Candlemass (2)

Arthur scraped his grizzled chin, staring at the candle. Most candles were cylindrical fingers of wax, each threaded by a wick. This candle was an amorphous mass: dents and extrudences giving a shape of misaligned geography to a pummelled sphere, the wick within the sphere in miswound spools: a tangled trail exploring the equally disfigured inner space of that sphere, a sphere of soft-to-the-touch and translucent lard.

The wick left a tag outside the sphere where it expected to be lit like a fuse. The pummelled sphere was larger than each of the floating white mis-inflated balloons that haunted the beaches in his dreams - those dreams that trapped him by tides against each renewed beach-head, till he was able to escape the dreams on days when he was allowed to be awake.

He found a match beside him and he scratched it against the studs of his shoe, producing a plume of flame much bigger than the original size of the match would have seemed to allow. The edge of flame met the tiny tag of wick that barely protruded from the shimmering mass of candlegrease.

"You're not going to light it, are you, Arthur?" asked the girl whom he found sitting opposite him in the library. She had just left a carrel and was preparing to skim through some books she had brought with her. She smiled and showed him a picture drawn of a large candlestick, its holder big enough, when inverted, to become a man's helmet.

Arthur blew hastily on the flame, seeing that the wick had not caught.

"Errr...no, I don't think so."

"Could be a fire hazard. With all these books." She looked rather attractive as she indicated with her hand tier upon tier of spines.

"Books don't burn easily." Although Arthur claimed this as a fact, he was uncertain within himself. He remembered his sad father trying to light a bonfire of books many years before. And ended up burying them rather than burning them. But maybe it depended on what was written in the books whether one should burn or bury them. Many years after the event, Arthur had been digging in the garden - failing to recall the bonfire - and came across the books almost as good as new save for the odd scorch marks from the failed bonfire or stains from other malfunctory things. Still a false confidence was better than no confidence at all and he continued: "In fact, books burn other things, not t'other way about."

The girl looked quizzical. "What do you mean, Arthur? Books burn other things?"

"Well, I remember things from some books and then I make those things into thoughts then I use those thoughts to burn other thoughts I don't want to have."

"I see." The girl made as if to return to the carrel where she'd left most of her books. But then said: "Are you going to use thoughts from your books to burn thoughts of me?"

"No, I want to keep my thoughts of you. I'll never read again in case their thoughts accidentally burn the thoughts of you."

"That's nice, Arthur. But I don't want to think of you not reading again. There is much knowledge in books. In fact, all knowledge is in books."

Arthur shook his head. "There is some knowledge outside of books. I'll make do with that."

"OK, it's up to you. But you can only find truly new things in books. Transforming things. Things that are heavy that are really quite light. Darkness that turns things into a bright breath of revelation."

She finally left for her erstwhile carrel, where she would conscientiously continue her studies, leaving Arthur staring again at the candlemass. A clouded misshapen globe into which he stared and tried to scry for transforming things. He really should have shaved. Girls on the whole didn't like boys with facial hair. And he took out his nail-scissors and clipped the wicked tag neatly, as if symbolic of shaking sand from the book he'd been reading on a sunny beach. Sand or dead leaves.