A dugout.... A burrow.... A lair.... A womb.... We crawl in and curl up. We sleep. We hibernate. We dig ourself into hides. We cover ourselves with dried leaves....
No. A burrow is not the point. A cellar-like pantry – this is the point. It is located near the house, it doesn't touch the house, it's half sunken in the ground and covered with the ground.... as if the lawn has swollen up.... a kind of ground bubble.... as if someone put a number of n letters, one after the other, dug them into the ground, half, threw the ground taken out from the ditch on their tops and sowed it with grass, herbs and flowers, made in the front a wall from stones and put there a small door.... Yes, in the past there were plenty of such bubbles here. As if the earth got a rash, as if a mysterious parasite (or maybe it was even more mysterious bird of parasite?) laid its eggs under the earth's skin. Let us not be under the illusion, no. These were not the pantries of thoughts. Books were not kept there to protect them against calamities, to cool them in summer heat and to warm them during extremely frosty nights.
OK, you rent the burrow and: sleep? eat? sleep? eat? sleep? eat? No, definitely not. You learn to read in darkness. They say once upon a time there was a monk, who spent all his live in delight and ecstasy, because he was writing and rewriting books – when the candle flame was nearly to die he never stopped to write, he went on lighting the page up with his left hand shining..... This story is astonishing, takes you aback. At first. Then it does not. Or at least surprises much less. One can write even in absolute darkness. But can one read? To read in darkness lighting up the text with the light of your own eyes.... That's something.
