This was the reason for the man’s changes, his happiness. The book watched them throughout the day, as sadness filled its pages. At one point, the girl saw the book and asked about it, but her father quickly dismissed it, and they went along with their day. When night came, the two sat together, and they read. A new book. It was a thinner book. Its pages smoother and glossier, its type crisper, its binding tighter. It was much less wordy and the two finished it in one sitting, the man reading to both of them. Years passed with nothing for the book. Only once was it touched in this time, when the girl was still quite young and the book still sat at the bedside table, she put a flower between its pages when the man was not looking, hoping to preserve it for a while. After this, time tortured the book for years, decades. Surrounding objects would grow and change, but life was not given to the book. Eventually it would forgive the man and come to watch him longingly. Once in a long while, the man would glance at the book, seeming deep in thought, and the book would beg and scream with its silent words. But the man would never again touch the book. And one morning, he did not wake, and cold filled the house. Silence lingered for days until the girl returned, now a woman, no longer laughing and no longer free. Rain beat down on the roof, just as it had that first night with the man and just as it had the last night with him. She wandered, like a ghost, looking at everything and touching nothing. Eventually she arrived at the book. She stared at it for a long time, and finally picked it up and opened it. Out of it fell what was once a flower, now black and dead. The book felt a trickle, a single teardrop, then another, and she began to weep. And the book wanted to weep too. Not for the man or for itself, or for the girl, but because it understood now that nothing—not love, nor life—lasts forever.
13
