Marianne, the Magus, and the Manticore

by Sheri S. Tepper

  After making an effort to leave the library every night for some little time, she had resolved not to try to leave for a while. The attempts had become increasingly frustrating, and she felt it might be easier to give up the effort, at least temporarily. She resolved to accept the necessity of washing out her underwear and collar in the staff washroom. She made a brief prayer of thanks that her appetite had never been large and was now easily placated by a few of the stale biscuits kept in the staff tea room. These biscuits never seemed to grow more or less stale, and their quantity remained constant in the slant-topped jar. When the jar was turned in a certain fashion, the tin lid caught light falling from street lamps through the high window to reflect it upon the dusty couch where she slept.

  During the first several evenings, Marianne had turned on the lights in the basement room, flooding it with a harsh, uncompromising emptiness more threatening than the dark. The light brought persons to gather mothlike at the window where they crouched on the ground to peer down at her and whisper of books; the stealing of books, the destruction of books. When she turned off the lights, they went away, or so she thought, for the whispers ended and no shadows moved at the barred window. Thereafter, she used the lights only in the washroom, which had no windows, or upon her desk, so deeply hidden among the corridors of volumes that no ray could have betrayed her to watchers.

  On each of the first several afternoons, rather late, Marianne had been sent on an errand of one kind or another: to take books to a room in the sub-basement; to find books in the fourth floor annex; to take papers to the special collection room on the mezzanine – all of them places difficult to find or return from. She had been at first surprised and later angered to find all the staff gone when she returned, the doors locked tight, the outside visible only through the vast, chill slabs of glass in the main entry. Each evening at this time it rained, glossing the pavements and translating the sounds of cars into sinister hisses which combined with the tangle of brass railings to make her think of feculent pits aswarm with serpents. It was better to go back to her desk, to that single warm light, to work there until weariness made it impossible to work any longer, than to stay in the chilly chasm of the lobby beside those transparent but impassable doors.

  When both darkness and weariness overcame her, she felt her way down the wide marble flight, carefully centered in order not to touch the railings, around the corner to the small door – discouragingly labeled ‘Authorized Personnel Only’ – then down the pit-black funnel of the basement stairs to the washroom and light. From there it was only a step or two to the tea room where panties and collar could be laid wet upon the table, wrinkles smoothed; where a handful of biscuits could serve for supper, washed down by a mouthful of cold tea; where the tin-topped jar could be turned to beam its pale blot onto the place she would sleep; and to dream of dusty wings beating against glass. She always folded her trousers over the back of a chair, thankful for the plain, dark uniform which did not show dirt or wrinkles.

  At first light she wakened, terrified that she might have overslept and be about to be caught in semi-nakedness, remnants of dream catching at her to drag her back into sleep. After washing and dressing herself she became calmer, able to hide in the washroom and emerge when others arrived, as though she herself had just come to work. Some member of the staff always brought rolls, sometimes fruit, though whether this was done spontaneously or by arrangement Marianne never knew. The provender made up the larger part of her day’s food, and she had learned to sneak an extra roll or second orange to hide in her desk. At 8.50 the assistant librarians reported to the head librarian, a single line of them neatly clad in the same white-collared uniform which cost Marianne so much anxiety. Many shadowy figures, Marianne among them, watched this assembly from above while the roll was called to the accompaniment of dignified banter suitable to the profession, and finally to the clang and thwock of bolts withdrawn from the top and bottom of the main doors.

  Usually one or more patrons waited outside, strolling about on the brick paved portico or leaning against the glass to peer within through cupped hands at the lobby clock. Then the staff members trooped upstairs to their desks, the doors began swinging as patrons entered, and the day began.

  Though none of the staff ever spoke to her directly, Marianne was not conscious of any ostracism. There was such indirection in the affairs of the library that she believed no one really spoke to anyone else, ever. Information seemed always to be conveyed in passive statements. ‘The door to the muniments room needs to have a hinge repaired’ rather than ‘Mr Gerald, please repair the hinge.’ This inherent passivity had much to do with the fact, thought Marianne, that the door to the muniments room was not repaired for days although its need for repair had been plaintively stated half a dozen times. Thus, Marianne might be given some task by a half-aborted gesture from an assistant librarian directing her attention to a small pile of books while a statement was directed somewhere over her left shoulder, ‘Those should be in the sub-basement storage area,’ or ‘There’s space in the shelves of the Alchemy stacks for those.’ Mr Gerald, an insouciant figure who arrived occasionally to have long, confidential talks with the head librarian or the doorman, seemed oblivious to these gentle requests. Marianne wondered why she, almost alone among the staff, always acted upon these indirect requirements when virtually all the others seemed able to ignore them completely.

  She also asked herself what the staff did all day. Though there was a constant movement to and fro, a flutter of paper and a wheeling of carts about, no one ever seemed to bring books in or take them out. She thought at first it might be the kind of library which was devoted to research on the premises, full of important works and rare volumes. This thought would have been comforting, but she could not reconcile the idea with the actual subject matter of many of the books on the shelves. Some were of an obscenity she found shocking; others lacked sense; some had pictures so vile that she had to cover the pages while working away with her mending tape and glue. There were always loose backs to be fastened on securely, notes to be erased from margins, pages to be mended, labels to be lettered and affixed. Each morning a cart of such work awaited her arrival at her desk, and each afternoon the cart disappeared, taken away by one of the porters, she supposed, though she had never actually seen it happen. Upon this constant maintenance work were imposed the errands, obliquely stated. ‘Some periodicals in the Sorcery section need to go to storage.’ ‘They need a binder clamp up in Thaumaturgy.’ The same diffidence which undoubtedly prevented the assistant librarian from directly ordering Marianne to do these things also prevented Marianne from questioning them. Once she woke late at night with the words, ‘Where in hell am I to find a binder clamp!’ upon her tongue, only to flush and curl more tightly into herself upon the couch. To have spoken those words aloud would have been to break some fragile pretense upon which the library and Marianne’s whole existence depended.

  She spent much time carrying books away to the sub-basements, adding them to the endless, tottery stacks which filled corridor after corridor of rooms. When books were sent to storage, they had faded almost to monochrome, page and print alike in yellowed tan, the print a mere shadow of fading lines. She never found the bottommost of the subbasements. Her imagination told her that the rooms of faded books ranked downward forever, into infinity. Some of the rooms nearer ground level held a clutter of miscellany which might have been left over from a time when some other occupant had used the building.

  In one room a line of dress forms stood along a wall, voluptuous bosoms thrust in various directions like the snouts of questing animals, turtles perhaps, hunting food in the dim underwater light. Another room held cases of stuffed birds, parrots and lyre birds and toucans, and still another was almost filled with broken furniture. In this room she found a dusty blue blanket which looked almost unused. She beat it free of dust before carrying it to her couch, sighing with contentment. While the room was warm enough, there had been something indecent and d
angerous about sleeping half naked with no cover. The blanket became her walls and doors at once. She ate her biscuits while stroking it and curled up beneath it early in the evening to savor the scratchy security of it next to her face. That night she slept without waking, and when she did waken, much later than usual, it was with the dream clear in her memory. She had been collecting butterflies, huge, brilliant insects which fluttered away before her net only to be captured and thrust into her collection jar where they beat their wings against the confining glass, shedding the delicate powder from their wings, breaking the membranes, becoming motionless. Then she had been in the jar with them, feeling the feathery blows of those wings as they beat and beat against the glass, seeing the rainbow dust which fell from them onto her own bare arms and shoulders and breasts so that she became as brilliantly colored as they. She lay for a long time thinking of this dream, slow tears gathering beneath her eyelids.

  Eventually, she rose, folded the blanket lengthwise, and hid it beneath the cushions. Several times during the day she went to the tea room to see if it was still there. She slept with it close around her every night thereafter.

  Some time after this one of the assistant librarians spoke to the air across Marianne’s shoulder saying that Mr Grassi would be researching certain literature in the small reading room later in the day. Later the same person, still speaking to the vacant and unresponsive air, said that Mr Grassi would need the books reserved for him in the thaumaturgy section. Marianne understood this to mean that she should find the books in Thaumaturgy and deliver them to Reading. As was the case with most locations in the building, both Thaumaturgy and Reading were uncertain. She was sometimes amazed that she always seemed to be able to get to any place indicated by these oblique instructions. This time she referred to the large chart hanging behind the head librarian’s desk and was able to puzzle out a route to and from. She was approaching the small reading room when she heard the doorman say behind her, ‘Good afternoon, Mr Grassi,’ and was able to follow the strange hunched figure thus addressed as it moved between two stacks and through the half hidden door. She caught the door as it closed and entered.

  He was seated at the round table set in an arc of window, peering through the one transparent pane at the narrow view of the garden outside. Tattered lilies bloomed there under the lash of a cold wind, and the man’s head nodded in time with their nodding as though the wind blew him as well. When she put the books at his elbow, he turned to look directly into her eyes. ‘The books I ordered?’ he asked.

  Tears spilled down her cheeks before she was aware of them, pouring across her face in forked runnels, wetting the sides of her nose, the corners of her mouth, dripping untidily from her chin. She fumbled for a tissue, blotting her face, apologizing while Mr Grassi engaged in a strange little dance of compassion which he wove about her out of pats and pokes and jigging steps.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said angrily. ‘I don’t know what got into me.’

  He had pulled out a chair for her, bumping it into her legs from behind with such vigor that she fell into it. ‘My dear, my dear,’ he said, emphasizing each word with another pat of his pawlike little hands. ‘Please don’t cry, my dear.’

  Marianne wiped away another freshet, confused by the troubled face before her. His mouth was open, the tip of his tongue showing at one side of it in an expression of such comical and doggy concern that she almost laughed. ‘You looked directly at me,’ she sobbed. ‘They don’t do that here. They don’t see me.’ And having said this she was aware for the first time of its truth. Indeed. They did not see her; they did not see one another. They lived, if this was living, and worked and were without true knowledge of one another, acting at every moment in the faith, perhaps only the hope, that others were there, but without the evidence of it. Perhaps it was only that things did, eventually, happen in response to their expressed hopes or needs which made them believe that others were present, that others heard, saw, felt, did. ‘They don’t see me!’ she asserted again, ‘But you did. It made me cry!’

  Unaware of her revelation, he attempted comfort which she did not need. Their mutual incomprehension straggled into silence. He sat looking at her, tongue still caught between his teeth as though it were too long to be completely withdrawn. Marianne blotted herself dry and said, ‘The people here at the library do not look at one. I realize now that they can’t. But it’s nerve-wracking never to be noticed, seen. So, when you did, I was so grateful to know that I’m actually here.’

  He shook his head, not in confusion or negation, but as though in commiseration. ‘But of course you are here, my dear. That’s the whole thing, isn’t it. You are here, and we don’t want you here at all.’ They both subsided after this. She did not feel she had explained, and she had not understood what he had just said, but they were convinced of one another’s good will.

  ‘May I get you anything else?’ she asked, suddenly conscious of her position as staff.

  ‘Not at all. We have the two I asked for: Doing and Undoing, and here is Macravail’s To Hold Forever. Macravail is the authority on malign enchantment, of course.’ He tipped his head to one side so that his eyes were almost above one another as he regarded her from this strange angle. ‘Can I do anything for you?’ This offer, the last word whispered in an intensely confidential tone, caught her so by surprise that she shook her head, saying, no, no, not at all, before she realized she could have said, yes, of course, you can help me escape. But the moment had passed, he had turned to the books and was now reading while one finger tap-tapped at the page. The picture on the page was familiar, and Marianne stared at it for a long time over his shoulder before creeping out and away to her own place to work there while the light from the window swung slowly from right to left as the morning gave way to late afternoon. The inevitable errand materialized to take her to the fourth mezzanine just before the doors were locked, but afterward she did not go either to her desk or to the tea room.

  Instead, moved by some obscure impulse she could not have explained, she went back to the reading room where Mr Grassi had spent the day. The room was empty, the books lying on the table. She took up the one titled To Hold Forever, thinking to take it to her own desk for a while. Through the single transparent pane of the window she saw persons gathering in the garden, pushing through the shrubbery to crowd at the side of the building to lie down there with their heads and shoulders hidden. She knew then that the staff tea room lay immediately below this room and that the persons gathered outside were those who peered so greedily in upon her if she was unwary enough to leave the lights on. From above they looked ominous, bulky and amorphous, as though constructed of shadows. She did not attract their attention as she took the book away.

  At her own desk she turned the pages one by one but was unable to find the familiar picture. Faces stared at her from the pages, demon faces, ordinary faces, bulky forms like those in the garden, long pages of incomprehensible words. She left the book in the reading room before she went downstairs. Evidently the page she sought was one only Mr Grassi could find. She did not find this idea at all surprising.

  She was waiting for him when he arrived the next day as she had somehow known he would. She blocked the aisle leading to the reading room, giving him no room to walk around her, ready for the question she had known he would ask. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ to which she replied, ‘Will you open the book for me, please?’ It was not quite what she had planned to say, but it was close enough.

  He led her into the room, opened the book upon the table, holding it with one hand as he guided her own to the heavy pages. ‘It won’t stay open unless you hold it,’ he said. He waited patiently for her to refuse or ask other questions, but she had done what she planned to do and could think of nothing else. He left her then, and she sat in his place at the table to examine the picture of herself, seated on the couch in the tea room, the light falling dimly through the high, barred window. The text on the facing page began, ‘Her desk was on an u
pper level of the library, as were those of the assistant librarians, but not, as theirs were, upon the balcony itself …’ It went on, ending at the bottom of the page, ‘But she had done what she planned to do and could think of nothing else.’

  She could not believe what she had read, dared not close the book or turn the page. She read it again and yet again, not needing to have read it at all.

  She was brought to her sense of time by a scratching at the window which proved to be one of the shadowy peerers, evidently balanced upon the shoulders of one of his fellows to press half his face against the transparent glass and stare in at her, mouth making fish motions, words she could not lip read and wanted not to hear. Holding the book carefully open with one hand, Marianne turned out the light. A muttering outside the window became a crashing sound and a louder shouting then with tones of anger. The peerer-in had fallen. She sat for a long time without being able to make up her mind whether to take the book to her own desk or to carry it down to her couch or leave it where it was. In the end she did none of these, merely sat where she was, staring blankly at the wall until she fell asleep sitting upright to wake in the dim gray of morning now knowing where she was. When Mr Grassi came in, much later, to take the book from her, she was so cramped she could hardly stand.