The Book of Levi by Mark Clark

moment before bursting into hilarious laughter. They hugged, and Damien even undertook the familiarity of a kiss on Leslie’s cheek. ‘You clever prick,’ he said. ‘Well done.’
    ‘Thank you, sir,’ Leslie replied breaking the embrace and moving towards the fridge. ‘And I have taken the liberty of purchasing some of the finest alcohol available in Corporate City to celebrate this occasion.’
    With a theatrical flourish he opened the door of the fridge to reveal a variety of beverages. ‘And since the lady couldn’t stay, I say we make it secret men’s business.’
    That sounded alright to Damien.
    Needless to say the next morning very soon became the next afternoon at which time the two comrades arose with thumping brains and a great desire to do nothing.

    *

    Sebastian Levi, caretaker of the Fisher Library, was finishing his rounds for the day. He had been haunted all morning by a short novel he had read earlier that day. It was a simple but magnificent novel by a twentieth century author called John Steinbeck. It was the simplicity and the elegance of the novel that had haunted him for the past six or seven hours since he had read it. Sebastian had no idea what time it was. He had long since stopped wondering about that. It was, in fact, two fifteen in the morning when Sebastian had first stumbled upon Steinberg’s book and three twenty eight when he had finished it. The time mattered little to Sebastian. But by the time the sun was making its presence felt in the east, Sebastian was wandering, thinking deeply somewhere down in the dim quarters of the lower floors of the library he had been caretaker off for over a dozen years. The book haunted him. How could such a treasure destroy someone’s life so? And if he found such a treasure, what would he do?
    As he cleared out and dusted yet another stack of old home and garden magazines, his eye was caught by something that didn’t fit. Sebastian didn’t know precisely why it didn’t fit, but he had been caretaker long enough to know that it didn’t.
    He dived his hand deep into the pile within which it resided and he pulled it out. There it was. It was a green, hardcover book, way out of place here, among the magazines and paperbacks.
    So unexpected was the find that he looked about from right to left involuntarily to check that none had seen his discovery. They hadn’t. In fact, no one had been down here in the bowels of the old library for years. He looked at the cover. There was no title. He flicked through the pages. It looked mainly technical. He looked around again and quietly began to read the script. At first he was perplexed and then he realised that this was a lost treasure – a pearl. He laughed at the coincidence, pocketed the manuscript and began to walk the long spiral stairway up through the stories, and stories, of the library above.
    Sebastian was almost forty. He was a dark-haired, swarthy looking man who had a permanent five o’clock shadow and who had once been good looking. But the years had ignored Sebastian and any potential he might have possessed, kindled up there in that sharp mind of his. Instead, he was, if anything, a little hunched for those years. He was not hunched with age or disease, but with despondency. The world had shunned him and pretty well forgotten about him. Now he was a willing recluse, purposefully hidden from the world of men, alone and mainly silent in his silent world. Without parents in his memory, without friends to call upon, without love in his life, he had pursued a quiet life beneath Corporate City sifting through the detritus of a former age. No one visited. Very few borrowed. Few cared about such things as books any more, even though there was little other kind of entertainment. They still didn’t come. Occasionally he would find a stray interested person, but this was seldom. Why?
    Sebastian had all the time in the world to consider such questions. The problem, as it appeared to him, was that