The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections(15)

“A respected faculty member.”

“So respected that she’s never been in here. We’ve never heard of her. Don’t you care at all about these collections?”

“I’ve worked here longer than you have, Max.”

“It’s hardly about tenure, is it? I know these books in my bones. The way Christopher does. It’s my calling. The library isn’t just somewhere I’ve worked a long time.”

“I didn’t volunteer for this.”

“No, I suppose you didn’t. But you didn’t say no either. You didn’t think of what Christopher would want. What the library would need.”

Liesl shook her head.

“Christopher will be back and well soon, I’m sure,” she said. “Until then, we have to find a way to work together.”

“Are you asking me to put on appearances?” Max said. “Well, I won’t. You’ve lost a piece of religious history. Of world history. I won’t put on appearances that everything is fine until that is resolved. Nor should anyone else around here.”

She turned back around to face him, finally. “I don’t understand, Max,” she said. “The Plantin never made it into the safe. Christopher didn’t put it into the safe. Why are you so insistent that I’m to blame?”

“Why not?”

“You need a more compelling reason than that.”

“Because you are the only one who doesn’t seem certain that it wasn’t their fault. I can see it in your eyes, the doubt.”

“That’s your imagination, I’m afraid.”

“Are you down here, going through book by book, because you think it was on Christopher’s desk and was mis-shelved? Is that my imagination?”

“Please make sure you sign out that manuscript if you’re to use it,” Liesl said. “Or put it right back.”

She finally walked out the door, finally went to the elevator, finally got into the office, finally closed the door, and finally let herself cry, but only a little. She looked around the office and tried to imagine where the books had been before she’d had them removed. Three on the desk? Four? A stack on the filing cabinet. The Plantin was bound in the eighteenth century, in a red morocco binding. She checked her copy of the invoice. Six volumes. Could she have missed that? Could Dan? She had heard the binding was beautiful. The deep-red goatskin, the gilt edges. Could she have missed that? She walked back to the door of the office and stood facing the room as she had when she first entered on Monday. No, she didn’t think she had missed anything. She was almost certain now. The Plantin hadn’t been taken out of the office and mislaid. It had never been there in the first place.





5


The students interfered greatly with Liesl’s enjoyment of the campus. The breeze rustling the old oaks, the September crispness nudging out the August humidity. It was a perfect time in a perfect place to remove one’s shoes and read Jane Austen, but, Liesl thought, how could one go barefoot and not risk having one’s toes crushed beneath all these undergraduates? There were students coming from every direction, heading toward the large lecture hall that was attached to the administration building. Liesl was a river rock, and they were the water that rushed around her.

There were serious types, wearing the leather bombers that branded them as engineering students, despite the warm weather. There were flighty types, in cutoff shorts and flip-flops, nothing in their backpacks or their heads. And the bicycles. Screaming by with no regard for traffic laws or personal safety. As she waited for a pack of them to pass, Liesl tried to see if Garber was among them, tried to make out the recognizable shape of his calves, but the cyclists all passed her far too quickly.

She hoped she might run into Hannah on this walk, or that she might see the back of her daughter’s blond head from afar and glimpse what her student life was like, but that was improbable. This group, heading into the giant lecture hall in their shower shoes or showy bombers, was almost certainly in their first year. She stepped aside to let the traffic flow uninterrupted and then stood off on the grass and watched for a moment so she wouldn’t be too early for her meeting with President Garber. It was terrifying to finally be telling him about the Plantin. It was a relief to finally be telling him about the Plantin. She walked into the administration building.

Outside his office, Liesl was greeted by his secretary, offered coffee and a newspaper, and asked to wait. She declined the coffee because she didn’t want to have foul breath, and she declined the newspaper because she was past the age where she could read newsprint without getting a headache. Her empty hands gave her plenty of time to check her watch. President Garber was late. The secretary made calls and clattered at her keyboard, typing emails or making herself look busy. Liesl did not ask how much longer it would be, but she wondered in silence how much longer he would make her wait. The secretary said nothing. It had been nearly an hour. The secretary had spent the last several minutes on the phone.

“Dr. Weiss?” she said. “I’m terribly sorry to interrupt.” Liesl sat with her back straight and her empty hands in her lap.

“Mrs. Weiss. Not doctor.”

“Mrs. Weiss, that was President Garber. On the phone.”

“I thought he was just in his office, running late?”

“Did I say that?” the secretary said. “I’m sorry if you got that impression. He hasn’t been in the office yet today.”