There are admittedly various obscure points in the story of Vero, the man who never once in his life met a woman, but who must be considered the source of some of the most beautiful descriptions of love the world has ever seen. However, by uniting the undisputed facts with the most fortunate guesses and charming additions it is, nevertheless, possible to create a coherent story out of it."

The woman sitting opposite me was silent for a moment. She looked closely at me. Slowly she drew her hand across her lips, flashed a smile at me and began her story.

"The setting for the first episode is bay after bay of bulging shelves characteristic of the huge library. It is an autumn day many years ago. A few rather faint sounds seem to be coming from the books; otherwise, that heavy silence reigns which is peculiar to illustrious old libraries.

"Two rather unusual people were going around searching and hesitating, afraid to disturb the established pattern. It was the young man, a weaver who had as yet not completed his training, who was most embarrassed at the situation, forever stroking his short, refractory hair. He had a receding chin and wandering eyes, and his hands were sweating. The girl, heavy and uncomprehending, followed in his footsteps. Pregnant she certainly was, but no one knew how close to her delivery – too late had the young couple begun to concern themselves with what was fermenting in her stomach and causing it to distend. When the more imaginative versions of the story tell us that the girl had got into this condition without the assistance of the man, this is doubtless a spill-over from another well-known myth; this detail appears to have no foundation in fact.

"The couple scarcely knew why they were in this place. In their distress, however, they had been persuaded to accept the claim that the solution to all problems can be found in books. However, they had not envisaged there being so many different problems as the number of books seemed to indicate. There they stood without any idea of where to begin; to read right through all the books was obviously an insuperable task. All around there were librarians standing motionless behind counters, but they couldn’t address themselves to them. Naively, then, they allowed themselves to be attracted by the reddest spine, but on closer examination this turned out to be outshone by another one further away. But now their eyes alighted on another yet more exciting shelf. With a series of rapid, jerky movements the young man made his way deeper and deeper into the forest of books, lost his way, found new possibilities, enthused, was disappointed. Patiently gawping, his vital burden lumbered after him.

"When the violent pains overwhelmed the girl they were in a distant corner of the building, where people seldom ventured. The young weaver considerately led her into a convenient cubicle. Before long the pains merged with the distended stomach and turned into a child.

"The two grown-up children looked at the alien being to which they had given birth, the girl in despair, the boy scared on account of the stain they had left on the august floor. Mean-while, their long association with books had resulted in a certain eloquence on the part of the weaver, and without any difficulty he persuaded the girl to get up, and as soon as she had found her feet again they fled from this collecting ground for all learning, leaving behind them the consequences of their ignorance.

"The story could well have ended here, for it really was a place abandoned by Man in which the child had laid itself down. The room was filled with books with damaged bindings in need of repair, and the general pressure of work meant that there were no immediate prospects of improvement. It must be considered a miracle that the child was found while still alive.

"The librarian responsible for this corner of the collections was a middle-aged woman, sere and unmarried, and with few friends. One curious feature about her was that she looked just as though cut out of cardboard – a hunched, angular figure with a pointed nose. Although she had spent most of her life in the library, she had never managed to wrest anything but dust from the books. And so her amazement knew no bounds when she went into the broken bindings room and found on the floor a tiny infant which had apparently originated on one of the shelves.

"The child’s tears softened some of the cardboard, giving rise to certain hitherto unknown feelings. Almost immediately, the woman felt herself growing mightily, and she conceived the idea of keeping the child, of grasping this opportunity of enfolding in her arms a more living fragment of reality than those everlasting books. She was aware that she would lose the child if she declared it. So as to keep the thing she had found, she had to leave it in the safest hiding place imaginable, this final resting place for mouldering volumes.

"She made a bed for the child on the shelf where there was most space, and tended it with yet more care than she lavished on the other works, even if it must be assumed that she had already become so stiff and brittle by nature that she showed but few signs of affection.

"It was under these distinctive conditions that the child now grew up, always shut up in that far-away cubicle, most of the time left to itself. At first the old woman was together with the infant as often as she was able, picking him up and imagining that that was how it would feel to enfold life in her arms. But it was not all that different from holding an untidy stack of books in her embrace, and soon the child grew so big that the cardboard arms had difficulty in lifting him. The woman’s interest in this tender life was now limited to that of the observer. Now and then she would stand and watch him crawling about; later he toddled around; the child grew bigger and bigger, but she herself had no greater share in life.