“Wherever. They give us their thoughts, but not their bodies. They give us analysis, but not experience.”

"I

f I had a camera,” Felix says, drumming his fingertips on the wooden library desk, “I could simply take photographs of all the books here.”

Wilhelm looks around, smooths his dark moustache with two fingers, and raises a single eyebrow. “And when you have demonstrated your prowess as a photographer, what then?”

“And then I would have no need to sit here, day after day, while my hand cramps from writing notes and my head burns from all these—”

“All the dead words? “

His mother’s son, he can’t quite call the words dead, not while they’re being read and studied. “Not dead words, not exactly.” The shelves climb all the way up to the ceiling, filled with endless volumes. A group of new students sits across the way; Wilhelm doubtless is occupied with deciding what prank he can play on them.

Felix walks over to a shelf and removes an armful of books. Bindings — green, maroon, black. Gold letters embossed on the spine, black ink pressed into the covers. He sets them on the desk with a thump.

“The problem with all these,” he says, “is that they are rectangular.”

Wilhelm leans back in his chair and crosses his long legs. He is amused. “Let me guess. You would rather have triangular books. Or perhaps, perfect circles, a la Leonardo. Or would you prefer that these were inked onto parchment and rolled up, and stacked one upon the other, like in the great library of Rome.”

Felix takes a single book, places it in the middle of the bench.

“It just feels like one shape. One dimension. Just intellect. Just a head, no legs or bodies.”

Wilhelm places a hand on the pile of books, as if to protect them. “All theory and no action?”

“Yes. No. It’s more than theory. It’s a level of being disembodied. These scholars sit in the libraries of Berlin and Paris and Vienna—”

Wilhelm flips open a cover, tugs it toward him and reads the title page. “Athens, actually.”

“Wherever. They give us their thoughts, but not their bodies. They give us analysis, but not experience.”

Wilhelm removes the books from Felix’s hand and gently places it back on the stack. “Well, of course, but whoever said that this is all there is?”

Felix looks at his friend carefully. “What do you mean?”

“Has it ever happened to you that you were thinking about someone, and a few minutes later, you meet him? It could be in an unlikely place, an out-of-the-way bookshop, a coffee shop you never frequent.”

Felix frowns. “If it has happened, then I have not noticed it.”

“Well, start to.” He sniffs. “Or, you are pondering a certain idea, and all of a sudden, it’s mentioned by a professor, a colleague, a student, a sister.”

Felix climbs out of his seat. “That is simply because you are listening out for it.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps there is something beyond the workings of our rational mind. An energy field that surrounds us, and communicates somehow with others.”

Felix places his hands on Wilhelm’s shoulders. “There is a thin line between all this spiritualism and madness, my friend. Abandon rational thought and you may as well go back to being a Polish peasant.”

Wilhelm shoves his hands off. “I am not denying rationality. I am suggesting that there may be more than that. There is the heart and the mind and there are parts of us that we’re barely aware of.”

Felix puts on his most pompous voice, imitating Professor Handmein. “I fail to follow the intent of your argument.”

Wilhelm’s boots clip on the stone floor as he strides out of the library. “I do not know why you come in here to begin with. It only makes you grumpy.”

“So I should write my dissertation in a coffee shop?”

“A coffee shop? Surely there are more interesting places than that?”

The two wander across the university grounds, and Wilhelm turns to him. “Why are you doing this, anyway? The bachelor’s, obviously. The master’s, I hear. But all the way to the doctorate?”

Felix shrugs. “I’m a Jew. We do things to the end.”