What would it be to write a real book?, we reflect. A real book – with scholarly rigour, of course; the product of years of research, of archive-reading, of reading books in many languages, including ancient ones.
A real book – but one that was framed by some real interest, some real and unimaginable engagement – a commitment of the sort we could barely imagine. A book that streamed above us in the sky, very distant, and paying us little heed as its author. A book that would ignore us, almost.
A real book! It would be dense and difficult, to be sure, but would have a quiet luminescence it would keep to itself. A sober book, glowing quietly in the dark that would reveal itself only to one likewise sober, obscure, prepared to follow it into the stillest corner, to sit hunched over its pages, to cross the night with it.
Wouldn't she finish it just as dawn broke? Before dawn broke, waiting for it to break, and knowing that for her something had changed in the world, that something had been redeemed?
Ah, but what would we know of real books? What would we know of sobriety?, we ask ourselves on the train, with half a bottle of gin drunk between us.
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