“Did your mother read you Muca Copatarica?”
“Repeat after me: Muca Copatarica.”
“Muca Copatarica.”
“Much better. Almost perfect.”
“Muca Copatarica.”
“Perfect. Your pronunciation is perfect.”
“No it’s not. But thank you.”
“Obstinate Miriam.”
“Did your mother read it to you?”
“Muca didn’t exist when I was little. She was not yet written. A few years ago I found her and bought her for my niece.”
“Did you read Muca out loud to your niece?”
“Yes, very often.”
“How old is your niece now?”
“Eight.”
“Is this her book? Does she know you have it?”
“Suspicious librarian! Darkest Miriam, you think I would steal my niece’s book, the present I gave her?”
“How should I know. If I can’t prevent you from becoming a computer programmer, if I can’t stop you from giving up your art, then what do I know?”
“This is my own copy, this book belongs to me. I bought this copy for myself.”
INCIDENT REPORT 107
He arrived at 6:15 PM, an ample man with an open face and a white beard. In his right hand he held the folded remains of a cardboard box, and from his left, by its broken handle, dangled a pretty little paper bag, robin’s egg blue.
“May I please see your piano?” he asked in the grave tone of someone who expects to be obeyed. I took the necessary key and showed him the way. I unlocked the door. The large patron entered the tiny room, settled himself on the piano bench, and launched into a monologue of considerable seriousness, addressed to the piano. I walked away, leaving him to his private act of communication.
At 6:25 PM, the patron came to inform me: “You’ve changed pianos.”
I agreed that we had. “The old one,” I explained, “was removed several months ago. It was beyond repair and could not be tuned.”
“Where is the old piano?” he asked.
“Gone,” I told him.
“I left an empty can inside it. I was going to return that can. I wanted my ten cents.”
“The old piano is gone and so is your empty beer can,” I stated. “You should have come back sooner. Please don’t hide any cans in the new piano.”
The patron in question filled his cheeks with air and slowly, volubly, exhaled through thickly pursed lips, while raising his white tufted eyebrows and opening his countenance wide in an expression of incredulous acceptance of the vagaries of life. He lifted his broad shoulders, and allowed them to fall.
As he turned to leave, a flat, oversized book, recently returned and lying on the circulation desk, caught his attention. He flipped it open. Bound sheet music: Satie’s Gnossienne #1, and Satie’s Sonate Bureaucratique.
“May I take this?” he asked, and without waiting for my reply he headed for the piano room, the book tucked under his gigantic arm.
He closed the door and played. He played fluidly, with feeling and grace. I stood outside and listened.
INCIDENT REPORT 108
Janko unbuttoned my blouse and asked, “Now am I calm?” The time was 11:30 PM.
Janko unzipped my jeans and pulled, so that they pooled around my ankles, and I could not step easily forwards or backwards. He was smiling.
“Now am I calm?” he asked.
INCIDENT REPORT 109
At 4:15 PM, three children set fire to a strip of paper in the children’s area. A delicate curl of smoke, drifting up from behind the picture book shelves, indicated the children’s presence. They explained that they were “doing a science experiment,” and reluctantly handed over the cigarette lighter, without which they could proceed no further with their experiment.
INCIDENT REPORT 110
Yes, vengeance, terrible vengeance is my soul’s only wish. It’s already drawing near, the hour of your punishment that will fatally descend upon you, like a thunderbolt hurled by God. Like a thunderbolt hurled by God, your fool will strike you.
He’d tucked his warning between the pages of a children’s book on electricity, which he’d left on a table in adult nonfiction, where I picked it up, at 7:30 PM, intending to return it to the appropriate book cart.
It is the Duke he’s speaking to. It is not me he dreams of harming, but any person he perceives as presenting a threat to my honour or happiness.
To prevent myself from tearing his note into pieces, I slipped it quickly into the drawer of my desk and shut the drawer.
INCIDENT REPORT 111
This morning, Irene Frenkel and I, with the help of twenty children, began to build a seven-foot dragon. A hardware shop up the street donated two rolls of screen. In the basement we found bags of shredded paper and numerous cardboard boxes. Our dragon, to date, resembles a large, somewhat angular sausage. Our work has just begun.
INCIDENT REPORT 112
“I don’t go out dancing anymore, because I haven’t got the right shoes, or the right clothes, or the right legs, or the right ass,” Nila announced. From the drawer of her desk, she took an ink pad and a rubber stamp; she yawned, walked over to the shelf marked “Withdrawals” and started stamping the words “For Sale” inside the covers of the books selected to be put out for purchase because of their battered condition or failure to circulate.
“Then last night, who calls? My sister, to say the arthritis in my mum’s hands has got so bad, my poor old mumsey can’t even pick up a pen. So what do you think, girls? Shall we go out dancing while we still can? Anyone want to come? We’ll wear whatever we like, and we won’t give a shit.”
She set down the ink pad and stamp, and crossed the room to where the kettle was vigorously boiling. She unplugged it.
“Tea, any of you? Or am I on my own? At least you’ll drink a cup of tea with me? There, that’s better. And tonight we’re all going out dancing, yah?”
INCIDENT REPORT 113
At precisely 2:30 this afternoon a female patron, well spoken, with a pockmarked face and a nervous disposition, asked if I might assist her in determining the name of an artist who, several centuries ago, painted a now famous portrait, contriving to use fruit and vegetables to represent each of his subject’s facial features. I answered that I was familiar with the painting, though ignorant of whose work it was, and that I would happily do my best to find out the artist’s name.
For some minutes I searched the Internet without success. Then it came to me. I’d seen the painting less than a week ago, reproduced in a small book brought to the circulation desk by a child. Without pausing to explain my intentions, not wishing to dilute my excitement with concerns of formality, I left the desk and hurried to the children’s area where I pulled from the shelf the exact book. I returned to the desk, victorious, and revealed my find: Vurdunum, 1591, by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Italian painter, court portraitist and festival organizer to three generations of Hapsburg emperors, 1527–1593.
Our pleasure—mine and the pockmarked patron’s—sang in the air. She, the patron, ran her fingers through her lank hair—a regrettable habit—and thanked me. It is of course impossible to measure the intensity of another person’s pleasure.
INCIDENT REPORT 114
“Janko, who taught you to bake?”
“My mother.”
“Do all Slovenian men know how to bake?”
“I am the only one.”
“How old were you when your mother taught you to bake a plum tart?”
“I was ten or maybe twelve. I don’t remember.”
“This is a delicious tart. I have no choice but to marry you.”
“And you will live with me in this horrible little apartment?”
“I will.”
“And you will be miserable, and become angry with me.”
“I won’t.”
“I will find your anger impossible.”
“It won’t happen that way, Janko.”
“Did I tell you? I’ve
dropped out of computer school.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Two days ago.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I’ve painted two copies of Roman frescoes. They are now aging in my bathtub.”
“Can I see them?”
“Later. They are not old enough yet. I’ve contacted someone who says he can sell them for a good price. There will be no lying. People will know the frescoes are not real but won’t care, so long as the pictures look convincing and expensive. You were right.”
“Good.”
“Until I find out how many people in Miami, Florida, want to pay a good price for fake frescoes, I will continue to drive a cab.”
“It’s a good plan, an excellent plan.”
“There’s one piece of tart left. Who is going to eat it?”
“You are.”
“I’ll cut it in half.”
“It’s delicious, Janko, but I’m full.”
“Very good. I’ll eat my half, and afterwards I’ll eat your half.”
INCIDENT REPORT 115
At precisely 6:00 this evening, the squat, well-spoken female patron with the nervous disposition, and interested in the paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, approached the Reference Desk. She slid The Rituals of Dinner, an excellent book by Margaret Visser, across the desk for my inspection, and asked if I might recommend another work of equal quality, also on the history of eating.
“I would particularly appreciate anything you can find on the use of food to depict the human body, in works of art from any century,” she clarified.
I willingly embarked upon the mission she’d assigned me, and began ferreting out possible titles from within our labyrinthine catalogue.
“I am researching,” she explained, her hands restless in her lap. “I am researching cannibalism during the French Revolution.”
She was watching me closely. She was observing me with anticipation.
“I don’t often divulge the nature of my research,” she confessed quite wryly, and her long fingers took flight from her lap. “Cannibalism arouses fear. As a subject of research, it repulses. People retreat and I become the victim of their unfounded loathing.” Her fingers combed her lank hair.
I did not loathe her, and I could have told her so. I chose to remain silent instead, as was my right, according to the Rules and Regulations. I could feel her oppressive closeness. I continued my search for titles of books similar to and comparable in quality to Margaret Visser’s The Rituals of Dinner.
INCIDENT REPORT 116
This morning, at precisely 9:30 AM, one of the smallest and oldest of our male patrons was dropped off by his wife. He wears without fail, regardless of the weather, a plaid bow tie, and marks the ends of his sentences with a vigorous sniff that suggests the day is on probation, his judgment of it pending. His wife, who is considerably younger than he, a tall, austere woman, delivers him to us nearly every morning with perfunctory efficiency, then continues on her way. Her high heels click on the tiled floor of the library foyer. Her patrician bones—cheek, collar and wrist—where they press against her unblemished skin, appear worthy of admiration. At the end of the day she collects him.
Though the patron in question makes every effort to appear obedient in his wife’s presence, in her absence he cannot hide the cunning look in his eye. He conceals candies in his pocket and jots down telephone numbers in his address book, numbers he dials while his wife is gone, using the pay phone in the library foyer.
I suspect his wife knows he won’t live forever. Last winter he slipped on the ice and broke his leg in three separate places.
INCIDENT REPORT 117
The time was 2:04 PM. An exceptionally long-limbed male patron, a regular with wiry white hair drawn back in a short ponytail, and an amused expression in his bright eyes, requested one of the daily newspapers that we keep behind the desk. He stood motionless as a stork, though not on one leg, and from his great height, unhurried, contemplated the circulation desk. He was wearing a paisley necktie that matched his frayed jacket surprisingly well. I complimented him upon his appearance.
“Ah, this, well, the wind was up this morning, and I thought of a scarf, but then that might have been a bit much in this weather, though it was too cold to wear my shirt open at the neck. So I put on this tie, which I’ve had for, oh, some thirty years, it can’t be true, but there it is, some thirty years. Do you know what they call this pattern? Paisley. And do you know why? It’s a wee place some fifteen kilometres to the west, and you can see it from Glasgow, but never mind. This old tie, it might be made in Scotland, I’m not sure. Let’s see now.”
He twisted his tie so I could read the label. It was in fact made in Scotland.
“The jacket, of course, is old as well, but bearing up. And I’m willing to confess I found it. Quite a lovely blue, don’t you think?” He tossed me a flirtatious smile. “Oh, I don’t mind admitting, I do salvage a useful object here and there. Someone had thrown out this lovely jacket, and a pair of pants as well. The pants were not quite the same blue, and they didn’t last long. Big holes in the knees, I had to let them go. But the jacket is quite fine, holding up well, I believe. Quite nice, don’t you think?”
He held out the lapels for me to admire, and playfully puffed up his bony chest, grinning with pleasure like a child at a party, but with a look of irony in his eyes.
It was then that another patron, also a regular, came up to the desk. This man turned to the unsuspecting first patron and shouted, “She was my colleague, we were working at the same clinic when we met and I married her, and what a bitch she turned out to be.”
The first patron nodded politely, ran his tongue along his upper teeth and listened while the second patron continued to pour out his anguish. “She climbed into bed with one of my patients. She’s been harassing me ever since, followed me here from Cochrane, can’t get rid of her, had a restraining order put on her. A real bitch.”
I knew the second man’s stormy tale by heart. Over the past few months he’d mistaken numerous female patrons for his ex-wife, and each time he’d pointed at the woman and yelled, “Get her away from me.”
I slipped away from the desk, leaving the two men to their conversation.
When I returned some ten minutes later, both men were gone. But soon enough the lanky Scotsman reappeared. He cleared his throat and straightened his necktie.
“Well, now, if you’ll recall, we were discussing clothing and the curious difficulty some of us have in parting with certain garments. There was one such garment I bought in 1946, and I’ve dragged it along with me ever since. A housecoat. Of course, nobody in my family wore such a thing, a housecoat, and neither did any of the people we knew. We were what you’d call poor, working-class people. But I bought myself this housecoat anyway. It’s made of felt. I’m not sure it’s entirely fabricated from wool, but there’s wool in the mix for sure, and now, as you might expect—it was purchased in 1946, as I believe I mentioned—it has big gaping holes under the arms. It hangs in my wardrobe, quite alone, and I don’t have many occasions to wear it. But in the winter when the house is cold and I don’t want to turn up the heat too high, I’ll pull it on and wrap it around me, and this garment, this housecoat, does prove useful enough. It has white piping along the edges of its pockets and cuffs and such, and silver stitches, if you please.”
INCIDENT REPORT 118
I walked with my eyes closed.
“This way, this way, good. I won’t let you trip.”
“Are we nearly at the greenhouse?”
“Almost.”
“Is the moon still out.”
“Yes.”
“Is anyone else around?”
“No. Nobody I can see, except two men.”
“Where are they?”
“Some place far away, walking their dogs. Off by the edge of the park. They each have a dog. One small dog is white, with short legs and short fur, one big dog is brown with curls.”
“Thank you
.”
“You are welcome. Is there something else you would like to see?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? You could see a lot through my eyes. The trees are casting dark precise shadows.”
“What happens when we reach the greenhouse?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“I then close my eyes, Darkest Miriam, and it’s your turn to lead me.”
“Where to?”
“Home.”
“You don’t have a home, Janko.”
“Don’t I?”
“No.”
“What about my apartment?”
“No.”
“And my paintings?”
“They are the closest thing you have to a home.”
“What if I have children? Where will they live?”
“You won’t have children.”
“I won’t? You are deciding I won’t have children? But I want to have children.”
“I don’t see you having any.”
“You mean you don’t want me to have any? Is that what you mean?”
“I haven’t any idea if I want you to or not. I’m saying what I see when I close my eyes.”
“Open your eyes.”
“Have we reached the greenhouse?”
“No.”
“Then why should I open them?”
“Open them, Darkest Miriam.”
“No.”
“Do you want me to leave you here?”
“Are you afraid of what I’ll see, if I keep my eyes closed?”
“Afraid. Afraid. Why are you always thinking about fear? Life is bigger than fear.”
“Are you afraid of what I’ll see if I keep them closed?”
The Incident Report Page 9
