The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections(2)

The book needed to be appraised for insurance, separate from the general collection, which is why it was in the safe in the first place. The donors would understand, would be impressed by the level of care with which the library was treating the new acquisition. Liesl suggested again that they call off the meeting and tell the donors the truth. They had already been briefed about Christopher’s stroke and knew that he would not be the one greeting them.

“We’ll show them the Plantin as soon as the safe is open, and until then, they know it’s secure,” she said.

President Garber was typing something into his phone. She thought he was acting on her suggestion, so she went on. “Everyone knows that these acquisitions take time, and think how nice it will be to pair the first viewing with good news about Christopher’s health as he’s recovering.”

Garber continued to type into his phone, and looking at him and waiting for a reply, Liesl could see his jaw clench. Presumably the tension of his jaw against the strap reminded him of the bicycle helmet, and he finally snapped it off.

“Just think,” she said. “With a little bit more time to plan? We could bring in a scholar to talk about the book’s importance.”

Garber looked up from his phone. He was not smiling. Liesl straightened some papers on Christopher’s desk. Garber put his phone in his pocket. Crossed his arms. Uncrossed them. “For God’s sake,” he said. “There are no circumstances under which we are canceling today’s meeting.”

“Why shouldn’t we? If it means time to get the book, time for Christopher to improve, time to plan a lecture?”

Once she had said it, she went back to the safe to give the handle a yank herself, a feat of force to disguise her self-consciousness at the stupidity of the suggestion. A lecture? she chided herself.

“To hell with a lecture,” Garber said. “They don’t want to write a thesis on the book; they want to be the first to see the book.”

“I’m sure if we explained…”

“This is day one, Liesl. I brought you in to assure donors they can have confidence in us. How can we screw up so badly on day one?”

“If we just explain,” she said. “They’ll feel informed.” Still crouched by the safe, she wished it would open for no other reason than to allow her to crawl inside and disappear.

“These are major donors. They don’t want to feel informed. They want to feel important. They need to be the first to see it.”

“We have expertise enough to deliver a lecture today, and there are probably photographs,” she said. She regretted it immediately, but couldn’t stop the ill-conceived suggestions from coming. She stood up and wiped her sweaty palms on her trousers, stepping away from the safe to find her head.

“Photographs?” Garber pulled his phone back out and resumed typing. “They didn’t donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to look at photographs.” He walked over to the safe and gave another yank.

“Another book then.”

Another book was what Christopher would have proposed. Liesl was sure of it. As sure as she was that Garber didn’t want a creative solution from Christopher’s second-in-command. He wanted Christopher.

“What other book?” he said. He tapped his phone against his chin. “Go into the stacks and get them something that no one ever gets to see, something Jesus or Shakespeare or Marx used to wipe his chin. Something transcendent.” He left the room still typing into his phone, his bicycle helmet dangling from one wrist.





2


That first morning, in the swampy heat of early September, exactly three minutes after Garber exited the library and just as Dan Haberer was about to hit Play on the secondhand Discman that he lorded over adherents to more convenient forms of technology, Liesl took him by the arm and asked him to retrieve the Peshawar manuscript. As an afterthought, she told him to bring a couple of book trucks to Christopher’s office to gather various scattered volumes for reshelving.

Dan made an offended display of removing his headphones. Liesl waited until they were all the way off—wrapped in their cord, placed gingerly upon the Discman—and the middle-aged man clad in head-to-toe denim was face-to-face with her before repeating her request. While waiting for the headphones and listening to Dan’s vague grumbles about book request slips and policies and work he had planned for the morning, Liesl had plenty of time to reflect on how unusual Dan’s heavy-denim-and-combat-boot ensemble was in the academic library. Corduroy slacks that stretched over thick thighs. Well-polished loafers concealing collapsed arches. A short-sleeved polo on a hot day, occasionally. These were the uniforms for their battalion. To be confronted with the workman’s ensemble over Dan’s slender frame as he ambled, for Dan always ambled, toward the elevator to get the Peshawar for her and the donors was a contradiction so acute that Liesl never quite trusted her eyes.

It was the too-obvious choice, the Peshawar, for the show-and-tell with the money. She could have been creative, could have asked some of the library’s people, could have phoned up a dealer for a one-day loaner. But Liesl wasn’t up on doing things just for the sake of appearances on her very first day of the number one job. Besides, she assumed that this accumulation of money-loving people would appreciate being in close proximity with these pages that had contributed to the invention of modern mathematics. You can’t have a bank balance with eight zeroes unless someone first invents the zero.