Three and a half million

The same gate, the same pass, one floor further up: the library keeps afternoon hours on Thursdays, one until six, and only for people who telephoned first. I telephoned on Monday. Volgogradsky Prospekt again, entrance A again, the same industrial park and the same two checkpoints. The woman who answered wanted the subject and not the reason, which I found restful in a way I could not have predicted.

It began in 1864 with nine books. It now runs to three and a half million volumes and is the largest technical history collection in the country, which means it holds the dull things: operating manuals, works journals, the trade press of an industry that no longer exists. I asked for manuals. Not memoirs, not commemorative volumes, not the anniversary editions with the good photographs, but the pages a person consulted with a screwdriver in the other hand and a deadline behind her.

The best thing in this building is not in this building. There is a form on the library website called ask the librarian: free, no institution required, an answer in two or three working days. I could have had half of today from Bishkek. I came anyway, to see who else sits at these tables on a Thursday. Two people. Both older than the catalogue.