a clear voice telling a story about an unusually passive man who let his life go by without taking any real part in it or having any opinions about what was happening around him. Even though she was anaesthetized, she was still conscious enough to feel surprised. Partly she wondered who the calm voice belonged to, and partly she was amazed by the strange story, which she didn't understand at all. It wasn't funny or sweet or exciting, but the compelling force of the voice held her attention and led her through the tale.

  When she was finally brought out of the anaesthesia, she had other things to think about. Her parents were in very bad shape and unable to visit her. She also had her own injuries, which only slowly began to heal under the thick layers of bandages – a subject that was off-limits for the relatives who visited her with teary eyes and quavering voices.

  As she regained consciousness, she started hearing voices. Not the same voice that had read to her, but various voices that seemed almost to merge together, voices that tormented her during the day and kept her awake at night. Sometimes the voices were accompanied by glimpses of images, impressions that forced themselves on her, demanding her attention, only to vanish as suddenly as they had appeared. One day she asked the nurse if she could hear the rest of the story. She was longing for the sound of the calm voice that had kept her company when she was under anaesthesia. The nurse stared at her in surprise. No one had read anything to her. It was true that she had shared the room with an elderly man while she was unconscious, but he couldn't have been the one who read to her. He'd had his vocal cords removed because he had cancer of the throat.

  Her family were very indulgent. They knew that being separated from her parents was naturally very hard on the girl, and the voices she claimed were tormenting her must be a delayed reaction to the trauma. Her mother's condition improved, and she was able to visit Katherina, but her father was still on a respirator, and it wasn't certain whether he would survive. Everyone treated Katherina with the greatest care and understanding, but as time passed and she was discharged from the hospital along with her mother, those around her began to think that her mind must have suffered permanent damage after all.

  Physically she had escaped with scars on her legs and arms, as well as one in the centre of her chin, which gave it a tiny, masculine cleft in the otherwise so girlish face. The scar on her chin was a constant reminder of the accident to her, and she was often seen rubbing the spot with her index finger, with a remote look in her eyes.

  Her distracted air only added to the family's concern and she was sent to a child psychologist, who had nothing to offer except to give her pills – a solution that seemed to keep the voices at bay but had the same effect on all other input.

  For that reason she paid very little attention when her father was discharged, permanently confined to a wheelchair and so bitter at life that he spent most of his days behind the closed door of his office with no desire to speak to anyone.

  She started roaming around, fleeing from her father's bursts of rage behind the closed door, and from the voices. There were places where they left her in peace. The woods and grassland of Amager Fжlled was one of these, and she seized every opportunity to bicycle out to that area where she could sit for hours, enjoying the silence. School was the worst place of all, and she soon began to skip classes and go out to the park instead.

  Of course it was only a matter of time before her family became aware of her truancy. She then realized that her condition
was not just affecting herself but was also hurting everyone around her. It was at that point that she decided to reconcile herself to the voices. Outwardly she would pretend they didn't exist, that she had been miraculously cured, but for her own part, she would start to listen. She wanted to find out what they wanted, clarify why she was the one they sought out, and whether she really was meant to be their victim. Up until then she had refused to listen to what they said, but now she had begun to suspect that they weren't speaking to her directly – it seemed more as if they were coming from a radio tuned to several different stations at once. Could it be that the voices were actually radio signals she was picking up?

  Because she was dyslexic, more severely than most, the world of the alphabet was already foreign to her, and the connection between the incomprehensible symbols on the page and the voices she heard in her head when others read them evaded her for a long time. But one day on the bus she worked it out. She was sitting there staring out of the window and listening to a clear female voice telling a story about a girl with red plaits, freckles and such strength that she could lift a horse. It was an entertaining story, and at a particularly funny scene, Katherina couldn't help laughing – she laughed out loud, to the amazement of all her fellow passengers, except for one. In the very back of the bus, a boy was holding a book in his hands and laughing just as heartily as she was. Even from her seat in the bus Katherina could clearly recognize the girl with the plaits on the cover of the book. It was Pippi Longstocking.

  The bells over the door in Libri di Luca rang, pulling Katherina out of her reverie. A man in his thirties, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, a corduroy jacket and carrying a worn leather bag over his shoulder, stood in the doorway. It was clear that he hadn't been to the shop before because he reacted the way most newcomers did: he looked around the room in surprise, paying special attention to the balcony, as if he'd never seen a bookshop on two levels before. Katherina had probably behaved in the same way when she first discovered Libri di Luca ten years earlier, but she was always a little annoyed by the bewilderment of new customers. Yes, it was an antiquarian bookshop. Yes, there was a balcony with rare books in glass cases. Yes, it was a fantastic place, so why don't you just see about buying a few books and then get lost? If it were up to her, Libri di Luca would be closed to customers.