The Douglas Kennedy Collection #2

by Douglas Kennedy

  “Figured with your background you might want to be doing something a little more cerebral than stacking books, so you’ve been assigned to me. A lot of people find cataloging tedious. I’m not one of them—and I’m gambling on the fact you might find it interesting as well.”

  Babs was from the prairies. A small farm near Saskatoon. She had this dry, reedy voice, tobacco cured (at every break she always dashed outside for a smoke), with a somewhat sardonic edge that seemed to define her worldview. She was in her late fifties—widowed, with two grown girls who both lived in Toronto and (from what I could gather) weren’t in close contact with their mother. Information from Babs only rarely seeped out, like the occasional drop of moisture on a concrete plinth. But she still indicated that her marriage had not been a particularly happy one, and her husband’s sudden death from a heart attack six years ago came just when they had decided to separate.

  Babs only revealed this fact to me after we’d been working together for four months. Even then it was mentioned in a side-of-the-mouth way, when I was re-cataloging all the John Updike novels we had in the library, and Babs asked me if he was “the guy who always writes about unhappy marriages.” This style of “plain speak” belied a real intelligence and knowledge of books . . . but she maintained what I came to see as a certain Canadian prairie style, in which overt displays of the highbrow had to be undercut with a certain backwoods naivety.

  When I confirmed that, yes, Updike often wrote about domestic unhappiness, she smiled a rueful smile and said: “Maybe I should read one of his, find out what went wrong in my own marriage.” That’s when she let drop the fact that she’d been on the verge of divorcing her husband—“on the grounds of his endless grumpiness”—when he happened to keel over on a trail somewhere near Lake Louise while returning from a fishing trip with “another of his taciturn friends.”

  That was the only moment I got a glimpse of Babs Milford’s interior life—except for a mention that she hadn’t had a visit from either of her daughters in over two years. Other than that, we simply made small talk when we worked. Babs was quite the political junkie. She taught me massive amounts about Canadian politics. For someone who had lived so long in ultraconservative Alberta—which always fancied itself as the Texas du Nord of Canada—she was surprisingly liberal on all social issues, from women’s rights (especially when it came to abortion), to the legalization of gay marriage, even to the idea that most drugs should be available in state-run liquor stores.

  “Of course, I don’t articulate such things publicly,” she said in that mordant tone from which she never varied, “especially because every second person you meet in Alberta is either a Bible-thumper or someone who really does espouse a Marie Antoinette doctrine when it comes to the less fortunate members of our society.”

  Babs rarely asked me anything about myself—though she did make a point of ordering my one and only book for the library and showing it to everyone in the staffroom during a coffee break, and even taking it home to read.

  “You’ve got one big brain,” she told me a few days later.

  “Don’t be so sure of that,” I said.

  “You don’t get into Harvard and write a book like that without serious smarts. You ever think you might go back into teaching?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  She acknowledged this comment with the briefest of nods. That’s when I knew that she knew . . . even though, from the moment I started work at the Central Library, I realized that Mrs. Woods had briefed everyone on “my background” and they had all collectively and individually decided to steer clear of any subject to do with children whenever I was in the room.

  There were over fifty employees in the Central Library but I only had ongoing contact with four of them. Besides Babs, there was Dee Montgomery, a woman in her mid-thirties who had pronounced buck teeth and was endlessly enthusiastic about everything and everyone.

  Dee was the reference librarian—and when she found out the subject of my book she made a point of taking me to “the crypt” (librarian slang for the room in which all the old bound periodicals and major source books were kept) and showing me a complete collection of Munsey’s Magazines (a key muckraking journal during the early twentieth century), a first edition of Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class, and even several signed volumes of Mencken.

  “This is your era, isn’t it?” Dee asked me.

  “That it is . . . and I didn’t realize how much you had here.”

  Actually, this was a lie. On one of my first days working at the library, I started rummaging around their computer files and discovered that they had very substantial research resources when it came to American Naturalism and the Progressive Era. But I stopped myself from getting too interested in their collection. That would mean revisiting the past. And revisiting the past would mean . . .

  “If you’re thinking about writing another book,” Dee said, “I sure would like to help you. We can requisition so much from other libraries around Canada. And then there’s an entire database of—”

  “My book-writing days are over,” I said.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “You never know. In time, when things are—”

  But she cut herself off, saying: “Oh, Lord, listen to me. I just never know when to keep my big trap shut. I mean, I don’t even know you and already I’m saying . . .”

  “It’s OK,” I said. “No offense taken.”

  “Well, I am truly sorry. I just wanted to help.”

  “Don’t sweat it.”

  From that moment Dee assiduously steered away from that subject . . . but could never shake off the tendency to put herself down or always point up her inadequacies.

  “Dee can’t get through the day without beating herself up,” Ruth Fowler said. “That’s why her husband eventually ran off with her best friend. I think he got fed up with listening to his wife tell him what a screwup she was. Eventually he decided she might be on to something—and sought refuge elsewhere. Poor Dee. She’s ace at what she does and she’s probably the nicest person working here. But talk about self-esteem issues . . .”

  Ruth Fowler was the wittiest person working at the Central Public Library. She was tiny—around five feet tall—with round rimless glasses and a predilection for tweed suits. At times I thought she resembled something out of a 1920s English drawing-room comedy—the herringbone-clad favorite aunt of some bounder named Sebastian, and the woman who—throughout the play—dispersed genuine words of wisdom through a veil of sarcasm. She was head of reception, which meant she manned the front desk and—as such—was the public face of the library. She also dealt with all information queries regarding the resources of the library, organizing school visits, open days, public events. She was the ideal person for such a public job. Along with Geraldine Woods she was also the only member of the staff I met who could be described as externally comfortable in her own skin.

  In private she had a wicked sense of humor. And when it came to the “thing” that everyone else on the staff danced around she let it be known that she was very much in my corner.

  “You probably know that I function as the staff chaplain. You’ve got a personal problem or a peeve against another member of staff, you come to me and I’ll try to sort it out. So I’ll be straight with you. Mrs. Woods briefed everyone on the death of your daughter. The fact is, no one really knows how to deal with it—because it’s so damn awful, and because, people being people, they don’t want to say the wrong thing and upset you. More to the point, we’re all terrified of other people’s tragedies, because they point up the fragility of everything.

  “Anyway . . . I just want you to know that Dee came to me horrified about that little exchange she had with you about maybe writing another book.”

  “I did tell her I wasn’t upset.”

  “Yes, she related that back to me. But Dee being Dee, your exchange gave her the excuse to indulge in a self-criticism that hasn�
��t abated for seven goddamn days. That’s her problem—and I just wanted you to be aware of a certain awkwardness people have with you. Just as I also want you to understand that if there is any moment in the future when you’re having one of those days . . . or one of those weeks. . . . when you are in a dark wood, when you just can’t cope, whatever, all you have to do is call me and I will arrange compassionate leave for however long you need—”

  “That won’t be necessary,” I said, interrupting her.

  “Fine, Jane . . .”

  “I do appreciate the thought.”

  “I’ll say no more about it.”

  “Thank you.”

  She did say some more about Vernon Byrne—the music librarian and perhaps the most taciturn of any member of the staff.

  “I think his problems began with his name,” Ruth said. “I mean, everyone calls him Vern. And who the hell could go through life with a name like Vern Byrne?”

  Vern was in his late fifties. He was a thin, reedlike man who always dressed in identical clothes: a dark gray jacket, gray flannels, a tattersall shirt and dark blue knit tie, well-polished heavy cordovan brogues. The tattersall shirts showed occasional variety. One day the pattern would be blue, the next day green.

  “I think he has three of everything: the same jacket, pants, shoes, and so on,” Ruth said. “It’s very Vern. He doesn’t care much for externals. But get him talking about music and everything changes.”

  Vern sported a military-style haircut—short back and sides with a precisely groomed flat top.

  “He must use a serious pomade and the stiffest brush on the market to keep it so perfectly planed,” Ruth said. “I keep wondering if, at home, Vern has a small bird that sits atop his crewcut and keeps the man company. God knows, he could use some sort of companionship.”

  That was the other known thing about Vern—the fact that he was an inveterate loner who had always lived by himself in the house he had inherited from his late mother in an inner suburb of the city. He had no known interests outside of classical music.

  “He’s so closed off, so closed down,” Ruth said, “that he strikes everyone as seriously weird, seriously damaged; the sort of guy you wouldn’t want to go near young children. But I’ve been working with him for sixteen years—and I must say I’m fond of the man. We all have our weirdnesses. His are just a little more on display than the rest of us.”

  Vern’s domain was the collection of compact disks, and music texts—all grouped in a quarter-acre of the library’s third floor. When I was first introduced to him in the staffroom he proffered a dead right hand lacking in any reassuring grip. Then he stared down at the tips of his shiny shoes.

  “Nice to meet you,” he mumbled.

  A week later I was trying to track down a missing volume from the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and had to venture over to his “lair” (Ruth’s term). As I approached him he was huddled over one of the CD players that allowed browsers to listen to a disk before taking it away for a few days. A large set of headphones covered his ears. He had his eyes closed and he was engaged in a moment of such intense musical concentration that, from a distance, he almost seemed to be experiencing some sort of religious rapture. But when he realized I was standing nearby, watching him enthralled by the music, he jumped up as if I’d caught him in an obscene act and wrestled the headphones off his ears. From the dislodged headset I could hear booming strings followed by a wall of brass—at an exceptionally loud volume.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he muttered, “I was just . . .”

  “What’s the piece?”

  “Bruckner Nine. The scherzo.”

  “The one with the heavy use of the double bass and then the länder theme coming in as a counterpoint to all the forward momentum?”

  “Uh . . . yes . . . absolutely,” he said, genuinely surprised by what I had just said. “You know your music, do you?”

  “A bit. Whose version were you listening to?”

  “Günter Wand with the Berlin Philharmonic. It was released before Wand’s death in 2002.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Do you approve of it?”

  “Oh, yes, absolutely. He understands the architecture of the symphony which . . . uh . . . is absolutely key to any reading of Bruckner. But he also has this kappellmeister control when it comes to metronomic markings and a refusal to—”

  He suddenly cut himself off.

  “Is this of any interest to you?” he asked.

  “Sure. But I’m hardly in your league when it comes to—”

  “So who do you like when it comes to Bruckner?”

  “Well . . . I always had the Karajan set. But I sense the interpretations were all a bit like thick-pile carpet—easy on the toes, but lacking a certain edge.”

  Vern Byrne smiled a nervous smile.

  “That was Karajan all right—everything plush and beautiful, but no sense of the . . . uh . . . metaphysical, I guess. Kind of a pretentious word, I’m sure.”

  “Not at all,” I said. “Anyway, with Bruckner, the metaphysical is all-encompassing.”

  “A kind of Catholic metaphysic. He was a little too devout for his own good.”

  Another shy smile from Vern Byrne.

  “So if you were to recommend me a lean, nonupholstered version of Bruckner Nine . . . ?” I asked.

  He raised a finger and went over to the top shelf of the “Symphonic” shelves, pinpointed the Bruckner section instantly, ran his finger along the tightly stored CDs, stopped at precisely the disk he wanted, pulled it out, and handed it to me.

  “Harnoncourt—also with Berlin. Period-instrument technique but with a modern orchestral sound. As I’m sure you know, Harnoncourt was one of the early pioneers of the ‘authentic performance’ school, and he did really innovative things with baroque and classical repertoire. His Beethoven symphonies were an absolute revelation—and better than John Eliot Gardiner, who has always struck me as a bit up himself. Anyway, give it a listen and let me know what you think.”

  I brought the disk home, sat down in my easy chair, and listened to the entire symphony without interruption. I had heard Bruckner 9 before—and even remember a live performance with the Boston Symphony under Ozawa that I attended with David, and which he wrote off as “classic Ozawa: all flash, no depth in the outfield.” (Trust my David to wonderfully integrate a baseballism into a discussion of a Bruckner symphony.) But I had never truly listened to the Ninth before now. And what did I discover in this unadorned but still very dynamic reading by one Nikolaus Harnoncourt? That Bruckner didn’t simply write music, but cathedrals of sound that sucked you into their vortex and made you consider worlds beyond your own. There was an epic struggle going on in this symphony. Unlike Mahler, however, the fight wasn’t between the individual and life’s remorseless march toward mortality. Rather, Bruckner seemed to be aiming at something altogether more incorporeal: the search for the divine amid the whirligig of the quotidian; the notion that there are large, ethereal forces at work in the universe.

  Listening to the symphony, how I so wished I could be a believer at that moment. How I wanted to think that Emily was there in some soft-focus afterlife, forever three years old, forever playing with her dolls, humming the songs she so loved, not afraid of being on her own because heaven is a place where fear and loneliness never exist; where even those taken so early from this life are in the most celestial of day-care centers. And since time no longer matters, it’s just a flick of an eye to them before sixty years have passed and the parent who never got over their loss has suddenly succumbed to some horrible cancer, and there is this reunion with their ever-adored, ever-mourned child, and they all live happily ever after under God’s benign hand. But they’re not really living because this is not life, this is heaven: a place where nothing really happens . . .

  How can people buy into such pathetic nonsense? How can they try to convince you that such a fatuous construct exists, in the well-meaning but wretched hop
e that it will somehow ease the agony? You want to find a notion of the celestial—listen to Bruckner or a Bach cantata. Go take a hike on a high-altitude pass (if, that is, you can stand to look at all that beauty). Hop on a plane and walk around Chartres. But don’t . . . don’t . . . try to tell me that the next life is babysitting my beautiful daughter for me while I sit here in torment, knowing that I will never get over it.

  I had to drink myself to sleep that night—the first time I had done so since the doctor had upped my dose of Mirtazapine. The next morning I felt fogged in and low. Staring at myself in the mirror was not a pleasant experience. I looked like I’d been on a bender. At work Ruth asked me: “Rough night?” To which I simply nodded, ending all further discussion on the matter. When I returned the disk to Vern I could see he too was disconcerted by my appearance, but said nothing.

  “Good recording,” I said, handing it back to him.

  “Glad you liked it,” he muttered, staring down at his shoes.

  “I’ll come back soon for another recommendation,” I said, then left.

  But I didn’t return to his lair for a couple of weeks—because I was fearful about getting sideswiped by Vern’s next musical offering; because Vern sensed a sympathetic ear for his musicological monologues; and because I didn’t want to feel beholden to him to play nice and interested and . . .

  God, how hateful I sounded. But the Bruckner had seriously thrown me, opening up a new rich seam of grief. It was like a cancer that constantly metastasized. Every time you thought you could zap it and keep it in one specific locale, shazam, it attacked another part of your psyche. And it was so tricky, so ruthless, that—even if you were distracted away from it for several hours—suddenly there it was again, reasserting itself, letting you know that this sort of torment was ceaseless, terminal.