An Imperfect Librarian

An Imperfect Librarian

A NOVEL

ELIZABETH MURPHY

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Murphy, Elizabeth, 1958-

An imperfect librarian / Elizabeth Murphy.

ISBN 978-1-55081-247-3

I. Title.

PS8626.U753I46 2008             C813'.6             C2008-903100-8

© 2008 Elizabeth Murphy

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A
LL
R
IGHTS
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ESERVED
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Printed in Canada.

A Personal Anthology
by Jorge Luis Borges. Copyright © 1967 by Grove Press Inc.Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Ficciones
by Jorge Borges. Copyright © 1962 by Grove Press Inc. Translated from the Spanish, copyright © 1956 by Emecé Editores, S.A., Buenos Aires. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Excerpts from
St. John's Waltz
by Ron Hynes. Used by permission of author: Ron Hynes. Peer Music (pub.)
www.hynesite.org

Excerpts from
Robinson Crusoe
by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1719, taken from
http://www.gutenberg.org/airs/etext96/rbcruio.txt

MAN, THE IMPERFECT LIBRARIAN

MAY BE THE PRODUCT OF CHANCE

OR OF MALEVOLENT DEMIURGI.

– J
ORGES
L
UIS
B
ORGES

for

JIMMY & MAISIE

CHAPTER ONE

I
MET HENRY DURING MY
first week of work at the library. Of all the people they could have picked to orient me, they chose him. The orientation, if I can call it that, turned out to be nothing more than an afternoon at the campus cafeteria listening to his rant about how the Internet was going to corrupt the soul of the library, diminish our collective intelligence and turn books into relics. I'd heard it all before.

“You can't stop the flood with a finger poked in the dyke,” I said. “One of these days, it's going to explode. If you're not prepared, you'll be washed away.”

Henry shook his head then eyed me as if to say I should know better. “If there's any poking in a hole, it won't be with my finger.” That was it for the conversation and I've been avoiding talk of floods and fingers ever since.

The orientation ended with a summary. “The most important fact you need to know about this library is that Information Services Librarian Henry Kelly takes a break every afternoon at 3:30. We'll meet at the cafeteria tomorrow
to continue. I don't mind sacrificing my spare time for a good cause. If you have any questions, you can ask me then. I'll be sure to know the answer.”

I saw Henry that next day, the next and the next, 3:30, at the campus cafeteria. The location and time never varied. Nor did his complaints. “How much for a medium stale coffee plus two of those shrivelled-up biscuits?” he said to the girl.

Later, while he scouted for a table, I cleaned up after him. “He's the same with me,” I whispered to her. “Don't take it personally.”

It wasn't long after that I proposed we have our coffee breaks in my office. He'd provide the coffee and cookies. I'd supply the coffeemaker and location. At the time, I assumed it was a fair bargain. The alternative would have been his basement office in the Librarians' Auxiliary Branch, but Henry had already rejected that idea. “I wouldn't have my coffee break in the LAB if Tim Horton showed up in person to serve me. No walls, no windows, no peace or quiet, no respite from the persistent drone of mindless chatter. You can't even pick your nose in private.” He raised a finger, shook it at me and said, “Consider yourself lucky to have this office.”

My office is one of those if-you've-seen-one-you've-seen-them-all kinds of spaces: metal filing cabinet, bookcase, desk and chair, two monitors, keyboard, mouse, electronic stylus, picture of my wife Elsa, two chairs facing the window, one for Henry, one for me, and finally, a makeshift coffee stand that I clean after his messy visits. The whole lot is sandwiched between fluorescent ceiling lights and wall-to-wall, grey industrial carpet that doesn't hide the stains. Opposite the door is the view down into the Special Collections Reading Room of King Edward University Library.

The best part about the office is that view. Henry can describe it better than me. I've heard him call it sublime – as in
the LAB's the ridiculous, the Room's the sublime or a house of worship: “What's happening in the house of worship today, Carl?” It's not only the architecture that he raves about. “The rest of this library is a desert – a wasteland of floor after floor, stack after stack, book after book, page after page, word after word, letter after letter of volumes that have never been borrowed, never been read or noticed. You're looking straight down onto an oasis with some of the rarest, most precious manuscripts and volumes in the country.”

When Henry comes by in the mid afternoon, he eyes the happenings in the Room so intensely you'd swear he'd forked out a fortune on a scalped ticket for the privilege. Occasionally, he'll overstay his welcome and I have to ration the cookies to get him to leave. He stuffs them into his mouth with assembly-line precision using his right hand then washes them down with coffee using his left. He doesn't hesitate to make himself at home. “How's the spectacle today, Carl? Any new developments? Move your chair. Stop hogging the view.”

I never was much of a Winnie-the-Pooh reader as a child, but I remember the image of the short, stocky, wobbly bear with the shrunken red shirt only half covering his belly. Henry reminds me of him, especially when he wears that red polo shirt he's surely had in his wardrobe for the last century. It passes for respectable from the chest up. The problem is around the waist. Between the top of his trousers and the bottom of his shirt is a too-generous view of a hairy stomach with a navel as round and deep as an artesian well.

I don't visit his office often, but I've seen the photo of his three grown sons on his desk. They're posed in descending order of height with Henry on the low end. All four have their arms crossed and are wearing matching red and black sweaters. The photo reminds me of a set of those wooden Russian dolls, more broad than tall, that nest inside each
other. Henry would know what they're called.

I joked with him once that people might assume he was pregnant with twins if he didn't cover up with a longer shirt.

“The Irish famine ended more than a hundred years ago,” he said. “Where've you been?” He sized me up toe to crown. “There's more meat on Good Friday. Bugger off or I might give birth to the twins on your grimy office floor.”

Henry has a stash of parting lines stored I-don't-know-where. He drops one whenever he exits my office, like an actor walking off stage to thundering applause. That time, I could only make out the words “giant with a dwarf's prick.”

I'd heard variations on that line in the schoolyard when I was a boy. Comments about my height don't bother me anymore, especially not from Henry. He'd be starved without an audience and I crave the diversion.

CHAPTER TWO