Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness (6 page)

It was her habit to deposit a few items—never more than three or four—in the return bin before going in search of more. She was silent, unsmiling, the solemnity with which she deposited her books that of a spy making discreet but important deliveries. I tried perpetually to catch her eye but her pause at the bin was nearly nonexistent. It was as if she were blind to me, intent on her simple mission to the exclusion of everything else.

Unlike her son, Violet always went directly to the basement. Within minutes of her arrival she vanished among heaps of old novels, free from my curious gaze. I enjoyed the delicately unnerving sensation of knowing his mother was standing on the floor below me, paging through books. Which one was she holding now? Was she nearly finished searching? (She struck me as a woman who opens a book in order to find something.) Such questions tempted me like flares from the dark stairs. I longed to follow them but I refrained.

In those moments I felt a bit like a spy myself. Using the Conscientious Librarian disguise as my cover, I lunged to help patrons, I snatched Violet’s books from the return bin and studied them. I accomplished innumerable pointless tasks in order to prolong my stay at the front desk to which I knew, with some guilt and even some pity, she was obligated to return and where I could at last meet her face to face. She was far too polite to ignore me within the context of a book-borrowing transaction and so it was within the narrow confines of these fleeting encounters (as thrilling as those I had with her son and yet doubly complicated, the difference between them like the difference between pornography and Victorian literature with an erotic subtext) that I, on duty and in public, plunged my pan into the cold river of friendship and brought it up again and again, each time hopeful, if not certain, I would see gold.

One Thursday, when I returned from lunch and saw the three self-help audio books in the bin, I knew at once they belonged to Violet for I had checked them out to her myself the week previous. The words
Peace Is Every Step
sent a shudder through my groin.

“Is she still here?!” I accosted Siobhan.

“Basement,” she whispered.

Siohban leaned down to take Violet’s items from the bin. “What do you think she does while she listens to these?” she asked as she scanned in
Smile at Fear
by Pema Chödrön. I had wondered the same.

“Probably she makes cheese.” I laughed. I had pictured her countless times in a green apron with yellow ties, preparing gourmet lunches for the young man.

“Can you really learn to love yourself while stirring hot cow’s milk on the stove?” Siobhan closed her eyes and brought her fingertips to her temples.

“Is that really how cheese is made?!” I gasped, mildly disgusted. There were many things (cheeses, butter cakes, Afghani slipper bread, child-rearing, current events, the disastrous results of extramarital affairs, et cetera) that Siobhan had superior knowledge of.

“Close enough.”

I wondered if Violet had sent the young man to the library to borrow
Crime and Punishment
or if he had chosen it for her.

“She seems to have moved beyond her Dostoevsky phase,” I said, thinking more of him than of her, though I was beginning to have difficulty distinguishing between the two modes. Siobhan must have known and indulged me.

“No more guilt, my Lowly Lady!” she cheered. “It’s time to love yourself while making Gouda!”

“What do you think she has to feel guilty about?” I asked, feeling a shiver of guilt myself. But before Siobhan could answer, I heard Violet’s tread on the stairs and shushed her.

“She’s mine!” I hissed.

“What?” Siobhan asked. She hadn’t recognized that light-footed ascent.

Violet approached the desk like a woman who has lost her luggage. She wore a brown sweater and carried nothing but a look of concern which quickly changed to one of disorientation as she began to speak (as if she’d left her map in one of the misplaced cases and was lost without it, would continue to be lost without it until one of us came to her aid). She addressed us equally, first Siobhan, then me, her eyes finally resting on the smooth, green lake of the counter.

“I wonder if one of you might recommend a good novel?”

As soon as her question was uttered, I lost heart. Mine indeed. Ravaged by cowardice, tormented by my hidden conflict of interest, I looked wide-eyed at my own hands and then at Siobhan. She cast an uncomprehending glance in my direction and then answered with the unflappable calm of the uninvolved, “This is our resident literary librarian. She’s the perfect person to help you.” Siobhan turned to me and patted my shoulder.

Violet thanked her and then gazed at me, waiting for my perfection to show. We managed to make our way to the basement (as if she needed me for that), the ungraceful lurchings and silences of our descent embarrassing but merely accessory to the terror of the literary underworld to come.

I reached the foot of the stairs feeling coarse and ineffectual, unworthy of my task. Before I could even begin my self-soothing Conscientious Librarian routine, Violet put in eagerly, “Maybe you could just recommend one of your favorites?” Patrons short on time often suggested this method, failing to realize that we were two different readers whose preferences would likely have little or no overlap. It was a mild nuisance, not to mention, ironically, a waste of time. In this case I allowed myself to receive Violet’s suggestion as a compliment, a sign that she saw some affinity between us, as if she was sure to love any book I loved.

As I perused my mental catalog of favorites, a dangerous well of possibility opened before me: sensuality, deception, obsession, the many forms of inappropriate love. Books containing these themes now took on a sinister quality. I did not want to be misconstrued, to inadvertently communicate a message. Or, if I was doomed to communicate (was it possible not to be?) I wanted to communicate innocence, anything but my own guilt. And yet I
was
innocent. I had done nothing. It was only with my mind I had sinned.

“What kinds of books do you usually enjoy?” I was stalling for time, having realized that to rule out sinister subject matter was to reduce my list of favorite books considerably.

“Well, I’ve read lots of classics but it’s been years since I read something contemporary.”

Yes, I thought with a rush of sympathy. And by now those contemporary novels have become classics.

“What are some of your favorites?” I asked. I imagined something old-fashioned in which guilt, shame, and anxiety figured prominently. Or perhaps, if she was feeling adventurous, one in which a prisoner is set free.

She hesitated before answering and in that moment’s hesitation I noticed that she was eyeing my name tag, though her birdlike gaze did not alight there for more than a few seconds before it flew to the nearby shelves.

“I’ve always liked
Crime and Punishment
. I like
Wings of the Dove
and
Anna Karenina
.”

So she had read the Dostoevsky before. She was a rereader.

“Have you read
The Lost Daughter
?” I asked, thinking that if one stretched one’s imagination it had something fundamentaly in common with
Crime and Punishment
. “The author is living, though no one knows her true identity. Elena Ferrante is her pen name. She’s a complete recluse.”

“People on this island can relate,” she said.

“Yes.” I imagined a reclusive life in which my sole companion was her son.

“She lives somewhere in Italy,” I drifted.

“I love Italy,” she whispered, perhaps drifting a little herself.

“Why?” I imagined tins of amaretti and flatbread for sale in her shop.

“Oh, everything. The food, the churches, the weather.” I’d never cared for spaghetti or popes, though a Mediterranean climate had its appeal. Italy had never interested me. That is, not until now. Violet could have said the London squats and I would have been intrigued.

“It’s this way,” I pointed, and began walking toward the F’s. She followed. I handed her the book.

She glanced at the cover and blushed, then quickly turned the book over. The cover photograph was of the backside of a doll whose dress was unbuttoned to reveal her plastic bottom. “Thank you,” she said, reading the back cover. “I think this will be just the thing for me. What’s your name?” she asked, for we had never been formally introduced. And when I didn’t answer immediately she added, “Where are you from?” The latter was a question some people asked after hearing me speak. My accent was slight but those who listened carefully could detect it.

I lifted my sweater toward her slightly so that she could better see my name tag. “It’s Mayumi,” I said. “I’m originally from England.”

My name means “truth, reason, beauty” or, depending on the
kanji,
sometimes “linen” or “bow.” I felt a dim pang of self-consciousness at the thought of these exalted meanings, none of which I seemed equal to.

“Whereabouts in England?”

“Stockingford.”

“Do you miss it?”

“No.”

“Do you visit?”

“Not often. I don’t like to leave the island.”

“I understand.”

It was my turn to give a Japanese nod. I was at a loss as to what to do with my body, afraid that if I opened my mouth I might let slip an incriminating sentence:
Your son’s so attractive!
And yet I also felt a teenage desire to impress, which only further undermined my ability to speak. It seemed better to say nothing than to offend or disappoint.

“Thanks again for the book. I hope I’ll be able to finish it in time.” Gingerly, she pressed her lips together.

“You can always renew it,” I said, hurrying forward in my mind to our next encounter, my next chance. As if she’d known I hadn’t needed to be told, she left without telling me her name.

It was one of those fall days that bears more resemblance to summer or spring, the colored leaves like bright flowers, the sky blindingly blue. The world, as I ran through it toward the apartment, surrounded me in shelves of color. There was the cocoa ash of the soil, the fields of hay marked by occasional scarlet, the gray umber trunks of the trees, their green tops just beginning to be dotted with red, yellow, and orange. The sky burned with sunshine, its bright white clouds dense as flames, the air ravished by an invisible sun. And beyond everything, also unseen, lay the darker blue shelf of the sea. I felt closer to him now and, of course, closer to her. I hoped she would like the Ferrante.
Come back to me, Violet
, I said to the day,
whatever you do, come back
.

She returned, wearing the same brown sweater, to thank me for the recommendation. “I liked it a lot. I think I’ll get another of hers,” she said, and walked self-sufficiently to the F’s.

“I’m so glad,” I said, keeping my eyes on the spine to which I was affixing a sticker and then a clear piece of tape. “I haven’t read that one. You’ll have to tell me how it is.” At last I looked up.

“I’d like that,” she said. She smiled the smile of pleasure shadowed by pain and I thought I saw a gap between her top teeth. She paused in front of the desk with
The
Days of Abandonment
in her arms; she was enfolding it the way I had many times imagined her son would enfold me.

A woman with only one sweater, I thought, is typically austere or practical or of little means. I wondered which, if any, applied to Violet. I began to dream of knitting her a new sweater using a warm cherry yarn and a fine gauge stitch, although I did not know how to knit.

“Shall I check it out for you?” I asked, trying to imagine how she would look wearing the finished sweater. Indeed, a warm cherry would suit her.

“Oh no, that’s all right. I’ll bring it upstairs.” Like a girl on her way to a literature class, she clutched the book more tightly and hurried away.

We were no longer strangers. We were coterminous, like distant neighbors whose common boundaries were the young man and a woman who had yet to reveal her true name.

* * *

Although I love books and although I have obviously devised ways of benefitting from my position, I am, in many ways, ill-suited to being a librarian. Though I shelve cart after cart without complaint, though I give excellent recommendations and can intuit a patron’s needs, I otherwise have few, if any, of the appropriate talents. My ability to lose myself while engaged in mindless tasks notwithstanding, I don’t like to smile when I’m in a foul mood, I’m prone to carpal tunnel syndrome (nowadays everything in the library is done on computers), I don’t feel the need to pick up the phone during the first ring (or at all frankly), nor do I want so desperately to please others that I will skip a lunch break in order to do so. I care little for best-seller lists and book reviews, I fail to watch PBS, to listen to NPR, to read
The New Yorker
, not to mention mainland newspapers. Indeed I am embarrassingly out of touch with what is popular in the book world. I have a strong musical voice that lends itself to whispering on occasion but for which the daily imperative is a prison. My most glaring deficiency is that I am not detail-oriented, although I lied unwittingly during my preliminary interview and described myself as such. In truth, before being initiated into that Mansion of Minutiae, I had no idea the true meaning of the phrase. Put another way, I had no idea how well the librarian’s vocation lends itself to existential crisis.

The entrance of Mother and Son into said Mansion enhanced my vocation and its meaning considerably. The seasonal Japanese restaurant worker who accelerated my pulse every summer and fall, the one-hundred-year-old woman whose barbed comments regularly stung me, the savage children whose despicable manners once annoyed me, now had a tranquilizing effect. All patrons now had a tranquilizing effect. They belonged to a race of people who were
other than the young man
. In their presence, I was unassailable. I exuded confidence. Behavior I might once have found irritating now amused me if it touched me at all. I was overwhelmed by a new sense of ease, with every breath conscious of my remarkable lack of nervousness. All of this was in contrast to the feverish, heart-racing state of wanting and agitation I experienced in his presence.