The archivist, p.33
The Archivist, page 33
Emily looked up into Verlander’s amiable face framed by owlish eyewear enlarging his twinkling, limpid eyes. He turned his head and drank in all the document boxes in the West archive, as if paying respect. The room hummed a low monotone roar. Wordlessly, Verlander paced along the row of boxes, slid one out, angled it downward, and dropped it into his arms. He squatted down, set it on the floor, unsealed its lid, and removed an accordion folder, meticulously labeled. From the folder he extracted a black Moleskine with the care of a rare book collector handling an ornate, filigreed volume of the Book of Kells. He bent his head over his shoulder and threw Emily a backward glance.
“Have you seen this, Emily?”
“I haven’t been through all the boxes, no,” she answered.
Verlander rose as if he were holding something precious and priceless and was standing precariously on a floor iced over by a recent storm. “Come have a look.”
Out of fear, or because she had just been imagining Nadia’s and Raymond’s visit of a year ago, she glanced up at the security camera, reassured that one was pointed down at her. She stepped toward Verlander and stopped an arm’s length away. She could smell the piquant scent of pipe tobacco clinging to his wool coat. He opened the Moleskine and presented it to her like some relic of literary lore. “A first draft of Lessons in Reality,” Verlander said in hushed tones.
Emily, adrenalized by the mention of the title, telescoped her head forward and zeroed in on it. Capital print handwriting filled the page in an, at times, indecipherable scrawl, as if written by someone whose narrative had outrun his physical ability to keep pace. Words and whole paragraphs were often crossed out. Marginalia in the tiniest of print poured down the sides of pages as if West had obsessively gone over these first drafts before transcribing the text to a computer. To Emily, it looked more akin to a lost mariner’s demented log than the beginnings of a Pulitzer Prize–winning novel.
Verlander seemed far more excited by the manuscript than by the beautiful young archivist standing next to him in the dusky light. “He wrote this in a fevered dream of thirty-four days. I mean, look at this.” His voice rose an octave in enthusiasm, imagining West’s hand racing across the page in a state of hypnosis. “You can see the creative tumult of this man’s mind on the page,” he intoned, tracing his index finger over the page he had opened the Moleskine to, as if trying to decode its cryptic birth by touching its tortured scrawl. He turned the pages slowly, with an air of mystery, as if each held a single breath of life of life that was now extinguished. “It’s like you’re looking into the unadulterated soul of pure creation.”
From Verlander’s words Emily could feel his awestruck reverence, and she knew instantly what Nadia had fallen in love with. No wonder Nadia had written floridly about the author’s fingers clutching her naked ass. Her ass was that Moleskine, and her skin was the parchment where his next soul-deepening love would be imprinted. Nadia wanted her soul to transmigrate through her skin to his fingers and that feeling to be transferred to the page, immortalized in a book, with a dust jacket, set in legible Sans Serif or Garamond or Bodoni, it didn’t matter, she would preserve it and here it would be, something final and immutable because she knew that love died with lovers, but books outlived their hearts that ceased to beat.
“Wow,” exclaimed Emily, then shrank abashed at the inanity of her expression. “Thirty-four days?”
Verlander nodded, still entranced by the pages he turned with solemnity and an archivist’s care. “Writing a novel is an emotional journey, and here we have the pulsing heart of that record. It feels alive to me looking at it. This is why I fell in love with this profession.” He turned to her. “This is what Mark at Harry Ransom said about you.” Emily raised her eyebrows questioningly. “That you loved the origins. That you got excited by going back and seeing the beginnings.”
“Yes,” admitted Emily, with a lump in her throat.
“But you don’t ever want to write?” Emily shook her head definitively. “I would have thought differently.”
“I don’t believe I have anything important to say,” Emily said self-deprecatingly.
“Everyone does. They just don’t have this.” He held up the West Moleskine for evidence of creative genius, an imagination touched by the unearthly. He squatted back down and carefully replaced the notebook in its folder. He ran his index finger over all the other folders in the box as if he were in a seminal archive in Europe and this might be his last opportunity to view a particular rare collection. “This came like a prairie fire,” he murmured. He fitted the lid back on and lifted the box up from the floor. “Bewilders me why he’s no longer what he once was.” He leveled his eyes at Emily.
She shrugged, not knowing what he meant.
“The sagging shoulders, the sadness, the absence of humor. West can be wickedly funny. Get a few tequilas in him, and he can command the room like Rushdie.” Verlander’s eyes gleamed mischievously. “And his mind ranges over . . . many disciplines.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Emily said.
Verlander carefully slid the box back in the empty slot on the shelf and, like a seasoned archivist, arranged it so it was smoothly aligned with the others in the row, his wrinkled, liver-spotted hand patting it for good luck. “Makes you wonder if the creative impulse isn’t destroyed by success rather than emboldened by it.” He turned to Emily. “Or money. Maybe the geniuses need the wolves howling at their door.” He chuckled sardonically. “Are you coming out?”
Emily shook her head. “I’ve got some work to do here.”
“Okay. It’s going to be quite a celebration on the eighth floor. Or, as Helena is fond of saying, fabulous.”
Emily chortled at Verlander’s mild derision of the director.
“Carry on.” Verlander turned and walked off.
Emily waited until he walked out of view. The black Moleskines, she thought to herself. A flare went off in her head. The Archivist. He didn’t need the wolves at his door—she mocked Verlander’s words because she knew the truth: he needed love to ignite those capital print letters scorching the page. Where were the Archivist Moleskines? How much had they written? How deep had they gone? Could she go to Verlander if she found them? Surely he would understand their cultural value.
It was nearing nightfall when Emily drove back to Del Mar. The tributaries of the Los Peñasquitos Lagoon were colored candy orange, sinuous in between the dark olive hue of the reeds flattened by an onshore wind. In the distance, the freeway flowed red and white in arcing crosscurrents, one person to a car mostly, Emily concluded, each ensconced in their own world of podcasts or music or text messaging, commuting back and forth, back and forth, until time inexorably ground them into old age and disintegrated them to carbon. Nadia didn’t want to end up that person. The house, the pension, it was all part of a sorrow that she would never be able to come to terms with. That was why she ventured out in the dead of night to swim to La Jolla Cove. That was why she had no compunctions about falling in love with the most famous donor in Memorial’s Special Collections and risking professional opprobrium and personal ostracism, her career in tatters. Nadia would have gleefully accepted the offer of a tandem ride with that paraglider instructor, Emily thought defensively. Hell, she would have probably had her own rig and leaped into the abyss without an instructor. She already had. “I have a passion for the void,” Emily had read in one of her short stories and she believed Nadia was speaking autobiographically. Emily realized in that moment she was jealous of Nadia, that she knew she could never be like her.
Back at her apartment, Emily showered, fed Onyx, then opened the cork on a Societe half-liter and poured a glass. An alarm jangled on her cell, a reminder that she had an appointment to talk with Professor Erickson, and she silenced it. She combed and blow-dried her hair and threw on a comfortable, but elegant, blue-and-gray checked flannel shirt because she didn’t want her image on the other end of their Skype call to mirror dishevelment. Archivists picked up on little details like that. And she had important things to talk to Erickson about.
Emily settled comfortably on her couch. In the middle of the living room, Onyx stretched out his forepaws, arched his back and yawned, oblivious of wars, the depredations of climate change and forbidden romantic affairs between archivists and donors. Then he padded over to her like a dreamy miniature panther, launched himself into the air on powerful legs and landed softly next to her thigh. Emily stroked his thick lustrous fur and massaged his bony spine. A feeling ran across her and she wondered if Raymond didn’t feel the same thing when he raked his fingers through Nadia’s hair. She shook free the image and opened up the Skype app on her computer. Her screen status indicated Erickson was online, so she tapped his contact and heard an ancient rotary phone ring. After a few moments, his face filled the screen. He was a white-haired man with crinkly eyes underscored by bags, physiognomic evidence of the hours he spent poring over manuscripts and other archival items that exacted its toll on his eyesight. The bifocal glasses with the gleaming gold rims only accentuated his age and years of toil in the vocation he had devoted his life to. Emily assumed he was gay, or a lifelong bachelor, because he had never been married, never been seen with a woman, or otherwise talked about such things with any interest. Possibly he was asexual, an archival troglodyte for life.
“Hi, Emily,” Erickson croaked.
“Hi, Professor.”
“How are you?”
“Okay,” Emily said. “You?”
“They’re trying to push me out here, think there’s a cottage outside London with my name on it, but I’m not ready to go yet. We just got a new accession of Arthur Miller. And, of course, still a lot to be done with Márquez. They’re going to have to drag me out of here kicking and screaming.” He glanced off. “I would be lost without Harry Ransom.”
Emily nodded and smiled, wanting to empathize with Erickson, but her mind was on other topics. She absent-mindedly ventured a sip of beer.
“How’s West coming along?” he asked, turning back to face Emily.
“I get asked that every day,” she said, shaking her head in mock exasperation.
“I bet you do. I read the news about the remodel of the eighth floor over there at Memorial. I’ve visited. Stupendous views. I can imagine they’re anxious to have you wrap up.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Stunning library on the outside, by the way,” Erickson remarked. “I’m jealous.”
“Yeah, it is,” replied Emily. “I marvel at it every day when I go in.” She chuckled. “Sometimes I think it’s ugly, sometimes I think it’s beautiful. The jury’s out for me.”
Erickson laughed in agreement. “It’s a beast of Brutalist architecture, that’s for sure. Probably outlive all of us.” He played with one end of his trademark handlebar mustache, an affectation dissimulating contemplation. “What’s on your mind, Emily?” he asked finally.
“Remember the SAA conference we both went to a couple years back in Portland?” she asked.
“Terrific beer there. And wine,” he recalled fondly.
“Yeah.” Emily held up her glass. “Anyway, do you remember that lecture on archivist-slash-donor ethics?”
“With Ms. Danielson, yes. Eloquent speaker; beautiful lady.”
“Question: You’re working on an archive; you come across compromising items—happens almost every time, right?”
“We’re dealing with human beings.” Erickson shrugged. “Most of the time, anyway.”
Emily smiled and took a deep breath. “Let’s say, hypothetically, that you believe the items are of cultural value. Part of the truth of the archive Ms. Danielson talked about. And that future researchers would definitely want to have access to these items. But you know if you go to your supervisor, or the director of Special Collections . . .”
“Helena Blackwell?” Erickson interjected.
Emily tilted her head to one side. “She’s the director here, yes.”
“I know,” he said, “I met her when I was out there. Not really an archivist like us, is she?”
“No. More of a social facilitator is what I glean,” said Emily. “She doesn’t know her DAMs from her acid-free folders, but she’s good at raising money.”
Erickson raised an index finger. “Not to be discounted.”
“No. Anyway, as I was saying, you know, because of the nature of the compromising items, they’re going to want you to destroy them. Or, at best, put serious restrictions on them. Hell, I read Caroline Kennedy has some restrictions on items in her mother’s archive that go into the twenty-second century.” Emily paused and sipped her beer. “These potentially compromising items I’m talking about are digital files, by the way.”
“Okay,” said Erickson, waiting.
“In the dark archives.”
“The dark archives. My favorite place to roam these days,” Erickson mused archly.
Emily fortified herself with another sip of beer. “But there’s an ethical issue—aside from the nature of the items themselves.” Emily paused. “The hypothetical archivist who discovered the items didn’t get access to the dark archives through proper channels.”
“I see.” He resumed toying with his mustache, but a dark ray had crossed his face.
“She was led there by a series of, shall we say, bread crumbs. And not heedlessly thrown either. I would say deliberately, leaving a road map as it were.”
Erickson narrowed his eyes in contemplation. “Compromising items?”
“Yes,” replied Emily.
“Of a prurient nature?” he asked, tilting his head suggestively.
“It’s deeper and much more . . . interpersonally complicated than that.”
“It always is.” He looked up into the camera. “Why can’t you—I mean, your hypothetical archivist—just leave them where they are in the dark archives?”
“That’s what I’m wrestling with. But what if I think, as the sole project archivist of this collection, that they belong in the archive, but no one else does?”
“You’re the hypothetical archivist.”
“Yes,” admitted Emily.
“The archive is West’s?”
“Yes.”
“What does the estate say?” he asked.
“The estate is Elizabeth West. The one you read about donating twenty-five million for the eighth-floor renovation.” She paused. “Raymond West’s wife.”
“I see. A little wayward, was he?”
“It’s a little deeper than that, Professor,” Emily said candidly. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say she would be stunned if these items were brought to her attention.” Emily polished off the rest of her beer. “I’m positive she doesn’t know they’re out there.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because they didn’t do, or authorize, the digital ingest of the items.”
Erickson recoiled in alarm. “Who did?”
Emily fell silent. The warning bell of an approaching Amtrak clanged on the bluff below, rising and falling. “I don’t know,” Emily answered feebly, trailing off.
“West’s archivist?” he asked, incredulous.
Emily shrugged as if she didn’t know the answer. She was now regretting the call. She needed advice, not an inquisition of her methods.
“Were they having an affair?” Erickson asked, assembling and disassembling the puzzle Emily had presented to him.
Emily looked down and blinked her eyes, not answering.
“Did you get to these items without permission” Erickson asked point-blank.
Emily looked off, bunching her lips with thumb and index finger until they were vertical. The train clanged out of earshot. “I’ve got to go, Professor. My phone is ringing, and I’ve got to take this.”
“Emily! Did you come upon these items illegally?” he thundered in an accusatory tone.
His words jolted Emily. She felt her stomach knotting and her voice went into hiding as she succumbed to the invasive echo of her thoughts.
“Don’t jeopardize your—”
“I’m losing you, Professor,” she cut him off. She quickly moused over the red End Call button and tapped the touchpad. The screen refreshed to her home screen: a picture of a weathered wooden bench at the top of the bluff overlooking the ocean in her temporary home, Del Mar. Seized with anxiety, she sat up on the couch, her breathing rapid, her heart pounding against its will. Onyx meowed, as if he sensed an emotional shift but couldn’t apprehend its repercussions.
Erickson tried calling back, his face blooming ominously back on the screen, but Emily slammed her laptop closed, her heart beating hard.
She sprang to her feet, grabbed a sweater, threw open the sliding glass door, patted her sweatpants pockets for her keys, locked the latch on the door, bolted down the concrete stairs, past the garbage bins, and sprinted out into the alley on wings of fear. She slipped by an apartment with its curtains open. Inside a party was in full swing. The music blared. Voices poured out in a collective cacophonous din. Everyone seemed to be in high spirits, enjoying alcohol, weed, and conversation. She felt wretchedly alone suddenly, skulking in the dark, the wind brushing her face, her arms stapled across her chest. Erickson knew Helena. Had met her! “He wouldn’t call her, would he?” Emily worried, then realized she had said this out loud when a woman walking her dog on a leash turned to look at her, thinking perhaps she was being addressed by Emily. Emily waved and moved on.
She made a left and walked down Sixth Street, but when she arrived at her favorite bench, she found a young couple occupying it, silhouetted against the moonlit blue ocean and starless sky. He had his arm around her, and her head rested on his shoulder. Both of them held cells that lit up their faces ghoulishly. They’re here alone in the night and they’re both looking at their phones? Madness!
Emily scrabbled down the first section of the cliff. She stopped in the middle of the railroad tracks, squatted and put her hand on one of the rails. She could swear it still felt warm from the sparking wheels of the train that had just rumbled passed. Raising her head eastward, she got an eyeful of a full moon over the gabled roofs of the seaside homes. Behind the veil of the ash-strewn sky it resembled a giant cataract-afflicted eye. Emily could almost feel its gravitational pull drawing the tide toward the cliffs. The waves battered them now in relentless thunderclaps. The ocean sounded, and felt, metaphysical in the dark, a mysterious, implacable force reaching out and pulling her inexorably toward it.
