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I had made my pledge to work in the Arcade, Pike was evidently its captain. I wanted proximity to such mastery, such certainty. I seized upon the existence of the place like a buoy floating in the middle of the sea.
“Excuse me, sir. My name is Rosemary Savage,” I said to Pike, my own accent peculiar, nasal in my ears.
He was unaccustomed to interruption. I went on hurriedly, shocked at my own boldness, at how sharp was the desperation that prodded me forward.
“I have worked in a bookstore before, Mr. Pike. And I must work here.”
He looked up from his task to register my temerity. Raised eyebrows were the only indication of affront on his rather unremarkable face. He was an anachronistic figure. His striped waistcoat, his shirt bunched above the elbows by arm bands, suggested a man that hadn’t altered his style of dress in decades. He wore a waxy-looking mustache, a darker shade than his whitish-gray hair, and he ran his finger over it before lowering his eyebrows to return his gaze to the book in his hand.
“You must work here?” he said in an odd, thin voice. He appeared to address the book in his hand rather than me, asking the cheeky thing if it really had the gall. “Do you imagine this an infrequent request?” he asked the book.
I didn’t know what to say. Too much was already at stake. I looked up at him and calculated that his platform was a good twenty-four inches higher than where I stood. It was designed to meet the floor at an angle, masking its height and disguising its purpose. It was a stage. I guessed Pike a full head shorter than my own five feet ten, but recognizing this didn’t reduce his stature. He loomed, flanked by books.
But I had given Pike my future, and I wonder now if he saw this himself. There was a long pause as he made his way through his litany of gestures. His movements seemed the process by which he could figure the book’s price, winding himself up to calculating its value.
He set the volume to his left.
I waited. He drew a long breath.
“What we want here is the mild boredom of order. Don’t try to be too interesting, girl.” He read me as easily as the book he had put down.
“Find the Poetry section and begin to shelve what remains on the floor.” He waved his hand in a shooing gesture. “You’re probably ripe for poetry,” he added, in a lower voice.
Was he hiring me on the spot?
“Order by poet, mind you. Only by poet. Don’t give a damn about editors and translators—that’s all a charade. You will shelve by poet or you will not be employed by George Pike. Remove all anthologies! Alphabetical, that is all. There are a few things that should be predictable.”
I had followed this breathlessly, even while it didn’t appear to be directed at me. Had he said “ripe”?
“Ah, yes, sir. Mr. Pike…ah, alphabetical, of course.”
“Find Poetry and my manager will assess your competency shortly.”
He picked up the next unvalued volume to his right.
I hurried deeper into the Arcade and found the Poetry section halfway down a tower that leaned dangerously toward the public toilet, in a far corner. Quickly I began the task of rearranging books that had apparently never been shelved in any order. The section began at eye level. Above it appeared to be books on Occult Practices. The juxtaposition of subjects struck me as deliberate, only accidentally alphabetical. To reach the shelf I had to lean across a tall pile of books on the floor, awkwardly moving volumes around, my arms stiffly extended. I decided to take handfuls off the shelf and sort them while sitting on the floor. This too proved pointless, as I had to constantly reorder each section, accomplishing only what amounted to tidying up. Was this a test of my patience, of my real interest, a practical lesson in the overwhelming nature of bringing even the slightest amount of order to the Arcade?
After half an hour I’d barely managed to complete a single shelf, and was standing with my back to the aisle, wresting another few volumes off the shelf, when I had the sensation of being watched. I heard a sibilant whisper and turned, promptly dropping the books in my hand.
An albino man of uncertain age was no more than two feet from me, his pale eyes moving involuntarily behind pince-nez glasses. From the first it was his eyes. His eyes could not be caught. He stepped back and knocked over several books I had set aside. Ignoring his clumsiness, he took in my surprise with practiced unsurprise. I had never seen anyone like him, nor any face more marked with defensive disdain.
“Walter Geist, the Arcade’s manager,” he whispered, turning. “Follow me, girl.”
I picked up the books I’d dropped, forced them onto the shelf, and caught up with him as his stooped shoulder disappeared around a corner stack.
As I trailed behind his quaint figure, I had the fleeting fantasy that this man was what someone would look like if he’d been born inside the Arcade, never having left its dim confines. Pigment would disappear and eyesight would be ruined beneath weak light, until one lay passively, like a flounder on the ocean floor.
In fact, as I walked behind him, Geist’s white ears reminded me of delicate sea creatures suddenly exposed to light, vulnerable and nude. There was a shrinking quality to him, a retraction from attention like an instinctual retreat from exposure. I was fascinated and repulsed in equal measure, a contradiction that was never to leave me. As I follow him there in my memory, I feel again that charge to his strangeness, a shock that compelled.
He led me to a small office in the very rear of the store, built high into the corner of the vast ceiling like a reef. I followed him up a narrow flight of wooden stairs, the handrail loose and broken.
“Wait here, girl.”
He indicated the patch of landing at the entrance to the office.
“My name is Rosemary, Mr. Geist. Rosemary Savage,” I said, tired of his anonymous address. I extended my hand then, thinking it appropriate, brave even, as I had seen Americans do. His hands remained clasped behind his back. He entered the office and reemerged holding several forms.
“Please fill these out. Print only.”
He handed me a pen and stood examining the activity on the floor below. From that high landing the chaos of the Arcade was fully evident, with the exception of Pike’s platform, where he moved as if choreographed, a small flicker of concentrated activity. I leaned over the rail, following the inclination of Geist’s head, to see what drew his attention. An obese man sat on the floor in a cul-de-sac made by piles of books, his legs splayed out like a toddler’s. He was turning the pages of a large photography book with one hand, his other hidden beneath the heavy covers opened across his lap. Even from the landing I could tell the images in the book were nudes.
“What are you looking at?” Geist asked me.
“Ah, just looking down where you were,” I said nervously.
“I don’t mean that,” he said. “What do you see?”
I described the fat man studying the photographs.
“Arthur!” Geist called down from the landing. “You should be shelving.”
“Just familiarizing myself with my inventory, Walter,” Arthur returned sardonically, his accent British and articulate.
He looked up at me and put a thick finger to his lips, indicating silence. Had I informed on him? Couldn’t Geist see what I had seen? Arthur returned to his nudes, his hand beneath the book’s cover moved rhythmically.
Geist stomped his small foot with impatience, and I noticed he was wearing elegant, polished boots, their smooth black shape nosing from his pant legs like the shiny heads of tiny seals.
“Mr. Geist, could I have something to lean on?” I asked, finding it difficult to write legibly without the support of a desk, and wishing to distract him, and myself, from Arthur.
“No,” he replied, his shifting eyes still directed over the rickety railing. He removed his glasses, placed them in his breast pocket, and continued to wait for me to complete the forms, his manner uncanny as his appearance.
Now that I was closer to him I could see Geist was younger than I at first thought, perhaps twenty years Pike’s junior, in his late forties. He was an unfinished version, a poor copy, of the masterful Pike, yet equally a creature from another time. Every feature was pallid. His hair was white and fleecy, the sheepish outcome of his soft face. His clothes were not as fastidiously kept as his boots, his trousers slightly frayed along the pockets. I completed the forms and handed them back to him.
“You will begin work tomorrow morning at nine,” he instructed without seeming to actually address me, a tactic he perhaps learned from Pike.
“You will finish for the day at six. Your responsibilities at the Arcade will, for the time being, be that of a floater. This means you do not belong in a specific section, as you have no expertise, but will float between tasks that are assigned to you. Do not concern yourself with assisting customers, you will only frustrate them with your ignorance.”
“I have worked in a bookstore before, Mr. Geist,” I said, defensively.
He replaced his glasses, lodging them in the wrinkles of his forehead and frowning to keep them in place—or frowning because he thought me impudent. He leaned in toward my face, and his nostrils twitched as he appeared to take in my scent.
“Not in this one, Miss Savage,” he said. “Please do not interrupt. You will receive a salary of seventy dollars per week. There are no advances on wages. Do you have any questions?”
“No,” I said, afraid to lose the opportunity.
“Good. There is one more condition of employment you must understand.” Geist’s pink ears shifted back delicately. “George Pike will not tolerate the theft of money or books. Immediate termination of employment will result if theft is suspected.” This last admonition was said in an emphatic whisper.
Later, I saw the statement printed in placard capitals on a sign in the women’s bathroom, and again over the clock all employees punched when the day began and ended. Another sign was located directly in the line of vision on the wall in front of the staircase that descended to the cavernous basement. Reading these signs was like being regularly rebuked, and so they paradoxically served to remind patrons and staff alike that theft was in some sense assumed.
George Pike himself called to me as, newly hired, I passed his platform on my way out.
“George Pike will not tolerate the theft of money or books!” he cried, characteristically speaking of himself in the third person.
Theft was a problem, as I would discover. The Arcade was regularly scouted by shoplifters; but more seriously, there had been several scandals involving ludicrously overpriced volumes whose provenance had been fictitiously embellished, resulting in what Pike defended as imaginative pricing. Scandals only increased the number of customers, both sellers and buyers. In other words, theft ran both ways at the Arcade.
“Why you stopped saying hello to me?” the dark lady of the front desk asked loudly when I returned to the Martha Washington. She had taken the wires attached to the television from her ears, and I could hear a tinny whining, the sound of cartoons speaking cartoon language.
“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to be pleasant. “But I stopped saying hello to you because you didn’t respond. I just gave up.”
“Don’t give up!” she said, enigmatically. “You just got here. That’s what can happen in New York. You give up. I know. I come to this country from Argentina. My brother, he own this hotel. My name is Lillian. Lillian La Paco. Still say hello, miss. You the only one who does.”
“All right, Lillian,” I promised. “I’m Rosemary,” and for the second time that day I stuck out my hand, only this time it was taken.
“Rosemary Savage,” I told her as we shook hands. “Nice to meet you, Lillian, and I’ll still say hello. I’m certainly not about to give up. I just got a job. My first proper job ever.”
“Ah,” Lillian said wisely. “Then you begin!”
“Yes,” I nodded, pleased with her pronouncement. “Yes, now it all begins.”
I went to my room at the end of the corridor and locked the door. I’d bought a pound of cherries from a street vendor to celebrate my employment, and I sat on the single bed savoring them. I felt optimistic; felt breath coming back into my flattened-out self.
Now that I had work, surely someone would notice if I died tragically at eighteen, having, say, choked to death on a cherrystone I might have neglected to spit out. I could stop fantasizing about what terrible things might befall me and write home to Chaps, reassuring her and myself. I could stop searching the streets for a sign. I had already found more than I could have imagined.
I pulled the Huon box from its silk scarf and recounted what had happened that day: how strange Pike was but how commanding; how bizarre Geist, and how I was already sure he disliked me; Arthur sitting with his nudes in the art section like a great obscene baby.
I missed Mother with an ache that could only be managed by a sort of separation from ache. A pain so deep that I came to observe its presence at a slant, sensing it crouched, and off to one side. If I could contain the pain in something like a transparent globe, it wouldn’t overwhelm me. If I didn’t look at it in its dark entirety, I could manage. Speaking to her helped. Chaps had told me I must give sorrow words.
I kissed the smooth Tasmanian heartwood, set it aside, and sat back against the pillows to relish more cherries. I spat a stone across the room, aiming at the metal bucket that served as a garbage bin, and heard a satisfying ping as it hit home.
“This is the beginning,” I told Mother. “Don’t you worry and I won’t either.”
I had a job to go to, and was expected at nine. They would know Rosemary Savage there, and notice me gone if I happened to disappear. I was an inhabitant of a great, perhaps the greatest, city. And what was more, I would always have books to read.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_b2f9f62b-2054-5138-853b-ed71275e09de)
The Arcade existed according to a logic all its own, governed by a set of arbitrary rules invented and maintained by George Pike. Paperbacks were never shelved. As the poor relations of hardcovers, they were heaped without order upon tables near the store’s entrance and priced identically—one dollar and fifty cents—whether fiction or history, a thousand pages or barely more than a hundred.
Pike was unimpressed by innovation. Any “new” book (one published within the past two years and hardbound) would never cross his oak table but was immediately sent to a vast, low-ceilinged basement, to be priced by Walter Geist. These books Pike cared nothing for, although he received a daily accounting of their acquisition, at one-quarter of the publisher’s list price, and subsequent sale, at one-half of that same price. So if a reviewer brought in a book that the publisher listed at sixteen dollars, Geist would give him a quarter of that, four dollars, and the book would go on the Arcade’s shelf in the basement priced at eight dollars.
Every other hardcover book in the Arcade, Pike had held in his hands at one time, remembering more of them than seemed humanly possible.
Pike employed a considerable number of eccentric individuals, Geist aside, and it remained a mystery why he had employed me. I was not eccentric, unless being an eighteen-year-old orphan from Tasmania made me so. As well, a number of the Arcade’s employees had rather dramatic aspirations. They were variously failed writers, poets, musicians, singers, and were marked with the clerkish frustration of the unacknowledged, the unpublished. The Arcade’s thousands of volumes mocked, in particular, literary aspirations. The out-of-print status of most of the stock was further proof of the futile dream of publication. As a monument to literature, the Arcade had an air of the tombstone about it.
“You will work this morning with Oscar Jarno in Nonfiction,” Geist directed, my first morning. “You will follow his orders.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Walter,” Oscar said, his voice mild and confident.
He had approached us soundlessly. He smiled then and touched my arm, almost imperceptibly. I was struck by his appearance, and moved by his gesture, the first indication of kindness since my arrival. Oscar’s extraordinary eyes were brass-colored and large; warm as the sun that never reached the Arcade’s interior.
“Don’t mind Walter,” Oscar confided, steering me away from the manager and toward the rear of the store, my elbow cupped in his hand. His touch left me a little breathless; eager to catch every word he spoke.
“He really can’t help his officious manner,” Oscar went on. “It’s important to Walter that he appear in charge. Obviously, he requires all sorts of allowances.”
Immediately then, I imagined Oscar Jarno took me into his confidence. He released my elbow once we reached the Nonfiction section, and ran his hand over his pale brow, leaving it to rest at his temple, as if he had a slight headache.
“Your blouse, Rosemary, is made from a type of polished cotton not commonly available in this country. I am interested to see how well it takes the dye.”
He fingered my sleeve gently and I thought in that moment that I’d do anything to keep his attention.
“Lovely,” he said into my face. “A type of faille.”
Oscar was slightly taller than me, and handsome in a poetic sort of way. His head was perfectly shaped, as if sculpted, and the contrast of his golden eyes against the pallor of his skin was dramatic. There was little else dramatic about him—he was soft-spoken, articulate—but there was a magnetism to his face: in the smooth planes of his cheekbones, the wide brow above rich eyes.
When I met him, Oscar had been at the Arcade for five years, and because he was quiet and reliable, Pike had come to accept that he worked only in the Nonfiction section and that whatever Oscar was doing in that suburb of twelve tall stacks would be accomplished with a minimum of fuss. More than a few customers were devoted to him. Oscar passed most of his day seated on a stool, writing in a black notebook, exempt from the loading and unloading of heavy boxes of books. No one questioned his special status.
He knew a great deal about many subjects, but his personal interest was cloth. His mother had been a dressmaker and had introduced him to fabrics—their names and properties.
Pike had occasional use for Oscar’s knowledge; he’d ask him to check rare bindings and speculate on their provenance or even how they might best be repaired. Oscar had had some experience with restoration, and with arcane materials like vellum. I witnessed his value to the Arcade during the first days he was training me. Pike called for Oscar from his platform, and I followed as he hurried to respond (the only time Oscar moved quickly).
“Ah, Oscar,” Pike said sharply, gesturing to a customer at the base of his platform who held an old volume in his hands.
“We have here Old Court Life in France, which should be on its way to the Rare Book Room for repair but has been kidnapped by this fellow. At the risk of encouraging such practices, please examine.”
Customers were always trying to snatch books before Pike had appraised them, before they had been allocated a value and destination. No doubt they wanted to believe that they had discovered something of greater worth than Pike would have reckoned.
As I watched, Oscar took the book gently in his hands, turning over the tattered binding, a smile cornering his mouth. Oscar was thin. His skin was so fine and dry it made a slight rustle when his hand moved across his brow, in an anxious sweep. His dark hair receded in a way I quickly loved, revealing, as it did, more of his remarkable face.
“This volume is bound in Chardonnet silk,” Oscar said, his voice soft, authoritative. “A fabric named for the French chemist who invented a process to produce it.”
Pike’s eyes narrowed appreciatively, pleased at the opportunity to overprice the shabby volume based on Oscar’s remarks.
“Chardonnet silk was first commercially produced in France in 1891,” Oscar added unnecessarily, as the customer was already removing it from his hands in a proprietary way.
“Thank you, Oscar,” Pike said, dismissing him.
Pike stretched down from his platform and took the volume from the customer. He then unconsciously proceeded through his ritual gestures—he flipped to the title page, scanned the copyright, his thumb fanned the edges of the entire book, he closed the volume, reopened it at the first page, took a pencil from behind his ear—and marked a reassessed price. He handed it down to the customer.
“But this is outrageous, Pike!” said the man, furiously. “Nothing short of robbery!”
“Rosemary,” Oscar whispered, as we returned to his section. “Do you know what the common name for Chardonnet silk is?”
“No,” I said cautiously. “I’ve no idea.”
“Rayon,” he said, stifling a small chuckle. “Made from extruded wood pulp. Not silk at all, of course. Remind me to tell you the history of silk.”
He covered his mouth with his fine, long hand and, sitting up on his tall stool, took out a black notebook and began to write in it rapidly.
Oscar’s face appeared composed of layers of papier-mâché, and this quality made his face seem expressionless as he wrote. He gave the impression of a man-sized marionette: his head large and shaped upon a soft, slight body. When Oscar looked at me, his round eyes glowed as if they reflected light, but over time I came to understand that this was a trick of their splendid color. The irises were actually golden.
