The Wandering Library of MirMarnia: A series

Part Seventeen: The Week of Theatrical Melancholy

(I’ve gone back to creating artwork for the Wandering Library, as I have a lot of previous sketches I’ve recently reworked in Procreate. This is one of them. Painted with the oil paint brush from a sketch. - Chaiga T. Cheska)
~~~

Being an account of the time our workplace developed opinions about suffering

Compiled by Bramwell Corin, who has catalogued forty-seven sighs and is considering a career in something quieter
~

Preface

The Wandering Library is having a mood.

Not a breakdown. Not a structural emergency. Not another encounter with windborne bakery packaging. A mood. The sustained, architectural equivalent of someone sitting in a chair with their arms folded, staring at the middle distance, and sighing heavily whenever anyone enters the room.

It has been doing this for six days.

I have been inside for six days. My nerves are in a poor state.

What follows is a precise account of the most trying week of my professional career, which is a significant claim given that my professional career has included the paper bag incident, the time Pip accidentally shelved himself in the Unusual Biographies section for four hours, and the ongoing situation with the Restricted Section, which I decline to describe further on the grounds that some things should not be described.

Day One: The First Sigh

Bramwell’s Account (9:23 AM)

I was mid-sentence in the acquisitions catalogue when the Library produced a sound, I have never heard a building make. A deep, prolonged exhalation that seemed to rise through the foundations, travel through the walls, and emerge simultaneously from every window.

It lasted approximately eight seconds.

I put my pen down. “Did the Library just sigh?”

Pip appeared from the reading room. “I heard it. That was definitely a sigh.”

“Buildings don’t sigh.”

“This one appears to have opinions about that.”

We waited. Nothing further occurred. I returned to cataloguing, reasoning that unusual structural sounds are to be expected from a building that walks on mismatched legs across uneven terrain.

I was wrong.

The Second Sigh (11:47 AM)

Longer this time. More committed. The sigh of something with a great deal to say and every intention of communicating it through breathing.

Books trembled on their shelves. My tea rippled. A small decorative globe in the corner rotated approximately four degrees for no reason I could identify.

“Library,” I said to the ceiling. “Is something the matter?”

Meaningful silence.

I consulted Mistress Spine. She reported that the Library had moved her desk six inches to the left that morning, which is normal, but had done so very slowly, as though the effort required more energy than the building currently possessed.

“The Library moved your desk lethargically?”

“With what I can only describe as architectural ennui.”

I returned to my desk and considered this at some length.

The Third Sigh (2:15 PM)

This one was accompanied by the Library sagging on its legs. The entire structure dropped approximately four inches, remained there for ten seconds, then rose again with another sigh. It had flopped. The Library had flopped, in the manner of a person throwing themselves onto a sofa to communicate that they are suffering and would appreciate acknowledgement of this.

Pip appeared from the upper stacks at a run. “Bramwell, the Library drooped.”

“I’m aware. Books fell on my head.”

“Is it unwell?”

“I don’t think so.” I considered the ceiling. “I think it’s being dramatic.”

We looked at each other with the shared expression of people who have realised their situation has become significantly more complicated.

“Oh,” said Pip.

“Yes,” I said.

Day Two: Escalation

Mistress Spine’s Morning Report (7:30 AM)

Woke this morning to find the Library in what can only be described as a structural sulk. From within: walls slumped, windows at angles that serve no ventilation purpose, floors vibrating occasionally with the effort of sustained melancholy. The entire building radiated the specific energy of something that is fine but is not going to pretend to be fine.

As I came through from the residential corridor, the Library sighed so heavily that papers blew off my desk.

I have extensive notes on building behaviour spanning several decades. None of them address this.

Pip’s Flopping Log

The Library flopped four times today. I am recording them professionally, as a professional.

9:15 AM: Settled itself heavily onto its legs with a groan. Everything inside tilted three degrees left. My breakfast porridge slid across the table. The Library remained tilted for seven minutes before straightening with another sigh. I ate tilted porridge. It was not an improvement.

11:30 AM: Dropped onto its foundations with such sudden conviction that I fell off my chair completely. The Library then went very still, in the manner of a building that has decided it cannot possibly be expected to do anything further today. This lasted twelve minutes.

2:00 PM: Flopped sideways. Sideways. I did not know buildings could lean like that. I am not sure they should. Everything inside slid right. Bramwell’s cataloguing system distributed itself across the floor in what I would describe as a comprehensive reorganisation that he had not requested. The Library sighed as this happened, which seemed unnecessary given that a point had already been made.

4:47 PM: The most committed flop yet. The Library sort of collapsed into itself. Not dangerously. Just with tremendous heaviness, like someone falling face-first onto a bed. We all stumbled. Books everywhere. The Autocurator filed a formal complaint via aggressively scattered index cards. The Library sighed throughout the collapse, as though providing a commentary on its own drama.

Between flops: constant sighing. The sighing of a building that would like it on record that it is having a very difficult time.

Bramwell’s Evening Notes

I have attempted to identify the cause.

Investigated possibilities include: residual paper bag trauma (occurred weeks ago, seems unlikely to resurface at this particular moment), some grievance with our current location (pleasant meadow, adequate drainage, no obvious problems), illness (Dame Pellifrax found no symptoms beyond dramatic temperament and a generalised attitude), boredom (visitor traffic has been reasonable), and existential crisis, which I cannot rule out but also cannot meaningfully address.

The Library responds to all enquiries with sighs. Heavy, significant sighs. The sighs of a building that knows precisely what is wrong and has decided that communicating through the normal architectural channels is beneath its current mood.

I am at a loss.

Day Three: The Silent Treatment

Bramwell’s Account (8:00 AM)

The Library has begun refusing to open internal doors for me specifically.

I came through from the residential corridor and found the door to the main reading room closed. This door is never closed.

“Library. I need to get through.”

Nothing.

“I have cataloguing to do.”

A sigh from the other side. The door remained shut.

“This is professionally unreasonable.”

A longer sigh. The door stayed closed with the quiet certainty of a building that has made a decision and is comfortable with it.

Pip came through from the reading room, and the door opened immediately for him. I attempted to follow. The door closed, gently, in my face.

“What did you do to upset it?” Pip called from the other side.

“Nothing. I have done nothing to this building.”

The windows rattled. The Library held a different view.

The Door Situation Continues (Throughout the Day)

Every other member of staff moved freely through the building all day. I was required to request Pip’s assistance each time I needed to move from one room to another. This took considerable time and was humiliating for everyone involved, though considerably more humiliating for me.

At one point, I addressed the corridor wall directly and asked what I had done wrong. The Library flopped in response, and a book fell from a nearby shelf and landed at my feet: “The Impossibility of Understanding Others.”

I have catalogued this under “Passive Aggressive Architecture.”

Lyria’s Assessment (2:30 PM)

Lyria performed an interpretive sequence aimed at reading the Library’s emotional state. Her interpretation, as relayed by Pip: the Library feels unappreciated, put-upon, and overburdened by the general experience of containing everyone’s nonsense.

“Is it having a sulk?” I asked.

“An architectural sulk,” Pip said. “Lyria says those are considerably more involved.”

The Library sighed in what sounded like confirmation and flopped sufficiently to send Lyria’s props sliding across the floor.

Day Four: Maximum Drama

The Morning Flop (Collective Account, 7:45 AM)

I was woken at approximately 7:45 by everything in my quarters having relocated to what was formerly the wall.

The Library was lying down.

Not settled on its foundations. Not resting on its legs. Lying. Completely horizontal, as though it had given verticality serious consideration sometime in the night and found it wanting. I lay in my bed, which had slid against the wall along with my wardrobe, two reference volumes, and one shoe, and stared at the ceiling, which was now somewhat to my left.

I heard Pip’s voice from the next corridor: “Bramwell. The floor is a wall.”

“I’m aware.”

“Is this intentional?”

“Almost certainly.”

A sigh moved through the building’s entire horizontal length. Tremendous. Resonant. The sigh of a structure that has made a statement and is waiting for it to be appreciated.

We extracted ourselves and convened in what had been the corridor and was now functioning as an extremely inconvenient floor. Mistress Spine emerged from the residential wing looking as unruffled as a person can look when they are standing on a wall. She assessed the situation, knocked firmly on the nearest surface, and said, “This is absolutely ridiculous. Get up.”

A sigh emerged from within. The sigh of a building that has suffered greatly and wants this understood.

“Get. Up.”

Another sigh.

“If you don’t get up, I’m cancelling the book orders.”

A pause. Then, slowly, with the energy of something that is rising entirely on its own terms and intends this to be recognised as such, the Library began to right itself. It took seven minutes. It sighed continuously throughout the process. By the time it was vertical again, we were all exhausted from trying not to get squashed by moving furniture and shifting tomes.

Interior Damage Report (Bramwell, 9:00 AM)

Everything inside had migrated to what had been the lower wall during the horizontal phase. Books, furniture, Pemberton the chicken (unbothered, as always; I believe the chicken has reached a philosophical accommodation with gravity that I would find instructive if I could determine how), my filing system, the tea service (intact, which is either miraculous or deeply suspicious), and Pip’s sketchbook, which had lost several pages to the experience.

Reorganisation took four hours. The Library sighed at us throughout, with a frequency that suggested it was judging our progress.

I addressed the ceiling at one point. “What do you want? What would make you stop this?”

The Library flopped left. Everything we had reorganised slid back across the floor.

Pip put a hand on my shoulder. “Perhaps don’t engage with it directly when it’s like this.”

“I asked a reasonable question.”

A book fell at my feet: “Self-Awareness: A Journey.”

I left it on the floor. I felt the floor deserved the company.

The Afternoon (Pip’s Account, 2:00 PM)

Bramwell ran out of patience at approximately two in the afternoon.

He stood in the middle of the reading room, looked up at the ceiling, and said, in the very controlled voice he uses when he is not controlled in the slightest: “Fine. The Library is having a mood. The mood has been extensively communicated. But I have a cataloguing system that has now been reorganised twice today, and I cannot continue working in a building that treats the floor as a theatrical surface.”

The Library sighed. A long, aggrieved sigh.

“Stop sighing.”

Another sigh. Longer. More wounded.

Bramwell turned and walked out. The front door opened for him immediately, which struck me as pointed.

The Library then settled into the heaviest position yet.

I sat down near a window. “Look,” I said to the room generally. “We’d help if we knew what the matter was. But you have to give us something.”

The Library was quiet for a while. Then it made a small, short sound. Not theatrical. Not dramatic. Just tired.

That was the first time I thought the sighing might be covering something rather more ordinary.

Day Five: The Breakthrough

Dame Pellifrax’s Visit (Morning)

Dame Pellifrax walked around the Library’s exterior, observed its slumped posture, its drooping eaves, its general aspect of a building that has eaten something that disagreed with it on a profound level, and said, “When did this start?”

“Six days ago.”

“What happened six days before?”

We considered. Six days before the sighing was the Royal Archives meeting. The paper bag. Bramwell’s aerial posterior. The scholars.

“Ah,” said Dame Pellifrax. “The story is spreading. Other institutions have heard about it. Your building fled from an empty paper bag, and this has become a topic of academic discussion.”

We looked at her.

“The Library is mortified,” she said. “Not about what happened. About other people knowing what happened. There is a distinction.”

“It’s sulking because it’s embarrassed about being embarrassed?”

“Yes.”

“For six days.”

“Buildings have pride,” she said, in the tone of someone who has had to say this considerably more often than they would like. “Yours has discovered that pride can be publicly wounded. It is taking some time with the discovery.”

The Conversation (Bramwell, 11:00 AM)

Armed with Dame Pellifrax’s assessment, I made my way through to the reading room. The door opened without hesitation. First time in three days.

I stood at the centre of the room and addressed the ceiling.

“Scholar Wickham’s report has been circulating.”

A sigh. Defensive.

“I’ve read it. I suspect you haven’t, so allow me to summarise: he describes our collection as exceptional and our staff as dedicated professionals who maintain composure under extraordinary circumstances.” I paused. "He wrote this having personally witnessed me upside down in a broken chair with my feet where my head should have been. I'm choosing to accept the assessment on its own terms."

Silence. Thoughtful silence, for a change.

“The paper bag story is circulating. We can’t do anything about that now. However, I’d note that the version being discussed describes a mobile library with genuine responses to unexpected stimuli. Several institutions are apparently finding this interesting.” I looked at the window. “More interesting, certainly, than anything their stationary buildings have been doing.”

A creak. A longer one.

“You came back,” I said. Which was as far as I was prepared to go on the subject.

I sat down. The Library was quiet.

Then my desk moved six inches to the left. Not the sharp, punitive movement of the previous three days. The ordinary one. The one that means we are talking.

I moved my chair to accommodate it. We remained in reasonable silence for a time.

Then every window in the building opened simultaneously. Fresh air came through. The Library straightened itself, properly, for the first time in nearly a week.

Pip appeared in the doorway, took in the open windows and the general absence of theatrical despair, and said, “Oh. Good.”

I picked up my pen and returned to cataloguing.

Day Six: Recovery

Mistress Spine’s Assessment (Morning)

The Library is functioning normally. No sighing. No flopping. Doors at full operational efficiency. Windows at appropriate angles. Books are staying where they have been shelved.

The week of theatrical melancholy has concluded.

I have noted in the building’s health record: “Embarrassment-related episode. Duration: six days. Cause: institutional gossip regarding the paper bag incident. Resolution: Bramwell, ceiling, Wickham report. The library’s emotional range continues to expand. The health record is running out of appropriate categories for this.”

The Apology (Bramwell’s Account, Afternoon)

The Library spent the afternoon making quiet adjustments.

My desk is now positioned at an angle I did not know I preferred until I sat at it. Pip has a reading nook that receives excellent natural light at precisely the time of day he does his sketches. Mistress Spine’s radiator, which has been unreliable for several weeks, is now functioning correctly. Lyria has a clear section of floor considerably better than anything she has previously worked with. Pemberton has a nesting box in the corner of the Restricted Section that appears, somehow, to be the safest spot in there. The chicken accepted this without comment, because the chicken accepts everything without comment.

None of us remarked on any of it.

The Library, for its part, did not sigh once.

I patted the wall when I noticed my desk placement. The wall was warm.

We maintain appropriate professional boundaries in this building. This is simply how things are communicated here.

Concluding Remarks

What I have taken from this week: buildings with opinions occasionally need to be allowed to have their moods without those moods being made into a larger event than they already are. There is a time for enquiry and a time for simply being present in the same room until things settle. I would not describe this as an insight I particularly wanted, but it appears to be accurate, and accuracy is what we are here for.

The Library is forbidden from lying down again. Mistress Spine has made this official. The building has not contested it.

Final Notes (Added by Mistress Spine)

This incident is closed. We do not discuss the flopping. We particularly do not discuss the horizontal phase or the seven minutes it took to convince the building to become vertical again.

The building’s health record now formally includes pride, embarrassment, theatrical sulking, architectural passive aggression, and selective internal door operation as documented behaviours. I have had to create a new section. The original record did not anticipate this volume of entries.

The book orders have not been cancelled. The Library is aware of this.

Additional Notes (Added by Pip Thimble)

The Library had a complete crisis because people at other institutions were discussing it, and expressed this by lying down in a meadow for a day.

I understand this completely. I once refused to come out of my room for two days because someone mentioned my singing voice at a gathering. I was thirteen, but still. The specific mortification of other people knowing the thing you are embarrassed about is its own particular experience, and the Library has clearly arrived at it for the first time. Six days of dramatic sighing seems, in that context, relatively restrained.

Bramwell sorted it by talking to the ceiling about Wickham’s report in a completely practical way, and specifically not mentioning the thing they were both obviously talking about. Which is, now I think about it, exactly how Bramwell handles most things. He just usually does it with books.

The Library gave him a better desk angle. He noticed and patted the wall. I saw this happen, and I am not going to mention it to him because he will only file it somewhere dry and deflecting, and it will lose something in the process.

My reading nook is perfect. I did not ask for it, and I am not going to say anything about it whatsoever.

Compiled during a week of architectural adolescence. The Library has recovered its dignity and is declining further comment. The tea improved considerably on Day Six. Pemberton, the chicken, was unbothered throughout, which remains the most aspirational thing about this workplace.