Library of Illumination

by C. A. Pack

  Johanna took the broom and shovel and returned to where she had seen Jo getting a haircut. Jo may have vanished, but bits of her hair lay all over the floor.

  A foul odor emanated from the broom as Johanna swept. She wrinkled her nose.

  The little old man apparently noticed. "That broom still stinks, does it? I tried cleaning it, but I guess I didn't do a good job. I must need new spectacles. But it's your own fault, you know. Those animals fromNoah's Ark left quite a mess last week, and I believe that was all your doing."

  Noah's Ark? Johanna thought about the elephants and other animals. She had been so busy trying to get the book away from the goat that she hadn't given much thought to what the other animals may have left behind.

  "What should I do with this?" She jiggled the shovel containing the pile of loose hair.

  The little old man pulled on a handle near the closet door. It opened up into a chute. "In here," he answered.

  Johanna dumped the snippets, and Malcolm Trees nodded toward the closet. She put the tools away without saying another word.

  He picked up a parcel and handed it to her. "Be careful. Templars can be ruthless."

  She nodded and delivered the package as instructed.

  The following morning Johanna found a huge pile of work on her desk, no doubt due to another nocturnal visit from lazy Lucinda. She busied herself with getting it done, so she wouldn’t have to stay late.

  Johanna’s boss startled her. "How did it go last night?" He had actually come out to her desk to ask about the book delivery, rather than call her into his office. Even Lucinda stopped typing and gawked at him.

  "Fine," Johanna answered, not offering him any additional information.

  He stared at her in silence for a minute or so, then walked away without saying another word.

  "What’s that all about?" Lucinda asked casually.

  "I have no idea," Johanna answered. "Why don' t you ask him?"

  Lucinda returned to her typing with a scowl on her face. About the only thing she and Johanna had in common was that they worked for the same company and neither of them liked their boss. He reminded Johanna of the cold and calculating headmaster, who had used an iron fist to rule the orphanage where she grew up. She didn't know why Lucinda hated their boss, but she knew Lucinda would never ask himanything.

  A few days later, Johanna's boss told her she would have to pick up two parcels and deliver them to two different destinations.

  She didn't mind visiting the library, but she hated her boss for intruding on her personal time. She thought he waited until the last minute to ask her to make deliveries as a demonstration ofhispower overher job. She wondered if he told her to make two deliveries, because he had tried to make one himself and had failed?

  "Where are they going?"

  "They'll give you the addresses at the library."

  "I hope they're local," she said, walking toward the door. "I don't have a lot of gasoline to devote to running all over creation. And my fuel costs are getting out of hand. I asked the garage to send you the bill.”

  She watched his face turn white, then red, just before the door closed behind her. She hadn’t really asked anyone to send him the bill, but saying so made her feel like she was taking back control of her life. She smiled. She didn’t do it often, but when she did her face instantly changed, and her beauty emerged.

  ***

  In Exeter, she again felt like someone had switched the streets around. It took her an extra half hour to find the library, and it seemed like she only stumbled upon it by accident.

  She entered the vestibule and walked over to the button on the brass plaque. She pressed it and said “Illumination.” The doors opened and she walked inside, smiling again at having figured out the key to gaining entrance.

  The little old man stood waiting for her. "Feeling pretty proud of yourself, are you?”

  "What you mean?"

  "Very few people come to our door, and rarely does anyone gain admittance. It would seem that hardly anyone ever seeks 'illumination.' They punch the button, pound on the door and rant and rave in general, but no one is going to get in unless they say the right thing.

  "You managed to gain entrance the first couple of times, through sheer, dumb luck.” He said it matter-of-factly and without malice, but Johanna’s smile vanished. Her mind immediately transported back in time to the orphanage where each child had been treated with such contempt, they couldn't help but feel worthless.

  The headmaster of the orphanage had been invited to sit in on the youngsters' weekly spelling lesson. Their teacher made a big fuss over him, and he began drilling the students.

  Johanna waited her turn with both enthusiasm and trepidation. She wanted to excel, but she feared humiliation

  "Johanna, spell judgment."

  Johanna stood ramrod straight, her excitement building. Her teacher had just gone over the spelling the previous day, and Johanna had memorized it. She really wanted to impress the headmaster, and she now had a chance to shine. "Judgment, j-u-d-g-m-e-n-t, judgment."

  Her teacher had started to nod his head in approval, when the headmaster shouted out, "Wrong!"

  Her teacher just stared, his mouth hanging open.

  "There is an E in judgment. J-U-D-G-E-M-E-N-T."

  Johanna knew she was right. She spelled it just the way she had been taught, and she stood her ground. "I spelled it correctly," she stated with a slight quiver.

  "You dare to challenge me?" the headmaster bellowed. "Prepare to be punished severely."

  Johanna looked to her teacher for support, but found none.

  The headmaster left the room momentarily, and returned carrying a massive Oxford English Dictionary and a cat o' nine tails. He scanned the well-worn dictionary to letters beginning with “J,” and there it was: j-u-d-g-e-m-e-n-t. It didn’t matter that the OED also included the other spelling; only that Johanna be punished for defying him.

  He whipped Johanna five times in front of her classmates. Her teacher had betrayed her by not defending her. Her so-called friends made fun of her. As a result, Johanna learned to embrace isolation and numb her feelings against pain.

  "What impressed me," Malcolm Trees continued, “ is how you learned from it.”

  But Johanna didn’t hear his last sentence. She had already switched to self-preservation mode. She masked her feelings of inadequacy with an obnoxious retort. "Why don't you just give me the parcels then, and we'll be done with it."

  "Wait here," he answered, surprised at her sudden change of mood. Her curt manner made him involuntarily retaliate, “And for heaven's sake, don't open any books."

  "Be quick about it, then. I haven't got all night." Her own rudeness shocked her, but she would rather die than let this little old man know he had the power to hurt her.

  The first parcel was very large. "You'd better hold this with both hands. It's an encyclopedia, and lord knows what page it might open up to, if you should drop it. You could unleash the tidal waves caused by the sinking of Atlantis; the hideous and painful boils from the bubonic plague; or perhaps the bombing or Hiroshima. It could be catastrophic."

  "Where's it going?"

  "Look here," he said, thumping the top of the package. "It's practically around the corner."

  "Is there a second package?"

  "Oh. Yes. I have it right here. He walked over to the desk and took a miniature parcel out of the drawer. "I'll slip this into you pocket," he said, matching word to deed. "You had best deliver the larger one first."

  The encyclopedia weighed a ton and Johanna rested it on the refectory table, to get a better grip. In doing so, she knocked Charles Dickens’A Christmas Carolon the floor and the Ghost of Christmas Past sprang into action, conjuring up a festive ball. In an instant, Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig danced around the library, swirling to and fro, and knocking more books onto the floor. Suddenly, a young boy in a wheelchair began asking where he could findThe Secret Garden.Trying to avoid him, the Fezziwigs danced right into a Brit
ish soldier, who held the body ofGunga Din. They all went down hard, causing mass confusion.

  "Go," the little old man said, pushing Johanna toward the door. I'll deal with this."

  Johanna suddenly found herself alone in the dim vestibule, clutching the encyclopedia for dear life. She didn't remember actually walking out the door. She felt almost as if the old man had transported her there by magic.

  She carefully placed the large parcel on the seat of her car and drove to the address written on it. The old man had been right about the location. She could probably have walked there, if she weren't afraid of dropping the encyclopedia and unleashing who knows what.

  After the first delivery, she took out the smaller package and looked at the address. Her stomach lurched when she sawher name and address on it. She slipped it back into her pocket and drove home. She wanted to make sure she was someplace safe and familiar, before opening it.

  Johanna's attached cottage could almost be called ramshackle, even though she worked hard every weekend to keep it from deteriorating. She had a small living room, a smaller bedroom, a tiny kitchen, and a minuscule bathroom—pleasant, but humble. It wasn’t her dream home, but it was all she could afford. She was only 17-years-old, and she liked being able to say she lived in a one-bedroom flat, even though she had friends with studio apartments larger than all her rooms added together. Now it looked like she would lose her home to a developer who wanted to build condominiums. Her landlord had informed her she would have to move out by the end of the year.Perhaps my next flat will let me have a cat,she mused. At least one positive thing might result from her dilemma.

  She locked the door and pulled down the shades, before taking out the tiny parcel. It would never do to have a neighbor witness something that might be difficult to explain.

  She sat down on the diminutive sofa in her living room and gingerly opened the package. Inside she found a small journal. It had the initials J.C. stamped on the front cover.My initials.How did the man at the library know her name?

  She began to lift the cover but stopped suddenly, breaking into a cold sweat.What if J.C. stands for Jesus Christ and they start crucifying him here in my living room?She imagined the crowd roaring for blood. She could practically see the dust risingas Christ dragged the cross to the field of execution. She smelled the sweat of the Roman soldiers leading the way.Or is that me?

  She didn’t know what to do. She thought back to her early years in school, when her teachers forced her to sit through Bible instruction. She had daydreamed through a lot of it, but was pretty sure no one had ever mentioned Jesus Christ keeping a diary. She had to chance it, after all, her address must have been written on the package for a reason.

  She opened the cover. The fly page had been dedicated to her.

  To Johanna Charette,

  You seek Illumination.

  May these pages embrace your imagination and feed your soul.

  Regards,

  Malcolm Trees, Curator

  The Library of Illumination

  Malcolm Trees?The little, old man in the library had given her a gift. She felt awful about having been rude to him. Maybe she should bake him some brownies to smooth things over.Does he even have any teeth?She made up her mind. She would bake light, fluffy muffins. She wouldn’t add nuts.

  Carefully, she turned to the first diary page. It had that day's date on it. She removed a tiny pen from a loop attached to the book. Then carefully, very carefully, she wrote about the day’s events.

  As she wrote, she nervously looked up from time to time, expecting to see her words come alive. But every word she wrote stayed firmly on the page.

  When she finished, she locked the diary with a tiny key that had been tied to its blue ribbon bookmark and slipped the key into her purse. She hid the diary in the back of a cupboard, behind her supply of bathroom tissue.It should be safe here.

  Johanna baked muffins every night and carefully wrapped them in a red and white checked napkin for Mr. Trees, but she received no last-minute requests from her boss to make a delivery. So each night she went home and ate the muffins for dinner, then immediately baked a fresh batch for the next day. She gave up baking after ten days. Her clothing had started to feel snug and she couldn’t afford to keep paying for the ingredients.

  The first day she arrived at work without muffins, her boss asked her to make a delivery. That evening, she thanked Malcolm Trees for the diary. He waved his hand in the air as if it were nothing, but she thought she saw a hint of a smile before he turned away.

  She was careful not to open any books while there, and watched as he wrapped up a book on the history of tobacco plantations. She accepted it with a nod and a smile and went on her way. Aside from the occasional odor of burning tobacco whenever she hit a bump, there were no mishaps.

  ***

  As the weeks passed, her boss called on Johanna to make deliveries with increasing frequency. Each time he told her to pickup a book at the library, her joy exceeded the time before. Not that she let it show. It was her secret. She spoke to her boss as little as possible about her visits. Whenever he told her to make a delivery, he stared at her as if he expected her to spill her guts about everything she had seen inside the library, but he’d stoppedaskingher about it, because when he tried questioning her, Johanna always requested time off as compensation for her trouble.

  Every time she picked up a parcel, she diligently wrote about the experience in the tiny diary. It had become second nature. As the year progressed, Johanna had many opportunities to explore the books she saw. In doing so, she met the Headless Horseman fromThe Legend of Sleepy Hollow; nearly fell down the rabbit hole with Alice during herAdventures in Wonderland;and listened to Sancho complain aboutDon Quixote.

  One day, as she waited for theAtlas of the Ancient World,Mr. Trees accidentally dropped the oversize book. She heard him groan as latitude and longitude lines floated over Mesopotamia. The book had split in two. Rather than asking her to wait by herself while he made the necessary repairs, he invited her into the library antechamber. There, he taught her how to repair broken bindings and re-sew loose signatures—the folded pages that make up sections of a book. She paid attention to every detail and from that day on, he guided her as she helped him fix old tomes in need of restoration.

  ***

  Everything Johanna had learned in the library was called to task, the day she found Mr. Trees pinned down by a lion. He had apparently ducked behind a wing chair, and the lion had jumped up on the piece of furniture, knocking it on top of the old man. Now the beast glared at the curator, and growled menacingly. Johanna scarcely moved as she looked around for the book the lion had escaped from, but didn’t see it. She had to divert the animal's attention if she wanted to save Mr. Trees. Her eyes searched the shelves for books written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. If anyone would know how to handle this, Tarzan would.

  A copy ofTarzan at the Earth’s Corelay just a few steps away. She quietly inched her way over to it and opened it, but instead of Tarzan, she encountered Germans operating an airship. The lion roared at the unexpected intrusion. She gently closed the cover, replaced the book, and pulled an earlier Tarzan novel off the shelf.

  In the blink of an eye, the King of the Jungle stood before her in all his glory. ALL HIS GLORY. Not even a loincloth.She averted her eyes and pointed toward the lion. Tarzan’s wild call of the jungle got the animal’s attention, and the two faced each other ready for battle. As man and beast circled each other, Johanna slipped behind the armchair and lifted it off Mr. Trees. He quickly closed the National Geographic magazine he held in his hands, leaving a stunned Tarzan looking for the now-missing cat. Johanna backtracked toTarzan of the Apes and closed the cover on that book as well. Aside from a large puddle of tiger drool on the floor, and the manly scent of a savage who had never heard of deodorant—much less used it, the library was none the worse for wear. Johanna, already well versed in the location of the cleaning supplies, went about tidying up that afternoon’s encounter,
while Mr. Trees carefully wrapped a selection of National Geographic magazines that Johanna had been called on to deliver.

  ***

  And so it went.Every time Johanna visited the Library of Illumination, she found herself more immersed in the fabric of its existence, and hid her disappointment on days when she wasn’t asked to make a delivery.

  She thought about the library so often, the rigors of daily life barely penetrated her consciousness. Invitations from friends went unnoticed, as Johanna ignored everything but the library.

  One sultry, summer morning, she felt restless and decided to visit the library on her own, but even though she had been there dozens of times before, she couldn’t find the building. After two hours of searching, she finally gave up and drove home, perplexed and depressed. A second attempt a few days later was equally unsuccessful.

  Yet, the next time her boss told her to make a delivery, she located the library without difficulty. Try as she might, she couldn't solve that enigma.

  ***

  The seasons changed and before Johanna knew it, the trees had lost their leaves and the cold bite of winter made its approach. Soon afterward, an eviction notice arrived. Johanna had forty-eight hours to vacate her home.How can they do this,she wondered?This isn’t enough notice. But as she scanned the sizable pile of unopened mail on her kitchen counter, she found the still-sealed letters announcing her impending eviction.

  She called in sick the next morning, needing the day to dump her meager belongings into boxes and find a place to stay. She called a couple of friends, seeking their help, but instead of sympathy she found bitterness, because she had ignored their invitations for too long, and hadn’t returned their calls.

  That afternoon, she looked at a few apartments and boarding houses, but they were either unfit for human habitation, or well beyond her budget. She would be forced to lose another day's pay looking for a place to live.