Ceremonies

by T E. D Klein

  'St Mary's, in Ambridge.' The little man blinked reflectively. 'I'm sure you've never heard of it,' she added. 'There are at least twenty others with the same name.' She looked past him, out the window. The fronds were tossing in the breeze.

  He moved slightly, blocking her view. 'Indeed I have. It's just above the highway, am I right? At the top of a hill?'

  'You're thinking of the high school,' she said. 'I went there too.' It was spooky, how much he seemed to know. 'You have nothing against parochial schools, I hope.'

  'No, no, quite the contrary. They're the only places left that still teach proper English.' He moved away from the window. 'So you stayed within the fold, then. From St Mary's to St Mary's.'

  She nodded. 'And then to St Agnes's, here in New York.'

  'Another college?'

  'It's a convent, actually. Over on West Forty-eighth Street.' She waited to see his reaction. 'I spent around six months there. I've only been out since January.'

  'You – a nun? Why, I never would have guessed it!' His eyes twinkled merrily.

  'Well, not really a nun. I only got as far as my novitiate, in fact. I never even put on a habit.' She noticed that, for all his professed astonishment, he didn't look particularly surprised. 'It was just something I felt I had to try,' she added. 'I realize now that I joined for the wrong reasons -1 mean, selfish reasons – but at the time there just seemed no place else to go. Things were really bad at home. My father was sick, and somehow I got it into my head that if I went and took the vows… well, that things might get better. Maybe my father would recover.'

  He nodded. He seemed to understand. 'A kind of sacrifice,' he said. 'You made a very difficult choice.'

  'Yes, I suppose so. But for a while I had the feeling that it wasn't really my choice at all. I felt as if somehow I'd been chosen.' She shrugged. 'I guess everybody feels that way at times: that they've been singled out for something special. I thought so, at any rate. It was a chance to give some direction to my life – which I thought I needed.'

  'Direction, yes.' He appeared to consider this. 'But you didn't stay very long.'

  'Well, you see… my father died.'

  'Oh, how sad.’

  'And anyway, the whole thing just wasn't for me. I began to think about all I'd be giving up – meeting someone, falling in love, getting married – and when you start having doubts like that, you know you're in the wrong place.' The memories returned. 'Still, I was so sure that I'd been-'

  'Chosen?'

  She nodded.

  'Well,' he said, 'who knows? Maybe you have been – but for something else. Something you never even dreamed of.'

  He did understand! She was going to enjoy working with this man.

  'Anyway,' he added, as if he'd read her thoughts, 'I've chosen you

  … and I think it's going to be a very productive arrangement for us both.' He paused. 'I'm a little concerned about one thing, though. This roommate of yours. You're sure she won't be too much of a distraction?'

  'Oh, no, not at all. Rochelle and I get along fine. She goes her way, I go mine. If she's bringing somebody home and I have reading to do, I just go in my room and shut the door. We're different sorts of people, that's all. She thinks I ought to get more fun out of life.'

  He snorted contemptuously. 'That's all very easy for her to say. She's obviously lost the most precious thing a young girl has.'

  For the first time that afternoon Carol thought she saw him glower, but perhaps it was a trick of the light; the room had dimmed perceptibly.

  'Take my advice and stick to your guns!' he said, his voice no longer so gentle or so high. 'I wouldn't have anything to do with the men that girl brings home. They're not for you.'

  Carol nodded dutifully, only half convinced. 'You sound just like my father,' she said. 'He was very protective of me.'

  'Well, of course, of course. That's what fathers are for – to make sure their little girls don't overstep the bounds.' He shook his head. 'I'm sorry, I don't mean to be lecturing you. I'm sure you miss your father very much.'

  'Oh, yes. I just wish I'd known him better. But he was so old, even when I was a little girl, that I never really got very close to him. All I can do now, whenever I go home, is buy a new wreath for his grave.'

  'Ah, yes, wreaths.' The old man nodded sympathetically. 'I'm half tempted to make them a chapter in my book.'

  She felt a tiny chill. 'You mean they're more than just a decoration?'

  He nodded once more, but now his face was somber. In the waning light the room had fallen silent, except for the queer singsong echo of a child reading aloud from a book of nursery rhymes. 'Frown thee, fret thee, Jellycorn Hill… ' The sky outside was almost grey.

  'You can trace all burial customs back to ancient times,' he said softly, 'just like funeral rites. We put flowers on graves because -well, for the same reason a woman wears perfume. A corpse by any other name would smell no sweeter.'

  She bit her lip.

  'No,' he said, 'it isn't very pretty, but this is the sort of material we'll be working on together. At bottom, most ceremonies are direct, distasteful, and utterly ruthless. Even the very notion of tombstones.'

  'I thought-' She stopped abruptly. Something had fluttered past the window, snowy white against the dark sky and the bricks. She'd glimpsed a flash of wings, as from a falling angel. Or an impossibly white bird. 'I thought tombstones were simply to mark the grave.'

  'And also to weigh down the corpse,' he said, his voice louder now. 'To prevent it from rising again.' Taking the briefcase, he moved even farther from the window, and she had to turn to face him. Behind her she heard high, mournful cries; a flock of birds must be passing over the courtyard. She wanted to go to the window and look, but it would have been impolite.

  'Mark thee, mind thee,

  Jellycorn Hill,' sang the thin, small voice of the child, echoing through the room.

  'If Crow don't find thee,

  Mousey will.'

  He was digging once more in his briefcase. He seemed to be in a hurry. 'Here,' he said, withdrawing a sheaf of papers. 'You should find some interesting material in this batch, and you can consider it your first assignment.' He handed them to her. They were photocopies of articles from various academic journals. She glanced at the top piece and frowned. Celtic Heathendom. An Inquiry into the Epigraphy and Myth-Cycles of Fourth-Century Meath. It looked rather formidable. So did the next. The Ethnology of theA-Kamba. East African, apparently.

  'And I'm to summarize all this?'

  'That's right. Just a page or two per article. You'll probably enjoy it.'

  Looking at still another piece, she doubted this. Report of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Straits, with Special Attention to – 'Torres Straits? Where in the world are they?'

  'The South Pacific' He grinned. 'As you can see, I cast a pretty wide net.'

  'Scramble thee, scratch thee,

  Jellycorn Hill

  The last one seemed innocuous enough. Notes on the Folklore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders -London, 1879. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. She reminded herself of how much he'd be paying.

  'If Mouse don't catch thee,

  Moley will.'

  He cleared his throat. She looked up to find him holding an open checkbook, pen poised. 'Along with the work, I think it's only fair that I give you some expense money,' he said. 'An advance, so to speak.'

  'Oh, that would be wonderful!'

  'It won't be much. Just something to tide you over for the weekend.' He winked. 'Now, what name shall I put here?'

  The question caught her by surprise. For a moment she had the crazy impulse to give a false name, even though it meant the check would be useless, but immediately she felt ashamed of herself. Rochelle was always making fun of her for being timid; now was the time to grow up. What was she afraid of, anyway? God would watch over her. 'Carol Conklin.'

  'Ah!' Beaming, he wrote it in. 'A fine old nederlandse name!'

 
She nodded uncertainly. 'But I think my mother's people came fromGalway.'

  'Ah, yes,' he said. 'I know it well.'

  'Hide thee, haste thee,

  Jellycorn Hill,

  If Mole don't taste thee,

  Wormy will.'

  He extended a plump little hand. 'And my name's Rosebottom – spelled just the way it sounds. No jokes, please!' His old eyes twinkled merrily. 'You can call me Rosie. Everybody does.'

  'Not Mr Rosebottom?'

  'Not Mister anything. Not even Aunt or Uncle. Just Rosie.' He slipped the check into her hand. 'I'll come by sometime next week and see how you're getting along.'

  With a courtly bow he moved off toward the stairs, swinging his briefcase. Momentarily she saw his little pink head flash between the banisters. Bobbing lower and lower, it disappeared from sight, still smiling.

  The first thing Carol did, once the little man was gone, was to examine the check he had handed her. She could barely make out the Aloysius Rosebottom of the signature, for the letters curled like vines across the bottom of the paper, in contrast to the sedate A. L. ROSEBOTTOM printed at the top. Across the middle was written, Thirty dollars even. She wondered if she'd have trouble cashing it; the banks would already be closed.

  It was only after she had slipped the folded check into a pocket, and was turning to see if anyone in the room might need her help, that she discovered the little man had forgotten his book. It was lying on the windowsill where he'd left it, a block of pale yellow in the waning light. Picking it up, she was surprised by its weight. It looked considerably older than she'd at first supposed, older than most of the books in the room. The cloth was worn in spots, but the front cover still bore traces of a design – imitation Beardsley, from the look of it – depicting what appeared to be the head of some fanciful animal; Carol could see long, supple horns (or were they antennae?) and great bulging heavy-lidded eyes. The book's spine, too, was ornamented with a Victorian-looking pattern of blossoms and leaves. Most of the tide had been rubbed away, but she managed to puzzle out the words The House of Souls. The white library numerals inked at the bottom seemed almost a desecration.

  'That old man left this lying on the windowsill,' she told Mrs Schumann, who'd been going through the offerings on the magazine racks for a group of patently uninterested children. Carol held up the book. 'It's a wonder the binding isn't cracked, with workmanship like this. I'd better return it downstairs. Someone may be looking for it.'

  'I suppose so,' the older woman said dubiously. For the first time, she looked put out. 'You haven't done a heck of a lot of work here today. Who was he, anyway?'

  'A friend of my father's.' The he was curiously comforting, as if speaking it aloud made it true. 'He brought it up here by accident.'

  Mrs Schumann blinked in slow comprehension, ignoring two small boys who were pawing through a rack of Crickets and Ranger Rick as Carol hurried from the room.

  She examined the book as she headed for the staircase. It appeared to be a collection of stories by someone named Machen; she had never heard the name before and was not even sure how to pronounce it. She wondered how her new acquaintance – Rosie, how perfectly fitting the name seemed! – had managed to walk off with it. Had he thought it might pertain to his research? Perhaps they're fairy tales, she thought, and flipped through the book to see. It fell open at a story called 'The White People.' Someone – she hoped it hadn't been Rosie himself – had scribbled a few penciled notes at the top of the page. Skimming the opening paragraphs, an earnest, rather abstract discussion of Sin, she gave up and snapped the book shut. This was no fairy tale.

  The first floor was just as she had left it, crowded with figures pale and immobile as statues and as silent as the storeroom of a museum. Carol sneaked a glance at the clock above the front desk; she had a watch at home, a long-ago Christmas present, but it was broken and she'd never had enough money to have it repaired. Till now, she reminded herself.

  It was nearly five fifteen, with still an hour and a half to go before Miss Elms flicked the light switch and announced closing time. For a minute or two there'd be no reaction except irritated sighs. Then one by one the statues would return to life. Among the grad students there'd be a faster riffling of pages; sleepers would lift their heads and shake off the hours of dream. Gathering up books and jackets, they'd shuffle grumbling and blinking toward the front desk.

  A young fellow with glasses, Rosie had said. Sitting by the bulletin board. Carol looked around, and immediately recognized the one he'd meant: he was a frequent visitor to the library, a plump, distracted-looking young man with sandy hair cut squarishly short. He wore a faded plaid sports shirt open at the neck, its sleeves rolled up over thick, freckled arms. A blue seersucker jacket clearly in need of pressing was draped over the back of his chair, and a red cloth book bag, empty now, lay crumpled at his elbow on the table. He was squinting into an oversize volume, a directory of some kind from the reference section; a yellow pad beside it was covered with hasty-looking notes.

  Approaching him, she cleared her throat. Up and down the aisle heads turned to watch her. 'Excuse me,' she whispered.

  He looked up with annoyance, but on seeing Carol his expression softened. Perhaps he recognized her too.

  She held out the yellow book. 'I think this may be yours.'

  'Mine?' He peered uncertainly at the book, then nodded. 'Oh, yes,' he said, reaching for it. 'Great.' He kept his voice low. 'Where'd you find it?' As he took the book from her, his eyes gave the tiniest flicker, and for an instant she felt his gaze drop to her breasts. It seemed almost a formality; she'd even known priests to do it.

  'Someone brought it upstairs by mistake.'

  He smiled bitterly. 'Yeah, and I'll bet I know who it was. That weird old guy I ran into today, over in the stacks.'

  She laughed. Once more heads turned. 'You mean Rosie. He's very nice, really. He's working on a book.' And I'm helping him, she wanted to add.

  'Well, he's damned near kept me from working on mine. I was hoping to get through this by the end of the day' – he tapped the Machen volume- 'and now I'm not going to have time. Am I allowed to check it out?'

  'Not this one,' she whispered, even before she'd glanced at the call numbers to make sure. 'Special collection. It can't leave the library.’

  He scowled. 'I was afraid of that. Maybe I can Xerox some things in it before I leave.' He pushed back his chair. Carol saw herself about to be dismissed.

  'Wait,' she said impulsively, 'I'll do it.' The only alternative was to go back upstairs with the children and their mothers and the slowly growing wrath of Mrs Schumann. 'I have access to the copy room,' she explained. 'And I think the machine's free now.' She hadn't heard it working, at any rate.

  'Hey, that's really nice of you,' he said. 'Thanks a lot.' He opened the book to the front and ran his finger down the list of contents. 'Let's see… I'll probably just need "The Great God Pan" and "The Inmost Light." ' He peered speculatively at the tides. 'And maybe the one that old man was going on about – "The White People." ' He handed her the book, then searched through his wallet and pulled out a ten-dollar bill. 'I don't know what it'll come to. You can bring me change.'

  Everybody's giving me money today, thought Carol as she followed the line of shelves past the administrative offices and toward the windowless little copy room in the rear. My luck must be changing. Taped to the dark wooden door, beneath a sign that said No Admittance – Staff Only, hung a sheet of paper reading See Mrs Tait at front desk for copy vouchers. Inside, the air smelled of sweat and machine oil; a portable fan on a table in the corner did little to alleviate the heat. Mrs Tait's aide, a furtive, narrow-shouldered old man who seemed as suited to the room as a hermit to his cave, was bent over one of the two silent machines, its immense glass-and-metal top lifted open like the hood of a stalled automobile.

  'Oh, no,' said Carol. 'Is it broken again?' The second copier, she knew, had been out of commission for months; replacement parts seemed to be permanently
'on order.'

  The man had looked up as she came in but was now bent back to the machine, tentatively prying at something with a screwdriver. He reminded Carol of the witch in Hansel and Gretel, about to be swallowed up in an oven. 'She was fine until an hour ago,' he muttered, 'but when I came back from my break-' He strained, grimaced; something came away inside with a clank of metal. 'Well, she's on the fritz now, all right.' Standing, he wiped his hands and regarded her suspiciously. 'You catch anybody coming in here while I was gone?'

  'No one I saw.' Sighing, she filled out a mimeographed voucher and left the book atop a pile of others to be copied, paper markers dangling from them like prize ribbons.

  'It's not your lucky day,' she told the young man at the table, handing him back his money. 'Both machines are broken down. Those copies of yours won't be ready till Monday at the earliest.'

  He cursed softly. 'Oh, great! I'm leaving town Sunday morning, and I won't be back till the end of summer.'

  'Well, if you like,' she whispered, as to a disconsolate child, 'I could copy what you need and mail it to you with an invoice.'

  He looked up with surprise. 'Really?'

  'Sure. We do it for people all the time. After all, it's what you're paying for. You ought to get something for your money.'

  He eyed her appreciatively, as if, despite what she'd just told him, she had offered to do him a personal favor. 'Yes,' he said, his voice low, 'that would be terrific. But you know, I'm not technically a subscriber. I'm here on an academic discount. Does that matter?'

  'That's all right. Just tell me where you want it sent.'

  He folded the pad back to a fresh page. 'It's an RFD out in Jersey,' he said, writing it down. 'I don't know the zip. It's such a weird little out-of-the-way place I'm not even sure they have one.'

  She felt a touch of envy. She'd be right here next week; he'd be off in the country. 'Sounds nice to get away to.'

  'Yes, it's like going to an earlier century, completely cut off from the world. I can't believe I'll be out there this time Sunday.' He smiled as he tore off the page and handed it to her. 'I'll probably get culture shock when I come back.'