Though God did not call mee to stande among the greate still I am a man not a clod & my story bears telling if onlie to holpe in the breding of my sonne: who needs muste rise to manhoode lacking what ever poore model I might have supply’d.
So saith Bracegirdle and so say I.
To take up the tale then, I see by my diary that the next two days passed without significant incident, as did the weekend, blank except for a lone “Ingrid,” which meant I must have gone up to Tarrytown for dinner drinks a brace of reasonably satisfying acts of sexual intercourse breakfast and bye-bye Ingrid.
No, this slights a very nice woman, a choreographer, whom I met at a music company gala, and whom I caused to fall for me by being courteous, sympathetic, generous, and large. She is not the first, was not the last, to make this misstep. I don’t know what’s wrong with men nowadays, but the isle of Manhattan seems to be full of attractive, classy, sexy women between thirty and fifty years of age, both married and single, who find it nearly impossible to get laid. I do my best, but it is a sad business. Let me not enter into all that now.
On the Monday, we had our usual partners’ meeting in the morning and afterward, as I usually do, I called my driver and went to the gym. I noted above that I live a fairly simple life, no expensive hobbies, etc., but I suppose that having a driver perpetually on call might be counted an extravagance. With the car, it costs me a little shy of fifty grand a year, but on the other hand much of it is deductible as a business expense. There is no good rapid transit connection between my home and my office, and I do not fit into a regular cab, or so I tell myself. The car is a Lincoln Town Car, in midnight blue to distinguish it from all the black ones. My driver, who has been with me for nearly six years, is called Omar. He is a Palestinian and, like me, a heavy-class weight lifter. He was driving a cab when we met, and we both complained about how the regulation cabs they had in New York were not designed for men like us, either as passengers or drivers, and from that came my decision to get the Lincoln and have Omar drive it. He is a terrific driver, both safe and speedy, doesn’t drink, and keeps the car spotless. His only fault (if you can call it one) is that when it is time for prayer, he feels obliged to pull over, get his rug out of the trunk, and kneel down on the sidewalk. This has not happened more than a few times with me aboard, however.
I am not devout myself, although I am not an atheist either. Nor an agnostic, a position I consider absurd, and excessively timorous. I suppose I am a Catholic still, although I do not practice the faith. Like the demons in hell, I believe and tremble. If people ask, I say this is because certain positions of the hierarchy or the Vatican are repugnant to me, as if the church were not quite good enough to contain the glory that is Jake Mishkin, but this is not true. I abandoned worship so that I could be a devil among the women. Yes, my single expensive hobby.
Back to Monday…I was in the gym, which is at Fifty-first off Eighth Avenue. Part of the gym is a regular carpeted Nautilus operation for the locals, but the weight room is unusually well appointed. This is because the proprietor, Arcady V. Demichevski, formerly lifted heavy for the old Soviet Union. Arcady will give you weight-lifting advice if you ask him, and he has a Russian-style steam room with a masseur on site. This end of the gym smells of wintergreen, sweat, and steam. Arcady says the great lifters lift with their heads more than their bodies, and this I have found to be true. It should be impossible for a human being, however muscled, to heave a quarter ton of deadweight into the air, but it is regularly done. As noted already, I have done it myself. It is all about concentration and, who knows, some strange form of telekinesis. It is marvelously relaxing for me to spend an hour or so in the middle of the day lifting weights. When I am done lifting, and have had a steam, I can barely remember that I am a lawyer.
In any case, I had just finished a set of three-hundred-pound bench presses with Omar spotting me. As I was filling my water bottle at the fountain on the Nautilus side, I spied two men entering the gym. They spoke to Evgenia, Arcady’s daughter, at the front desk and I saw her point me out. They came over to me, showed their badges, and introduced themselves as police detectives: Michael Murray and Larry Fernandez. We are so prepped by the cop shows to be interviewed by the police, we have all seen it a zillion times, that when it happens in real life it is oddly anticlimactic. The actual cops looked like the guys who just missed getting the TV part: an ordinary medium-size Jewish-type New York guy and a ditto Hispanic. Murray was somewhat more overweight than they like to show on TV, and Fernandez had misshapen teeth. It was somewhat hard to keep a straight face as they asked me if I knew Andrew Bulstrode, because I imagined what we were doing playing out on the small screen, and I sensed also that they did as well, that they had even learned how to behave from watching N.Y.P.D. Blue and Law & Order.
I answered that he was a client of mine, and they asked me when I saw him last, and I said the first time was the last time, and then they asked if I knew why anyone would have wanted to harm him. I said no, but also that I didn’t know him all that well, and I asked them why they’d come to see me. They said they had found a binder agreement in his room in a residence hotel on upper Broadway that Columbia keeps for visiting faculty, at which point I asked them had anyone harmed him? They said that someone had visited him in that room on Sunday night, tied him to a chair, and, apparently, tortured him to death. They asked me what I was doing Sunday night, and I told them about Ingrid.
Tortured to death. They didn’t supply any details and I did not pry. I recall being shocked but, and this was strange too, not surprised. I neglected to tell the police about the package he had given me, for I considered that it was none of their business, not, at least, until I had taken the time to examine it myself.
THE BRACEGIRDLE LETTER (3)
So we began & I found I had a head for this worke-the numbers stuck hard as Latine never did. I learnt me what is twice two, twice three &c until sixteen sixteens & he expounded & I did fix it in my mynde how to figure therebye using but a pensille & paper: & also Division, as if a man wished to packe 2300 jarres twelve to a boxe how many boxes to be builded & what left in the last one alle figured with no board. He gave me besides a booke which was a wonder to me named DISME: or the Art of Tenths by a Dutchman Simon Stevins, & although you will be hard put to understand Nan I will any way tell you that Disme is a kind of Arithmeticke consisting in Characters of Cyphers; whereby a certain number is described & by which also all accounts which happen to humane affayres, are dispatched by whole numbers, without fractions or broken numbers. When I had shewed I was master of that he let me looke into his Euclid lately englished by Billingsley Lord Mayor of London. Which I ate as foode to a stervyng man or lyke one bounde in fetters, of a sodden set free. Beside this he instructed me in the art of the quadrante & other philosophickal devises that were I thinke ne’er seen on Fish Street before & taught me to make plats to scale from measoures wee took with quadrante & chaynes: also the elements of astronomick figuringe such as takynge Latitudes from the sun & divers stars: mee that when I began I sweare I knew not a Latitude from a cheese. So it was a greate thinge for me to accomplish this who had been accounted a slugg at schole.
This all in one sommer my twelft year: but now my father seeyng this taxed us sayyng what shal you not only be idle thyselfe but also tayke my clerke into idlenesse with thee? But Mr Wenke stod his grownde lyke a man quoth he sir this lad you have is as apt at the Mathematicks as any I have seen: in some few moneths he has learned near all I have to teach hym & will shortly exceede me. He, that is my father, saith how will this Mathematicks sell me more iron? Mr Wenke then says what I have taught the boye will grately spede the workynges of accountes, and to me saith, do you shew your father your Arithmeticke.
So I took pensille & a bit of paper from the fire-box & wishing to mayke a vainglorious shew I Multiplied two numbers of seven figures together. My fathere looked & he saith pah that is mere scribbling. Nay sir, Mr Wenke sayde he has it right. My fathere sayde how can you say s
o? For it would take an houre or more to mayke certayne that figure working with my borde. So we were at a stand; also my fathere had it in his heade besides that there were some thing papistical about such workynges as cominge mayhap from Italie or other landes under sway of the harlot Rome.
Nexte day he ruled I should studie no more with Mr Wenke & be made a foundry-man insteade, saying we shall see if you founder in this as well & laughed heartie at his witte. Soe amid many teares of my deare mother & I too wept most bitter, I wase sent off to my Bracegirdle cozens at Titchfield. The night I left Mr Wenke sought me privily & pressed on me the first ten bookes of his Euclid, saying I have them by heart in the maine & can buy more at Pauls if needbe & make thou good use of them. Soe I departed my home.
My cozzens workes at Titchfield were as unlyke the countynge-house in Fish Streete as one could well imagine for makeing iron is as different from sellyng it as slaughteryng oxen be from the sarving of a mete pye: by that I intend dirty hard callous brute work. My cozzen Matthew the maistre of the place was harde as the stoffe he mayde. Looking down at me for he was a tall grete beare of a man he sayde what a paltrie thinge thou art but we will toughen you or kill you before a yeare be out we shall see which it shalbe & laughed. But though I worked lyke a slave & slept hard on straw with the other prentyces this was not the hardest of my newe lot for I had been blessed by nice breding never a curse in my house & all orderly nor had I ever been much among sinners in the way of the flesh. But now I thought I was amongst vere devils. My maistre though he professed the true faith was a vile hypocrite verey sober in church of Sundays but otherwise a roisterynge knave he kept a punke in the towne & dranke & beat his wyfe & servantes when in cups & fed we prentices short commons in oure kennel. The prentices themselves I swear were become little more than beastes of the field fighting & stealing & drunk when they could filtch ale. They were upon me from the start like crowes at a carcasse on account of my manneres & that I was a relatioun of the maistre & mayde my lyfe a miserie, which I bore as I must, weepeing onlie in secrete & prayynge for release whether by deathe or some othere mercie I cared not. But now one of them Jack Carey by name a lowde booreish fellow spied me at my Euclide & ripped it from my hande & mocked me for a mere clerke & made to throw it in the fyre, then I lept up lyke a fiende, & tooke up a stave & stroke him upon his heade so that he dropped the booke & fell senselesse down & three of them muste holt me then or I would have done grete evil upon hym even murther I think for being overcome with my rage, for which may God forgyve me. But afterwards my waye was more easie amongst them.
4
The crying lasted for approximately five minutes and ended in a series of deep shuddering breaths. Crosetti asked Carolyn what was wrong several times, but received no answer; as soon as the spasms had died down she pulled away from him and vanished behind the bathroom partition. He heard water running, footsteps, the delightful swishing sounds of a girl changing clothes. She’s slipping into something more comfortable, thought Crosetti with unaccustomed anticipation.
But when she emerged, he found that she was dressed in a gray mechanic’s coverall with her hair tightly bound up in an indigo scarf, below which her face had been scrubbed clean of even the light makeup she normally wore. Upon it no trace of the recent outburst. She looked like a prisoner or a nun.
"Feeling better?" he asked as she walked by him, but she didn’t answer. Instead, she began to replace the blotting paper in the wet books.
He walked over and started to pull sodden toweling out of volume three. After a few minutes of silent working he said, "And…?"
No response.
“Carolyn?”
“What?”
“Are we going to talk about what just went down?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you going hysterical just now.”
“I wouldn’t call it going hysterical. I get a little weepy when I drink.”
“A little weepy?” He stared at her and she stared back at him. Aside from a slight reddening of her eyelids there was no sign she had ever been anything but cool Carolyn Rolly. Who said, coolly, “I’m sorry if I disturbed you. I really don’t want to discuss it, if you don’t mind,” and returned to her work.
Crosetti had to be content with that. Clearly, there was to be no leap into intimacy, no sharing of dark secrets, and no further physical contact. They worked in silence. Crosetti cleaned up the scant debris of their supper and the used paper towels. Rolly sat on a stool and did arcane things with her medieval tool-kit and the half-ruined books.
Something at a loss, Crosetti retrieved the manuscript pages, now barely damp, and spread them out on the kitchen counter and the spool table. He grabbed a magnifying glass from Rolly’s worktable and examined a page at random. Some of the letters were obvious-the vowels were similar to modern ones, and short familiar words like the and to could be picked out easily. But actually reading the thing was another matter. Many of the words seemed to be mere sawtooth swiggles, and there were enough completely indecipherable letters to obscure the meaning of well over half the words. Besides that, several of the sheets seemed to be inscribed in some unfamiliar foreign tongue, but he couldn’t be sure of that because the orthography was so difficult to make out. Was he really seeing such a word as hrtxd? Or yfdpg?
He decided to ignore the text and focus on the fabric and character of the sheets. All forty-eight were folio sized, and they appeared to fall into three classes. The first, consisting of eighteen sheets of fine thin paper, were closely written, neatly but with many crossed-out words and lines; they had at one time been deeply creased both vertically and horizontally.
The second group consisted of twenty-six sheets of heavier paper, inscribed on both sides, and on these the writing was larger and messier, with a number of blots: despite this, it was written-at least to Crosetti’s inexperienced eye-in the same hand used on the first eighteen sheets. On each page of this second group, the paper was evenly punctured along one side, as if it had been torn out of a book. Another peculiarity of this set is that they seemed to be overwritten upon faded brownish columns of figures. The word palimpsest popped into Crosetti’s mind, and gave him an obscure satisfaction, although he understood that this was not a true example: palimpsests were normally parchment, where an old manuscript had been scraped down to make way for new text. But clearly this set of pages had been written on paper pressed into duty at need. The remaining four were the pages that had correction marks in pencil, and were clearly a different sort of paper and in a different hand. Crosetti held each of the pages up to the overhead lights and confirmed his guess: three different watermarks. The eighteen sheets of fine paper were marked with a curled post horn and the letters A and M; the twenty-six punctured sheets were marked with some sort of coat of arms; and the last four bore a crown.
But how did this collection wind up padding a binding in the mid-eighteenth century? Crosetti imagined a bookbindery of that era. There was a bale of wastepaper by the binder’s table, a table probably not very different from the one at which Rolly now worked under the light of an articulated desk lamp, her slim neck shone bright and vulnerable against the dark matte of her scarf. It would have been stout English oak, scarred and stained, instead of laminated pallet-wood. The bookbinder sitting before it would have reached into the stack and pulled out six sheets, trimmed them to size with a razor knife against a steel rule, and laid them neatly against the boards.
It was just sheer luck, thought Crosetti, that so many sheets of what seemed to be from the same hand had ended up in this copy of the Churchill Voyages; but on second thought, maybe not. He imagined some old guy dying, and the widow or the heirs deciding to clean out the deceased’s papers. They stack it all in bundles on the front step and send a kid to fetch the dealer in old paper, who comes, makes an offer, and carries the stuff away. Now they’ll have room for a proper pantry, says the heir’s wife, all that dusty old rubbish, pooh! And the old-paper guy tosses the bale into his bin, and after a whi
le, he gets an order from a London bindery, regular customer, say, for a bale of scrap paper…
And because the pages with the pencil marks were not written in the same hand, the binder must have by chance mixed some unconnected printer’s copy in with the scrap from Crosetti’s tidying heiress. Yes, it could have happened that way, and this thought made him happy: he did not desire a miscellany, but a discovery. Although it was giving him a headache now, the peering through the glass, the way the black-brown squiggles refused to surrender their meaning. He put the magnifier down and walked the length of the loft.
“Do you have any aspirin?” he asked Rolly, and he had to ask twice. “No,” said Rolly, in a near-snarl.
“Everyone has aspirin, Carolyn.”
She threw down the tool she was using, sighed dramatically, dismounted her stool, strode away, and returned with a plastic bottle that she shoved into his hand so hard it rattled like a tiny castanet. Motrin.
“Thank you,” he said formally and took three at the kitchen sink. Ordinarily he would have reclined in a quiet place until the pounding pain ceased, but chez Rolly had no comfortable seating, and he was wary of using her bed. He sat therefore on a kitchen chair and was glum and shuffled the sheaves of old paper. Were Carolyn Rolly an actual sane human person, he thought, we could puzzle this out together, she probably has books on watermarks and Jacobean secretary hand or at least she knows more about this shit than I do…
The Book of Air and Shadows Page 7