The Book of Khalid by Ameen Fares Rihani (best contemporary novels .txt) 📖

For two years and more Khalid’s young mind went leaping from one swing to another, from one carousel or toboggan-chute to the next, without having any special object in view, without knowing why and wherefor. He even entered such mazes of philosophy, such labyrinths of mysticism as put those of the Arabian grammaticasters in the shade. To him, education was a sport, pursued in a free spirit after his own fancy, without method or discipline. For two years and more he did little but ramble thus, drawing meanwhile on his account in the bank, and burning pamphlets.

One day he passes by a second-hand book-shop, which is in the financial hive of the city, hard by a church and within a stone’s throw from the Stock Exchange. The owner, a shabby venerable, standing there, pipe in mouth, between piles of pamphlets and little pyramids of books, attracts Khalid. He too occupies a cellar. And withal he resembles the Prophet in the picture which was burned with Tom Paine’s Age of Reason. Nothing in the face at least is amiss. A flowing, serrated, milky beard, with a touch of gold around the mouth; an aquiline nose; deep set blue eyes canopied with shaggy brows; a forehead 59 broad and high; a dome a little frowsy but not guilty of a hair––the Prophet Jeremiah! Only one thing, a clay pipe which he seldom took out of his mouth except to empty and refill, seemed to take from the prophetic solemnity of the face. Otherwise, he is as grim and sullen as the Prophet. In his voice, however, there is a supple sweetness which the hard lines in his face do not express. Khalid nicknames him second-hand Jerry, makes to him professions of friendship, and for many months comes every day to see him. He comes with his bucket, as he would say, to Jerry’s well. For the two, the young man and the old man of the cellar, the neophite and the master, would chat about literature and the makers of it for hours. And what a sea of information is therein under that frowsy dome. Withal, second-hand Jerry is a man of ideals and abstractions, exhibiting now and then an heretical twist which is as agreeable as the vermiculations in a mahogany. “We moderns,” said he once to Khalid, “are absolutely one-sided. Here, for instance, is my book-shop, there is the Church, and yonder is the Stock Exchange. Now, the men who frequent them, and though their elbows touch, are as foreign to each other as is a jerboa to a polar bear. Those who go to Church do not go to the Stock Exchange; those who spend their days on the Stock Exchange seldom go to Church; and those who frequent my cellar go neither to the one nor the other. That is why our civilisation produces so many bigots, so many philistines, so many pedants and prigs. The Stock Exchange is as necessary to Society as the 60 Church, and the Church is as vital, as essential to its spiritual well-being as my book-shop. And not until man develops his mental, spiritual and physical faculties to what Matthew Arnold calls ‘a harmonious perfection,’ will he be able to reach the heights from which Idealism is waving to him.”

Thus would the master discourse, and the neophite, sitting on the steps of the cellar, smoking his cigarette, listens, admiring, pondering. And every time he comes with his bucket, Jerry would be standing there, between his little pyramids of books, pipe in mouth, hands in pockets, ready for the discourse. He would also conduct through his underworld any one who had the leisure and inclination. But fortunately for Khalid, the people of this district are either too rich to buy second-hand books, or too snobbish to stop before this curiosity shop of literature. Hence the master is never too busy; he is always ready to deliver the discourse.

One day Khalid is conducted into the labyrinthine gloom and mould of the cellar. Through the narrow isles, under a low ceiling, papered, as it were, with pamphlets, between ramparts and mounds of books, old Jerry, his head bowed, his lighted taper in hand, proceeds. And Khalid follows directly behind, listening to his guide who points out the objects and places of interest. And thus, through the alleys and by-ways, through the nooks and labyrinths of these underground temple-ruins, we get to the rear, where the ramparts and mounds crumble to a mighty heap, rising pell-mell to the ceiling. Here, one is likely to get a 61 glimpse into such enchanted worlds as the name of a Dickens or a Balzac might suggest. Here, too, is Shakespeare in lamentable state; there is Carlyle in rags, still crying, as it were, against the filth and beastliness of this underworld. And look at my lord Tennyson shivering in his nakedness and doomed to keep company with the meanest of poetasters. Observe how Emerson is wriggled and ruffled in this crushing crowd. Does he not seem to be still sighing for a little solitude? But here, too, are spots of the rarest literary interest. Close to the vilest of dime novels is an autograph copy of a book which you might not find at Brentano’s. Indeed, the rarities here stand side by side with the superfluities––the abominations with the blessings of literature––cluttered together, reduced to a common level. And all in a condition which bespeaks the time when they were held in the affection of some one. Now, they lie a-mouldering in these mounds, and on these shelves, awaiting a curious eye, a kindly hand.

“To me,” writes Khalid in the K. L. MS., “there is always something pathetic in a second-hand book offered again for sale. Why did its first owner part with it? Was it out of disgust or surfeit or penury? Did he throw it away, or give it away, or sell it? Alas, and is this how to treat a friend? Were it not better burned, than sold or thrown away? After coming out of the press, how many have handled this tattered volume? How many has it entertained, enlightened, or perverted? Look at its pages, which evidence the hardship of the journey it has made. Here still is a pressed flower, more convincing in its shrouded eloquence than the philosophy of the pages in which it lies buried. On 62 the fly-leaf are the names of three successive owners, and on the margin are lead pencil notes in which the reader criticises the author. Their spirits are now shrouded together and entombed in this pile, where the mould never fails and the moths never die. They too are fallen a prey to the worms of the earth. A second-hand book-shop always reminds me of a Necropolis. It is a kind of Serapeum where lies buried the kings and princes with the helots and underlings of literature. Ay, every book is a mortuary chamber containing the remains of some poor literary wretch, or some mighty genius.... A book is a friend, my brothers, and when it ceases to entertain or instruct or inspire, it is dead. And would you sell a dead friend, would you throw him away? If you can not keep him embalmed on your shelf, is it not the wiser part, and the kinder, to cremate him?”

And Khalid tells old Jerry, that if every one buying and reading books, disposed of them in the end as he himself does, second-hand book-shops would no longer exist. But old Jerry never despairs of business. And the idea of turning his Serapeum into a kiln does not appeal to him. Howbeit, Khalid has other ideas which the old man admires, and which he would carry out if the police would not interfere. “If I were the owner of this shop,” thus the neophite to the master, “I would advertise it with a bonfire of pamphlets. I would take a few hundreds from that mound there and give them the match right in front of that Church, or better still before the Stock Exchange. And I would have two sandwich-men stand about the bonfire, as high priests of the Temple, and chant the praises of second-hand Jerry and his second-hand book-shop. This will be the sacrifice which you will have offered to the god of Trade right in front of his sanctuary 63 that he might soften the induration in the breasts of these worthy citizens, your rich neighbours. And if he does not, why, shut up shop or burn it up, and let us go out peddling together.”

We do not know, however, whether old Jerry ever adopted Khalid’s idea. He himself is an Oriental in this sense; and the business is good enough to keep up, so long as Khalid comes. He is supremely content. Indeed, Shakib asseverates in round Arabic, that the old man of the cellar got a good portion of Khalid’s balance, while balancing Khalid’s mind. Nay, firing it with free-thought literature. Are we then to consider this cellar as Khalid’s source of spiritual illumination? And is this genial old heretic an American avatar of the monk Bohaira? For Khalid is gradually becoming a man of ideas and crotchets. He is beginning to see a purpose in all his literary and spiritual rambles. His mental nebulosity is resolving itself into something concrete, which shall weigh upon him for a while and propel him in the direction of Atheism and Demagogy. For old Jerry once visits Khalid in his cellar, and after partaking of a dish of mojadderah, takes him to a political meeting to hear the popular orators of the day.

And in this is ineffable joy for Khalid. Like every young mind he is spellbound by one of those masters of spread-eagle oratory, and for some time he does not