The Librarian of Burned Books

by Brianna Labuskes

“A gift,” the merchant said, bowing slightly. He tapped the spot over his heart once, and then pointed at her. “Die Bücherfreundin.” “‘A friend of books,’” Diedrich murmured from behind her, his palm heavy on her waist, his chest close enough it brushed against her back when he inhaled.

“Books are a way we leave a mark on the world, aren’t they? They say we were here, we loved and we grieved and we laughed and we made mistakes and we existed. They can be burned halfway across the world, but the words cannot be unread, the stories cannot be untold. They do live on in this library, but more importantly they are immortalized in anyone who has read them.”

Americans were exhausted from caring about too many things. The plight of a free book program could hardly make waves in an ocean of grief and loss and hardship that was this never-ending war. Especially when the bigger fight had always been about soldiers’ voting rights.

“Our library is open to anyone who needs it. Always.”

And I like to think he lives on by any man who carries a copy of that book in their pocket. So, thank you for that.

My love burns eternal, Otto had said. But Hannah was the practical one out of their little pair and she didn’t work like that. The only thing that burned eternal for her were grudges and bridges.

The men who sought violence didn’t understand that while swords could destroy bodies, a pen could destroy a nation.

He grinned to reveal three missing teeth, and quoted, “‘There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.’” “But not this one,” Viv said, and earned herself a nod. “But not that one,” the old man agreed and took her money, sliding it beneath the fisherman’s cap he wore over his thick shock of white hair.

Viv still cringed when she remembered the letters she’d sent him, all increasingly more desperate, then hurt. At sixteen, she hadn’t known not to cut herself open for a boy. Hadn’t understood that pretty words whispered like promises could be nothing but empty lies. Girls were taught how to catch boys, not how to protect themselves from them.

The way to judge people wasn’t to look at how they acted toward people they wanted to impress; it was to look at the way they treated those who could do nothing for them.

“But as I said, words cannot be unwritten simply because you burn them. Ideas cannot simply be erased. People cannot be erased.” The librarian touched the spine of the book gently, reverently, before moving on. “Burning books about things you do not like or understand does not mean those things no longer exist.”

“The madmen might be loud, but we can be, as well. In our own way.”

“‘When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue—you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humor and ships at sea by night—there’s all heaven and earth in a book.’”

May his memory be a blessing, Brigitte had said. In Jewish tradition, that meant it was the responsibility of those who remembered the deceased to carry on his goodness.

She tried to swallow but her mouth had gone dry. This was too big for her to know. As softly as she could, she managed, “They’re planning an invasion.”

“It’s sacrilege,” Althea whispered. If Althea had a church, it was within the covers of books; if she had a religion, it was in the words written there.

Her lip bleeding, her elbow throbbing, her body scraped and bruised, Althea finally realized that there were bigger things in the world than fear.

We . . . we humans, we love telling each other stories, don’t we? We’ve done just that in caves and in amphitheaters and in the Globe and in kitchens and around campfires and in the trenches. Every culture, every country, every type of person in the world tells stories. They’ve been whispered and sung and written down on scraps of paper and they have always, always been an indelible part of our very humanity.”

Viv considered that. “I think so. The subtitle for it is A Novel Without a Hero, which feels like an apt warning.” “A cast of unlikable characters?” Althea asked. “Or at least flawed,” Viv said after a moment of consideration. “I find flawed characters so much more interesting, though. I imagine you do, as well.”

“You didn’t say. What is your favorite book?” “I’ve always answered Frankenstein to that,” Viv said, weighing the words. “And I adore Mary Shelley. She was so ahead of her time and surrounded by all these men who the world deemed brilliant, and yet, I’m sure her legacy will outlast all of theirs.”

“Fitzgerald always looks better a few years out. It’s a bit dark,” Althea said dryly. She turned back to the sea. “He talks about loving a person in one particular moment in their lives. Not about loving them forever, but remembering that there was and will always be something once upon a time that made the person love the other.”

Hannah would never forgive Dev’s decision—and she herself would have died before making a similar choice—but in her heart she would admit that perhaps, just perhaps, she understood it.

“I think sometimes people get so caught up in the literary prestige of a novel,” Viv said, with a little shrug, “the idea that reading should be fun is lost.”

“I don’t think an author’s job is always to change the world,” Viv said. “I think sometimes it’s to make it more enjoyable. Even for a brief amount of time.”

I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then. Beneath the quote, Althea had scrawled Thank you, and hoped Hannah would understand.

The moment the most educated country in the world willingly, joyously, wholeheartedly turned away from knowledge.”

I can tell you that there are people out there who want the world to only think as they think.

There were plenty of people who felt that way in May 1933, as well. And I promise you, if I’ve learned anything from my time in Berlin, it’s this: an attack on books, on rationality, on knowledge isn’t a tempest in a teacup, but rather a canary dead in a coal mine. “There are moments in life when you have to put what is right over what party you vote for. And if you can’t recognize those moments when the stakes are low—let me assure you, you won’t recognize them when the stakes are high. Thank you.”