Codex

by Lev Grossman

  “What do you know about this one?” she said, after a long pause.

  “Nothing.” He cleared his throat. “I can’t figure out how to open it.”

  “What does the catalog say?”

  “There isn’t one. I mean, I’ve been working on it, but I haven’t done that one yet.”

  She looked at him. It was very dark in the room: No light came in from the muffled windows, so there was only the lamp and the ghostly glow from the monitor.

  “What do you mean? This book is undescribed?”

  “So far as I know.”

  “Are all these books—?” She looked around at the rest of the books on the table. “They haven’t been cataloged?”

  “Nobody else knows about them, if that’s what you mean.” Edward tapped nonchalantly at the computer keyboard, opening the file he’d made. “I’ve been working on it. That’s what I was hired to do here.”

  “What cataloging standard are you using? AACR? ISBD?”

  He shook his head. “Beats the hell out of me.”

  Margaret looked down at the book in the case and touched its cover with her hands. She sighed deeply.

  “This is a very unusual situation,” she said finally.

  “That’s not all,” said Edward. “Look over there.”

  He gestured toward all the unopened crates at the other end of the room.

  When she saw where he was pointing, she walked over and looked into the one opened crate, which was almost empty except for a few large, heavy packages at the bottom. A strange, slightly hysterical gasp escaped her, but she recovered her composure almost immediately and turned it into a cough.

  She turned to face him.

  “It’s very unlikely that a collection this old and this large could have remained completely uncataloged,” she said evenly. “There must be records of it somewhere.”

  “You may be right. But then why would they have hired me?”

  “I don’t know. But there must be documents. A shipping manifest, sales receipts, insurance papers, tax returns. Objects like these don’t just slide through history untouched, invisible, without a trace. They leave footprints behind them, tracks. How long have these books been here?”

  “It all came over from England on a boat, right before World War II.”

  He related what Laura Crowlyk had told him on his first day about the collection’s history. As he talked she walked back over to the table and opened the drawers.

  “What are you looking for?” said Edward.

  “We should open up those other crates before we go any further.” She folded her arms. “There may be documentation in one of them.”

  “Okay.” Edward hadn’t thought of that.

  He retrieved the screwdriver from where he’d left it and handed it to her. The balance of power in the room had shifted, and not in his favor.

  “Clean the dust off those bookshelves,” she said. “We’re going to need a lot of space.”

  EDWARD CAME BACK upstairs carrying an aluminum bucket full of warm water, a squeeze bottle of Joy, two rolls of paper towels, and an unopened packet of fresh bright yellow-and-green sponges that the cleaning woman had given him when she found him rummaging around under a sink in a disused bathroom. Margaret already had the next crate open and was lifting out the books inside. He set down the bucket with a metallic clang, and she jumped.

  They worked in silence in the hushed half light of the library. He overheard the creak of old screws leaving the soft wood and the dry rattle as she let them fall carelessly on the floor, and Margaret’s breathing, deepened slightly by the physical effort. At first Edward tried to make conversation, but eventually he decided she might feel more comfortable if they didn’t speak. He soaked a sponge in soapy water and slapped it down onto the first shelf. The coating of thick, oily dust came away all in one swipe. It was interesting, in a way. He spent all day every day in places that were cleaned by other people, people who emptied the trash and vacuumed the carpets and surreptitiously scrubbed the urinals while he was elsewhere, or while he averted his eyes and talked louder on the phone. He thought of the cleaning women who made the rounds of his office every night after work in the wee hours, chattering in Spanish and Portuguese and Ukrainian, pushing their gray plastic carts ahead of them. The only English words they seemed to know were “excuse me” and “sorry.” He wondered if they all had Ph.D.’s in microbiology in their home countries, and went home to write brilliant romans fleuves in their various native tongues.

  When he’d finished one whole rack of shelves the water in the bucket was a solid gray. He dried them off with the paper towels. When he turned around Margaret was still working on the crates, deftly spinning the screwdriver with her slim, strong fingers.

  “Find anything?” he said.

  She shook her head without turning around.

  “Who was Cruttenden?” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Cruttenden.” Despite the chill in the room she’d broken a sweat, and she paused to blot her forehead with her forearm. “The name on the shipping label on all these boxes.”

  “I have no idea. He or she or it was probably Crowlyk’s predecessor. Probably several Crowlyks ago.”

  “Crowlyk—?”

  “Laura. The one who hired me, the secretary. I should probably tell you, the Wents don’t seem to be around here much. They’re kind of an absent presence. I gather they spend most of their time holed up in their estate in Bowmry. It’s really Laura who runs the show.”

  “In Bowmry?” She looked at him curiously.

  “Bowmry. That’s where they’re from. The Wents are aristocrats or royalty or something. The Duke and Duchess of Bowmry.”

  “Ah,” she said, as if he’d unwittingly given away a clue.

  “What?”

  “Gervase of Langford was in the service of the Duke of Bowmry.”

  “I thought you said he worked for an earl.”

  “Same person. Under the English system, one person can hold more than one peerage. Late in his career the Earl of Langford was created First Duke of Bowmry by Edward III. Edward was crazy about dukedoms, probably because he invented them.”

  “Oh. So does that mean the Wents might not be completely full of shit?”

  “No. But it does give me a better idea of why they might think they have a Gervase.”

  She went back to lifting books out of the crate in front of her and stacking them on the floor.

  “Maybe you could move those books from the table onto the shelves you’ve cleaned.”

  “Roger that.”

  When Edward was done the books took up a full three and a half shelves on the wall, an uneven skyline of deep browns and greens and blues and umbers, chased here and there with traces of gold and silver like lighted windows. Margaret had stopped working on the crates and was unwrapping a package in the space he’d cleared on the table. The book was tiny, barely bigger than a pack of cards, with smooth, brown, cracked covers that looked like they’d been glazed and roasted in an oven. As Edward watched she gingerly laid it out on the tabletop like a wounded sparrow.

  “There’s a correct way to catalog a book,” she said. “You might as well know it, if you’re going to be doing it.” She took a notebook and a pencil out of her bag. “A formal bibliographical description has four parts. Heading and title page; binding; collation and colophon; and the contents of the book. So beginning with the heading—”

  As she spoke she printed fluently in her notebook, and Edward watched over her shoulder. She had neat, pointy architect’s handwriting:

  Johnson, Samuel A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. 1775.

  “Now the title page:”

  [within double rules] A | JOURNEY | TO THE | WESTERN ISLANDS | OF | SCOTLAND. | [publisher’s device] | LONDON: | Printed for W. STRAHAN and T. CADELL in the Strand. | MDCCLXXV.

  “Now the binding.”

  Sheep over marbled boards, warped, brown endpapers.

  “This soft leather
is sheepskin, very cheap stuff,” she added. “See how it tends to crack at the joints?”

  She went on exploring the book with her fingers, measuring it, noting the technical aspects of the formats and gatherings, the signings and the foliation and the pagination. She recorded them as she went in an arcane-looking formula consisting of capital letters, superscripts, and Greek characters:

  “A highly unusual collation,” she announced with satisfaction.

  She worked with complete concentration and an almost mechanical intensity, all the time describing her actions aloud in the tones of a medical examiner performing an autopsy. Edward quickly lost track of what she was talking about, although he pretended to listen anyway. She was so absorbed in what she was doing she seemed to have forgotten that she was supposed to be explaining it to him, to have forgotten he was even there. When she concentrated her face was less severe—she became strangely calm, relaxed, almost happy.

  When she was finished she tore the completed pages briskly out of her notebook and tucked them inside the little brown book. Then she set it aside and started unwrapping the next one. It had been shipped in a cardboard box stuffed to bursting with shredded old newspapers. When it emerged it was dark brown, almost black, and shaped like a cinder block, short and narrow but fully ten inches thick. The spine was worn down to just a few shreds and strips of leather stretched across the bunched, gathered pages.

  Margaret treated it with a special delicacy. She carefully lifted up the front cover, supporting it with both hands. The printing inside looked different somehow, elegant and italicized, more like handwriting than printed letters.

  “It’s an incunable,” she said quietly, rapt.

  “Edward, may I speak to you a moment?”

  The moment froze and shattered. The voice came from behind them, and Edward turned around guiltily. Laura Crowlyk was observing them from the landing at the top of the stairs. Surprise entrances seemed to be one of her specialties.

  “Laura!” Edward said brightly, to hide his annoyance. “Laura, I’d like you to meet Margaret Napier. She’s a medievalist from Columbia. She’s helping me with the cataloging.”

  Laura’s eyes settled on Margaret. “Hi.”

  “Hello.”

  Laura regarded Margaret frostily, sizing her up as a potential combatant. Margaret barely looked up from the book on the table. There was an uncomfortable pause.

  “Join me in my office, please, Edward. In five minutes.”

  She turned and descended the stairs without waiting for an answer. Her tinny footsteps faded away.

  “Should I leave?” Margaret asked, when she was gone.

  “No, stay here. Keep on doing—whatever it was you’re doing. What did you say that book was?”

  “An incunable,” she said, placing the stress on the second syllable. “A book made in the first fifty years of printing. 1454 to 1501.”

  “What book is it?”

  “Historia Florentina. Poggio Bracciolini.”

  “And who was Bracciolini?”

  “Renaissance scholar. Worked on Quintilian.”

  Her interest in keeping him updated was already flagging. He watched over her shoulder as she delicately separated the pages. She wore no perfume, but her hair had a not unpleasant smell, delicately sweet but with an edge of bitterness.

  “I should go down,” he said. “Back in a minute.”

  As he climbed down the metal spiral, down into the relative brightness of the main apartment, Edward felt like a kid being summoned to the principal’s office. He reminded himself that he was doing them a favor by being here in the first place. Laura’s door was open, and she was sitting at her desk looking over a sheaf of papers with a pen in her hand, her brown hair gathered behind her head in a bunch. He had the impression she had deliberately posed herself for maximum severity. The blinds were lowered halfway against the gray day, and she’d turned on a desk lamp to give herself some light.

  She waited a few seconds before she acknowledged his presence. She’d put on a pair of rimless glasses, but now she took them off again.

  “I’ll have to ask you to stop working up there,” she said.

  Her voice was as dry as ever. Edward looked out the window at the brown roof of a building across the street. Disappointment stabbed him in the chest. He was surprised, but even more surprising was how much the news hurt. Something he’d been hoping for, without even really knowing it, had abruptly been ripped away from him.

  “Laura, if this is about—”

  “Of course you shouldn’t have brought her here,” she said, tight-lipped, “but no, that’s not what this is about. I hope it won’t be too inconvenient for you.”

  “Not at all,” he said stiffly.

  She looked down at her papers again. Edward couldn’t think of anything to say, but he didn’t want to leave it at that. It was up to him to take this news like a good sport, but somehow he’d forgotten how to do that. This is a lucky break, he told himself. You’re off the hook.

  “I’ll write up a report,” he said finally. “I mean, on my work up till now. Unless you’d rather—”

  “That won’t be necessary.” She gestured dismissively.

  “Listen, I apologize about bringing Margaret here, but you have to understand, she’s an invaluable asset to this project.” He placed his fingertips on the edge of her desk in what he hoped was a gently assertive gesture. “I know I should have cleared it through you first, but I really think you should reconsider this.”

  “It isn’t that. I told you, that doesn’t matter now. The fact is, I received a call from the Duke yesterday.”

  “The Duke.”

  “Yes. And he told me to stop work on the library immediately.”

  “Oh,” said Edward, wrong-footed. “Well, I guess that settles it then. But I don’t understand, why stop now? I was just starting to make some real progress.”

  “I don’t know.” She began briskly transferring piles of papers from one wire tray to another. “I just don’t know.” He saw now that she really wasn’t upset about Margaret. She was upset because Gervase could have been her ticket home, and he was slipping through her fingers. “It’s not my business to question the Duke’s decisions. Perhaps he’s bringing the books back to England ahead of schedule. Perhaps he’s decided they’re not worth the trouble after all. Who knows? Maybe he’ll just sell the lot and have Sotheby’s do the catalog for us.”

  Edward nodded slowly.

  “How’s his health?” he asked, with miserable politeness. “The Duke, I mean? You mentioned before that he’d been under the weather.”

  She ignored the question.

  “It’s odd, isn’t it?” she went on. “He called last night—it must have been three in the morning at Weymarshe. He doesn’t usually speak to me directly, you know. Technically I only work for the Duchess.”

  “Is that where they live? In Weymarshe?”

  She gave him a funny look.

  “Most of the time. Weymarshe is the name of their estate in England.”

  “Is it a castle?” Maybe answering questions about the Wents would make her feel better.

  “You might call Weymarshe a castle.” She went back to her papers. “It’s been built over and added onto so many times, I don’t know what you’d call it, really. It’s a hodgepodge. Most of it was rebuilt in the late 1600s, after the revolution, but parts of it are very old—they say it was even built on some old earthwork fortifications. The academics are always wanting to dig it up, but the Wents won’t let them.”

  She looked up at Edward thoughtfully.

  “You know, when you first came here I thought you might be after a career with the family. It’s quite rewarding, you know. And of course I don’t just mean financially.”

  Edward blinked.

  “You thought I was looking for a job with the Wents? A permanent position?”

  He didn’t know whether to be amused or insulted. Laura just shrugged.

  “The Duchess has made ar
rangements like that before, with other young people. Particularly with young men.”

  “What would that make me? A servant?”

  “Well, call it what you like.” He considered, too late, the possibility that he might have just insulted her. “If you played your cards right you might never really have to work again. The Wents like to keep interesting people around, to advise them if something comes up. It’s not for everybody—I mean, it’s not a regular career—but some people consider it very glamorous. Especially the Americans, I find.”

  “I’m sure they do.”

  Edward let it drop. There was no point in offending her while he was on his way out the door. He let his eyes stray to Laura’s desk. On it was a picture of a woman in a plain black frame—drastically foreshortened, from his oblique angle, but undeniably the Duchess. He recognized her wavy dark hair, her wide, sensual mouth. In the photograph she was even wearing the same cream sun hat he’d seen her wearing before, when he’d met her on the street. There was something maternal about her, but also something undeniably sexy as well. She was like your best friend’s mom, the one you fantasized about in junior high before you knew any better.

  “But I suppose that’s all off now,” Laura was saying. “Look, I don’t know what to tell you. The matter seemed so urgent when we made the initial arrangements, but now—well, everything’s changed. I hope you aren’t too disappointed?”

  “No. No, of course not.” Edward’s own voice sounded distant to him. He turned to go. “You’ll get in touch, if there’s any change?”