by Lev Grossman
PLEASE NO
TALKING IN THE
READING ROOM
She went back to examining the book.
Edward stood up, got his pencil and paper from where he’d been sitting, and brought them over to her table. He printed carefully on a piece of paper:
IS THAT GERVASE OF LANGFORD?
and passed it across to her.
This time she looked up for a little longer. She hesitated, then nodded reluctantly.
He wrote:
I NEED TO ASK YOU A QUESTION
She sighed deeply and pursed her lips, as if she accepted the fact that being continuously interrupted in her silent labors was her inevitable lot in life, but she wasn’t about to act all happy about it. They stood up together and walked to the door. When she stood up he saw that she was quite tall, as tall as he was. The movement in itself was striking, like some large, endangered heron gracefully unfolding itself into flight. He opened the door for her, and she stepped through ahead of him. The jowly old woman was watching him and frowning. He made a face at her.
Edward had wanted to sit down with her at one of the conference tables that were scattered around the lobby, but the young woman just stood by the door, doing the minimum.
“It’s a funny thing,” he began, chuckling as if it actually were funny. “But I came here to look at Gervase of Langford, too.”
He hoped she would throw the ball back, but she just waited for him to continue. He did.
“And I was wondering what time you thought you might be finished with it?”
She was wearing a small silver watch, but she didn’t glance at it.
“I’ll be working on it for the rest of the day.”
There was something odd about her voice—it was strangely flat and unexpressive. It held out no apology or invitation to negotiate. Edward scratched the back of his head with one hand. He was straying into unfamiliar territory, protocol-wise.
“What if I just took a quick glance at it.”
Her expression didn’t change.
“How much time do you need?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Will you be transcribing, tracing, or making sketches?”
“No, I don’t think so. I just need to—I just have to check a few things.”
She looked at him impassively. Her long nose had an aristocratic ski-jump swoop to it.
“Can you do it right now?”
He nodded.
“All right.” She stepped aside, unbarring the doorway, as if she’d been considering physically challenging him. “You have fifteen minutes. Come and find me when you’re finished.”
As he settled into her chair, he saw that she’d left some of her things where they were, the tools of the trade, scattered on the table in a half circle around the book. There was a red velvet bookweight; a delicate, serious little magnifying glass that looked like demilitarized Russian spy gear; three pencils, number fours, lined up in a row and sharpened to vicious little points. She’d taken her notebook with her, but she’d left her purse behind. It was open, and her Columbia University student ID lay in plain view. Her name, below her thin-lipped, unsmiling picture, was Margaret Napier.
The clock was ticking. Edward looked the volume over with what he hoped was a professional eye. Its sense of ancient, inanimate self-possession disconcerted him. What was he doing here again? It was large and thick, and the mottled pages had an oddly velvety feel unlike ordinary paper. The cover was made of a very pale gray material that he couldn’t immediately identify, and it had what looked like a prehistoric metal belt buckle bolted to it. Three delicate pink rosettes were faintly visible drawn along the edges of the gathered pages. The book was so palpably ancient he was afraid it would crumble to dust as he turned to the first page. When he did there was no title page there, just plain text.
He took a few notes. The writing on the pages was dense and black and almost totally illegible. He thought medieval books were supposed to have pictures in them, but there wasn’t even anything much in the way of decoration, just a few curlicues here and there between the columns of writing. He spelled out a word or two, enough to see that it was written in Latin. Turning the pages of a book he couldn’t read could only keep him amused for so long, but he felt like he should use the full fifteen minutes just to spite Margaret Napier.
But even spite got boring after a while. Edward found her sitting at a circular table in the lobby with an entire drawer from the card catalog in front of her. She had boldly removed the metal rod that ran down the middle and taken out a short stack of catalog cards. She was sorting them into piles on the blond wood in front of her, as if she were involved in an elaborate private card game, and taking the occasional note.
“Who’s winning?” he asked jauntily.
“Winning?” Margaret Napier looked up at him uncomprehendingly. Well, she didn’t deserve witty conversation anyway.
“Are you really allowed to do that?”
She continued to sort the cards.
“I used to work here,” she said. “Anyhow, the paper catalog is largely redundant. Most of its contents are duplicated in electronic form.”
“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” he said, sitting down across from her. “I mean, about Gervase of Langford?”
“Why?”
“Well, I’m doing some research, and—”
“Are you a graduate student?”
“I work for a private collection.”
She plucked another manila card out of the drawer and snapped it down onto the table. He forged ahead.
“Recently I’ve been looking for a particular book by Gervase of Langford. And as part of the search I’ve been familiarizing myself with the physical characteristics of his work.”
“You’re working for a private collection,” she repeated. “You’re interested in acquiring one of his works?”
“Actually, I think we may already have one.”
She looked up from her work. Touché. She seemed to register his presence for the first time.
“You’re saying that your employers may be in possession of a new example of the work of Gervase of Langford.” She put down her pencil, still skeptical but definitely paying attention now. “What is it? Another Chronicum?”
“No,” said Edward. “It’s a—I think it’s some kind of travel book. Something about the land of the Cimmerians, something like that.”
As soon as he said it he knew he’d made a mistake. Her manner frosted over again, visibly, and she went back to shuffling her cards. Edward waited, listening to the sound of her pencil scratching in the quiet of the library, but she said nothing more.
“You know the book I’m talking about?” he prompted.
“The book you’re talking about doesn’t exist.”
She sounded almost angry about it.
“My employers think it does.”
“Then they’re sadly misinformed.”
“Well, they’ll be very sorry to hear that.”
“I’m sure they will.”
“But you do know what I’m talking about?” he said doggedly. “A Voyage to the—?”
“A Viage to the Contree of the Cimmerians.” She spoke the words fluidly and easily, but with a weird sing-song pronunciation. She placed the stresses differently than he would have expected, and she gave “Cimmerians” a hard c, as if it were spelled with a k. “It is a well-known hoax.”
Edward blinked.
“I’m sorry to have to say this,” he said, “but I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
“You’re not a medievalist, are you?”
She said this without any real scorn. He had the impression that she simply desired a clearer understanding of the situation she was dealing with.
“No,” said Edward. “I’m not, I’m a—” What was he exactly? “I’m a layman.”
“Then let me clarify something for you. In layman’s terms.” She assumed a businesslike tone he recognized from the
boardroom. It was the sound of an implacable opponent preparing to deliver a deathblow. “In the mid-eighteenth century a man named Edward Forsyth had a cheap printer’s shop in a back street in a London slum. Forsyth printed a chapbook containing what he claimed were fragments from a book of prophecies by a medieval monk named Gervase. The book was called A Viage to the Contree of the Cimmerians. Stop me if I’m going too fast for you.”
The soul of graciousness, Edward nodded for her to continue.
“The fragments contained a sensational and occasionally salacious allegorical journey culminating in a mystical vision of the end of the world. Forsyth, an ex-convict and an employer of hacks, presented them as a prophecy of the apocalypse, accompanied by suitably sensational illustrations. The result was a nine-days wonder. The Viage was a bestseller, and Forsyth became a wealthy man.
“Since that time amateur bibliophiles and overzealous graduate students have occasionally furthered their careers by speculating that there actually was such a mystical book, by the same title, and that the putative monk Gervase is identical with Gervase of Langford, a legitimate minor scholar of the early fourteenth century. Flights of fancy aside, however, serious academics agree that the Viage to the Contree of the Cimmerians is a fabrication.”
Now she did glance at her tiny silver watch.
“If you’ll excuse me, my time here is very limited.”
She swept up the cards on the table, deftly restoring them to their original order, and began reinserting them into the catalog.
“Thanks for your help,” Edward said. You incredible bitch.
“Don’t mention it.”
He bit his lip as she stood up and carried the heavy drawer back over to the catalog. He watched her heft it up into its proper place, and he saw how thin her arms and her shoulders were. The door to the Reading Room closed behind her, and Edward suddenly realized how cold he was. The distant, heatless sun of the skylights made him feel even colder. He went to retrieve his things.
He felt obscurely disappointed. There had been something tantalizing about this little project, this miniature quest. He hadn’t expected it to go anywhere, really, but he didn’t think it would turn to shit quite as fast as it had, either. The Reading Room was almost empty now, only Margaret Napier and the distinguished-looking white-haired man still remained, slowly paging through the same tattered old pulp magazine. Edward gathered up his papers and squared them off—not that there was anything useful on them, unless you counted his geometrical masterpieces. Margaret ignored him completely. He left and climbed the stairs up to the dark landing. When he pushed open the glass door to the street it seemed like he’d been underground for days. He was almost surprised to see that it was still only midafternoon.
6
EDWARD WOKE UP SLOWLY on Tuesday morning. He was getting used to waking up late. He lay there on his back, slowly opening and closing his eyes, like a castaway who’d been washed up on a soft, gently sloping beach of white sand. He was awake, but he was dreaming, and every time he closed his eyes the dream would restart itself automatically, going back to the beginning and continuing on through the exact same course of events like a piece of looped film run and rerun over and over and over again.
In the dream he found himself on a fishing trawler, bobbing in a dark, choppy sea studded with whitecaps. His father was there, looking grizzled and irascible. He was dressed as a pirate in a cartoon, with a hat and a pegleg and a blue uniform—or was that the livery of the Wents’ doorman? The clouds were low and dark, seeming to hover only yards above the wavetops. The light was failing.
They had a fish on the line, but it was so large and strong that it was dragging their boat through the water behind it. Sometimes they caught a glimpse of it when it came near the surface. It was enormous, ten or fifteen feet long, and slender and muscular like an eel.
After a while the fish got tired, and they managed to winch it up over the side. The ship’s crew now included Zeph’s wife, Caroline, as well as Edward’s secretary Helen from work. The fish was olive green, with a beaked face like a turtle and bright yellow eyes. They laid it out on the deck, but even in the open air it refused to die. In fact, as they slowly made their way home through the mounting seas it gained strength, thrashing around and snapping at them and flaring its blood-red gills. No one knew what kind of fish it was. They weren’t even sure it was edible. The waves were rising, and the ship was becoming dangerously overpopulated. “Don’t be such a child,” the Wents’ housekeeper said, rolling her eyes in disgust. Edward could see the shore now, low green hills above the heaving whitecaps, but as it came closer he felt a sense of impending disaster. They would never reach the land. Somewhere in the distance a warning buoy was tolling and tolling....
The phone was ringing. He opened his eyes. The answering machine picked up.
“Howdy, playmate.” It was Zeph’s voice. “Re-telephone me, please, at your earliest convenience.”
Edward lay still for a while, staring blankly at the phone on his night table. The sheet was twisted up into a long rope that had gotten wound around his arms and legs somehow. With an effort he sat up far enough to see the clock radio next to his bed. It was almost one in the afternoon.
“Jesus,” he said, suddenly wide awake. “Not again.”
He looked around at the furniture in his apartment, blinking. How could he have slept for thirteen hours straight? He went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. Something must be going on deep in his subconscious, he thought, some kind of redecoration, refurbishment, reupholstering that required a lot of system downtime—some shadowy application running in the background, performing unknown operations, consuming huge chunks of psychic RAM.
The sheets had left a long crease in his skin, running from his crotch up to his collarbone, like the scar from some hideously invasive surgery. He came out into the kitchen dripping, rubbing his face with a towel, feeling the coolness on his face in the heat. He dropped the damp towel on the floor and plucked a pair of clean boxers from his dresser.
At any rate, he didn’t feel sick. He should have been depressed after yesterday’s disappointment, but instead he felt renewed, replenished, rejuvenated. The world looked crisp and washed, as if reality had been painstakingly restored and digitally remastered overnight for his viewing pleasure. He’d shaken off the feeling of defeat he had after yesterday’s research. He was starting to enjoy his new double life—I-banker by day, book hunter by night—and he wasn’t going to give it up that easily. He decided not to go to the Wents’ apartment today. If he was going to tell the Wents that it was all over, that the book—whatever it was called—was lost forever, or never existed at all, he was going to do it with a full dossier on the subject in hand, complete with charts and tables and appendices and bound in leather on triple-bond paper. And he knew exactly where to start.
He turned on his computer and Googled Margaret Napier. No luck in Manhattan, but Brooklyn had an M. Napier. It was a long shot—Brooklyn to Columbia was a long commute—but he wrote down the number anyway, pricking himself when the pen poked through the paper into his bare knee.
An answering machine picked up. She didn’t give her name, but that low, affectless voice was unmistakable. He was about to leave a message when the voice cut off.
“Hello.”
There was a quick riff of feedback as the answering machine shut off.
“Hi. Margaret Napier, please.”
“Napier,” She corrected, pronouncing it to rhyme with rapier. “This is she.”
“Margaret, this is Edward Wozny. We met yesterday at the Chenoweth library.” Silence. “I asked you about Gervase of Langford.” He felt a twinge of embarrassment; after all, she’d never actually told him her name. “There were a couple of things I wanted to follow up on with you, if you have a second.”
There was a long pause.
“I’m sorry, I’m not interested,” she said neutrally. “Good-bye.”
“I’d like to discuss a job op
portunity,” he extemporized hastily. There was another pause. A bass-heavy car stereo faded in and out under his window.
“I don’t understand.”
“Let me explain,” he said. “I’m under some time pressure from the Went Collection to resolve this issue of Gervase of Langford. I thought I might persuade you to act as a consultant on the project.” He wasn’t exactly sure how the Went family would feel about this, but he forged ahead anyway. “You have some reservations about the book’s validity. I understand that. If anything, those reservations will make you that much more of an asset. We need somebody who can anticipate any possible barriers to authenticating the volume before they arise.”
Silence. His ear was getting slippery with sweat where he held the phone against it.
“Who are ‘we’?” she said.
I’m sorry?
“When you say ‘we,’” she repeated, “to whom are you referring?”
“Myself, principally. And a woman named Laura Crowlyk who represents the Went family, the family that owns the collection.”
“How much can you pay me?”
He hadn’t thought this far ahead, but the little he knew about graduate students suggested that this would be his chief source of leverage. He did some quick calculations.
“Let’s say thirty dollars an hour.”
“And how much of my time would you require?”
“How much time can you give us?”
“Ten hours a week,” she said immediately.
“Ten hours. Fine.”
“All right.”
“All right.” Edward was a little taken aback. Things were progressing more rapidly than he expected. “All right. When can you start?”
“Any time.”
“Today?” He might as well call her bluff.
“What time?”
“Four o’clock? Why don’t you meet me at Café Lilas, on Eighty-second.”
“Fine.”