Transcendent

by K. M. Szpara

  The researcher will not discuss the Harrad Collection in person or on social media.

  Texts from the Collection will not be added to referencing apps or software including (but not limited to) Zotero, EndNote, RefMe…

  Modernity isn’t inevitable, the librarian had said. She knew about social media and referencing software, but had decided to ban them. She wasn’t an ageing dusty stereotype. She was well informed, and gatekeeping.

  “I don’t like it either,” Fred said. “But I’m not going to climb a tree with a book up my arse to prove a point.”

  “I don’t think anyone could expect you to do that.”

  “I’m out of here, anyway.” Fred’s exodus predictions had taken on a personal, insulting note for Jas. This place that you want to get into? Fred seemed to be saying. I shun it. I’m better. I’m gone.

  “So you said.”

  “You should read up on the founder, Lady Harrad. She had some interesting principles.”

  Lady Harrad had been born in 1890, Jas remembered vaguely. Victorian Values didn’t seem relevant here.

  Jas felt Fred’s hand fumbling with his own under the pub table. He felt a flush of embarrassment, then realised Fred was trying to slip a tiny object into his palm.

  “Have a look at that.”

  “What—”

  “There are more discreet ways to take photographs.”

  Jas remembered the thick-rimmed glasses Fred wore for reading.

  In his bedroom that evening, Jas phoned his boss.

  “Jas! Great work so far.”

  “Michelle, did I sign a contract to work here?”

  “The company signed one.”

  “Could you send me a copy? I want to make sure I’m sticking to it.”

  “Sure. Probably common sense, though.”

  But there was nothing common, or sensible, about the Harrad Collection.

  Jas held Fred’s gift. The sliver of plastic was almost weightless. He knew he shouldn’t examine it. He’d lose his job, and any chance of studying here.

  But a radical librarian had to be brave. Jas opened up Fred’s gift.

  The memory card held a dozen files, all photos of pages. Jas read a header at random: “Unlike Other Women.” Intrigued, Jas read on.

  The woman was Unlike Other Women because she wasn’t a woman at all.

  The page was from a transsexual autobiography. Jas knew the label was anachronistic, but the story felt so familiar. I rarely found myself drawn to feminine ways, and as a child threw myself into games with hoops and trains. The voice bubbled off the page. By the end of the first page, the narrator had become engaged but could not rest while betrothed to Daniel, having no wifely feelings for him. I then lived ten years in Clacton under the name of Donald.

  “Lived under the name of Donald”. What a world of activity that sentence glossed over. How had she—he—earned his keep, bought his clothes…

  Jas checked the title of the book. Accounts from the Patients at Woburn Sands. Fred had also photographed the contents page, and there were twenty names: Constance, Jack, Alicia, Robert, JC. Were they all trans?

  Published in 1878. A voice from history, a miracle.

  Michelle, in Jas’s mind, said slow down, hold back. But Jas still cornered Moira the following morning for another demonstration. There were things in this collection too precious to stay boxed up. He’d known it objectively, but Fred’s illicit snaps—Donald’s story—had brought it home.

  He needed to know where Moira stood.

  Jas opened some images from the Lampeter website. “This was incredibly fragile, a Vulgate Bible from the twelfth century.” Everyone liked illuminated manuscripts. “We scanned it without even opening it.”

  Moira didn’t dismiss it out of hand. “How?”

  “Michelle’s inventions.” He showed Moira pictures of the scanners. Sheets of graphene that slid in between pages, ultra-fast book flippers for the most robust texts, or ultrasound devices for the most fragile. “So now that book can never be lost, or destroyed, even if it’s stolen or water-damaged…”

  “Or burnt.”

  It felt wrong to mention fire, to a librarian. Like saying “Macbeth” to an actor. “Yes.”

  “Interesting.”

  He would pitch hard, now, while he had her attention. “And with a collection like this, it seems such a waste for only the readers who are physically present to see it. I’m not saying you should throw it open…” He wanted that with all his untrained anarchist librarian heart, but he could haggle. “You would still absolutely be able to control exactly who has access to the texts.” She’d like that.

  “So you see digitisation as a way to circulate the texts.”

  It was such a basic question that it confused Jas completely. “Yes.” Of course, why else?

  Moira sighed. “Jas, you are a very diligent young man. That’s why I hope you’ll work here for a long while, perhaps study here. But please understand, I will invest in any technology that means I know where my books are.” Tapping her desktop with a bloodless fingernail. “And which means they cannot be destroyed. Anything that makes it harder to steal them, to photograph them, to gain access to them without my knowledge—I want that.”

  She wasn’t interested in opening the library up. She wanted to close it down. Maybe she’d misunderstood.

  “We live in such an amazingly connected world, now,” Jas said. “It’s such a part of scholarship, and learning, and…” Vainly throwing keywords at the librarian.

  “You’re right. In fact, I’ve been speaking to Michelle. She’s agreed that you can advise me on this.”

  “Really?” A bloom of optimism.

  “Building a security net, for a connected world. I’ll tell you about some of the worst offenders of the last five years.” Her eyes were bright at the thought of book thieves. Worse than that: library thieves. “You can tell me how you would have caught them.”

  “Yeats,” said Jas. They were using famous writers for the game, today.

  Each touch they give / love is nearer death… Jas had read that Yeats poem when he was learning about the librarian’s dilemma. It applied more to books than to lovers.

  There were always two impulses in any librarian, any library, any collection: the desire to preserve a text, and the desire to make it available. Those two impulses were always at war. Each finger on a book lessened its lifespan.

  But that was the marvellous thing about Jas’s scanning work: now the whole world could read a book without damaging it, without even touching it. How many other professions built around a central paradox could say: we solved it?

  “Wallace Stevens. Hey. Sleepyhead. Stevens.”

  Moira didn’t seem to be conflicted at all about her collection. Preservation trumped access, for her, every time. She was committing an act of enclosure: taking things which could easily be in the public domain and building a wall round them.

  There was a dark side to collecting books. A hoarding, acquisitive desire. To keep the books away from other people and their sticky fingers. You had to temper that desire, and use your knowledge to increase the knowledge of others. Without that, you weren’t a librarian. You were just a hoarder.

  “Stoker,” said Jas. “Bram Stoker.”

  “Hey, not fair. That’s my turf. Anything Gothic—mine. Anyway. Ayn Rand.”

  And now she wanted to put Jas’s diligent young brain to keeping people out. Poacher turned gamekeeper.

  “You coming to the pub?”

  “Already?” The whole day gone, and he hadn’t even tried to find the Woburn Sands book.

  “All librarians are evil,” Fred announced, as they crossed the dark quad on the way home that night. “You want to be a librarian, Jas. It’s because they make a difference, right?”

  Jas shrugged. There was still a light burning in the library. At lunchtime he’d emailed his best essays to an admissions tutor at St Simon’s, and he wouldn’t let Fred’s ramblings damage his chances.

  F
red rolled on. “But librarians are supposed to be neutral, right? You want a book about raising Satan, the librarian’s supposed to give it to you. So how can you be moral and neutral? They want to make a difference, but they don’t say what difference they actually make.”

  “But you gave me that book.”

  Jas hadn’t intended to say it. He was tipsy. He wanted to check if he had someone on his side. “That made a difference, to me.”

  “Oh, that was just queer solidarity. Hope you didn’t mind. I mean, I’m not assuming… Y’know.”

  “I thought you were agreeing with me. Showing me something that should be shared—released.”

  “Nah. None of that hippy stuff. Just a present.”

  They climbed the stairs to Jas’s room, and at the door, Fred said: “Hold on a moment.” He reached behind Jas’s head, speaking and moving so casually that Jas thought Fred was brushing fluff off his coat collar.

  Fred laid his hand across the nape of Jas’s neck and kissed him. His beer-tasting tongue parted Jas’s lips and moved in a slow circle inside Jas’s mouth. It was a bit much, but not unpleasant.

  “Can I come in?” Fred asked.

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Have you met me? I’m always drunk.”

  They were both laughing. He could feel the upwards curve of Fred’s lips, wished he could remember what Fred’s face looked like, if he’d been attracted to him at all before this ambush.

  “Look, come in, but maybe not…”

  “Not for that.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “But maybe.”

  After all Fred’s threats to leave, his sudden attempt to move closer was sexy. Sexier than his musty suit jacket. “Perhaps.”

  It was hard to plan the theft.

  Jas found Woburn Sands the following day and read more of it in the library. It was too intense to read it in a dark public room during his lunch hour. It needed to be read on a windy beach, in a cafe in a city, on a bed, being charmed and buffeted by the voices from the past.

  More importantly, it should be shared with the people who would be cheered by it, who were trying in the face of hostility to construct a history.

  Jas checked the perimeter first: no door, no hatches. No means whereby he could slip the book into another bit of the building.

  He argued with himself while he patrolled: I could get sacked.

  I probably wouldn’t.

  This would be a ridiculous way to remove all hope of studying at St Simon’s.

  It’s really important. It’s the principle.

  I’m a thief. When you steal from a library, you steal from everyone in the world.

  That’s such a pre-digital idea. A childish idea. I’m not a thief. I’ll bring it back.

  You’ll keep it.

  Shut up.

  Jas looked at the windows. In most libraries, the windows were sealed. If you didn’t have a central courtyard, you were condemned to swelter. Here, at least, they were open.

  Jas set his book on a wide windowsill.

  Then he worked for another half hour, to make it less suspicious.

  “I’m going for lunch.”

  “Mind if I join you?” said Fred.

  “Oh, I need to do some things.”

  Fred’s poker-face rebuked Jas. It would be tactless, after last night, to fob him off. “Sorry. We could meet later?”

  Fred shrugged, all bony shoulders and nonchalance. “If you like.”

  Jas forced a smile. His footsteps down the library aisle had never sounded louder. Moira was in her office. His heart slapped insistently, something is wrong, something is wrong.

  Jas opened the library door, turned hard right along the wall, to the window where, on the sill, his prize waited for him. He scooped it up silently, slipped it into his bag and kept walking.

  In his room, Jas slid the book under his mattress. No, that was the first place people would look.

  He turned round and round, eyeing every crevice and seeing no hiding place. What had he done? A sackable offence, definitely a sackable offence.

  Better to scan it, and take it back straight away. He popped the book into one of the slower flicker-scanners and watched it deftly turn the pages.

  The door opened.

  Jas tried to stand in front of the device.

  Fred stood in the doorway.

  “Cheeky,” he observed. “Oh, no, don’t faint on me…”

  Jas sat on the edge of the bed and waited for the room to stop spinning.

  “It’s not enough,” Jas said, when he was calmer. “I mean, it’s not fair for me just to borrow a book that I want to read. There must be other books, useful to other people…”

  “Aye.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Well, what can you do? You can’t take snapshots of everything.”

  “I’ve got these scanners. Really good scanners.”

  Fred raised his eyebrows. “Moira wouldn’t like that.”

  “Do you think we could talk to the Vice Chancellor of the University?”

  “‘We’? Leave me out of it.”

  For the next fortnight, Jas was remarkably productive in both halves of his double life.

  He set up the online security net Moira had requested. First, he cross-referenced the Harrad Collection catalogue against other library catalogues to find the really unusual books. Then he set up alerts, triggered if anyone mentioned one of these rare books online.

  “That’ll catch them,” Moira said. It was the most satisfied he’d ever heard her.

  After work, Jas smuggled texts out of the library. Ones that seemed to him to relate to queer history, a couple every day. He scanned them and returned them, too nervous even to read them. They went no further; he couldn’t work out how to share them. It was a futile, minuscule act of rebellion.

  Most evenings he ate dinner in the pub while Fred drank, and they slept in Fred’s room together. And while Jas worked and stole and slept, he waited for an offer from St Simon’s.

  He woke up in Fred’s room, colder than usual. Fred’s warm weight was absent.

  Jas wondered if he should go back to his own bed. It was weird to be here on his own. The pillows smelled of cigarette smoke—it had seemed exotic and sexy as he’d fallen asleep, but now he didn’t want to rest his face in it.

  Jas walked as softly as he could to his own room.

  There was a light shining under the closed door. He flung open the door, hoping to startle whoever was in there.

  The surprises came in quick waves.

  To find Fred in his room, when he’d just come from Fred’s bed.

  To see Fred juggling very competently one of the graphene scanners, clearly having used the slippery and delicate thing before. A flicker-scanner fanned a stack of five books in one corner of the room, and the ultrasound machine hummed in another.

  But mainly, Jas was startled by the scale of it. There had to be a hundred books stacked on the carpet. Fred alone had clearly carried them from the library, intending to scan and replace them tonight. Up and down the stairs, and no lifts. Fred was enthusiastic, manic at times, but Jas had never seen him so industrious.

  Jas realised that Fred and Moira both scared him. But at least he knew what Moira wanted.

  Fred sprang towards him. Wrapped his pyjama-clad arms round him.

  “You were right. Information wants to be free,” said Fred.

  “Fred, why…” Fred had been awake for hours, Jas for only minutes. He couldn’t think straight, and Fred talked over him.

  “You’ve opened my eyes,” said Fred.

  “You’ve nicked my scanners.”

  “Borrowed. Just for tonight. But something’s better than nothing, eh? Send a few books out into the world, like doves after the flood.” Fred tightened his hold.

  Jas spoke into Fred’s mop of smoky hair. “You need to promise—swear—you’ll never do this again.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Have you shared any of it?”


  “No.”

  “You have to wipe your memory cards, wipe everything. I’ll help you put the books back.”

  Up and down the stairs in the dark. Barefoot on stone, so as to make as little noise as possible, so that each step was painful—like the little mermaid, he thought, as sleeplessness sent his brain off on strange tangents.

  He was so bone-cold and bone-weary at the end of it that he never wanted to see Fred again. But so much of both that he let him creep into his bed and hold him.

  “Promise. Never again.” Jas knew his own lesser transgressions would have to end, too. Even though they was hardly comparable to Fred’s efforts. No more scanning for either of them.

  “I promise,” said Fred.

  An alert was triggered the next morning; something caught in the new security net. An academic in America boasting about working on a “lost” Gothic novel. It could be a coincidence. Jas didn’t report it to Moira.

  Fred didn’t turn up to work. Catching up on sleep, Jas guessed.

  An email at midday from St Simon’s made Jas an offer: a place on an undergraduate degree, starting that autumn.

  Jas prayed they’d never find out about the scanned books.

  During the afternoon, a different fear crept over him. If he took up the offer, would he be tied to Moira and the library indefinitely?

  As Jas was leaving the library, that evening, Moira spoke. “Wait, Jas.”

  She’d found out. About the alert Jas hadn’t reported, or his thefts, or Fred’s misdeeds. She was going to sack him, prosecute him, have him barred for life from all libraries.

  Or she knew about his offer, and he was trapped.

  “I’ve not been fair to you. Come with me.”

  Moira led Jas a long way into the library. Unlocked doors, revealed a dusty room. On a table lay metal guillotines, a pin-cushion stuck with three-inch needles. Moira was going to torture him. No, don’t be daft.

  “I do some small repairs, here. Have a seat.”

  She laid a book in front of him. Published in the 1940s, maroon cloth binding. He picked it up, automatically looking for the crevice in which to insert the tracking seed.