Introspeculum
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Prospero’s Books sits on the NW corner of 39th and Ball street, in Westport. It sits next to a sushi joint in a two story brick building, the ground level of which has two windowed walls, facing east and southward. Outside the windows, on the sidewalk, are a few wooden tables with stacks of books selling at a discount price. It is here that Pyramus pauses and peruses, being the cheap bastard that he is, always on the lookout for a deal. His girlfriend, Thisbe, scans the titles as well, and then he follows her into the bookstore.
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They have just enjoyed a sushi dinner, and are out for an evening walk, Pyramus burping up a mixture of soy sauce and wasabi amid the bookshelves and tables piled with literature. Behind a desk sits a man with his feet up, reading a book. Kind of Blue plays elegantly from a speaker. A real literati space. You all have a press? asks Pyramus, standing before the desk.
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The bespectacled man raises his gaze for a moment to look at Pyramus. What’s that?
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Do you have a press here?
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What do you mean?
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Do you have a press? Do you publish books?
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Oh says the man, a look of comprehension tightening his pupils. Books. Not really. Leaflets, maybe. Pamphlets kind of.
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He peels the corner of a page from his book and turns it over with a quiet hiss from the paper. Anything specific? asks Pyramus.
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Ummm… magic, mainly. Literature that deals in the instruction and performance of magic.
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Like magic tricks?
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Ya… well, no. Not tricks, perse. More like the attempt to achieve supernatural qualities from natural beings.
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Oh says Pyramus, turning to look down the long rows of bookshelves that extend to the back of the store. Thisbe has disappeared, somewhere. Beside the desk is a curved stairway that leads down to the basement, and at the back of the store is another set of stairs that goes up to the top floor.
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Fifty fifty says the man, beginning to read again from his book.
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What’s that?
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She could be in the basement, or she could be upstairs.
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Pyramus follows the curved staircase down to the basement, his hand lightly trailing along the rail that bows and bends downward. He finds himself in a dim space, cluttered with books, among which a small desk lamp illuminates a table top further back. At the table sits a woman hunched over a block of linoleum, a chisel gripped tightly in her hand, with which she peels long layers of linocut that curl and spiral like dried leaves on the floor around her.
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Pyramus approaches cautiously, knocking into a few columns of stacked books that teeter precariously over his head, until he is gazing over the shoulder of the woman, and he can see the image that is carved into the piece of linoleum; a snarling wolf’s head, the fur of which transforms into oak leaves at the base of its neck with two human hands reaching out, fingers spread.
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Whazzat? says Pyramus over the woman’s shoulder, causing her to jump in fright.
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Spinning on her stool, the woman brandishes her tool like a weapon and even thrusts it towards Pyramus, catching his bare arm with the v shaped chisel, peeling a sliver of skin that now hangs pale and slightly translucent from the sharp metal. Fuck says Pyramus, holding his hand against his forearm where a trickle of blood has begun to form. I didn’t mean to scare you.
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The woman takes him to a sink where he washes the cut with soap and water and then dries it with a paper towel. She produces a small vial of super glue, and, smoothing the piece of skin that lies crinkled like paper on the chisel, she pastes it back into place onto Pyramus’s arm. Is this sanitary? he says, wincing slightly as she touches his arm, although there is no pain from the wound. I mean medically speaking. I mean I’ve never seen anyone glue skin back in place.
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The woman is a foot shorter than Pyramus, and she has straight silver hair, although the relatively tight skin around her face puts her age somewhere between thirty and forty. Are you supposed to be down here? she says, returning to her perch on the stool, taking up her chisel, and carving deep grooves into the howling face of the wolf.
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Oh says Pyramus, I don’t know. I was just looking for my girlfriend.
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Before him, in the very back of the room, is a large press, a structure of iron and wood that expands outward and upward into the obscured light of the desk lamp. A big hydraulic cylinder holds a steel plate above the base of the press, and as Pyramus pumps the handle protruding from the structure, the piston begins to extend downward, lowering the steel plate that is attached to it. Please don’t touch that says the woman, not looking up from her work.
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Oh, I’m sorry. This is pretty neat. The man upstairs says you all print pamphlets on magic. About how to do magic, I guess. Is that right?
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The woman doesn’t answer. Around the base of the press lie different illustrations printed on paper, and Pyramus leafs through them, examining each one, and then says I guess you’re the illustrator? For the pamphlets I mean?
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But again, the woman doesn’t answer, and Pyramus leaves her to her work, climbing the stairs back up to the ground floor. On the top floor, meanwhile, Thisbe is curled on a couch in a corner nook, reading a pamphlet on the practice of magic. It says that the supernatural exists in a plane outside of the human senses, but that, with practice, supernatural senses can be developed. Some precocious practitioners of magic are even born attuned to supernatural qualities.
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Thisbe feels a deep stirring in her being at these words. And she is pretty sure it isn’t just the sushi, although she does lean slightly to the side and lets a fart slip out, a quiet reverberation clapping her butt cheeks. Immediately, her stomach feels better, and she settles deeper into the cushions of the couch to read the rest of her pamphlet. It talks about a 13th century magician who was able to preserve his consciousness in a tree, and, through the subsequent centuries, transfer into different beings until, in 1997, he opened a bookstore on the corner of 39th and Ball street in Kansas City.
Downstairs, Pyramus finds a mechanical typewriter sitting on a shelf in a cutout in the back wall. A compact model with round keys, he lets his finger fall on a tab and he watches as a slender metal arm rises and presses its dark face against a light sheet of paper, and then fall back quietly into its slot. Pyramus looks closely at the image now printed on the paper, although it doesn’t correspond to any letter in the alphabet, not any derived from the Greek, anyway. Please don’t touch that says the voice of the man at the desk, although from behind the shelves of books, he can’t see Pyramus and Pyramus can’t see him.
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Sorry he says. He follows the narrow stairwell that leads upstairs, in the wooden wall of which is another cutout, this one covered over with glass. Behind the glass is a garish red light that shines on a scene of figurines, seemingly stranded on an island, around which tosses a stormy sea.
Pyramus remains enthralled for a moment, studying the characters, and then he climbs the rest of the way up the stairs.
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He finds Thisbe in her nook and sits down next to her, cuddling close so he can see the pamphlet. It is only a few pages, printed on red paper with blue ink. On the front is an illustration of a large donut, only in place of the frosting there is a layer of writhing maggots. Isn’t this place amazing? says Pyramus, adjusting Thisbe’s feet on the couch, which she has tucked beneath her, so that he can cradle her ass.
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It says here that the best use of magic is the subversion of illegitimate authority says Thisbe, running her finger along a line of text in the pamphlet. Do you know what that is?
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No says Pyramus. I don’t. What is it?
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It’s any kind of authority that is derived from the use of force or bribery, and not from the will of the people whom it governs.
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Where did you learn that?
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It says it in this pamphlet.
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When they leave the bookstore, the pregnant spring air has released its heavy load, and the water hits the streets and rebounds in little fountains like marbles falling from the sky. Thisbe and Pyramus walk hand in hand through the rain as if in a trance, letting the water soak them, watching as the clean white petals are knocked from the spring blossoms on the trees, falling on the sidewalk like snow. People clear 39th street before them, ducking into the bars and restaurants that line the street, peering out through the windows at the poor souls left to soak in the downpour.
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At their apartment, they enjoy a fuck that is as intense as the downpour outside, fingers gripping, tongues searching, legs shaking, until they are left motionless in the sheets, filling their lungs with air, stinking, lacking the strength even to wipe the fluids that now drip from their stomachs and legs. Nine months later, Thisbe is lying on her back in a hospital bed, legs flung upward, and Pyramus watches as she pushes from her stretched birth canal, covered in afterbirth, not a child, but a pamphlet with instructions on how to achieve magical qualities from natural subjects.