The Amazing Absorbing Boy

by Rabindranath Maharaj

  Following that meeting, I wandered up to the third floor, where there was a Caribbean section, and there I met the chimera.

  Chapter Nine

  THE CHIMERA IN THE LIBRARY

  Sometimes when I was sitting on the third floor of the library, gazing down at the street, I would imagine what my friends at Mayaro Composite might think if they could see me here. At that school, the library doubled as a detention centre where delinquents had to spend an hour after dismissal doing nothing in particular while one of the male teachers chatted up the librarian, Miss Garcia. A mobile library came once a month at the Mayaro junction but there was usually a line of drunkards demanding picture books on diseases and witchcraft and outer space. In any case, Uncle Boysie’s shop was always stocked with comics so I had little use for libraries.

  This place, though, was different. There was an elevator with glass sides that went straight up to the fourth floor where a host of people sat before computers. It wasn’t long before I would head straight for the third floor where I had discovered there were Caribbean storybooks, comics, movies, thick old books with mostly pictures, and, here, too, computers all over the place. I sampled all, moving from place to place, watching boys my age concentrating on their monitors. I wondered how many of them were here on a six-month visitor’s visa that would expire in twenty-one days. That always brought me back to earth; and I hung around the weekend seminars on the first floor before I got too distressed and bolted to some other spot. During those times, I wished Dilara was still around so I could share my concern.

  One Saturday there was a seminar on family sponsorship. The seats were filled with grandfather Sikhs who with their white beards looked like corralled lions. The speaker who had brownish-reddish hair that matched her jacket repeated all her sentences and spoke very slowly so what she said was easy to understand: I was in real trouble. I rushed up the steps nearly tumbling a fat man in an old cream jacket.

  The next day I changed my mind several times about whether I should go to the library and when I eventually decided to go I ignored the seminar—this one mostly of women in veils—and headed for the third floor. I plucked out a Trinidad storybook and flipped through its pages searching for some reference to Mayaro. “A mediocre little island.” I glanced up and saw the man I had almost tumbled the previous day. “Think they are smarter than everyone else. The presumptuousness of silly little islanders. Mud-hut folks.”

  And who ask you that? I thought. But I said nothing because this fella looked as if he was working here. After a minute or so, I got a little uncomfortable because he was still looking over my shoulder. When I went to replace the book on the shelf, I saw him staring at me. During the week, I forgot about him as I had other things to occupy my mind but on Saturday, he appeared once more. “I have seen you hanging around the seminars,” he told me. “You always leave halfway.”

  Could he be some sort of library police? I looked up for a good glance and to be honest, he was one of the ugliest persons I had ever set eyes on. There was nothing wrong with any particular feature but the way everything was patched together gave the idea of a man who had no use for friends. Without any invitation, he boldfacedly pulled a chair next to mine. “Yesterday a boy jumped off the fourth floor. He landed right there.” He pointed in the direction of a square enclosure filled with plants.

  “What happened to him?”

  “Exactly what one would expect when a body lands on its head. Every month someone tries to commit suicide here.”

  “You mean the books so boring?” The minute the words left my mouth, I regretted saying them. This fella didn’t look as if he approved of jokes, particularly of tragic topics. I tried to cover up. “Why here?”

  “One does not know. One can only speculate. Perhaps there is a special gravitas to expiring in a place like this. In the case in question, the victim was a refugee claimant who received news that his parents had been murdered in Pakistan.” He daubed away some hair oil that had leaked on his huge forehead and wiped his hand on his jacket. “I am leaving in two months.”

  “To go where?”

  “One goes where life takes one.” He paused a bit. “And you?”

  I had the sudden suspicion that he was some kind of undercover agent to smoke out illegal immigrants. “One will stay here.”

  “Will you allow me to indulge a bit in a favourite pastime?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You are in some kind of trouble. There is a decision to be made.” He brought his hands before him like if he was praying and I noticed the caterpillar bumps on his wrist veins. “See those people walking along Bloor Street? They arrive here from every corner of the globe. A huge conference of nomads. Do you know there are Gurkhas and Bedouins and Shullaks and Mongols and Kushites squeezed together in the streets?”

  Whoever they were. I felt I had to say, “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Have you ever wondered where they disappear to?”

  “To their homes, I would say.”

  “In the nights when everyone else in the city is asleep, their lights are still on. What mysteries are they poring over?” When he said the word “mysteries” he smacked his lips and sniffed as if it was the last piece of a buttery cake. “What are they doing up so late? What are they reading, and eating? Who really knows?”

  I know it might sound disrespectful but the words popped out of my mouth. “Why you telling me all this?”

  “One simply throws out observations. One has no control over their interpretations.”

  The next weekend I decided to avoid him so I sat in a seminar and listened to a strict-looking lady talk about nannies. In Trinidad, nannies were grandmothers but here it seemed that they were servants of some kind. These nannies, the lady explained, had to take care of a pack of children all day, while cooking and washing at the same time. Just like Trinidad nannies. Then a man with his glasses pushed over his bald head said that one group from the Philippines ended up working in an apple farm. When he was finished the woman asked for questions and a Philippines lady said she had been a registered nurse in her old country and many in the audience nodded. One by one, they got up and listed their previous professions. Finally, a youngish girl asked what could be done. The strict woman talked about agencies and sponsorship and some women’s group. When I left, I saw the ugly man staring at me from the third-floor railing.

  All week at work I tried to think of some way I could get my father to understand my problem. I rehearsed questions on my way home, ranging from pleading to threatening to patiently explaining but each time I imagined my father’s reaction to be the same: What assness you talking about?

  On the day my visitor’s visa finally expired, I chose a quiet spot in the library to consider all my options. I decided to write a letter to Uncle Boysie. I got out a pen and began to write:

  Dear Uncle Boysie,

  My visa ran out today.

  I tried to think of the next sentence but was stuck. I didn’t want him to think I was being ungrateful or too complaining.

  “… and I have discovered this booming city withholds its generosity from the disenfranchised,” said a voice. I looked up and saw the ugly man. “Consequently I am trapped on a bridge with no destination in sight,” he said, and added, “Continue writing, please.”

  “Why?”

  “One couldn’t help but notice—”

  “Because one was right over my shoulder peeping at my letter.”

  He sat. “You’re right, of course.” He brought his hands before him and made a triangle with his fingers. “This library has changed over the years. Once it was a nesting place for privileged folks researching some arcane topic but now … now there’s a whiff of desperation about the people you see.” He broke his triangle and waved at a line of Indians before computers. “They are all e-mailing their folks back home pleading for money and understanding. You, on the other hand, have chosen the old-fashioned route. A letter. It’s more poignant, I believe. Each word is stamped with
pain.” He got up. “My time is almost up, too.”

  I completed the letter the next day at home. I ended it with this line: I feel I have reached a bridge with no end in sight.

  In a strange way, I was grateful to the library fella. I searched him out the following weekend. He was sitting before a desk gazing at a book and smacking his lips. “Yes,” he asked without looking up.

  “I wrote the letter.”

  “Ah.” He glanced at his watch. “I will be with you forthwith. My shift finishes at six.”

  I sat by a window table and gazed down. I wondered how long it would take the letter to reach Mayaro. I remembered my plane ride to Canada, imagining that I was flying over big blocks of ice to a Fortress of Solitude place that was cool and quiet and windswept. I recalled the bus trip with my father from the airport, gazing at the rows of similar houses. And for no reason at all, I felt afraid of returning to Trinidad. It wasn’t like a fear of jumbies or anything but a deep cold fear as if a block of ice had lodged somewhere in my chest and was making its ways down, numbing and then eating away all my joy. I remembered a comic book word: contagion.

  “One feels that one is trapped.” He sat.

  “One too.”

  We sat side by side for a few minutes. I tried to understand my fear of returning to a place I missed so much. I wondered whether I was afraid of disappointing Uncle Boysie, or because Auntie Umbrella had mentioned my mother would have been happy to know I was here, or just because my departure would be a victory for my father. In Mayaro, people who returned suddenly from what we called “the cold” were always laughed at. Like Mister Dana who walked around the street in winter boots and shorts, telling everyone “Hi” and saying “Wow” whenever he spotted a ripe mango or pommecythere on a tree.

  I noticed the library fella looking at me as he reached for a book on the table. He pressed it to his nose. “For years I lived in the Beaches. One morning I woke up and discovered that all my neighbours were missing. There were new people managing the shops and sitting in the pubs and staring at me in the bistros. Who were these people, I wondered? How long have they been my neighbours? What did I miss?” He glanced at the jacket photograph on the book. “I met him once, you know. He was chatting up some women who had no idea who he was.”

  “The writer?”

  “Poet. He had come to do a reading and was quite distressed by the women’s mistake. He didn’t come here for anonymity, you see.”

  “Where was he from?”

  “The Caribbean.”

  “And you?”

  “One lives between …” He seemed to be searching for a word.

  “Bridges?”

  “Yes,” he said finally. “But they are quite shaky at this point.” He got up and walked unsteadily to his desk.

  I liked talking to this library man. He appeared more educated than everyone I had met so far, but I believe it was really the idea that he was at some kind of crossroad. Just like me. The next day I was waiting by a glass case that enclosed some books by an Iranian writer when I saw the reflection of a woman in a long Matrix coat.

  “Canella?” I turned to face her.

  “It’s Ginny. And you?”

  “Kelvin Raspail.” I saw her pretty broad mouth opening a bit before she turned and walked away, her coat swirling.

  “A friend?” The library man had a book clasped against his chest.

  “Maybe. I was waiting for your shift to finish.”

  “Come.” I followed him to a corner table and when he sat, I did the same.

  After a minute or so of silence I asked him, “What’s up?”

  He spent another minute passing his tongue over his thick lower lip before he said, “One feels sometimes like a chimera.” It was an interesting comic book word and I tried to picture him with horns and scales. It was surprisingly easy. “It may be difficult to conceive but there was a time when I actually enjoyed my work. This place was my home.”

  “Is that why you are leaving?”

  He shook his head. “Everything has changed. Now the entire staff is beholden to lists. Horrible memoirs bursting with frivolous grief. I feel sometimes as if I am a custodian of misery. But to answer your question, I am leaving because I have been pushed out.”

  “By who?”

  “By my advancing years. In two weeks, I will have reached my retirement age. There is just one regret. Just one.” He didn’t seem willing to continue but I just had to ask. When I did, he brought up his hands, made his triangle, and peered through. “I began a poem on August sixteenth, 1984. It was my first day at the library.”

  “It must be very long.”

  “It’s two lines.” I would have laughed if he wasn’t so serious. “The first line is ‘The snow piffles.’ The second line, written the following year, is ‘Like orphaned kittens.’ For twenty-three years, I have been searching for the third line. It’s inconsequential now.” His triangle collapsed and he looked down at the table. “One had reached an impasse, you see.” He got up suddenly and leaned across the table as if he was about to make a speech. I saw him looking through the window at the people walking along Bloor Street. “One could no longer be inspired. The magic …” He sat once more.

  Magic? I wasn’t going to let him stop here. But what he said, pausing to stare at the table, was the last thing from magic. He said that his inspiration had dried up because his poem was supposed to capture the city but each time he had nailed the place, some change or the other made his line irrelevant. “One was always too late, you see. Not unlike a guest who had arrived at a dinner after the festivities, gazing at the drawn curtain and the darkened house.” Then he said something real unusual. “I have been watching you ever since you first entered this place. Chatting with the jewellery girl, taking the elevators to all the floors, sitting uneasily in the seminars, hiding in a corner to read your book, gazing at the street beneath, writing the letter to your uncle.” He went on with some more observations that got me real uncomfortable, as I had no idea I was under this kind of surveillance. But his little speech seemed to have the opposite effect on him as with each new observation his voice got livelier. The way he was pronouncing his words made me think of plump fishes that had jumped from an aquarium to land on the hard tile. I even told him that. He smiled broadly, which made him look like his chimera creature.

  The following Saturday I hurried out of the Bloor and Yonge station and the minute I got to the library I ran up the stairs. I searched from floor to floor until I eventually walked up to a woman at the desk. I didn’t know the chimera’s name so I described him as honestly as I could. The woman frowned a bit as if she didn’t like him. Eventually she told me that he had retired.

  I took the stairs to the seminar on the first floor: perhaps he would soon return to clear up his desk or take home some personal effects or something. The speaker before the podium was a young man with a real stylish haircut. He was saying, “If we want to capitalize our assets we need to actionize in a robust manner.” I gazed around at the group of oldish Philippine and Somalian people glancing at each other rather than focusing on the speaker. “We must think outside the box,” he said as he connected his laptop to a machine. Words appeared on a screen behind him. He tapped the heading Incentivizing Your Resumé. The words scrolled up and he tapped other words: ballpark figure, winningest, and a series of abbreviations. When the man next to me began to snore, I got out the letter I had received the previous day and pretended I was reading it to the chimera.

  Dear Sammy,

  Is about time that you decide to further you education. My head was always too hard for studies but I always believe that you had it in you. Don’t mind the comic books and them. I sending one thousand with this letter, which will help you to register. Make sure that you don’t waste it on any foolishness. If ever you need any help don’t feel shame to write me and let me know. I going to write a letter to you father too just to make sure that he play his part. He not going to get away from this one.

 
Righto Pappyo.

  Uncle Boysie

  I imagined the chimera listening to me and saying something about “One should do this” or “One should do that.” Just like his last words to me as he was talking about his poem and this magic business: Presumptuousness and innocence must be poured in equal parts into the same container. It is only then that one can discover magic. The way he went on it had seemed that magic for him was not spells and frogs and Ra’s al Ghul, but a new way of looking at some old thing.

  Chapter Ten

  A THOUSAND LITTLE SECRETS

  I continued going to the library on weekends, collecting booklets and trying to understand this whole college system. In Trinidad, high schools were called colleges but it seemed that here they were almost like universities. That almost made me put the whole picture out of my mind, especially when I realized that I also had to do preparatory courses just to qualify for acceptance. One Sunday, a shaved-head black boy showed me how to use the computer to get more information. While he was scrolling through the different sites I asked him if he was from Regent Park and he asked why I would conclude that. I felt he might be displeased by my explanation so I said someone like him was walking up the stairs a couple weeks earlier. He seemed to believe the lie and mentioned he was from the Beaches and that he felt Regent Park was a rathole.