Ceremonies

by T E. D Klein

  In that case, Carol wondered, why is he wasting time up here?

  'The truth is,' he said, 'there's a job enough for two. I've been trying to find someone at Columbia to work with me, some bright young student, but I didn't care much for the people they sent.' He shook his head. 'No, I didn't care much for them at all.'

  He gazed absently toward the garden once more, then turned back to her. 'You know, when I was downstairs today I couldn't help noticing all the scholars down there, looking oh so self-important as they pored over their books, but not really knowing half as much as they liked to think. And I suddenly asked myself, "Why bother with people like that? Why not turn to a professional? I'll bet there's a children's librarian right here at Voorhis who'd be a lot more useful to me, and who'd probably be grateful for the extra work." That's why I came up here. It was just a whim.'

  Carol's interest was stirred, but so were her suspicions. Was this funny little man about to offer her a job? Or was he merely looking for an unpaid volunteer? His project sounded interesting enough, but she was in no position to work for free. She hoped he wouldn't ask her.

  'I've collected a huge amount of data over the past few months,' he was saying, 'and I expect to be acquiring more over the summer. You know the sort of thing: journal articles, newspaper clippings, dissertations, and so forth. More than I'll have time to read myself.' He patted the briefcase again. 'I'm an old man – at least that's what they tell me! – and frankly, I'm going to need some help.' Laying the briefcase on the windowsill, he leaned toward her as if he had something urgent to confide; she noticed with approval, that he smelled of talcum powder and soap. 'What I'm looking for, you see, is someone to read over the material, pull out the important ideas, and, wherever possible, summarize them for me. Part-time, of course. Ten or fifteen hours a week.' He stood back, hands on hips. 'So, young lady, there it is in a nutshell.'

  'I see.' She recalled the work she'd done four winters ago at college, the dark evenings at the library and the endless pages of notes. 'You want a sort of research assistant.'

  'That's right,' he said. 'Someone I can depend on. Someone who's smart, who writes well, and who has an interest in the field.' He paused a moment and regarded her quizzically; the wide, gentle eyes, level with her own, seemed to float in their sockets, taking in her surroundings, her features, her hair. 'I feel certain that you meet my qualifications.'

  'Well, I – I do have an interest in the field,' said Carol, not entirely sure what field he meant. She wondered if he'd mistaken her for a regular children's librarian, instead of just one of the downstairs assistants. Dare she tell him? And dare she ask him about pay?

  'These articles,' she said at last. 'How would I obtain them?'

  'Well,' he said softly, leaning toward her again, 'I rather like to do my own collecting.' Idly he reached up to scratch at the comer of his eye, and Carol felt a wisp of breeze against her cheek. Above her the shades billowed and collapsed. 'Sometimes I might ask you to locate a particular item for me, but that won't happen often. We'll meet each week, and-Whatever's the matter?'

  'No, no, it's nothing. Please go on.' For a moment she had felt a tiny stinging just above her left temple, but already it was gone. She smoothed back her hair and tried to look interested.

  'Well, I was saying- Here, let me brush you off.' His hand swept gently over her shoulder, and came away trailing several strands of her newly clipped red hair. 'I was just saying that we'll meet wherever's convenient – here at the library or at one of our homes.' He stepped back, slipping his hand into his pocket. 'I live uptown, by the way, near the Hudson. It's an easy walk from the subway.'

  He paused as if awaiting a reply. Carol resolved not to give him her address, at least not for the moment. She remained silent.

  He licked his lips. 'None of this is important,' he said at last. 'It can all be arranged later. Each time we get together, you'll give me your notes and I'll give you the new material… along with your pay.'

  So there was to be money after all. 'And this pay would be-'

  He laughed. 'I thought I'd mentioned that! I was thinking of twelve dollars an hour, plus expenses. Does that sound all right?'

  'Twelve dollars an hour?' Hastily she tried to calculate. He'd said ten to fifteen hours a week; that would be anywhere from $120 to

  … She gave up; her heart was beating too fast. She only knew she wasn't worth that much.

  He looked momentarily uncertain. 'If you don't-'

  'That sounds absolutely fine,' she got out. She hoped she appeared composed, but in her imagination she was already buying the outfit she'd seen in a shop on Greenwich Avenue, and a subscription to next season's ballet. Maybe even an air conditioner, too. God loved her.

  'I'm glad it's satisfactory,' said the little man, with the faintest of smiles. 'It'll be off the books, of course.'

  'Off the books?' She wasn't sure exactly what that meant, except that it was something illegal. The ranks of dancers faded and the air conditioner stopped. The room grew warm again.

  He nodded. Was there impatience in his face? T assumed you'd prefer it that way. You won't have to give anything to your Uncle Sam.'

  'Yes, yes, of course.' This was too good to be true. 'You mean, then… I could keep everything.'

  'That's right. You would, I take it, be interested?'

  'Yes, absolutely. This is just the sort of thing I've always been fascinated by – fairy tales, and myths, and primitive religion… ' She finished lamely, unable to recall if this was his intended subject; he hadn't actually said anything about religion, had he?

  'Excellent,' he was saying. 'You sound like just the person I've been looking for. I need someone with an inquiring mind, who's not afraid of a little hard work.' He unfastened the strap to the briefcase and began digging inside. 'It may sound old-fashioned, butOh, dear!' He drew forth a plump, pale yellow book and turned it over to examine it. There were catalogue numbers on the spine. 'Oh, for heaven's sake, look at this. I'm getting so absent-minded these days! I seem to have walked off with someone else's book.' He grinned sheepishly. 'I'm afraid this must belong to that nice young fellow downstairs – the one with the glasses. Do you know him? At the table by the bulletin board?'

  Carol shook her head.

  'Well, I'll just have to make sure to return it.' With a sigh he laid the book idly on the windowsill, then turned back to Carol with a dazzling smile. 'Now, young lady, where was I?'

  Downstairs, where rows of scholars frowned over texts, scribbled silently, or dozed, Jeremy Freirs reached for the yellow book and cursed when he realized it was gone. It was a dog-eared old copy of The House of Souls by Arthur Machen, bound in saffron-colored cloth, and it had been lying on top of the pile on his desk. He searched the pile again, but didn't find it. Damn! That pesky old queer must have taken it.

  They had met, in fact, over that very book less than an hour before. Searching for it through the labyrinth of Voorhis's open stacks, Freirs had rounded an aisle in a deserted section of the library where bookshelves high as hedgerows blocked the sound from the street, and had come upon the old man hunched over the volume as if tracing its words with a his finger. At Freirs' approach he had glanced up like a child caught reading pornography – he was hardly more than child-size himself, in fact – and then he'd snapped the book shut. Freirs had seen him slip something hurriedly into his pocket. A pencil! No wonder the old guy had looked guilty. He'd probably been writing in the margins.

  There was something not quite right about the man. He didn't look as seedy and dispirited as the other old-timers who frequented the library, yet he seemed far too elderly to be an academic. He looked like the sort of man who'd play the kindly uncle in some saccharine 1940s movie – not Freirs' style at all. Freirs had ignored him at first, but he'd been unable to find the book he sought on the shelves. Behind him the old man said softly, 'Could this be the one you're looking for?'

  He held the book out for inspection. Freirs glanced at the spine. 'That's it, all rig
ht. Are you using it?'

  'No, no, I'm all done.' Smiling, he handed over the book. 'Here, take it.'

  Freirs hefted the book in his hand. It was fat and heavy, damn it, and he didn't have much time left to look through it all. He turned to go, but a hand caught his arm. The old man was looking up at him. His voice was practically a whisper. 'You're familiar with Machen? With his beliefs?'

  'No,' said Freirs, a little louder than necessary. 'I've never read him. I just want to see if I should. ' Once more he made as if to leave. If he stayed away from his seat too long, someone might steal his book bag.

  'Oh, you should, you really should.' The little man seemed not to care that he was detaining Freirs. 'He knew a thing or two, our Arthur. You'll be well repaid for reading him, I promise.'

  Freirs nodded. 'Good, I'm glad.' Turning his back, he made his way up the aisles to his table.

  He had a small square table to himself, in the rear, just beneath a bulletin board laden with clippings and notices like a brick wall overgrown with ivy. Throughout the spring it had been his usual place of work; the better tables, farther down the row, looked out upon the little patch of garden in back of the library, but he seldom arrived at Voorhis early enough to secure one. And just as well, too; if he'd had a window seat, he'd probably have spent all day staring out at godforsaken weeds instead of finishing his work.

  Even without the distraction of a window view, he hadn't gotten quite as far as he'd expected over the past two months; he was still compiling a reading list for his projected dissertation, whose working title was currently 'Hell's Abhorr'd Dominions: The Dynamics of Place in the Gothic Universe,' though this now struck him as a Utile pretentious, even for Columbia. He added the Machen to the pile already on his desk, first transcribing the publication data -London, 1906 – and a list of the book's contents, some half dozen stories. He was searching the literature at the moment, still uncertain of his dissertation's scope. Even the most unlikely books might be worth a footnote or two, if only as a way of dropping the name; the longer he could pad out his bibliography, the more unlikely it would be that the board of examiners would be able to check all his references.

  He was leafing through the second-to-last chapter in a Gothic bibliography, alternately amused and aghast at the titles – The Benevolent Monk, or, The Castle of Olalla, 1807; Deeds of Darkness, or, The Unnatural Uncle, 1805; The Midnight Groan, or, The Spectre of the Chapel, Involving an Exposure of the Horrible Secrets of the Nocturnal Assembly, 1808 – when someone cleared his throat. He looked up to see the old man standing beside his table, smiling down familiarly at him.

  'I wonder if I can borrow Mr Machen back from you for just one moment,' the old man asked. 'Would you mind terribly? There's a passage I really ought to check.'

  With a shrug Freirs tapped the yellow book at the top of the pile. 'Be my guest. Just bring it back when you're done, okay?'

  But after opening the book the old man showed no signs of moving; he stood riffling through page after page and peering at each with an almost comical fervor, head darting back and forth with the movement of his eyes.

  'Ah, here we are!' he said at last. He nodded to himself. 'Ah, yes

  … yes.'

  Freirs sighed and returned to his own reading – Gondez the Monk. .. Phantoms of the Cloister… Horrors of the Secluded Castle – but moments later the old man began to speak. ' "We underrate evil," ' he said, his voice a portentous whisper.

  Freirs looked up. 'What's that?'

  ' "We underrate evil," ' the man repeated, reading a passage from the book.' "We have quite forgotten the awfulness of real sin. What would your feelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you, and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmed with horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that you noticed at night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning? Well, these examples may give you some notion of what sin really is." '

  Finally he looked up from the book, face oddly transfigured, almost ecstatic. 'Marvelous!' he said, all but smacking his lips. 'What do you suppose the man is driving at?'

  Freirs shook his head, reluctant to involve himself in a discussion, yet drawn to the game. Around them several readers looked up with curiosity or annoyance. 'Obviously it's a kind of moral metaphor,' he said. 'Evil as a violation of normal physical law, an aberration – something like a disease. But the symbols he's dreamed up are unusual, to say the least.'

  The old man nodded. 'Yes. Yes, I'm sure you're right. I can see that you're a very bright young man.' He smiled slyly. 'But then again, of course, they may not be symbols after all. For all we know, Machen may have meant them quite literally.'

  Freirs had been glad when, at last, he'd wandered away, no doubt to bother some other unsuspecting soul. But now the damned book was gone too; the man must have walked off with it. Freirs looked around the room but didn't see him; nor, despite the lost book, was he especially sure that he wanted to.

  Anyway, the day was almost over. He had his final class to teach at eight and wanted to get home first to prepare for it, to go over his students' papers and brush up on his Cahiers and Film Comments. Celluloid, swish pans, mises en scene. Another world, that one, far from gloomy monastics and their Gothic battlements, farther still from flowering stones and singing flowers. Beyond the window several seats behind him, shadows were lengthening in the garden, doggedly climbing the bricks. He checked his watch: almost five o'clock. He'd press on to the end of the chapter, then get the hell out of this place.

  Sunlight still streamed freely through the second-story windows, but suddenly the old man's eyes narrowed as if he'd seen a shadow cross the sky. Frowning, he glanced quickly at his watch.

  Across the room, summoned by an impatient gesture from Mrs Schumann (now reimmersed contentedly in the catalogues that covered her desk), Carol was leafing through a stack of books on dinosaurs for the benefit of a small boy and his mother, while a daughter awaited her turn. 'He just can't get enough of 'em,' the woman explained proudly, as her son studied pictures of steaming primeval swamps where monstrous reptiles preyed upon the weak, jaws tore flesh, and giant serpents struggled against batlike things with sharp-clawed wings and impossibly long beaks. None of it was real, Carol told herself; none of it had ever been real. Later, searching through Perrault and Andersen to find a fairy tale for the daughter, she stole a glance at the little man across the room. He was leaning against the windowsill, gazing idly at the book he'd carried upstairs. The sunlight from behind him made a nimbus of his hair. Suddenly, as if aware that she was watching him, he looked up and winked at her. His smile was radiant; even from the other side of the room it made her feel good.

  So this, then, was to be her future employer. She still couldn't believe it was true. Nor could she believe that, for the duration of the summer, she would more than double her income. How could he afford to pay so much? He certainly didn't look rich; Carol recognized a cheap suit when she saw it. Was he a liar or a lunatic, and the job a hoax? Somehow she felt inclined to trust him. Perhaps he'd saved his money all his life, and now, reaching the end, found himself with no one else to give it to. She wondered how he'd made his living.

  For her part, she reminded herself that she hadn't been entirely truthful with him. Thank God he didn't know that she was only an assistant here. As she read a page aloud, more to mother than daughter, she prayed she looked professional.' "Whenever a good child dies, an angel of God comes down from heaven, takes the dead child in his arms, spreads out his great white wings, and flies with him over all the places which the child has loved during his life. Then he gathers a large handful of flowers-" ' Lord, no! So depressing. She handed the woman a Disney Cinderella and made sure the little girl approved.

  Over by the window, the old man was staring at her. He nodded reassuringly. 'I see you have your hands full,' he said, when she'
d returned to his side.

  She laughed. 'Oh, today's one of our slow ones. You should come up here on a rainy afternoon. It's like a playground!' She smoothed back her hair. 'I'm used to that, though. I grew up with three sisters and a brother.'

  'Ah, really.' His smile was a trifle vacant. 'I'm sure they're all very proud of you, coming to the big city like this.'

  'Well, I – I do hope to make something of myself,' she said.

  Perhaps she should try to impress him, lest he change his mind about the job. 'As a matter of fact, I'm planning to take some psychology courses next fall. In dance therapy.' If, she added mentally, I find the money. 'I may take night courses once or twice a week, up at Hunter.'

  He gave a courtly nod. 'A fine institution. I know it well. This job should help you meet some of the expenses.' He began to turn away.

  'Speaking of expenses,' she began, then regretted it.

  'Yes?' His look was guarded.

  'Well, you mentioned something about "twelve dollars an hour plus expenses," and I was just wondering' – she hoped she didn't sound greedy – 'not that it makes the least bit of difference, of course, but I was wondering what expenses you meant.'

  He shrugged. 'The usual. Paper, photocopying, typewriter ribbon. .. You do own a typewriter, don't you?'

  'Oh, yes, of course. That is, I have access to one. It's my roommate's. She's almost never home.' Some residual bitterness from the morning made her add, 'And when she is, she's in no position to use it.'

  'A roommate, you say?' The little man pursed his lips. 'Hmmm. A bit of a free spirit, is she?'

  Carol nodded. 'She thinks so, anyway. But-' She stopped herself; she really didn't mean to be unfair. 'It's not that she does anything wrong. We just come from totally different backgrounds. She went to a big state university; I went to a little Catholic school. Girls only.'

  'And where might that be?' He didn't sound very interested. The shadows in the room shifted as a cloud passed in front of the sun.