Джон Краули - New Haven Noir

“Uh,” I said. “Who’s not allowed?”

“Students,” he said. “Haha, too bad for you. Haha, not true, you could, but long ago, no.”

“So...”

“We-ell,” he said, as though I was little kid, “what you did was, you looked up the book in the card catalog. You see those cabinets over there? They’re all that’s left of the system, and they’re now actually empty. But once there were hundreds of cabinets, and each drawer in each cabinet held hundreds of cards, all in alphabetical order” — here he stared at me with his goggle eyes vibrating, like to make sure I understood what that is, which I do, sort of — “and the card told you what the book’s call number was, and then you looked at that sign over there, which told you where in the Library that range of numbers was.”

“You called the number?” I dialed with a finger, another finger to my ear, like in oldtime cartoons means call me .

“No no. You’d write it on a paper. And ask a clerk to go find it.”

“Every book had a different number?”

“Every book. Every. Single. Book.”

“Of like how many?”

He bent over so close to me, with this creepy suspishy smile, that now I was thinking that he, or well they, was maybe gay or bi. “Millions,” he said.

That sort of staggered, yah? Millions?

“You want to see them,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Don’t know,” I said. “Do I?” I looked away and up and around, the darkness was like solid, there was no sound. Place was entirely soundproof, with all these books — like a million pounds of insulation.

“Jeez. They must be unbelievably valuable. I mean worth a lot .”

“Not really so much,” the Librarian said coldly. “Not one by one. All the really valuable ones — they’ve been taken out, they’ve been put with all the most valuable ones in that big marble cube — you saw it, right? — the Beinecke. And locked up so no one can steal them or handle them or even see them except the big shots, who don’t care much anymore anyway.”

He looked up to the spaces overhead, as though he could see the books up there, in stacks. “What’s here are the ones they don’t care about. Oh, they aren’t valuable, no. They’re just here. Abandoned. This building’s kept safe and locked and a few lights on until they can decide what to do with them. Ha. Pretty clear what they’ll decide. ”

I thought: place had not been locked when I arrived.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I’ll tell you something no one knows but me. There is one book in this library that is unique . If they knew it was here they’d take it and put it in with the Audubon Elephant Folio and the Gutenberg Bible and all the rest over there . Because you know why?”

“Why.”

“Because there is only one copy of this book in all the world. ” His nose was almost touching mine, far back as I pulled, and he whispered, like somebody might hear, “It’s one thousand years old. It’s covered in gems. The pages are made of the skin of goats, pounded so thin you can almost see through it.” He smiled this mad smile. “Only one copy. It’s never been kindled. It’s not on the Internet Archive. It can’t be accessed online. It is fabulously valuable. ” He goggled at me. “This book is mine. ”

“Okay,” I said. Mostly I was trying to picture jewels stuck on a goat’s skin, and getting nowhere.

“You want to see it?”

“Yes. Maybe. Sure.”

He let out this strange sigh, as though deflating, like after you’ve held tension a long time. “Yes,” he said. “You do.” He jumped up, dusted off his core-droys, and set off, wagging his hand for me to follow.

I followed.

He took me down the hall to this place that would have been an altar, if it was a church, and then around and through a little door.

“Up,” he said.

This was a different space, narrow not big, closed not open, low-ceilinged, tight.

“The stacks,” he said. Slowly by slowly we went up the zigzag stairs. They made this ringing noise in all that silence. His steps, my steps. Now and then we go through a padded door and then up again. There was an elevator, but a lock bar bolted over it. He’d look back at me grinning, like a dad taking a kid for a treat.

There were so many books. Endless. Lonely. Fearsome. Looking at me, like those demon faces. Thinking their words, reading themselves to themselves.

I knew we were high up now, but it didn’t feel like it; it felt like being down in a mine. There was only a light now and then, and it was just an emergency or like a nite-lite. “What’s that smell?”

“Books.”

It was a strange smell, musty or mildewy but dry and not ick, sort of appealing actually, like I don’t know what, a nice cave or a grandma’s bedroom or. It smelled... old .

He turned down a narrow passage and ran his hand gently across some books, looking no different to me than the others. “Poe,” he said. “You’ve read Poe, of course.”

This suspishy look in his eye made it clear I was supposed to say Of course , but of course I couldn’t. “A little, maybe,” I said. “I think I played the game a few times.”

He took one out, opened it, and spoke words, not like he was reading them, like he was remembering them or making them up. “There was a discordant hum of human voices!” he whisper-yelled. “There was a loud blast as of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! The fiery walls rushed back! An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell, fainting, into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.”

The Pit and the Pendulum . Didn’t know that then. Sure do now.

He closed the book gently, like it might be hurt if he smacked it shut, and put it in its place like putting a baby to bed. Patted it.

“Up,” he said. He pushed me along to the next stair up.

Then another smell, almost not there at first, then more. Not nice, bad. Something dead, dead rat like we once had in the basement.

“Books,” he said.

“Not books,” I said.

“Up,” he said. “It’s up this way.” He pushed me ahead of him through another padded door and up another metal stair. It was starting to feel a little close-to-phobic. “Where’s this book?” I said. “I gotta go. There’s a party. There’s a class.”

“Here!”

There was an empty space in the ranks of shelves, where they’d been sort of dismantled somehow. He grabbed my shoulders and turned me toward it. I was done here, hey, I wanted out, and wondered if I knew how to get out. “Okay,” I said, “just a peek, then we go, yah?”

“Shut up,” he said. He gave me a shove in the back, he growl-shrieked, and then that’s all I knew. I guess a minute or two, or seconds, and things appeared again, like coming into focus. I’d got hit on the head. Hit on my fucking head with something by this fucking heyjoe.

I reached out to smack him, and I couldn’t. Fucker laughed.

I was stuck to the metal shelving. With zipties.

“What the fuck,” I said, calmly. I even tried a little laugh.

“What indeed,” he said.

“Heyjoe,” I said. “Come undo. I can’t.”

“I see that you can’t.”

Getting so weird. He was looking at me like I was a big goodie bar.

Then. This happened. No shit. He turned and from the shelves across the walkway he started pulling out handfuls of books and plopping them down around me. Then more. “You’ll be happy here,” he said. “Right here with the other book lovers, haha. Yes. One on each side of you. Kyra I think was the name. And Ira. Or something. Tweedledum and Tweedledee. You’ll be right in the middle, like Alice.”