An Imperfect Librarian (20 page)

“Orly 2 to London.”

He glances at me through the rear-view mirror. “You make a life in London?”

“Newfoundland.”

“Finland?” he says.

I switch to the French name. “Terre-Neuve, Canada.”

“Canada! Beautiful nature. So cold. Snow, mountains, big cars, houses of ice.”

I lean forward in my seat. “We don't live in igloos. It's cold often but you get used to the weather. Newfoundland summers are the best anywhere. Where are you from?”

“I come to Belgium two years now. Paris last year. My family come from eastern Congo. Zaire. Refugee camp. You know Zaire?”

“Only from reading
TinTin in the Congo
. You're far from home. You miss it?”

“No miss camp. I start home in this country. You have home?” He reminds me of the last line I read in Defoe's
Crusoe
before I fell asleep in the hotel:

Now, I look back upon my desolate island as the most

pleasant place in the world, and all the happiness my

heart can wish for is to be there again.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

I
F WE CAN
'
T LAND IN
St. John's,” the captain says, “we'll go on to Halifax.”

I don't care if there's thirty-two centimetres of fresh snow on the ground or that gusts are in the fifty-kilometre range. The minus five degree temperatures shouldn't stop a plane from landing either. We pass through turbulence. Pressure builds in my ears. The plane drops then rises again. “Looks like we're going to have to abort the landing,” the man in the seat in front of me says. A baby starts crying. The woman next to me grips the armrest. There's a jolt, a bounce then the brakes screech while the plane slows down on the runway.

The airport is swarming with throngs of stranded passengers. On my way to the taxi stand, I pass a young man lying on the floor on top of a sleeping bag. Outside the terminal, a man holding a clipboard asks me where I'm heading.

“Cliffhead, near Cape Spear.”

He points to the first taxi in the line. I open the door then slide my laptop and backpack along the back seat. The interior
smells of stale cigarette smoke. The seatbelt doesn't work.

“How long you here for?” the driver says.

I talk over the noise of the radio. “For as long as people will have me.”

He laughs. The snow-covered roads make for a quiet ride except when the driver slams his palm into the horn because the car up ahead is going too slowly. I slouch in the seat and close my eyes to make the time go faster. I picture the Crimson Hexagon looking pink under a white gauze of snow. I imagine being naked with her, under the covers in the peak of the house. The driver turns up the heat. The car fills with the smell of the pine freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror.

I can hear the dogs barking as soon as we stop in front of the barn. The path to her house is neatly shovelled in places, drifted over in others. The key is under the step where she said it would be. I open the door slowly to let one dog out at a time. Folio comes first and jumps up on me. The other two rush out from behind. They squeal and bark then hop on me.

“Calm down. Stop!” I hold them off with my backpack but they jump and knock it out of my hands. I can't fight them so I sit on the front step and let them lick my face. Octavo and Quarto hear something in the woods then dash off. Folio pokes her nose in the backpack. I pull out a purple ball I bought in a shop in Oslo. It glows in the dark and has a remote sensing device that goes at the end of a key chain. I throw it. Folio hops through the snow then tears back to me and drops it at my feet.

“Good girl. Come on in.”

Norah doesn't allow the dogs beyond the porch area. I make an exception this one time for Folio. She follows me into the porch and then into the kitchen. I read the note on the table next to the open bottle of red:
Make yourself at home. Enjoy the bread. Cheese is in fridge. Will arrive between 9 & 10. We'll toast our reunion.
Folio hops up and rests her paws on the table.

“Get down. Bad dog.” I take her by the collar to lead her to the porch. Just before we reach the door, she sits. I try dragging her. “Come on. Into the porch. I'm tired. Please, Folio.” She licks my jeans. I let go of her collar then rub her ears. “I'm happy to see you too.”

Folio is more comfortable on the warm hardwood floors in the living room than on the ceramic tile in the porch. She likes it when, every so often, I lean forward in the rocking chair to rub her belly with my foot. After two glasses of wine, and forty pages of
Alice in Wonderland
, I don't feel like rubbing anymore. I close my eyes again and hope that Norah will soon arrive. There are no sounds except for the woodstove's fan and Folio's snoring. I stop rocking and rest my feet against her warm stomach. She jerks up suddenly and digs her teeth into her fur to chase fleas then barks and runs along the hardwood floor to the porch door.

Norah said she'd be back around nine o'clock. It's only seven. I run my fingers through my hair and tuck my shirt into my trousers. I open the door but there's no sign of Norah. I call the dogs. They crowd into the porch around their food and water. I leave the three of them behind the porch door then go up to the peak. I can smell her scent off the blankets. I prop myself up with pillows and pick a book from the pile on her bedside table:
Using Images To Improve Your Memory: 100 Mnemonic Techniques.
I return the book to the pile and close my eyes. There's no commotion in any corridor, no gurgling sounds of flushing toilets from a room above me, not a peep from the wind – nothing but a faint whisper of lazy waves trickling through beach rocks before they're swallowed up by the ocean. I count the seconds between ebb and flood. I fight to stay conscious, like someone treading to stay afloat. It's cold but I'm too tired to get out of bed to close the window.

When I wake later, Norah's naked body is lying next to me.
The moonlight shines in through the window and off her hair. I shiver, then curl up against her warm body. She turns round and kisses me. I reach one arm under her neck and the other around her waist to draw her close to me. Outside, the wind is forcing the snow to fall horizontally. There are no stars to watch through the star-lights. I draw the blankets over our heads and take shelter in her desire.

It's almost early morning before I fall asleep again. As usual, Norah is up before me. She operates on the dogs' schedule and they're up at sunrise. I go downstairs in my bare feet. “Bacon and eggs? Can I help with the cooking?”

“You must be tired after a long trip,” she says. “Let the dogs out then have a seat.”

Octavo and Quarto go outside. Folio smells my clothes then my pocket. I leave her in the porch. Before we eat, I show Norah the
Jabberwocky and other Poems by Carroll
that I bought for her in Norway. “I didn't know if you had it in your collection already. I would have bought you something more expensive or–”

“It's the thought that counts. Thank you.
Jabberwocky
and I have a long history.”

I sit at the table while she fills my plate with strips of bacon. I go to the counter for a napkin. When Norah's not looking, I slide a few strips inside it then poke it in my pocket.

“You'd be surprised how many people have never heard of
Jabberwocky
,” she says as she takes off her apron and sits at the table with her back to the porch door. “Sometimes they know it's a famous nonsense poem. I'm impressed if they can recite ‘'Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.'”

“There's a movie by that name isn't there?”

“That's
Jumanji
, not
Jabberwocky
.” She passes me the salt and pepper. “In third or fourth grade, I promised some kids I'd
give them five dollars if they could tell me what
Jabberwocky
was. That was a fortune in those days. When they couldn't, I said, ‘You'll never be any good except to fish.' Some of them cried. Their parents warned them not to play with me. They'd chant rhymes about me: ‘Yer fadder's a queer, yer mudder's a whore and you're the runt yer parents bore.' I invented my own rhymes: ‘Burn your books and rot your brain. Leave the school, learn in the lane. Less you know, less you miss. Need know nuddin in order to fish.'”

I look down at my pants and see the grease stain from the bacon seeping out through the napkin. Folio watches us through the glass door. I wink at her. After we finish eating, while Norah is in the basement doing the laundry, I open the porch door to give the bacon to Folio. She rushes over to the table before I can stop her.

“Come here you little imp.” I kneel on the floor then reach under the table for her collar. She sniffs my pocket. I take out the bacon and feed it to her.

“Carl!” Norah shouts.

I straighten up with a start. My head hits the underside of the table. “Sorry, Norah. Folio! Come out of there.”

“I asked you not to let the dogs in the house. I told you not to feed them table scraps. Can you get the dog out of there while I go make the bed, please?”

“I said I'm sorry.”

“What good is sorry when the damage is done?” she says as Folio licks the last traces of bacon off my fingers.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

N
OT MUCH HAPPENED AT THE
library while I was away except that Margaret left a message in my voicemail. She wants to schedule an appointment for me with the Chief once the privacy policy is approved. I tell Henry about the message.

“It's only a matter of time now.”

“What were you saying about a miracle?”

“Enter that Crimson Hexagon, fetch me some evidence and I'll deliver your miracle on a platter,” he says. “I bet you Francis is stashing Special Collections materials in there.”

“You're so keen, why don't you do it?”

“I'm not the one who has to worry about Francis. In no time I'll be far away from him, far from this library. Four years, two months, one week and two days to be exact. I'll be retired, and if all goes well, sitting behind the desk in my bookstore.”

“And you scold me for counting?”

“Are you any good with accounting?” he asks.

“You don't need to be good at accounting anymore. There
are very sophisticated computer programs that will do it for you.”

“I'll have better things to do than counting, accounting or computing. When I'm not tending to the business, I'll be busy with writing. Did you know I have a brilliant idea for a play already? The main character is modelled after you. It's called
The Imperfect Librarian
. ‘Man, the imperfect librarian may be the product of chance or of malevolent demiurgi.'”

CARL:
What's that supposed to mean?

HENRY:
Ask Borges.

CARL:
Did you have in mind a tragedy or a comedy?

HENRY:
Only high drama could capture the severity

of evil gods. This nonsense with Elsa could lend it a

melodramatic character. There'll need to be an

element of comedy, otherwise it wouldn't be true to

your character. I want to give it a Borgesian quality. I

wonder if I could pull that off in a one-minute play

with six scenes of an equal ten seconds each.

CARL:
Or ten scenes of six seconds each or three

scenes of twenty minutes each or–

HENRY:
How do you say the word
enough
in Spanish

and Italian?

CARL:
Basta.

HENRY:
Again, three times in a row.

CARL:
Basta
,
Basta
,
Basta
.

HENRY:
Let that be a lesson for you the next time

you get carried away with arithmetic.

CARL:
It's not arithmetic, it's–

HENRY:
I could always do some acting on the side.

You've never seen my Borges' recital have you?

[Henry pauses, passes coffee mug to Carl, rises out of his

seat, turns to face Carl, legs astride, ready to pounce, hand

in the air, head cocked to the side staring up at hand.]

...the sky turned the rosy color of a leopard's

gums. Smoke began to rust the metallic nights.

And then came the panicked flight of the animals.

And the events of several centuries before were

repeated...With relief, with humiliation, with terror,

he understood that he, too, was all appearance, that

someone else was dreaming him.

[Henry lowers arm.]

CARL:
I don't know if you're worse as an actor or a

playwright.

HENRY:
What do you expect with Carl Brunet

for an audience? Since when did you read Borges?

You thought his name meant soup the first time I

mentioned it.

CARL:
You're making that up. I know the difference

between Borscht and Borges.

HENRY:
How about
An Imperfect Librarian: The

musical
?

CARL:
Wouldn't be a hit.

HENRY:
How about
BiblioBrunet
or
BiblioBlunder
?

Or we could scrap the alliteration and settle on

Bibliofiasco
. What's your take on it? You're the central

character in the production after all.

CARL:
I'd prefer a more nuanced character.

HENRY:
Not possible. Not among the company you

keep.

CARL:
What I mean is that supposing my mother

hadn't given me up at birth and I didn't have to be

raised by a pair of squabbling twins?