Little Doors

by Paul Di Filippo

  But the woman only smiled as she counted the spines, seemingly oblivious to titles, and said, “Quite a reader we have here.”

  “Yeah, I spend a lot of lonely winter nights by the fireplace, just me and my Dickens.”

  The old gents nodded sagely, and the woman’s smile broadened. “Oh, you love Dickens too! So do I! We have one of his first books in the Hemphill Collection. It’s not for sale, but if you’d like to see it, Mister—?”

  “Mamoulian. Sure, I’d be happy to take a look.” Might as well humor the gal, now that he’d cleaned out her sale. Thirty-five dollars should buy at least a few shingles for the gym roof, right? Anyhow, she was probably inordinately proud of some tenth printing of some twentieth edition of A Christmas Carol, but Mamoulian would lay on the praise. Who knew, but this sale might become one of his regular stops.…

  After money changed hands and Mamoulian’s books had been reboxed, the woman said, “Arthur, Fred, will you watch Mister Mamoulian’s purchases and handle the sale while we step away for a moment? Thank you so much.”

  The woman led Mamoulian out a different door and down a dim corridor deeper in the academy. “My name’s Emily Lerner. I’m the librarian here. Have been for the past twenty years, and will be until I retire, I suppose. The job’s very satisfying, except of course for the lack of money.”

  Growing impatient and not a little unnerved by the eerie quiet of the old building, Mamoulian was only half listening. “Yeah, salary’s always a bitch.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t complaining about my wages. It’s true they’re low, but it doesn’t cost quite so much to live here in the valley as it does elsewhere. No, I was lamenting the relative lack of funding for new book purchases. Caxton Daye doesn’t exactly attract the children of privilege and their parents’ endowments. But that’s an old story. In fact, that’s how the Hemphill Collection first came about.”

  Mamoulian made no reply to this gratuitous information, but simply followed Emily Lerner impatiently as she ushered him through another door—

  —and straight into paradise.

  * * *

  Paradise was a small airless shadowy room where dust motes danced above a worn floor of wide wooden planks, the whole interior poorly illuminated by a series of porthole windows high up one wall.

  Obviously, Mamoulian first observed, his awestruck brain working with some desperate attempt at objective precision, the single wall of shelves in the time-lost room held their contents not in alphabetical order, but in chronological sequence. The relatively drab books on the upper shelves were jacketless, leather-bound and gilt-lettered, as comfortingly bulky and solid as most other pre-twentieth-century artifacts—cast-iron stoves, say. As Mamoulian’s eyes traversed the shelves, left to right, up and down, straining to capture intriguingly suggestive names and titles, the books morphed sequentially into modern, more colorful shapes: trimmer, bejacketed, potentially lighter in heft. Eventually, after his stunned yet still avaricious gaze had raced over roughly a thousand books, he stopped at a couple of terminal volumes that might have come straight from the “new arrivals” table of a Barnes & Noble.

  Like a sleepwalker, Mamoulian crossed the room to the shelves. As he got closer, names swam randomly into focus: Thackery, Eliot, Collins, Fitzgerald, Hawthorne, Stein, Poe, Colette, Twain, Faulkner, Alcott, Mailer, Kerouac, Hemingway— Dimly, he sensed the librarian of the Caxton Daye Academy, Emily Lerner, trailing him without speaking, as if respectful of his bibliogenic trance.

  Mamoulian reached out for a volume spaced about midway on the shelves. He pinched it delicately and withdrew it reverently from its niche as if handling either a vial of nitroglycerin or the governor’s commutation of his death sentence. Where were his cloth curator’s gloves? Back in the van, of course, useless now. But he couldn’t tear himself away long enough to retrieve them. Cradling the handsome, well-preserved book as if it were a premature baby or the withered hand of his dying grandmother, Mamoulian opened its cover.

  The inner pages confirmed this to be a Shakespeare and Company first edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses. That wasn’t a complete surprise, for Mamoulian had suspected as much from first sight of the book’s exterior, which he’d once seen in a Sotheby’s catalogue. But the presence of Joyce’s autograph below an inscription—”To Miss Rosemary Charcroft: long may you Bloom.”—was definitely not foreseen.

  This single book was worth at least $150,000.

  Mamoulian began, uncontrollably, to weep. But unlike his sweat, his tears ran clear, no ink leaking from his dazzled eyes.

  Wafting a scent of lavender, Emily Lerner stepped past him, oblivious to his distress, or at least pretending not to see his tears. She blithely plucked a single book from near the beginning of the Hemphill Collection and offered it to Mamoulian.

  “Here’s that Dickens I mentioned.”

  Gently, Mamoulian reshelved the Joyce, wiped his cheeks with the backs of his hands, wiped his hands on his pants, and took the Dickens.

  It was the 1836 Macrone first printing of Sketches by Boz, worth a paltry twelve hundred dollars. A minute ago, Mamoulian would have trembled to hold such a find. Now, faced with a whole wall of what must have been rare firsts, he could only nod like a spring-necked dashboard doggie and murmur, “Very nice. Very fucking nice.”

  * * *

  When Mamoulian shouted, every diner in the Golden Goose—that pleasantly old-fashioned restaurant offering a serene view of the church-dominated village green forming the center of the town of Newbery—turned to look. Mamoulian realized he had half-risen out of his seat, and that his own dining companion, the inestimable Emily Lerner, had instantly flushed at becoming the center of attention. With an exercise of extreme self-control, Mamoulian lowered his rear into his chair and also lowered his voice.

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t believe that you let the kids handle those books.”

  “Only the honors students. They’re very respectful and mindful. Caxton Daye attracts that kind of child. And I always stress the age of the books to them.”

  “The age, the age—what about their goddamn value?”

  Emily sniffed dismissively at Mamoulian. “That was never a consideration in my mind or the minds of my students. We are interested in literature alone, Mister Mamoulian. That is the only reason for the existence of the Hemphill Collection.”

  Mamoulian picked up his wine glass and slugged back a hearty mouthful, then poured himself another generous portion. “Tell me you don’t let the kids take the books home.”

  “I let them take the books home, yes.”

  Before he could speak again, Mamoulian had to refill his glass twice more. “Jesus, Emily, do you realize what your goddamn Hemphill Collection is worth? Let me give it to you straight from the shoulder, no dealer-style bullshit. This find is too big for me to play games. Pay close attention now. Easily, no hype, I’m guessing a million. Maybe more. I’d have to examine each book individually to firm up the figure.”

  Mamoulian studied the librarian’s relatively unlined, lightly cosmeticized, heart-shaped face for a reaction. Demure, that was the word he had been searching for. Yet subtly complex, with depths not easily plumbed. Was she as naive as she seemed, or really a sharp player? Mamoulian hadn’t been this flummoxed by anyone on the other side of the bargaining table in a long while.

  For the first time in their short acquaintance, the woman’s face betrayed some signs of agitation. “Oh my goodness. I hadn’t realized the collection had accrued such value. I wonder what Amy would think of such an outcome?”

  “Amy?”

  “Amy Hemphill, the first librarian at Caxton Daye.”

  “Oh, right.” Mamoulian’s stomach nudged him not to entirely neglect his meal, and he wolfed down a buttered roll. “Would you run the whole story by me again? I still can’t quite believe it.”

  Emily’s smile bore a keen edge. “Are you asking me to be a boring pedant on our first date, Mister Mamoulian?”

  “Huh? Date? Oh, you’re making a
joke, right? No, just lay the history on me informal like.”

  Her smile dimmed. “I’d be happy to.”

  As Emily began to talk, Mamoulian sliced into his steak and listened more attentively than he had a few hours ago back at the school, when he had immediately demanded to know the origin of all the rare firsts, and then cajoled Emily into dining with him that very night so that he might present a business proposition that would benefit the school immensely.

  “In 1827,” Emily Lerner dispassionately lectured, “Caxton Daye, a wealthy merchant and trader, founded the school that bears his name in order to implement his rather stern ideas about vocational instruction. One of the first teachers he hired was Amy Hemphill. Her ancillary duties included the post of librarian. Unfortunately, the small library she presided over was composed almost entirely of ponderous tomes on farming, blacksmithing, weaving, and other practical arts. About the lightest confection Daye permitted the school to buy officially was The Pilgrim’s Progress.

  “A dedicated reader of borrowed novels herself, Amy felt that her young charges would benefit from exposure to contemporary literature. She began to acquire a few books on her own, using whatever small portion of her wages she could spare. She kept these books separate from the academy’s holdings, and loaned them out at her own discretion.

  “Amy held her job for the next thirty years, until her death. By that sad but inevitable date the collection was approximately one hundred and fifty books large. Amy willed it to her successor—whom she never actually met—a woman named Virginia Norton. Amy’s will also enjoined Virgina to continue the tradition of extracurricular purchases, which Miss Norton gladly did.

  “Virgina saw the collection reach the turn of the century, and approach the five-hundred-volume mark. By then, of course, the academy had become a more typical liberal-arts institution, and the main library offered its own share of popular fiction. But the tradition of librarians purchasing a few additional high-quality books continued. Virginia’s successor was Rosemary Charcroft—”

  “The gal mentioned in the Joyce volume?”

  “Yes. Amy had established a tradition of securing inscriptions from many of the authors she selected, dealing with them through the mail.

  While not every book in the collection is signed, the majority of them are.”

  Mamoulian moaned incoherently, but Emily politely ignored him and continued.

  “Rosemary passed on the collection to Helen Castelli around 1935, and I took it over from Helen in 1979. During my tenure, I’ve added approximately twenty-five books per year. That’s a higher average than my predecessors maintained, but I don’t claim any extra devotion to the collection. It’s just that books are cheaper nowadays than they were at many points in the past. Helen, for instance, had an awful time during the Depression. I think she managed only three acquisitions a year during the worst of that era. Buying all of Dos Passos nearly bankrupted her.”

  Mamoulian’s groans simulated the painful calls of an unfed hyena. Finished with her account, Emily turned efficiently to her meal, pasta with shrimp. They ate silently for a while, Mamoulian trying to ingest both words and food.

  “Okay” Mamoulian finally said, “I can accept five do-gooders amassing a private library over the course of nearly two hundred years. But what gets me is the quality of it. Every book in your frigging collection is a literary masterpiece. The lowest lowbrow item I saw was Gone with the Wind—worth roughly thirteen hundred nowadays, by the way.”

  “That was Helen’s first purchase. She debated long and hard before she plunged on that one, she told me before she retired. She loved the book herself, but worried that it might be too racy for her students. In fact, she wasn’t entirely happy with some of Rosemary’s daring choices. Joyce and Hemingway, primarily.”

  “All right, so there were some minor disagreements among you. But still, you all seem infallible in your own way. I mean, what’re the chances you five would pick nothing but winners? How come there’s no F. Marion Crawford or Bulwer-Lytton crap in the goddamn Hemphill Collection? For instance: how’d you personally decide to snag the first edition of Angela’s Ashes before there was any buzz about it? It’s fetching five hundred bucks now, you know.”

  Emily dabbed at her lips with her napkin and considered the question. “I can’t really speak for the others, but I suspect that my motives were also theirs. First off, we were all educated women from similar backgrounds with a certain level of taste who bought what we liked. Isn’t that the first rule of collecting, Mister Mamoulian?”

  “Alex, for Christ’s sake. Mister Mamoulian is my father.”

  “And second, Alex, we all held the enlightenment of our students paramount. We were determined not to buy ephemeral trash.”

  Now it was Mamoulian’s turn to ponder. He shook his head uncomprehendingly after a few minutes. “It’s still uncanny. It’s like you all had some sixth sense for literary horse races. If you won that consistently in a casino, you’d be out on your ass for cheating.”

  “Fortunately for us, the headmasters of Caxton Daye Academy did not follow casino rules.”

  His expression earnestly overwrought, Mamoulian laid down his utensils and leaned toward Emily. She awaited his speech with seemingly sincere interest.

  “The books in that room are being wasted, Emily. You realize that now, right? You could replace all of them with nice reading copies for a few thousand dollars total, and your honor students wouldn’t know the difference. The texts would be the same, the kids wouldn’t give a— They just wouldn’t care. Believe me! And the sale of the collection would bring in a million bucks for the school. You’re hoping to renovate the gym, right? You could buy gold-plated dumbbells with that kind of money!”

  “And what do you get out of all this, Alex? Are you an altruist?”

  “No! I admit it! I’m a sharper, a hustler. I’ve always got my own interests foremost. But money’s not the issue here. Didn’t I play it straight with you about the collection’s real value right from the start? Pardon me, but the way I cleaned out your crummy book sale shows I could’ve pulled the wool over your eyes on this deal too. Now, I can’t buy the collection off you and resell it on my own. I don’t have that kind of capital. But with your consent, I can take the credit for discovering it, and I can oversee the auction. That kind of publicity could vault me into the big leagues. My reputation would be made, and my business would take off like the goddamn space shuttle! Oh, if you wanted to give me a commission of a few percent on the sale, I wouldn’t fight you. But the main thing is that I get the kudos for the discovery. What do you say? Can we work together on this?”

  Mamoulian reached out and grabbed Emily’s left wrist (no ring graced the elegant tapered fingers of that hand, he noticed). She let him hold her for a moment before disengaging. Her expression registered genuine confusion.

  “I don’t know, Alex. You make a plausible case. But the children do appreciate the first editions, I think, at least on some level. They represent a continuity to the school’s history, and to the history of literature.”

  Mamoulian sank back in his chair. “Hell, Emily, if you’re determined on throwing away this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, just tell me and I’ll be on my way. Or maybe you don’t like me as an individual. You think another dealer would be more savvy, classier, maybe do a better job.”

  “I didn’t say any of that.”

  Mamoulian allowed a look of sudden shocked awareness and dismay to alter his face. “Maybe you’re planning to cut the academy out of the deal altogether? Is that it? I suppose the books are legally yours, since they’ve been willed from one librarian to another. I don’t blame you for giving in to temptation, Emily. You can still set yourself up pretty well with a million these days. But the ethics of such a sneaky-pete move— Well, Emily, I never would have suspected—”

  “I don’t need a lecture on ethics from you, Mister Mamoulian. All I’m trying to say is that I need time to sleep on my decision.”

 
Mamoulian shifted to an optimistic grin. Considering her naked ring finger, he almost suggested that sleeping with someone might hasten the decision-making process, but ultimately decided that perhaps he had better not push his luck.

  “I respect that, Emily. I really do.”

  * * *

  Mamoulian had rented a room at an old-fashioned motor court on the edge of Newbery named Teepee Lodge. The chenille-covered bed proved comfortable enough, but Mamoulian never slept in it. During what remained of that night, he alternated between lying down wideawake in his sleeveless T-shirt and boxer shorts—fantasies of his fabulous future racing through his head—and pacing the floor barefoot in the mellow light from a yellow-papered lamp whose glazed ceramic body was shaped like a stag being torn by hounds. He had bought a six-pack of some local brew to keep him company, but after finishing two cans he saw a vivid image of his brother drying out in the clinic, and poured the rest down the toilet.

  As early as consonant with decency, Mamoulian phoned Emily Lerner at her home. She spoke before he could even employ any of his carefully formulated courtesies.

  “Yes, I’ll sell them, for the sake of the academy. But just don’t ask me to be happy about this.”

  “Happiness is generally not a prerequisite to making some serious money, Emily. But I don’t think you’ll regret this move. Maybe the school will even give you a bronze plaque or something. Now, when can I come in to catalogue the books?”

  “Why not start today? ‘If it were done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.”’

  “That’s a quote. Shakespeare. Am I right?”

  Emily sighed. “Yes, you’re right.”