The Incident Report (12 page)
Read The Incident Report Online
Authors: Martha Baillie
I questioned the patrons seated at the neighbouring terminals. Not one of them had seen the man hit her. Nobody supported the woman's story. The man stated his innocence repeatedly and with utmost confidence. The woman left the library, yelling obscenities, a damp patch spreading across the bottom of her pants, and the flower in her buttonhole drooping.
At 4:05
PM
, a Page reported that a pair of dentures had been left unattended in the foyer. I went to take a look. The dentures in question lay on the display rack, where flyers for the public are generally placed. I wrapped the dentures in a paper towel, on which I marked the date and time of their discovery. I placed them, thus loosely packaged, in the Lost and Found box behind the Reference Desk. There the dentures remained, a full half hour, until another staff member, Nila Narayan, judged them hygienically suspectâupon which grounds she threw them out.
The time was 12:15
AM
. Janko asked me to scratch a little lower and I did so. His sigh of pleasure pulled me closer.
“And here?” I asked.
He mumbled his relief into the pillow.
“And here? And harder?”
I'm acquiring sublime knowledge of his various itches.
“My dispatcher is an asshole,” said Janko, into the pillow. “I will quit and go far away, and when I come back, my dispatcher will be an old man with shrivelled balls, who sits on a park bench, dispatching pigeons.”
“Will the pigeons obey him?”
“They will rebel. But not how I did against my father, hiding and eventually running away. They will circle above him, dropping white shit in his hair. He is cruel, and so they will treat him in this way.”
We were standing in the cacti room, and could go no further, the rest of the greenhouse being under repair.
Janko turned to me and said, “I am going to enroll in a computer school, then I will be able to stop driving a taxi.”
“But you've already studied,” I protested. “You've restored twelfth-century frescoes on the walls of churches.”
“Look around you, Miriam, do you see any frescoes?”
“You could paint fake frescoes, make them look old and sell them as copies. You wouldn't be lying. People will pay a lot for a good copy of something old and beautiful.”
We left the cacti room and followed the curving narrow path that led between the raised beds where plants grew leaves as large as dinner plates.
“You'll paint fake frescoes,” I insisted, slipping my arm through his. “People in Florida, in Miami, will buy them from you over the Internet.”
His note appeared, taped to the door of the piano room, and was brought to the desk by a puzzled patron. I thanked the patron for bringing the unusual message to my attention.
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What use is eyesight so long as we have hands to feel our way in the dark, to move deeper into darkness? My Gilda disguised herself as a boy and knocked on the door of the inn. She gave her lovely life to spare the one who'd twisted his key in her heart, as if her heart were a windup toy, a ticking delight created for his diversion. She died in place of my debauched and loathsome master, the Duke.
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But see, see how free and lighthearted my Gilda is now? Do you see how happy she's become, now that she's died and recovered? See her freckled hands fluttering from here to there. I am her father and know my duty. To protect her from grief will take all my cunning.
I folded the paper and slipped it into the drawer of my desk. In the mirror above the small sink, in the
corner of the workroom, I studied my face. I gathered up my hair and pictured how I'd look with it cut off short as a boy's, or with it hidden under a cap.
Daily, for the past three days, a male patron has been devoting his energies, between 10:00
AM
and 2:00
PM
, to reading the 2006
Martin's Annual Criminal Code
. His favourite section seems to be the Charter of Rights.
Yesterday morning, he slipped a handwritten note between the pages. I found the note when I went to reshelve the book, which is a Reference volume and must not leave the library. The note expressed unequivocally the patron's irritation at feeling himself to be the object of somebody's scrutiny. It read: “get a life you nosy bastard, stop staring. I'm trying to get a life, so don't bug me. What do you mean to me? Fucking nothing. Get a life.”
At 12:15
PM
, the patron in question, Mr. Criminal Code, was observed taping postcards to the foyer wall. On each card he'd scrawled in thick black marker, “Try to pray to Jesus. He will help you.”
At 12:40
PM
, Mr. Criminal Code entered the men's washroom, from which he reemerged half an hour later, reeking of cigarette smoke. I informed him that smoking was not permitted in the library. He swung the library's copy of
Martin's Annual Criminal Code
this way and that through the air, while loudly recommending that I do my homework, like the “fragrant bitch” I was.
“How many rides today? Good fares?”
“Tomorrow evening I take my first class.”
“Do you want to programme computers?”
“I don't want to drive a taxi.”
“Then I hope you do well in your first class.”
“I will do well.”
“What are you reading?”
“
Muca Copatarica
.”
“The illustrations are beautiful. Who is Muca? Is she the cat?”
“Yes, her name is Muca. She takes the slippers that children lose and she embroiders on them. Sometimes she even takes slippers they haven't lost, just because she likes a particular slipper. The children know where to go when they lose a slipper; they go into the woods and follow the path to Muca's house. She gives them back their slippers, all covered in embroidery, every inch.”
“Did your mother read you
Muca Copatarica
?”
“Repeat after me:
Muca Copatarica
.”
“
Muca Copatarica
.”
“Much better. Almost perfect.”
“
Muca Copatarica
.”
“Perfect. Your pronunciation is perfect.”
“No it's not. But thank you.”
“Obstinate Miriam.”
“Did your mother read it to you?”
“Muca didn't exist when I was little. She was not yet written. A few years ago I found her and bought her for my niece.”
“Did you read
Muca
out loud to your niece?”
“Yes, very often.”
“How old is your niece now?”
“Eight.”
“Is this her book? Does she know you have it?”
“Suspicious librarian! Darkest Miriam, you think I would steal my niece's book, the present I gave her?”
“How should I know. If I can't prevent you from becoming a computer programmer, if I can't stop you from giving up your art, then what do I know?”
“This is my own copy, this book belongs to me. I bought this copy for myself.”
He arrived at 6:15
PM
, an ample man with an open face and a white beard. In his right hand he held the folded remains of a cardboard box, and from his left, by its broken handle, dangled a pretty little paper bag, robin's egg blue.
“May I please see your piano?” he asked in the grave tone of someone who expects to be obeyed. I took the necessary key and showed him the way. I unlocked the door. The large patron entered the tiny room, settled himself on the piano bench, and launched into a monologue of considerable seriousness, addressed to the piano. I walked away, leaving him to his private act of communication.
At 6:25
PM
, the patron came to inform me: “You've changed pianos.”
I agreed that we had. “The old one,” I explained, “was removed several months ago. It was beyond repair and could not be tuned.”
“Where is the old piano?” he asked.
“Gone,” I told him.
“I left an empty can inside it. I was going to return that can. I wanted my ten cents.”
“The old piano is gone and so is your empty beer can,” I stated. “You should have come back sooner. Please don't hide any cans in the new piano.”
The patron in question filled his cheeks with air and slowly, volubly, exhaled through thickly pursed lips, while raising his white tufted eyebrows and opening his countenance wide in an expression of incredulous acceptance of the vagaries of life. He lifted his broad shoulders, and allowed them to fall.
As he turned to leave, a flat, oversized book, recently returned and lying on the circulation desk, caught his attention. He flipped it open. Bound sheet music: Satie's
Gnossienne #1
, and Satie's
Sonate Bureaucratique
.
“May I take this?” he asked, and without waiting for my reply he headed for the piano room, the book tucked under his gigantic arm.
He closed the door and played. He played fluidly, with feeling and grace. I stood outside and listened.
Janko unbuttoned my blouse and asked, “Now am I calm?” The time was 11:30
PM
.
Janko unzipped my jeans and pulled, so that they pooled around my ankles, and I could not step easily forwards or backwards. He was smiling.
“Now am I calm?” he asked.
At 4:15
PM
, three children set fire to a strip of paper in the children's area. A delicate curl of smoke, drifting up from behind the picture book shelves, indicated the children's presence. They explained that they were “doing a science experiment,” and reluctantly handed over the cigarette lighter, without which they could proceed no further with their experiment.
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Yes, vengeance, terrible vengeance is my soul's only wish. It's already drawing near, the hour of your punishment that will fatally descend upon you, like a thunderbolt hurled by God. Like a thunderbolt hurled by God, your fool will strike you.
He'd tucked his warning between the pages of a children's book on electricity, which he'd left on a table in adult nonfiction, where I picked it up, at 7:30
PM
, intending to return it to the appropriate book cart.
It is the Duke he's speaking to. It is not me he dreams of harming, but any person he perceives as presenting a threat to my honour or happiness.
To prevent myself from tearing his note into pieces, I slipped it quickly into the drawer of my desk and shut the drawer.
This morning, Irene Frenkel and I, with the help of twenty children, began to build a seven-foot dragon. A hardware shop up the street donated two rolls of screen. In the basement we found bags of shredded paper and numerous cardboard boxes. Our dragon, to date, resembles a large, somewhat angular sausage. Our work has just begun.
“I don't go out dancing anymore, because I haven't got the right shoes, or the right clothes, or the right legs, or the right ass,” Nila announced. From the drawer of her desk, she took an ink pad and a rubber stamp; she yawned, walked over to the shelf marked “Withdrawals” and started stamping the words “For Sale” inside the covers of the books selected to be put out for purchase because of their battered condition or failure to circulate.
“Then last night, who calls? My sister, to say the arthritis in my mum's hands has got so bad, my poor old mumsey can't even pick up a pen. So what do you think, girls? Shall we go out dancing while we still can? Anyone want to come? We'll wear whatever we like, and we won't give a shit.”
She set down the ink pad and stamp, and crossed the room to where the kettle was vigorously boiling. She unplugged it.
“Tea, any of you? Or am I on my own? At least you'll drink a cup of tea with me? There, that's better. And tonight we're all going out dancing, yah?”
At precisely 2:30 this afternoon a female patron, well spoken, with a pockmarked face and a nervous disposition, asked if I might assist her in determining the name of an artist who, several centuries ago, painted a now famous portrait, contriving to use fruit and vegetables to represent each of his subject's facial features. I answered that I was familiar with the painting, though ignorant of whose work it was, and that I would happily do my best to find out the artist's name.
For some minutes I searched the Internet without success. Then it came to me. I'd seen the painting less than a week ago, reproduced in a small book brought to the circulation desk by a child. Without pausing to explain my intentions, not wishing to dilute my excitement with concerns of formality, I left the desk and hurried to the children's area where I pulled from the shelf the exact book. I returned to the desk, victorious, and revealed my find:
Vurdunum
, 1591, by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Italian painter, court portraitist and festival organizer to three generations of Hapsburg emperors, 1527â1593.