An Imperfect Librarian (8 page)

“Thank you. I knew I could count on you. I hope you won't mind if Sophie shares in our happiness. She's like you in many ways. She'd do anything for me. She wants a family as much as I do. We could arrange it for July. That means the baby would be born near Easter next year. What do you think?”

I think, What will Henry say when he learns that after so much hoping, wanting, longing, wishing, all I have to show is an opportunity to share paternity with Brutus? Instead of responding with anger, I opt for reason. “I think what you're asking me to do is screw myself. I decline the offer.” End of call.

My computer screensaver alternates through an Elsa slideshow. A photo of the two of us on a ferry fades onto the screen. It was the day we moved from England to Norway. There's a photo of Elsa's athletic body sprawled the length of our divan. That was earlier in our marriage, before she stopped spending time at home.

Segments of the conversation replay themselves like a refrain:
impregnate me, family, baby.
I activate the screen-saver controls, locate a folder named
Elsa,
then press delete. The message box responds with:
Are you sure you want to delete Elsa? Yes or no?
I press Y, wait three seconds, find the recycle bin, empty the recycle bin. End of instructions, end of Elsa. Next, I dispense with the honeymoon photo by sending
Mr. and Mrs. Brunet sailing on a swift voyage across my office, smack into the wall.

The fresh air on the walk from the library to the parking lot revives me. I feel less nauseated. The car coughs and chokes but doesn't start. My breath condenses on the windshield. I trace the sum with the tip of my finger:
-3 + -6 + -2 = -11
. Minus two equals the number of years (rounded off to the nearest black whole) that I wasted after she left. I should have clued in long before that, like during the three years together before our six years of marriage. I breathe in deeply, then exhale onto the glass. Like magic, the sum disappears. Like magic again, the car starts when I turn the key.

I drive to Gower Street and park in front of the house. It's not hard to find, even in the thickest fog. The scaffolding gives it away. Cyril's supposed to be repairing the clapboard when he's not working on building the shed in the backyard. They celebrated the house's hundredth birthday seven years before I moved into the basement. It still has its original plumbing. Cyril says it's located in the holiest part of the city. The Anglican Cathedral is around the corner. So are the Basilica, the Presentation and Mercy convents. I was waiting to visit them with Elsa.

A cat dashes across the street as if its path is booby-trapped. A man in a baseball hat, jeans and work boots trudges by, leaning under the weight of a stack of empty cases of beer. An orange cab whizzes past, stops and blows its horn. A voice calls from an open door, “Don't forget the loaf of bread.” A car pulls up in front of the house. It's Mercedes.

I step out onto the curb. “How was your shift?”

On or off duty, she recognizes a patient. “What happened to you?”

We stand like statues in front of the house, in between the puddles, under the flickering street light. The fog horn
groans. Was that an empathetic response? I wonder. I head towards the lane on the side of the house that leads to the basement. “Stomach flu. Don't come too close, Mercedes.”

She prescribes ginger ale plus crackers.

I hear her door closing on my way round back. The keyhole in the door of my flat is rusted. I fight with the lock while drops of water drip onto my head. The door opens and I run my fingers along the inside wall to switch on the light. After a shower, I go straight to bed then curl into a ball to conserve heat. I stare at the ceiling. I don't have to stare far because the height is under code at seven rather than the normal eight feet. Cyril claims the basement is warmer that way. “You're a lucky man to have an apartment that heats up so fast,” he says. I might be lucky if Cyril turned on the furnace more often. I don't complain about the cold. If they made it any more comfortable, I'd be less inclined to search for a proper place to live. Item number three on my priority list:
find new flat
. It's been high on the list since the day after I arrived in Newfoundland.

My colleagues at the university in Norway warned me life in Newfoundland would be harsh. They were convinced I'd never survive here. They said I'd either be taken hostage by flies just off a hunger strike, pickled from a diet of salted beef, pork and cod, or worse, turned into a native – literally, as in Mohawk with a piercing, fierce cry. They gave me a copy of
Robinson Crusoe
for a going-away gift. On the inside cover they wrote:
Something to read while you're shipwrecked in Newfieland.

I climb out of bed, go to the closet, open my suitcase then rummage through clothes not worth unpacking. The book is poked in a side pocket with some dirty laundry. I climb under the covers again. My nest is still warm. Defoe's story takes me to the seventeenth century. Crusoe has ignored his father's advice. He's taken to the sea and he's sailing in a storm in the Caribbean. The wind is blowing the ship towards the shore
where it will be crushed into a thousand pieces. Before that happens, a mountain of a wave hits. Crusoe is swallowed by the sea. He sinks, but on the last breath, the wave ebbs and leaves him standing on sand. If he can run fast to avoid the second wave, he'll make it to land. If the wave hits him, he knows it can suck him out to sea again. He runs, glancing over his shoulder as he does, but it's too late.

The wave that came upon me again buried me at once twenty or thirty feet deep in its own body, and I could feel myself carried with a mighty force and swiftness towards the shore – a very great way; but I held my breath, and assisted myself to swim still forward with all my might. I was ready to burst with holding my breath, when, as I felt myself rising up, so, to my immediate relief, I found my head and hands shoot out above the surface of the water; and though it was not two seconds of time that I could keep myself so, yet it relieved me greatly, gave me breath, and new courage.

I curl the ear of the page, tuck the book partway under the mattress then turn out the light. It's only a story after all.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

N
EITHER ELSA
'
S BETRAYAL NOR
C
ARL
'
S
delusional hoping makes headlines in the following weeks. No state of emergency or day of mourning is proclaimed. People behave as usual and I try to do the same. When I tell Henry about Elsa's call, he says they should establish an award to recognize men like me. “Outstanding-cuckolded-husband-of-all-time award. The recipient has shown evidence of unfailing tenacity in his efforts to cling onto his cheating wife. His superhuman efforts to play the devoted husband earned high esteem for his semen.”

I don't have time to gloat over the award. Not when I'm so busy writing reports, reading reports, shredding reports and ordering reports. There's nothing like a report to take your mind off an award, except maybe a meeting. My weekly planner is littered with those. Ordinarily, I reserve the 3:30 to 4:00 block for afternoon break with Henry. Sometimes meetings come up unannounced – which means I have to cancel coffee. Since Henry doesn't use email or voicemail the best way to reach him
is to go directly to the booth. He doesn't spend much time in the LAB, so if he's not there, he could be anywhere.

I head to the Information Services booth to change break time from afternoon to morning. Henry is walking away as I arrive. “Be right with you, Carl. The student wants help finding a book on ‘metaphorns.' Wait at the booth.”

The donut-shaped booth can fit three or four librarians at one time. It's at the centre of a commons area they call the Atrium. When I tilt my head up, I can see the five floors of library stacks. If I were on the top floor looking down, I'd see rows of tables with four chairs on each side. That view will change if my proposal is approved to equip every table with Internet-ready computers.

I browse the booth's computer while I wait. I go to the most interesting part, where the files are too often unorganized. We can create all the information we want, but if we can't effectively access it, what's the point? How can I convince people to be passionate about information management when they don't appreciate proper file–

“Excuse me,” she says.

I shift my attention from the screen. The last time I saw her that close was in the Reading Room.

She holds a slip of paper in front of me. “I found this listed in the catalogue. It's supposed to be in the stacks. I checked high, low, under, about, up, down, but it's not there. Can you help me?”

Henry's nowhere in sight. I don't bother searching too hard to find him. “I can try. How about if we visit the stacks?”

We take the elevator to the top floor. We stand side by side facing the door.

“I should be honest, Henry Kelly is the Information Services Librarian on duty, but he's gone off searching for metaphors. I'm a librarian too but I work in another department. You're a
historian?” The final n is out. There's no way to undo it.

“How'd you guess?”

“Because of the book you're searching for.”

“That's clever,” she says.

The elevator jerks upwards then halts. We exit.

“Your accent is English but there's a hint of some other flavour in there that I can't label,” she says. “Where're you from? Not Burin, Bonavista or Burgeo surely?”

When Cyril saw me for the first time, he decided instantly that I don't resemble a Newfoundlander. Couldn't explain why. “It's OK, Carl,” he said.

“English, yes. Some French. I guess I'd need to be in Newfoundland longer than six or seven months to sound like people do here.”

I put up with three years of teasing about my Québécois accent when I arrived in France at five years old. Then Tatie and I moved to England where I put up with taunts about my French accent. Before we left French soil, she warned me that I'd only be allowed to speak English when absolutely required. She forbade any English food in our French diet. I had to eat salad at the end, not before the meal like the English. At school, we had to sing “God Save the Queen” during assemblies. She told me, “There'll be no reverences paid by Carl to English monarchs.” Tatie would glance at my school texts then complain that the English were as confused about books as about meals. “Why do they place the table of contents at the beginning and not at the end of their books? Why are they so insensitive to how things should be ordered?”

Norah knows the route better than I do. The truth is I don't know my way around the library except virtually. I can picture the databases down to the most minute detail and file name. I can trace the intricacies of the cataloguing system with my eyes closed. I understand how records are linked, how tags predict
users' search habits. But I am, as Henry would argue, “clueless” when it comes to orienting myself in the library stacks.

I make a turn. She heads in the other direction. I backtrack a few steps and follow her again. We're sandwiched between stacks that dwarf us. The book is not where it should be. I browse the shelves above and below. I tilt my head. She does the same. We can't bend far at the waist because we're squat between the narrow stacks. I reach sideways then down too fast; she moves and I smack my skull off hers. I reel back and hit my head again off the edge of the metal book shelf. She raises her hand to my head to stroke it. “I'm so sorry!” she says.

“Don't be sorry. It's not the first time I've hit my head.”

From there we head back through the stacks and down in the elevator to the circulation desk to see about the missing book. We're told to talk to a Mrs. Power, but it turns out she's gone for coffee. “Come back in a half-hour,” they tell us.

“I could do with a cup of coffee myself right now,” Norah says. “How about you? Can I buy you a quick cup?”

I hesitate then nod. The tender hand that stroked my head is the same one I saw through the binoculars from my office.

“My treat – for going beyond the call of duty and being injured in the process. I don't believe we've met officially. I'm Norah. Norah Myrick. History prof, Newfoundlander, woman in search of missing books. You already know so much about me.”

We both laugh. For different reasons.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

O
N OUR WAY TO THE
campus cafeteria, she talks about the Gulf Stream, the Labrador Current and maritime climates of Newfoundland versus the continental climates of central Canada. “The ocean's contrary,” she says. “It warms us in the winter, cools us in the summer. I always joke: If the weather doesn't suit you, wait a minute.” Cyril had already used that line on me once, but I laugh anyway. We take the university tunnel system. The exposed pipes on the ceiling lead me to suspect the same architect for the tunnels as for my basement flat: Chez Mercedes and Cyril on Rue Gower, Saint Jean, Terre-Neuve.

I follow her conversation to the entrance then up the stairs. Her stride is long, like her legs. Her jeans are snug on her wide hips and tucked into her knee-high leather boots. Her woollen sweater has a geometric pattern like on the sweater Mercedes is knitting for Cyril. She reminds me of a girlfriend I had in England. I only ever had one girlfriend besides Elsa. She was tall like Norah, confident, leading the way, always
smiling. We lived together for five years until she decided I didn't talk enough, didn't spend enough, didn't work out enough, didn't joke enough.

Two of the library staff go by while we wait in line to be served. I wave and smile. They don't wave in return. “What if they never find the book? What will you do then?”

“If they don't find the book? Let me see.” She pauses. “I'm too old for a tantrum, too gourmand for a hunger strike, too conservative to protest. I suppose I'll settle for a request to interlibrary loans. Is that a double espresso? The English aren't a nation of espresso drinkers, are they?”