Soon I will study at the Sorbonne, a true university of centuries with philosophers and thinkers thinking between the walls, next to the columns, arches and statues. After classes I will go to study at the Sainte Genevieve library, beneath it are caves, above it is a lonely monastery on a mountaintop, in the name of the city's saint, Genevieve, a woman like me, calls men to go out to battle and defend Paris, our city. Genevieve and all the warriors go out after her to defend justice. Saint Genevieve! A woman like me and nothing is impossible. In the library I will read books in a language I know, rows of wooden tables, lamps casting a single shadow for one reader alone with himself and yet the spirits that travel there, the words that are whispered there, for centuries read under the arched beams, thin hands like those of the dancer from the Châtelet Theater, hands stretched out in supplication and then curled in a circle, and the fingers look for someone at the end of a crowded cafe or at the end of this library, to caress with round fingers, thin iron arches, to listen to the words I am learning. Waiting, preparing myself, pretending or maybe something real is already beginning, approaching my dreams and despite this lie, reading in French as if it were my own, searching, bringing the books to me without them noticing that I am a stranger in the library of Sainte Genevieve. The spirit of Saint Genevieve who succeeded. The Middle Ages stretch until the Revolution and then to me. The burning of the monastery's books by the people. Hot, hot, burning skin, a great sun from the words, the heat of history with me, the heat of the rage of the masses. A collection of monastery books, church property, catalogs loaded with theology books, the works of monks, priests. One of them in my hand. Close to me on a shelf. Words that excited the heart of the one who wrote, tried to understand, explored, that same heat of his and mine is now here, and later science books also entered here until there was no room left on the first floor of the old monastery and they moved the collection to where I am sitting now.
My body is found, too young to contain what was, and yet here I am like a fairy tale, reading in the space behind Montague's old school, accepting poor students, forcing a dark life on them, only dry bread, cold, stale water, and replacing the students with patients. They brought beds for soldiers there, placed beds next to windows smaller than the ones under which I sit and read. In bed they lay and waited for life or death, the beds next to a square of light, where the pupils looked before they were fixed, to a flat ceiling, because the rounding beams were not yet here, and then the patients were replaced by prisoners bound in chains, rooms after rooms, and only at the end did the library rise with iron domes above the flat floor, above dark rooms with islands of bookcases, works of monks, beating hearts. Now the spirits continue to speak to me through the ink of the books around the walls, the black blood of poor, sick, imprisoned students, pressed against the stone, and now it is the books that touch the walls, hiding them. Book after book speaks of the past only when read, and yet despite the dark legends I could dance here, I could get up and dance here, continue the library's incarnations and become something else with it again, the library will become a hall, a ballroom, and I walk around like it and she again, Emma Bovary, or Genevieve, any other brave person. High windows, the arches above and the books cling to the stones of the walls. I too cling to the ancient wooden table in front of which I read and smile because there is a hint of clinging to it in all this. Montague's old school, Montague's son. Gazozatra.
Love rises above walls. Hides his name. But she understands how terrible the name is and longs to change her name to be like him. And I, like her, change it for him. My name, completely concealing it. Light from the high window. Tell me that the whiteness pales in front of my beauty and I will be alienated from everyone, from the place I came from, even from my father. How he looked at them, the actresses, his whores, always beautiful. Say her name, Catherine. Her name is yellow, Catherine, and the beauty is as clear as that of the blonde, strong as the sun without wavering, stumbling steps, arms too thin in a plea for love to the sky. The taste of betrayal. Nothing terrible, just words about beauty, of comparing woman to woman, but like a knife. Look, look at how you dress, look at how you are. And look at her. Pointing at them like a picture, real art, and then forgotten, words that are not written in books like in the library where I sit, but in my heart they sit like in a prison, locked up in sickbeds. He forgot or maybe apologized and I accepted him, he is the Paul Newman of Hadera, a small, unimportant town, with no stones, only paving stones. But there is only one thing. Beautiful eyes. The eyes and without them nothing. She has beautiful eyes. Without eye sockets, internal organs, no heart. Just beautiful eyes like Dad's. They want to take out the beautiful eyes and see what will happen without them. Maybe I won't be. Blind like the poor students tortured at Montague School, beaten with a whip so that they will be stronger, smarter, believe in a God who asks a lot to be worthy of him, and who will I be worthy of without eyes. No one. A real black. What will happen then, without beauty. I will disappear, I will fall through my eye sockets into Wonderland. But in the library, color doesn't matter. Black or white or blue or brown. The Mediterranean is on maps like a simple tablecloth, with bread, water, a bottle of table wine, nothing more. There's no need to see it, to be inside it, to feel the sun burning and the eyes looking at me or at someone else, the sun is far away and the eyes only read, and only they see without anyone seeing them and giving them value, beautiful or not. To be inside the words and occasionally to go up to the windows, light, the pantheon Behind without seeing it. Just imagine and it's there, proof of everything that exists in this world without actually seeing it.
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If the episode made you want to walk through the Latin Quarter then why not try the route this?