An Imperfect Librarian (11 page)

“Is your mother still living?”

She gets up from the table then goes to the porch to let the dogs outside. A draft of cold air flows into the room. She sits at the table again. “Will didn't really want children, not after spending so much time with a midwife. That's why he married my mother. She was a widow, ten years older. She couldn't have children, or so they thought. She passed away when I was young. He brought a copy of
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
to the hospital. Baptism by books. Before I turned seven, I had over six hundred.”

“You're like Matilda in Roald Dahl's book. She read all of Dickens before she turned five.”

“I can't claim the same, although I did have the largest collection of children's books in any outport, probably on the whole island. It earned me more suspicion than friends though. I would have been more popular with the largest marble or doll collection.”

“I remember a boy in school who brought a collection of objects his father, a doctor, removed from windpipes, ears and nostrils. Stuff like popcorn, peanuts or peas.”

“English peas?”

“French.”

“Is your father a doctor?” she asks.

“A civil servant.”

“Retired?”

“Retired to be a curmudgeon.”

“Your mother?”

“She retired to Spain once my umbilical cord was cut. We haven't been in touch since.”

“I can see the Spanish in you. If you'd come to St. John's thirty years ago you would have been mistaken for a sailor. You have an exotic look for around here.”

“Please don't remind me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

A
FTER THE MEAL, WHILE
N
ORAH
putters in the kitchen, I browse her collection. I count twenty-four editions of
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
and as many or more of
Through the Looking Glass.
The two framed photos on the wall are more interesting to admire than count. There's one colour photo of what looks like Norah with Will and her mother. The other is a black and white photo of a fair-haired boy with Will. When Norah enters the study, I shift my attention back to the books. She takes me on tour. She hands me books to examine as if they were fine jewellery. She explains the differences between editions, which ones are most sought after and why. “Am I going into too much detail?” she asks.

When the tour ends, I help her carry in firewood from the outside to the porch. After, we sit in rocking chairs by the floor-to-ceiling window. She talks about her collection and favourite passages in
Alice in Wonderland
. I tell her a story I once read about a Mr. Benjamin Button who was born old then grew younger as he aged. She asks me about my work
and then about my parents.

“No mother? What about your mother country?” she asks.

“Nowhere, really.”

“It's settled. You'll become a Newfoundlander. Our population is declining. We can always use a few more people here.”

“For ballast?”

“You're funny,” she says.

“I don't look like a Newfoundlander. I certainly don't sound like one. I wasn't born here.”

“Being a Newfoundlander is not about being born here. It's about how you connect with the place. It's about missing the island when you go away, putting up with the fog, walking face-first into gusts, that sort of thing.”

“My friend Mercedes says there's no bad weather only bad clothes.”

“The weather here isn't the scoundrel people make it out to be. Besides, there's so much else that makes up for it. You don't mind putting up with someone who makes your life more difficult if they have finer qualities to compensate. We may not have the weather but we have other things.”

“Like char in phyllo pastry?”

“That's a Cliffhead specialty. Like people who surprise you and come through for you. Years ago, before I lived at Cliffhead, I went camping up the flats of a river with a friend. There were sandbars and grassy islands everywhere so we assumed it was fine. That night it poured out of the heavens. Daylight came, we packed up. We had to wade in water up to our knees, carrying our gear until we made it to the road, then to our car. In that short distance, one person shouted, ‘Do you want a cup of tea?' Someone else called out, ‘Do you need a place to stay?' Not everyone is so welcoming. You met Ray Harding so you know that. But he's the exception.”

“You may not have the weather but you have Ray.”

“You'll get used to the weather after a few winters. You'll accept your swindled share of summer because you'll have that bond with the place.”

“Cyril, Mercedes' husband, says it comes only about once every two or three years.”

“Well, it's coming this year for sure. And it's going to make up for the winter.”

“Sounds like an apology.”

“A request for forgiveness. If the good weather continues, we'll have one of the best summers on record.”

“Best by Newfoundland standards.”

“Best standards there are. How many other islands can boast their own dictionary, encyclopaedia, dog and pony?”

“Or hexagons, Ray Hardings, three-pawed foxes, birds on crutches?”

She laughs, lays down her glass then runs her fingers through her hair. She stares out the window into the darkness. “Once you've been this close to the ocean, you'll never want to live anywhere else. We call it the sea. Ever hear the folk song?” She sings while she taps the one-two-three rhythm on the arm of her rocking chair. “The sea, the sea, the wonderful sea. Long may she roam between nation and me. And everyone here should go down on one knee. Thank God we're surrounded by water.”

I applaud.

“Once you have its salt flowing in your veins, you're never the same,” she says. She closes her eyes and hums to the music.

I close mine. Before long, the rocking makes me sleepy. I stand then go to the kitchen. “I've had more fresh air in the last five or six hours than I've had in years. I'm going to ‘give 'er,' as they say here.”

“Giver?”

“Cyril's been giving me lessons in local sayings. I'm sure he
told me that give 'er as in ‘give it to her' means speed on, go on or to go.”

“I hope your friend isn't charging you too much for those lessons. You can't use give 'er in that sense. You can say, ‘I'm going to take off' or ‘I'm going to hit the road' or ‘burn some rubber' but not give 'er. Anyway, it wouldn't sound right coming out of you.”

“I told you I could never be a Newfoundlander.”

“It's not about the accent.” She pours the last of the wine. “We should meet again, share stories, music,” she says. “Who knows? By that time, you might have learned your book of fables off by heart.”

“If you don't mind waiting years.”

“I was thinking of this coming Saturday.”

“Fine, as long as you don't expect me to have it memorized by then. I have a busy week ahead.” I open the porch door. The dogs get up off their beds. Three tails wag and swat each other.

Norah squeezes in past me, opens the door and they rush outside. “I know the perfect place,” she says. “I'll send you an email with the information. In the meantime, what about your lost boot? I'd lend you one of mine but I doubt it would fit.” She laughs. “I'd say that fox is wearing your boot over his wounded paw. He's strutting around with the new prosthesis, showing off to everyone.”

I step outside. “They were too tight. I was thinking of returning them to the shop.”

“You could still try,” she says. “Sorry. I bought a pair of boots here. I'd like to return one. Can I have half my money back?” She calls to me as I limp to my car. “Watch out for the moose and the foxes, especially the ones with boots. They're fast.”

The road is dark until I reach Shea Heights and look out onto the glimmering lights of the city. I negotiate the curves
down the steep hill. Maybe the eight hundred dollar brake job was a fair deal. “Deflated, impotent, prick of a car.” I pass the mural of the whales, the
Welcome to the Waterford Valley
sign, the Railway Museum, drive across the harbour-front with the crab vessels, the rusted Russian trawler, the offshore supply vessel and the
Arctic Explorer
, up Prescott Street where the muffler probably wakes people from deep sleep. “Worse pain in the arse than a severe case of haemorrhoids.”

The flat is dark and damp. No woodstove here. No view of the ocean. No peak with star-lights. No wooden floors or bookshelves with single volumes worth more than I'll probably ever have in my bank account at any one time. The spider in the corner has trapped two more earwigs. Let that be a lesson to them. It's about time the extended family of earwigs moved out. I open the fridge for something to do. The container of beef stew is still there. Mercedes made it fresh for me two weeks ago. After four days in a row of beef stew, I've lost my appetite for it. It's too watery for the trash bin. I can't flush it down the toilet because the last time I did something like that, the toilet clogged up then overflowed. I was forced to ask Cyril to come down, everything was floating around on the bathroom floor and I thought I could never feel so embarrassed.

I crawl under the blankets with my clothes on. It's too cold to take them off yet. I'll wait until I'm warmer and hope I don't fall asleep before then. I reach for the
Robinson Crusoe
sticking out from under my mattress. I stay with him until my eyes are too tired to focus anymore. By then, he'd been living on the island for four years or long enough to stop regretting his fate:

I could hardly have named a place in the uninhabited

part of the world where I could have been cast more

to my advantage.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

H
ENRY AND I SIT IDLY
like spectators at intermission for some sports event except that our intermission
is
the main event. In the Room below, they're trying to wake a man who's asleep in a chair. Henry shifts his attention like someone channel surfing. “Behold the geometry on her. Where's the binoculars, Carl?”

“I brought them to the flat.” They catch my eye. They're on top of my filing cabinet behind him.

Henry notices instantly. When I make a move to reach them before he does, I trigger a painful muscle spasm in my leg. I don't know if it was the hiking or the horseback ride but I can barely move. “We're not using those anymore,” I tell him.

He takes them from the cabinet then puts them to his eyes with his glasses resting on top. He focuses on me. “Don't go saying there are no binoculars when they're glaring directly at you. Lying is a despicable, dirty act. If you'd been raised a Catholic, you'd know that.” He laughs then shifts his view from me to the window. He sits with them glued to his face. “You'd be
better off wasting your time with a woman like her instead of one who's mixed up with Francis,” he says.

I reach across to take them from him “You don't know that for certain. Anyway, I spent one day with her. Give me those binoculars.” The muscle contracts and I gasp with the pain.

He leans away from me. “Francis and Myrick are a duo, a pair, a two-some.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I keep my eyes and ears open and my prick pointed, unlike some people around here,” he says.

“I tried dealing with Francis. I asked for his inventory. He told me–”

Henry lays the binoculars on the floor under his chair. “You're wasting your time with inventories. What library really keeps an accurate account of which books they have? The proof's with Blumberg. He stole twenty million dollars worth. After they caught him and found the loot, most of the titles had to be auctioned off. The libraries didn't know they'd lost them. You're the one who fancies numbers. Imagine how many books go missing that we don't even know about. Imagine the books that are never requested, never borrowed. That's the majority of our collection. If someone can devise a scheme to steal the books, most of the time, no one will ever notice anything's been stolen. If a man eats a can of beans, does he know which one caused the fart?” Henry lays his empty cup on my desk, picks up the binoculars from the floor then puts them in front of his eyes again. “The view is grand today.”

“You're doing that to irritate me because you know I can't move.”

“Don't be assuming you're the focus of my behaviours,” he says. “You're not that fascinating.”

“If I was after twenty million dollars, I'd rob a bank instead of a library.”

“That's because you have no imagination,” he says. “Bibliophiles are driven by passion, not profit. Theft is merely interlibrary loan for them. They want to free the books and give them the attention they deserve.”

“It's still stealing.”

He lays the binoculars in his lap then takes a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his forehead. “Think of all the lonely books on the shelves accumulating dust, growing old and frail. Can you blame a lover of books for wanting to bring them home where they'll be appreciated?”

“Borrow them. That's what a library is designed for.”

“As the anonymous Arabic proverb so wisely observes: ‘He who lends a book is an idiot. He who returns the book is more of an idiot.'”

“What about he who steals a book?”

“Depends whether he has the luck and smarts to get away with it.”

Henry stands then puts the binoculars back on the cabinet. He walks over to the window for a last inspection and turns to face me before he goes to the door. “They'll replace all books with computers one of these days,” he says with a resigned tone. He raises his right hand in the air and stares up at it. “Instead of the sound of pages turning, you'll hear the staccato of fingers plucking keyboards.” He drops the right hand then raises the left. “Instead of the seductive aroma of aged paper and leather bindings, you'll be nauseated by the stench of burning dust from overheated circuitry.”