The Last of the Wise Lovers

by Amnon Jackont

  "I don't owe you any explanations."

  "No, perhaps you don't owe me any," she said, the glint of victory in her eye, "but you'll owe Mr. K. some and how." She strode ahead without even checking to make sure I was behind her. At that moment I had no intention of escaping - quite the contrary. I went with her, all the time trying to imagine the sound her orthopedic shoes would make on the cement corridor in the stacks.

  We passed behind the librarians' counter - even senior employees were forbidden to do that without a reason - Ms. Yardley going full steam ahead, staring straight at everyone we met and announcing, "I'm taking this young man to Mr. K."

  At the entrance to Mr. K.'s office I said to her, "If all this to-do is to throw me out, then there's no reason for me to go in there, I'll just take my things and go."

  But she was too smart for me. "If that's the case, then you admit your guilt. Good. But now even if I wanted to, I couldn't let you go. The theft of a slide from the library is a matter for one of the directors."

  "Are you sure he's one of the directors?" I asked skeptically, looking at the plywood walls that made a corner of the corridor into a tiny cubicle.

  "He most certainly is a director," she whistled importantly. "And he knows me, and knows that when I'm right, I'm right."

  She knocked on the door once, and then again, but there was no response. She twisted the handle decisively and went in. Mr. K. sat absorbed in two books that were open in front of him among a bunch of other junk that crowded his desk. There was an old lamp in the shape of a globe whose bulb had burnt an orange stain in the Pacific Ocean, a few books piled in two low stacks, magazines, opened letters, envelopes, post cards, and notes.

  "Yes," said Mr. K., taking a bite out of an apple.

  "Mr. K.," Ms. Yardley began resolutely, "this young man, whom we accepted to work with us in conjunction with the municipality's Program for Summer Vacation Youth Employment, made a fine impression on us in the beginning - so fine, in fact, that we agreed to allow him to work with the public, and we put him in the Catalog Room instead of poor Simpkin."

  "Simpkin," Mr. K. noted, though I wasn't sure if in wonder, uncertainty, or confirmation.

  But Ms. Yardley made sure to clarify the matter. "Who took ill last month...”

  "Ahh," said Mr. K., regarding me through his glasses.

  He had a doleful and contemplative expression, but I wasn't taken in by it. The thickness of his lenses hinted that it was nothing more than extreme myopia, and that this seemingly sympathetic little man might actually be a tough and ready bastard who would throw me out on my ear without a moment's hesitation. I didn't particularly care one way or the other, and if it hadn't have been for the accusation of theft that Ms. Yardley was just then beginning to detail, I'd have walked out right in the middle of the `enquiry'.

  "Here," Ms. Yardley drew my employee's card out of the pocket of her flared skirt, "your signature is all we need to pass the matter on to the personnel depart...”

  "Hey," I interrupted. "I also have something to say," but Mr. K. didn't even hear. He brought the card close to his eyes, then moved it away. His mouth was very round and sensuous, like Byron's mouth in the portrait on the flyleaf of his book of poetry. We were all silent. The apple was still perched precariously on the edge of the desk. Ms. Yardley was the first to lose her patience. "At the bottom," she reminded him, "where it says `Date of Termination of Employment'."

  Mr. K. looked at me again and said, "Why did you do it?"

  Both Ms. Yardley and I stood there dumbfounded. Each of us was astounded by the question - Ms. Yardley because she hadn't understood it, and I precisely because I had. He was the second person in two days to speak to me in Hebrew.

  "I didn't do it," I said after a moment.

  "She says you did," he added in broken, heavily-accented Hebrew.

  "Could you manage to speak in a language I understand?" Ms. Yardley bristled.

  Mr. K. apologized in English. Ms. Yardley gladly forgave him. His speaking to me in a language she didn't understand was so rude that one would've expected him to punish me just to even things out. But he merely asked in English, in a gentle voice, "What were you looking for, there in the stacks?"

  "The terminals in the Catalog Room were in use," I explained.

  "And this!" Ms. Yardley presented the slide.

  "That's mine."

  "And I say that this is a slide that was stolen from a book or from one of our collections."

  Mr. K. sent a tiny white hand forward. She placed the slide in it. He peered at it in the light that came from the window and asked, "What's this a diagram of?"

  "That's exactly what I'm trying to find out."

  He tugged at a drawer and took out a magnifying glass.

  "You haven't signed," Ms. Yardley reminded him.

  But Mr. K. was preoccupied. "How did you go about looking?" he asked. "What did you type into the computer?"

  "Agitator."

  He raised an eyebrow in surprise, turned the slide over and examined it under the magnifying glass.

  "Your signature, Mr. K.," Ms. Yardley demanded.

  He discovered the words that were printed on the bottom. "Why agitator, of all things?"

  "I've seen that word someplace before."

  He flashed a quick smile that seemed almost like a twitch. "How do you go home?"

  "From Port Authority."

  "Do you go through Times Square?"

  "Sometimes."

  He picked my card up off the table and held it out to Ms. Yardley. "It's all right," he hurled at her, "it was a misunderstanding." He turned his attention back to me. "When you stand opposite the Warner Cinema, look up." He glanced at the slide again. "Are you interested in science?"

  "Yes," I said, happy that I didn't have to lie, "especially electronics."

  From the look on his face I could tell he liked me. You can trust me about this. I'm so anxious for people to like me that I can tell immediately when they do. He tugged the drawer open again, took out an envelope, and placed the slide inside.

  "If you'll leave this with me for a day or two, I'll be able to tell you what it's a diagram of," he said, and without another word drew his two books back toward himself and returned to his reading. The apple fell and rolled on the floor.

  Ms. Yardley went out first, striding with such angry steps that her heels left little rings in the carpet. Along the corridors, on the stairs, in the Reading Room and in the Catalog Room everyone stared after us in amazement. The rumor about my being caught had undoubtedly flashed through the library, and I must have looked like a condemned man come back from a hanging. I stood behind my counter. Ms. Yardley also took her place; after a minute or two of self-control she picked up the telephone receiver and dialed someplace. Her words were lost in the usual noises of the Catalog Room - conversations, the clicking of keyboards and the rasping of printers - but at one point she raised her voice and I thought I could hear her say something like `those two Jews settled it in their language.'

  As far as I know, a comment like that would have made you so angry that you'd have dashed off a letter to the Board of Trustees of the library, or the mayor. But I was absorbed in something else - something so important that it couldn't wait until the end of the day - and at lunch break I left the library and ran to Times Square. Above the Warner Cinema there was an ad for a new movie, Terror on the Roads, showing a long road that stretched off into blue-blue skies. What had he meant? Just to be sure, I looked at the two adjacent buildings. Nothing. But when I turned to go back, I found it. It seemed he really was absent-minded, because it was above some dinky cinema that showed porn flicks all day, on the other side of the road altogether, where Broadway meets 42nd: a huge ad for a washing machine bearing the words, "The Only One in the World With a Double-Action Agitator".

  *

  All that afternoon I was embarrassed that I had made such a fuss over a washing machine. I had a burning need to talk to Mr. K., both to apologize and because that's ju
st the way I am. If somebody shows even the slightest interest in me, I shower him with attention. Only discipline and a proper education prevent me from sticking like glue. The rest of the day I ran into him all over the place: twice on the stairs (I volunteered to get the flow charts of requests to use the catalog), once by the soda machine, and a few times in the corridor of the administrative wing, where I'd passed on my more-frequent-than-necessary visits to the bathroom. I noticed that he was thin and had very white skin, that his eyes, behind those thick glasses, were dull, and that the twitch that passed for a smile actually expressed a lot of things, depending on the circumstances: greeting, embarrassment, acknowledgment, or "leave me alone".

  At ten minutes to five he passed through the Catalog Room. I caught up with him just before he reached the door.

  "Hi," I smiled. "I saw it - that is, the washing machine."

  "I'm working on it," he said, completely ignoring my smile. His gaze was focused on something behind me and his brow was furrowed with worry. "I'm working on it," he said again and went out into the street.

  What more was there to work on when it was clear that it was just a washing machine? I didn't have much time to think about it, because just then something else happened: again I felt someone looking at me.

  It was a woman. She stood at the end of the Catalog Room by the farthest terminal, seemingly absorbed in the list of operating instructions that was taped to the wall in an effort to mask the interest she had in me, or in Mr. K. (who had by now vanished), or in both of us.

  I went back to my counter, from where I could look her over: There was nothing special about her. Just a regular woman wearing jeans patched at the knees - a bit sloppy for her age - these completely crazy purple shoes, and a brown poncho with five or six horses on it galloping up toward a long, long neck and a delicate face. She finished reading the list of instructions, bent over the keyboard and began to type. The printer next to her started to whirr and rasp, and immediately stopped. She typed a few more letters, and then tapped the printer lightly. Ms. Yardley took one step on her wooden platform. The woman looked around in despair, casing the room, Ms. Yardley, and the other half-dozen people there before turning her gaze to the opposite, most distant, least likely corner of the room: to me.

  Ms. Yardley walked over toward her, but the woman was quicker; she was already leaning over my counter and saying, "Hi. Could you help me?"

  Ms. Yardley was pretty close by, and I didn't want to get into any more trouble.

  "Certainly," I said, "Ms. Yardley here will be able...”

  But she had already spilled the contents of her bag onto my counter: notebooks, lists, chewed pencils, a few magazines.

  "Here," she smoothed out a list of books, "I need to find these, and the computer doesn't...”

  "Yes, madam?" Ms. Yardley said from behind her. The woman moved aside, revealing the pile of her possessions on the counter and the list in the middle.

  "The computer," she explained again. "I can't seem to find what I need...”

  Ms. Yardley took the list and narrowed her eyes in examination.

  "Articles," the woman said, "scientific, mostly. I photocopy them for a media resources company."

  Twenty or thirty "regulars", most of them students, earned their wages photocopying articles in the library at the behest of various companies for 20 cents a page. Ms. Yardley detested them in particular. She claimed that the library was meant to serve the residents of New York, and not to make a bunch of middlemen rich.

  But now she said rather cordially, "I don't think Mr. Levin will object to giving you ten minutes of his time." She glared at me maliciously. "I'm sure he can feed the information into the computer for you."

  The large clock on the wall showed five-forty. Feeding the information into the computer, including waiting for confirmation that the information was correct and that an article was indeed in the library, took about five minutes per title. There were eleven titles on the list, which meant it would take a little less than an hour. I threw a glance at the sign that read, "No Requests for Books Received After 5:45".

  Ms. Yardley quickly added, "You're lucky there are five minutes left in which you can request this service...” and went back to her post.

  "Thanks," the woman said in a low, soft voice. While I was filling out the order form, I was certain that something was amiss. Very much amiss. I didn't know what, I didn't know how, but it had something to do with how she had come up to me - of all the people in the room - with this long list of titles that had to be found fifteen minutes before closing time; something even in her voice, which wasn't the voice of someone who wouldn't know how to use a computer - especially a user-friendly computer like the one in the Catalog Room.

  "Name," I asked.

  "Doherty," she pulled her poncho back, "Annie."

  "Tomorrow," I said drily, "at 9:00 o'clock."

  I went over to the terminal she had abandoned. There was nothing that wasn't in order, other than the fact that she had stopped in mid-function.

  "If you want," I said over my shoulder, "I'll show you how and you can...” but she was no longer there. She was already in full stride toward the door, where she was waving goodbye.

  At exactly 6:00 p.m. Ms. Yardley left. Mrs. Kahn left immediately after her. At 6:10 the guard turned off the chandeliers.

  "You be here long, kid?" he asked.

  "An hour." At least he didn't call me `young man'.

  "I'll leave you the small lights."

  "Great."

  The books she'd requested were approximately what you'd expect from a company that employed these gofers: electronics, chemistry, astrophysics. It was 6:40 when I finished typing in all the information. I pressed the "SAVE" key and waited for the printer to spit out the list. In the meantime, I looked around. The small lights twinkled between the tables. The darkened terminals looked like blind eyes. Again I had the sensation that someone was looking at me. I walked to the door and pressed the electricity switch, but it only turned on two lights in the hall.

  I left the door open to let light in, a lot of light. I tore off the sheets that came off the printer and stuffed them on the shelf under my counter. As I was leaving, I heard steps from the head of the stairs. I immediately went back to the Catalog Room. Two days earlier, I wouldn't have done so. But then, two days earlier I wouldn't have gotten into trouble with Ms. Yardley and I wouldn't have felt confused enough to let myself be badgered into staying to enter a request for books that some strange woman had brought in too close to closing time.

  Through the glass I could see a blurry figure pass under a row of fluorescent lights. I cautiously opened the door. It was Mr. K. He was dressed in a coat that was too big for him and was reading a book as he went. When had he come back? How?

  "Hey!" I called out, but he didn't hear. I hurriedly turned off the terminal and the lights and ran out after him. The guard opened the main door for me just seconds after he had closed it behind Mr. K. From the head of the stairs I could see him go around the coffee shop at the entrance to the library and walk north along Fifth Avenue. I ran between the tables in the coffee shop, as a shortcut, but I lost him anyway. Near Times Square I saw him again, coming out of a kiosk that sold newspapers, candy, and cigarettes. Before I could get close to him, he'd vanished down East 42nd Street.

  I jumped over the divider, crossed the street, and stared down 42nd Street. All I could see was the usual mess of peep shows, massage parlors, whores, and pimps. I went back to Times Square. The washing machine above the cinema was now bathed in neon light. A woman came out from behind the sign of a souvenir shop. I thought I could make out a poncho with galloping horses. Miss Doherty? I preferred to think that I was just hallucinating. I bought a hamburger, to get rid of the hallucinations. Then I walked slowly to Port Authority and I got on the 8:00 o'clock bus.

  *

  By the time I got home it was already 9:05. Mom wasn't in. Usually I don't mind being alone in the house; it's rather nice. But this
time I had the jitters, which had been with me all day, together with a new cause for worry: how had she left here, with no car?

  I turned on the TV. There was news on Channel 13. I even remember some of it: the US Ice Hockey All-Stars were training in Canada. A sailboat race on the Potomac. The president escaping Washington for a week of R&R. Then foreign news. Israel. Soldiers in olive green waving black billy clubs, chasing after a group of kids who had set a tire ablaze. From on top of the flat roofs of stone houses, women keening like crows. I remember thinking: get ready. Next year, you, too, will be a part of that.

  After that there was a commercial, the famous picture of the New York apple shriveling from thirst. "Save the Apple - Save Water". I'm part of that apple, I thought, not part of those soldiers caught in a chase after Arab kids.

  I fell asleep in mid-thought. I woke up around 1:00 a.m. only to discover that the house was empty. Like I already said, there was nothing unusual about that. Mom always went out two or three times a week when Dad wasn't around (and he usually wasn't around). She'd go to exhibitions in Nyack, to films in Manhattan, to garage sales, to special sales at the supermarket, to her few girlfriends on Long Island or in Queens, or to one very rich one in New Rochelle. I was already an old hand at heating up dinners, locking the house, managing on my own.

  But like I said, this time everything was different. I wandered through the house, restless. I turned the TV on, then turned it off, thumbed through the latest edition of FMR (a periodical on art, one of the many Dad gets regularly and reads during the few days when he's home), drank cola from the fridge, ate some ice cream, and washed a few dishes that I found in the sink. Finally, I went outside. The street was quiet and empty. I walked along it, aimlessly.

  Most of the houses were dark. This was one of the few times I thought how nice it would be if we lived in a place that was slightly less ritzy and slightly more noisy. Like Queens, or even Brooklyn. This, too, had been one of Mom's achievements. She had always dreamed of living in a house, and we were the only ones of all the hundreds of families of Israeli bureaucrats in New York who didn't live in an easily-defensible high-rise. How had Dad managed it? I haven't a clue, but it was part of the tradition: whatever Mom wanted badly enough, she got.