Conjunctions 65: Sleights of Hand

by Sleights of Hand- The Deception Issue (retail) (epub)

  He has avoided the lakeside park. The esplanade along the lake.

  He has been avoiding even thinking of her and in this he has become slack, careless, negligent, like one who has let his guard down prematurely.

  And so when he isn’t prepared he sees her for the second time: entering the Cattaraugus Public Library.

  A glimmering figure in white, at dusk. In the heat of summer of upstate New York there is a moist heaviness to the air that seems to gather like an electric charge with the waning of the light in the sky and it is at this time he sees her, not certain at first if it is her …

  A tall, pale gliding figure. And her tangled silvery hair partway down her back.

  Without a backward glance at L_____, who stands stunned and breathless on the flagstone walk outside the library, staring after her.

  Should he follow her into the library? As if he were entering by chance?

  (But of course it is chance.)

  (L_____ has not been following her. L_____ had not even been aware of her nearby.)

  Or (he is thinking) he should continue past the library as if he has no business in the library after all.

  (No one will notice! He is sure that no one is watching.)

  The Cattaraugus Public Library is a small library housed in the first floor of a gaunt, faded-redbrick colonial on Courthouse Square; it shares the house with the headquarters of the Cattaraugus County Historical Society at the rear. The historical society is darkened but the library is still open at 7:00 p.m., though most of the staff has gone home and there are few patrons in the library.

  This is the first time since his return to Cattaraugus that L_____ has revisited the library and it is both gratifying to him and a little disturbing that the library has changed so minimally over the years. Obviously, the library budget for Cattaraugus County isn’t generous. All of central upstate New York has been locked in a “recession” for years—decades. (When does a “recession” become a permanent state of being? Who is there to formally acknowledge such transformations?) Still, the Cattaraugus Public Library retains the power to excite L_____ with the prospect of a new adventure—a book he has not read yet, an author of whom he hasn’t heard. L_____ experienced his first sense of the forbidden in the rear of the library, where, as a boy, he’d been looking through novels in the section marked Adult Fiction and a frowning librarian had surprised him skimming impenetrable pages of James Joyce’s Ulysses—“Excuse me? What is your age?”

  His age! He’d been twelve or thirteen at the time. The prim-faced middle-aged woman with staring eyes had known very well that the trembling boy she’d apprehended was hardly eighteen.

  She’d taken the forbidden book from him, shut it, and replaced it on the shelf. Abashed, he’d fled.

  L_____ smiles, recalling. That has been a long time ago, when anything in any library could possibly be “forbidden” to him.

  Now, L_____ is standing on the walk outside the library, uncertain. It is near dark. The gaunt old brick house is lighted from within and so he can see a few figures, a wall of bookshelves, a display of books—but he can’t see her.

  Out of restlessness he’d been walking in the early evening. Down the mile-long hill at Juniper Avenue, from Road’s End Lane to Lake View Avenue; avoiding the lake, he’d decided to visit the historic quarter—a town square bounded by the Cattaraugus County Courthouse and post office, the YM-YWCA, and the library. Here there’s a small park with a World War II memorial, a Revolutionary War cannon, a rain-worn American flag, a few benches.Near deserted, which is a relief.

  The library is one of those small-town public libraries of the kind scattered across America, often housed in a “historic” building. L_____ feels a tug of nostalgia, seeing it.

  The Cattaraugus library has very few books in which L_____ is interested, and none helpful for his current project. Yet L_____ is drawn to the library, as a haven of sorts. The welcome of warm lights within, which seem to beckon to him. He recalls how he was sent here by his grandmother to take out books for her, slender mysteries with little black skulls-and-crossbones on the spine of the plastic covers, and the black letter M. (Mystery? Or Murder?) Strange that his genteel grandmother had devoured murder mysteries!—as if death were some sort of entertainment.

  She’d given him her card for this purpose, not to be confused with L_____’s own (child’s) card.

  In a trance of indecision L_____ has been debating whether to enter the library. He thinks: He can simply ignore the woman with the tangled silvery hair—she’s a stranger to him, she will not “recognize” him. And truly she is nothing to him.

  Still, he feels some hesitation. A part of his brain cautions him against behaving recklessly.

  The library is small, cramped. It is not really possible to avoid other patrons if they are in the front area, at the checkout desk, as you enter. L_____ feels a visceral dread of getting too close to the woman with the shimmering silvery hair for fear that he will (unwittingly) call attention to himself and she will see him staring at her and if she sees him she will know.

  Oh but what will she know?—something.

  Something she will see in his face?

  A premonition of something that will happen, or something that will never happen?

  Something that has already happened?

  He decides not to enter the library. Yet not—quite—to leave.

  Finds himself walking along a darkened pathway beside the library. Staring up into the windows as he passes—sees several figures—a man with a fleshy, flushed face—a middle-aged woman—but not the silvery-haired woman.

  Then at the rear window he sees her: her back to the window.

  She is leaning over an oversized book, like an atlas. Probably it is, as L_____ recalls, The American Gazetteer, a nineteenth-century book of maps kept with other, similar atlases in a corner of the reference section of the library.

  He sees the woman’s slender arm, her fingers turning the oversized parchment-like page. He sees silver filaments in her hair, which falls in tangled waves over her shoulders. He can see the side of her face, just barely: the curve of her cheek, her parted lips.

  The scene is brightly lit from within. Only a few yards away he is standing in darkness, invisible. The sharpness of Vermeer, he thinks. He feels a yearning in the region of his heart so powerful he is almost faint.

  Why is the young woman interested in that old book? Why The American Gazetteer? As a boy, he’d paged through atlases in that library, examined the Rand McNally globe that spun with geriatric slowness; its carefully outlined countries were defined by faded colors, outdated thirty years ago. Perhaps it was a collector’s item, a novelty of history like Mura House.

  How erotic, the sight of the silvery-haired woman’s arm as her sleeve slips down to her elbow. And the faint shimmer of her hair. Every movement of the woman is exciting to L_____, the more that she’s unaware of him watching her so intently.

  She must never know. She must be protected from—whatever is happening.

  L_____ rouses himself, and passes quickly by the window. He has not meant to linger, and stare.

  His heart is beating rapidly. How absurd! He is ashamed of himself but he is very excited.

  At the rear of the library he pauses. Here is a shadowy alcove, a little distance from the street. A grassy patch, not well lighted. A pedestrian pathway that functions as a shortcut to the next street and it is quite reasonable that L_____ might take this pathway, close beside the library. You might think that he’d parked his car nearby. A library patron, like others.

  He has positioned himself in such a way that he can see, not the front entrance of the library, but much of the front walk, which leads to the street. No one can leave the library without being seen by L_____—he is certain.

  From his vantage place in the shadows he observes a heavy-hipped woman leaving the library, picked up
at the street by someone in a station wagon. A solitary man in shorts, trotting across the street to his parked car. It must be closing time: 7:30 p.m. on a weeknight in summer. L_____ can’t see anyone else inside except the librarian, an older white-haired woman whose name he should know.

  Still, the silvery-haired woman must still be there. He seems to be waiting for her to leave the library after all. But he will not follow her.

  Under a hypnotic spell, time passes slowly for L_____. In fact, it is a pleat in time; L_____ is neither here entirely in the shadows at the rear of the Cattaraugus Public Library nor is he elsewhere. He is suspended in time.

  Earlier that evening he’d had to walk out of his parents’ house, where the air of late afternoon becomes thick as suet and where it is difficult to breathe.

  He wants to plead with the silvery-haired woman—There has been some mistake. The person you see is not really me. What was done to me and what I have become …

  And the woman will turn to him, and she will touch his arm, gently. All of his senses are alert, to the point of pain: He can scarcely breathe, in anticipation of what she will tell him.

  Why she has entered his life, what she has been meant to tell him …

  There is a jolt. Time has passed. L_____ rouses himself to realize: The library is empty except for the librarian, who is switching off lights.

  How is this possible? Where is the silvery-haired woman? He wants to protest: He could not have missed her. Not for a moment has he turned his gaze away from the front walk. He has scarcely dared to blink.

  (Is it possible she left the library by another door?)

  (But there is no other door for library patrons, he is sure. Only an emergency door at the rear, which would sound an alarm if opened.)

  Admonishes himself: It is not possible that she left by the front door, and he didn’t see her. He could not have missed her.

  In a state of agitation he approaches the front entrance of the library. How familiar the doorway is, the truncated view into the library, as if he has never left his childhood home, and his adult life has been a delusion …

  He peers inside—as one would; a husband, for instance, or a father, waiting for someone inside to emerge from the library, who has (unaccountably) not emerged.

  Must happen all the time. Nothing to alarm anyone.

  However, there is no one visible except the librarian, Mrs. McGarry.

  “Hello! Can I help you? I’m afraid we’re closing just now …”

  Doesn’t Mrs. McGarry recognize L_____? He is older than she has ever seen him, of course; his face is lined, his once thick, dark hair is scanty, thin like the feathers of very young birds not yet fledged. Perhaps he is unnaturally pale. And perhaps he is grimacing impatiently, irritably, his face so contorted that Mrs. McGarry can’t seem to recognize the boy who used to come into the library so often, a lifetime ago.

  “Oh! Is it—”

  The light of recognition comes into the white-haired woman’s face. Now L_____ cannot escape.

  Mrs. McGarry speaks his name. Mrs.McGarry greets him warmly.

  She is just locking up the library, she explains. Switching off lights and the ceiling fans. Would he wait a moment?

  Of course! How can L_____ possibly say no?

  “I was a friend of your dear mother for many years …”

  “Yes. I know.”

  L_____ shakes her hand, or would shake it. But Mrs. McGarry extends her hand to clasp his, in commiseration, perhaps, not merely to be shaken.

  L_____ is eager to escape. L_____ is eager to drift away into the night in chagrin and shame and a kind of fury except Mrs. McGarry retains him. “The last time I saw you, I think—Margaret and I had just returned from visiting Chloe Sanderson in the hospital—poor Chloe!—your mother brought her flowers from her garden, an armful of the most fragrant flowers—white carnations—” A bittersweet memory. A memory to be shared. A memory not to be avoided and so L_____ endures it with a stoic smile.

  “Are you living in your parents’ beautiful house now? I thought I’d heard this. Are you returned to us?”

  Mrs. McGarry clutches at his hand. Her eyes search his with a discomforting intensity and he sees that it is Mrs. McGarry (perhaps) who has been awaiting him in this place, not the other.

  L_____ wants to ask the librarian about the shimmering-silvery-haired woman who’d leaned over the old atlas: Who is she? Did Mrs. McGarry see her too? He wants to ask her what she recalled of the boy he’d been. What his mother might have told her, of him. But the words choke in his throat, he can only smile and allow his hand to be clasped and stroked, in consolation for his loss.

  Are you returned to us? He has no idea.

  No. Ridiculous!

  Yes. Ridiculous.

  He is very tired. “Drained.”

  His energy drains from him like the slow drip, seep, ooze of excrement. His life.

  Wouldn’t have had the energy to follow the silvery-haired woman if he’d seen her. That is the sobering fact.

  He has his eye on the farther edge of the lake, along the east shore. On one of his restless walks he has scrutinized the area. The possibilities. His mind is always working. Swift, sharp like flashing scissors. He’d recalled from years ago and has reacquainted himself now: that fetid stretch of rotted cattails, fish floating belly-up, broken Styrofoam. Since he has no boat to row out onto the lake, no motorboat, no way of assuring that the body will be far enough from shore that the body will sink to a depth of more than six feet to lie against the mucky bottom of the lake, he will have to dump the body in a more convenient place.

  “A highly challenging, very ambitious project for which I need seclusion here in Cattaraugus.”

  So he said. There was pleasure in such a statement made to the inquisitive. Saliva gathered in his mouth as with a delicious taste.

  A shock to L_____, yet deeply flattering, that he’d been named executor of the literary estate of the distinguished writer-historian V____ S_______, who’d died, at eighty-four, the previous December.

  Obviously there had been a mistake on someone’s part: for L_____ had not been contacted beforehand. Nor would L_____ have expected to be singled out for this honor, which carries with it a good deal of responsibility.

  A call from a lawyer, congratulations from friends, his name in the very last paragraph of S_______’s obituary in The New York Times—all so sudden, unexpected.

  He had just begun chemotherapy. Every two weeks for four hours in succession, poisons dripping into his veins and coursing through his heart, so lethal the infusion-room nurses had to wear protective clothing, gloves. Yet when S_______’s lawyer called, L_____ heard his voice crack with emotion.

  “Yes, of course! Though I knew, it’s still a—surprise … and a great honor.”

  Flushed with this honor like a transfusion of fresh blood, L_____ agreed to help S_______’s editor prepare S_______’s final book for publication in January of the new year.

  A Biography of Biographies will be a “magisterial” work—no doubt. The manuscript, or manuscripts, runs to thirteen hundred pages.

  S_______’s editor, upset and aggrieved that the prominent elderly author had died before his book was quite ready for press, assured L_____ that the book was all but finished: It needed only “minimal reshaping, reorganization, some revision and rewriting, and an index.”

  L_____ had agreed without hesitation. Like a drowning man clutching at a lifeline, which will haul him out of a turbulent sea, allow him to breathe for a while longer, to endure.

  “Thank you! This is an honor.”

  And: “I’m a longtime admirer of S_______. I think that I’ve read everything he has written …”

  And, somberly: “We were never exactly friends. There was a generation between us. But I felt a kind of kinship with S_______, and only wish now that I had known him
better.”

  Is this true? Perhaps not entirely. L_____ has certainly not read all of S_______’s work, which consists of a dozen or more substantial books. Nor had S_______ sought him out, though S_______ had always been perfectly friendly, kind, and behaved as if he were interested in L_____’s work.

  It is true that L_____ is grateful for the assignment. Or was, initially.

  Fact is, after his evisceration L_____ has no energy to undertake original work of his own nor can he foresee a time when he will regain his energy.

  (Possibly this was the case even before the evisceration. But L_____ doesn’t care to consider that.)

  Some days L_____ is enthusiastic and hopeful about the project; other days L_____ is rueful and chagrined that he’d made such a blunder in a craven gesture of attaching himself to a famous and respected name in the hope that some of the glory would rub off on him, like the faint iridescence of a broken moth’s wing.

  He has been working with at least three manuscripts written at different periods of time, derived from several computer files; he has been trying to give structure to an essentially structureless book. There is much to admire in S_______’s eloquent prose but there are many passages that are haphazardly written, and uninspired; there are sections that have been left blank—glibly marked material TK. (With a sinking heart L_____ wonders who is expected to provide this missing material.) Chapters have been many times revised, with much overlapping and repetitive material. Footnotes are overlong, pedantic. Other footnotes are just numerals, with no information at all. At the time of his death S_______ hadn’t even begun an index. Most upsetting, A Biography of Biographies seems to be based upon numerous other books on the subject, and to contain virtually nothing that is original or inventive. Like every other historian of the subject, S_______ begins with Plutarch’s Lives but he ends (arbitrarily) in the early 1980s with Leon Edel’s Henry James and Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce, as if these are the most recent major biographies S_______ had troubled to read.

  What a joke! A cruel joke.

  L_____ had hoped to attach himself to a work of substance, even of genius. A work of literature that mattered.