WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.040 --> 00:00:08.359 Rain against the tall library windows makes a steady, unhurried music. 2 00:00:09.119 --> 00:00:11.119 I sit in my usual corner, a high bat chair 3 00:00:11.160 --> 00:00:13.480 with its upholstery sun bleached at the edges, with an 4 00:00:13.599 --> 00:00:15.679 arm's reach of the battered duck shells that have crowded 5 00:00:15.759 --> 00:00:18.399 this room since before I was born. The air smells 6 00:00:18.440 --> 00:00:20.079 as it always does here at a slow drift of 7 00:00:20.079 --> 00:00:22.000 old pepper, the tine of salt that creeps and from 8 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:24.320 the sea even of the window seal, and today a 9 00:00:24.320 --> 00:00:26.760 faint mineral damp from coats left to dry by the radiator. 10 00:00:27.320 --> 00:00:31.320 Retirement has given my days a pleasant shapelessness. Some people travel. 11 00:00:31.920 --> 00:00:34.240 I come here to the public library as I once 12 00:00:34.280 --> 00:00:37.039 did after skull, seeking neither escape nor adventure so much 13 00:00:37.039 --> 00:00:39.119 as the famella company of words and the shuffle of 14 00:00:39.119 --> 00:00:42.520 neighbor's feet in the aisles. I'm browsing the classics, trailing 15 00:00:42.560 --> 00:00:45.479 slow fingers over cracks blinds, when a cardboard box half 16 00:00:45.520 --> 00:00:47.520 tucked behind the desk catches my eye, one of those 17 00:00:47.520 --> 00:00:50.000 innocuous bits of detritus that have never moved and never 18 00:00:50.079 --> 00:00:53.320 quite belong anywhere. Something not quite bored makes me steep 19 00:00:53.359 --> 00:00:56.439 for it. Inside a tumble of old checkout cards edge 20 00:00:56.479 --> 00:00:59.399 is foxed and curling. Most are what you'd expect Dickens, 21 00:00:59.479 --> 00:01:03.119 Austin Steinbeck, several with my own signature from years ago, 22 00:01:03.719 --> 00:01:07.040 but then a handful stand out. Their titles make me pause. 23 00:01:07.599 --> 00:01:11.840 The sky beneath the hill, a recipe for shadows, yesterday's 24 00:01:11.879 --> 00:01:16.480 lentence odders. I don't recognize this s Palmer E Dorsey, 25 00:01:16.920 --> 00:01:20.480 Martha Ree. The dates blow backward, some so faded i'd 26 00:01:20.480 --> 00:01:22.000 need to whit my thumb to make out the ears. 27 00:01:22.680 --> 00:01:24.640 But in fresher blue ink I see the lipinge of 28 00:01:24.680 --> 00:01:27.000 Grace Lowther, who still brings a cake to every garden 29 00:01:27.040 --> 00:01:29.719 club bike sail, A neat, small r talbot Ruth who 30 00:01:29.760 --> 00:01:32.120 holds cod at the hard west stah See March written 31 00:01:32.120 --> 00:01:34.680 with the skull to Hou's wobble, now likely grown somewhere 32 00:01:34.680 --> 00:01:36.920 out there in the world. I can hear the rain, 33 00:01:36.959 --> 00:01:39.000 the rumble of the heating, the distant cheerful coal of 34 00:01:39.040 --> 00:01:41.799 someone greeting missque Gardener at the front disk. But inside 35 00:01:41.879 --> 00:01:45.680 I feel a small prickling uncertainty. I've spent a lifetime here, 36 00:01:46.319 --> 00:01:48.879 I talk generations of local children to hunt the shells 37 00:01:48.879 --> 00:01:51.879 for exactly these sorts of books. Yet Not only are 38 00:01:51.879 --> 00:01:54.519 these three entirely unfamiliar, I was where they never sat, 39 00:01:54.560 --> 00:01:57.519 on any shelf in his place. A stack of library 40 00:01:57.519 --> 00:02:01.079 cards shouldn't be unerving. Yet there is something indistinctly impossible, 41 00:02:01.079 --> 00:02:03.439 delicate and insistent about this tiny heap of recos for 42 00:02:03.439 --> 00:02:06.239 books nobody seems able to find. I set them in 43 00:02:06.280 --> 00:02:08.439 a careful row, as a fletting the light, inspect their 44 00:02:08.439 --> 00:02:10.919 oddness from me. How can a book be check out 45 00:02:10.919 --> 00:02:12.960 by half a dozen tants for cover decades, yet leave 46 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:15.199 not the faintest shadow in my memory, nor any trace 47 00:02:15.199 --> 00:02:18.280 in the visible shelves. The effect is half amusement, half 48 00:02:18.319 --> 00:02:20.319 a shiver, the way you feel when a relative insists 49 00:02:20.319 --> 00:02:22.919 you went on a holiday you cannot recall. I flip 50 00:02:22.960 --> 00:02:25.719 each card again, searching for some clue, a misfiled author, 51 00:02:25.879 --> 00:02:28.599 a crooked date, perhaps a catallogious joke. But there is nothing, 52 00:02:29.280 --> 00:02:31.919 just the undeniable impression under my finger tips of their 53 00:02:31.960 --> 00:02:35.000 age and use. I slip the cards back into the box. 54 00:02:35.759 --> 00:02:38.280 The ordinary world to the voices that tappen, computer keys 55 00:02:38.280 --> 00:02:42.120 returns unchanged. But I can't help glancing now and then 56 00:02:42.199 --> 00:02:44.560 toward the box, as if the odd titles will resettle 57 00:02:44.599 --> 00:02:47.080 themselves under my gaze and prove that I imagine the whole thing. 58 00:02:47.759 --> 00:02:50.599 After all, what are memories and libraries for if not 59 00:02:50.639 --> 00:02:53.280 to reassure us about what is real? On bad nights 60 00:02:53.319 --> 00:02:55.960 after my teaching years ended, in especially over the last winter, 61 00:02:56.039 --> 00:02:58.599 I wondered if the town had forgotten me. Now it 62 00:02:58.639 --> 00:03:00.840 seems I have stumbled on some thing the town seems 63 00:03:00.840 --> 00:03:04.400 to have forgotten about itself, or more precisely, something that 64 00:03:04.439 --> 00:03:07.439 remembers itself all too well, but leaves no proof. The 65 00:03:07.479 --> 00:03:09.719 public library has long been the center of a small 66 00:03:09.759 --> 00:03:12.520 seaside town. Not its heart may be, but an essential ventricle, 67 00:03:12.520 --> 00:03:14.800 pumping quiet energy to the farthest gray cottages and the 68 00:03:14.879 --> 00:03:18.879 buildbric culdesacs. The building appears grander than it is, Weary 69 00:03:18.919 --> 00:03:21.360 white columns with a brass on the double doors and 70 00:03:21.439 --> 00:03:23.439 a line of stained glass windows depict in the sea 71 00:03:23.560 --> 00:03:26.599 a white light house and a great open book. Even 72 00:03:26.599 --> 00:03:29.719 the sandstone chips in the winter wind. Inside time, it 73 00:03:29.759 --> 00:03:33.319 spoils more gently, flows creek and sometimes complained. The shelves 74 00:03:33.360 --> 00:03:36.599 are height built to suit old fashioned sensibilities and taller generations. 75 00:03:37.280 --> 00:03:40.680 Ceiling fans far overhead turn with a tied grace. You 76 00:03:40.759 --> 00:03:42.960 can still smell the salt of the sea here, especially 77 00:03:42.960 --> 00:03:45.039 on days when a storm lashes the breakwater and the 78 00:03:45.080 --> 00:03:48.159 wind penetrates a hundred tiny seams. I've lived in this 79 00:03:48.240 --> 00:03:50.759 town all my life. I know its rhythms as I 80 00:03:50.800 --> 00:03:53.199 know my own boats setting out before dawn, the bakery's 81 00:03:53.240 --> 00:03:55.599 first bell before sunrise, the strange hush of main Street 82 00:03:55.599 --> 00:03:57.800 at three in the afternoon, when everything seems to pause 83 00:03:57.840 --> 00:04:01.280 but no one stops working faces to I know nearly everyone, 84 00:04:01.360 --> 00:04:05.199 from toddler's to great grandparents. I live alone these days contently. 85 00:04:05.879 --> 00:04:08.479 My wife died several years ago. Our children outgrew the 86 00:04:08.520 --> 00:04:12.039 village and return and flashes holidays and occasions. In retirement, 87 00:04:12.159 --> 00:04:14.960 the town has become both larger and smaller. I find 88 00:04:14.960 --> 00:04:17.680 myself a fixture at cafes, always welcome at the counter, 89 00:04:17.759 --> 00:04:21.240 but rarely interrupted. The library is my anchor, shelter, and 90 00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:24.319 at times my audience. Missus Gardiner is at the main 91 00:04:24.360 --> 00:04:26.199 desk today, as she is every day and has been 92 00:04:26.240 --> 00:04:28.560 for what feels like at least half my life. She 93 00:04:28.680 --> 00:04:31.279 is unflappable and distracted, and gives impression that she would 94 00:04:31.319 --> 00:04:33.240 run the world much as she runs her library with 95 00:04:33.319 --> 00:04:35.680 a cool glance, a precise word, and a deep low 96 00:04:35.720 --> 00:04:39.240 loft that rattles the filing cabinets. She presides over everything 97 00:04:39.279 --> 00:04:42.439 and everyone, including Jonah, her assistant at nineteen, with earnest 98 00:04:42.480 --> 00:04:44.720 glasses and a tendency to hide in the oversize at 99 00:04:44.720 --> 00:04:47.519 the section whenever a phone rings. The days here have 100 00:04:47.560 --> 00:04:50.600 a timetable, but not a tyranny. The book club meets 101 00:04:50.600 --> 00:04:52.839 in the old reference room every Tuesday, the same crowd, 102 00:04:52.920 --> 00:04:55.120 more or less as when I taught English at the 103 00:04:55.160 --> 00:04:58.839 secondary school. The doctor jew from the clinic, Ruth Talbot 104 00:04:58.879 --> 00:05:01.800 from hardware cass still in school and determined to disrupt 105 00:05:01.839 --> 00:05:06.199 every tradition. We have background, hum's, children's story hour, poetry readings, 106 00:05:06.240 --> 00:05:09.839 retirees consulting over bridge guides, sometimes a mother, arms full 107 00:05:09.879 --> 00:05:12.360 of coats, hustling and armado small children from one world 108 00:05:12.360 --> 00:05:16.120 to fiction into another. Shelves are only partly cataloged. A 109 00:05:16.199 --> 00:05:18.680 running joke, the Jewy decimal system is a more suggestion 110 00:05:18.720 --> 00:05:21.399 than law. In our library. Walk through the back rooms, 111 00:05:21.639 --> 00:05:24.120 I'll find old accession ladgers clapped together with the last 112 00:05:24.120 --> 00:05:27.480 it bands more ghost than facts. Missess Gardener shrugs off 113 00:05:27.519 --> 00:05:30.839 any call for stricter order, fish in a berrault. She says, 114 00:05:31.480 --> 00:05:33.720 you want precise, go to the banked. Here we hunt. 115 00:05:34.399 --> 00:05:37.639 On any given day, conversations drift toward favorite childhood books, 116 00:05:37.680 --> 00:05:40.199 first crushes on fictional heroes, the novels that made you 117 00:05:40.240 --> 00:05:42.519 want to write, a sort of oral tradition. I have 118 00:05:42.639 --> 00:05:45.519 heard more times than I can count the exact phrase, 119 00:05:45.680 --> 00:05:47.720 Oh that one change me, or you must read it, 120 00:05:47.839 --> 00:05:51.360 you must remember it. Everyone has their touch done. But 121 00:05:51.439 --> 00:05:53.439 nothing in all my ears, not in memory or record, 122 00:05:53.480 --> 00:05:56.160 resembles the strange musical titles I found in that box, 123 00:05:56.920 --> 00:05:59.480 not so much as a whisper, not single listen plan 124 00:05:59.560 --> 00:06:02.199 or summer reading list. I half expect the whole thing 125 00:06:02.240 --> 00:06:05.240 to unravel with a single question. The next day, I 126 00:06:05.319 --> 00:06:07.519 catch Massesque Gardener at the desk as she sets out 127 00:06:07.560 --> 00:06:11.120 a new stack of returns. Have braces clinking, miss Esque Gardener, 128 00:06:11.160 --> 00:06:14.240 I came across something peculiarly yesterday, old checkout cards with books. 129 00:06:14.240 --> 00:06:16.680 I couldn't place the recipe for shadows the sky beneath 130 00:06:16.680 --> 00:06:18.680 the hill. Do you have any idea where there's a shell. 131 00:06:19.399 --> 00:06:22.800 She doesn't pause, just whips through her receipts. Old there 132 00:06:22.800 --> 00:06:25.120 are always stray cards. If the books are out, they'll 133 00:06:25.120 --> 00:06:27.240 come back in their own time, or else they are lost. 134 00:06:27.279 --> 00:06:31.319 Happens more often than people admit. She peers over her classes, unreadable. 135 00:06:31.959 --> 00:06:34.560 You know how it is. I press as slightly as 136 00:06:34.560 --> 00:06:36.639 I can, mention that the date stretch back decades and 137 00:06:36.639 --> 00:06:41.360 show familiar names. She smiles, this time indulgently. Old libraries 138 00:06:41.360 --> 00:06:44.000 are full of stray ghosts. Sometimes it's a catalog mistake. 139 00:06:44.120 --> 00:06:46.399 Sometimes people just make things up to tormentous half the 140 00:06:46.439 --> 00:06:48.439 town's pranks as grew up, making up new books to 141 00:06:48.480 --> 00:06:51.800 accidentally check out. It is the expected answer, tangling the 142 00:06:51.800 --> 00:06:54.199 improbable with the mundane. And yet something in her turne, 143 00:06:54.199 --> 00:06:56.879 a complicit, almost amuse certainty, makes it clear this is 144 00:06:56.879 --> 00:06:59.480 not a puzzle for her. The cards don't trouble her 145 00:06:59.519 --> 00:07:02.319 balance sheet. I leave her to the stack of overgye 146 00:07:02.319 --> 00:07:04.879 notices and drift into the dimmer reaches of the fiction section. 147 00:07:05.560 --> 00:07:08.000 If these are austere ghos, surely some material remains a 148 00:07:08.040 --> 00:07:10.360 misfelt spy, and a shelf label may be a bat 149 00:07:10.360 --> 00:07:13.160 of copy punch with a with drawn stamp. The stacks 150 00:07:13.160 --> 00:07:15.879 are quieter here, protected from view by years of rearrangement. 151 00:07:16.319 --> 00:07:18.279 I kneel patience forced by the slow eag of knees 152 00:07:18.319 --> 00:07:22.439 tracking each shelf. Nothing, no evidence, not even the ghost 153 00:07:22.480 --> 00:07:25.160 of a sticky label. I double back to the catalog, 154 00:07:25.360 --> 00:07:29.000 both digital and handwritten. The new system blinks, no results 155 00:07:29.000 --> 00:07:32.560 found in the accession register. Here my old careful catalog 156 00:07:32.600 --> 00:07:35.160 and comes in handy. I scan for gaps. There are 157 00:07:35.199 --> 00:07:37.839 notes in pencil, pinched into margins, but not a single 158 00:07:37.839 --> 00:07:40.680 accession number of lines up with the peculiar cards. And 159 00:07:40.759 --> 00:07:42.759 still the check up box sits on the counter as 160 00:07:42.759 --> 00:07:46.120 of challenging me prove it belongs. Settling in a chair 161 00:07:46.160 --> 00:07:48.600 neard a reading room, more out of habit than clarity, 162 00:07:48.720 --> 00:07:51.399 I absently turn the top card again and again, tracing 163 00:07:51.439 --> 00:07:55.759 its pedantries ruf Talbot nineteen eighty seven are Talbot two 164 00:07:55.759 --> 00:07:58.519 thousand three. It is almost about a small reco for 165 00:07:58.519 --> 00:08:02.319 a book. So when Ruth herself materializes, Cardigan at the elbow, 166 00:08:02.399 --> 00:08:05.240 pursuit of her eternally misplaced glasses paused, I, since that 167 00:08:05.279 --> 00:08:08.360 fate is coxing me, Ruth, don't suppose you recall this? 168 00:08:09.160 --> 00:08:11.560 I hand her the a recipe for shadows card expect 169 00:08:11.560 --> 00:08:15.000 in fir shark. Yes, she grins, her old mischievous teacher's grin. 170 00:08:15.519 --> 00:08:18.279 Oh goodness, yes, I love that. My mother read it 171 00:08:18.319 --> 00:08:20.120 to me one winter, probably the year to tiled the 172 00:08:20.120 --> 00:08:22.199 school roof. It was about the little girl who learned 173 00:08:22.240 --> 00:08:24.439 recipes from her neighbor, though they were all well odd. 174 00:08:24.600 --> 00:08:26.480 I remember the last page. I had a recipe for 175 00:08:26.560 --> 00:08:28.800 night saucy. Was supposed to whisper before that kind of 176 00:08:28.800 --> 00:08:31.800 silly now, but it gave me shivers. Then I blink, 177 00:08:32.039 --> 00:08:35.639 not hiding my surprise. Ruth, are you sure that title? 178 00:08:35.720 --> 00:08:38.360 That story? I don't recall what ever being here? Of 179 00:08:38.480 --> 00:08:41.480 course it was. Ruth insists, flipping the card in her palm, 180 00:08:41.519 --> 00:08:43.600 as if searching for part of her childhood lodged behind 181 00:08:43.600 --> 00:08:46.639 the typwriton lines not a thick book, may be only 182 00:08:46.679 --> 00:08:49.440 a hundred pages pale green cover. I think missus Garden 183 00:08:49.480 --> 00:08:53.799 has prefcessored donated it. She nods, satisfied and claps my shoulder. 184 00:08:54.399 --> 00:08:56.600 There was even a sequel, wasn't there? I never found 185 00:08:56.639 --> 00:08:59.080 that one. I want to ask more, but she is 186 00:08:59.120 --> 00:09:02.480 already off mid memory, joining another conversation at the window. 187 00:09:03.080 --> 00:09:04.519 I am left with the card in my hand and 188 00:09:04.600 --> 00:09:06.799 a conviction that something here is more fragile and perhaps 189 00:09:06.799 --> 00:09:10.799 more peculiar than cataloging error or fadd recollection. Ruth's certainty 190 00:09:10.840 --> 00:09:13.799 is absolute. I would wager my old teaching mud that 191 00:09:13.879 --> 00:09:16.799 no such book ever graced these shells, at least not 192 00:09:16.879 --> 00:09:20.039 since nineteen seventy one, when my own reading began in earnest. 193 00:09:20.759 --> 00:09:23.519 The contradiction is not subtle, but both missing and undeniably 194 00:09:23.559 --> 00:09:26.159 present a memory that is shared. Yet, according to all 195 00:09:26.159 --> 00:09:29.600 evidence impossible that evening, after the last of the rain 196 00:09:29.679 --> 00:09:31.759 and the sea's hush returns, I prop the U Metton 197 00:09:31.799 --> 00:09:33.879 cards on my kitchen table and pour myself a short 198 00:09:33.879 --> 00:09:36.759 glass of local cider. The question is no longer just 199 00:09:36.799 --> 00:09:39.600 about lost property. How can a butt both belong and 200 00:09:39.639 --> 00:09:42.559 not belong, remembered in circulation and absent from every shelf. 201 00:09:43.080 --> 00:09:44.879 It becomes a kind of game, low and looping in 202 00:09:44.879 --> 00:09:47.279 my mind. Perhaps I missed a year, an addition, a 203 00:09:47.360 --> 00:09:51.120 clear and sale. Perhaps, as Missess Gardiner implied, it is 204 00:09:51.159 --> 00:09:54.000 simply a gost to small town bureaucracy that the more 205 00:09:54.039 --> 00:09:56.399 I puzzle, the less content time to leave it alone. 206 00:09:56.799 --> 00:09:59.600 Ruth's conviction plans a stubborn seed. I do what I 207 00:09:59.639 --> 00:10:03.000 have always done, attest the waters. Next Tuesday, the book 208 00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:05.200 club meets in the meeting room, a lowlitspase that still 209 00:10:05.240 --> 00:10:07.879 smells faintly of the blackboats that lived here for seventy years. 210 00:10:08.480 --> 00:10:11.120 I brings naccent. After the first friend of lively argument 211 00:10:11.159 --> 00:10:13.240 over a dense Russian novel, I casually bring up with 212 00:10:13.279 --> 00:10:15.840 the Sky beneath the Hill, I keep my tone neutral, 213 00:10:15.960 --> 00:10:19.279 just curious someone brought up the title recently? Does anyone 214 00:10:19.320 --> 00:10:22.639 remember it? Doctor jew, who usually says little perks up 215 00:10:23.159 --> 00:10:25.919 war memoir? Wasn't it about the tunnels in France? I 216 00:10:25.960 --> 00:10:28.480 remember a chapter about soldier's plain chess under the earth, 217 00:10:28.559 --> 00:10:31.960 waiting for the all clear, eating liquoruse. She smiles, eyes 218 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:36.240 distant cast. The group's youngest member snoughts, that's not what 219 00:10:36.320 --> 00:10:38.159 it was at all. It's a fantasy. The boy finds 220 00:10:38.159 --> 00:10:40.120 a cave and climbs down into a whole world under 221 00:10:40.120 --> 00:10:41.919 the village, a kind of mirror of his own life, 222 00:10:42.120 --> 00:10:44.360 only brighter. There's a lantern that keeps going out, and 223 00:10:44.399 --> 00:10:47.039 a ghost who can't make up his mind. Ruth on 224 00:10:47.240 --> 00:10:50.600 face raises an eyebrow. No, No, it was about the 225 00:10:50.679 --> 00:10:53.799 ruined abbey on the mower, wasn't it. The conversation quickly 226 00:10:53.840 --> 00:10:58.320 splits familiar beloved, even heated. Doctor jew insists she lent 227 00:10:58.360 --> 00:11:01.000 her copy to her brothers, claims the school made her 228 00:11:01.000 --> 00:11:02.960 class read it, though she adds with the rye grin, 229 00:11:03.080 --> 00:11:05.159 most of us just took ten summarizing to get out 230 00:11:05.159 --> 00:11:07.480 of reading it. Ruth pipes up with it in from 231 00:11:07.480 --> 00:11:10.240 a screen cover, though now it's possibly blue. As the 232 00:11:10.279 --> 00:11:14.200 discussion swhirls, everyone recalls the version with the conviction descriptions 233 00:11:14.279 --> 00:11:17.120 to average boy or girl protagonist said in France or 234 00:11:17.120 --> 00:11:19.360 in the Mullins written by S. Palmer, or maybe it 235 00:11:19.440 --> 00:11:21.360 was by that author who also wrote the Windmill Book. 236 00:11:21.879 --> 00:11:25.759 Details grow, shrink change. At one point, doctor Shu vividly 237 00:11:25.759 --> 00:11:28.240 describes a chapter about eating wild onions in the dark. 238 00:11:28.480 --> 00:11:31.200 Cass interrupts, remembering a girl who keeps a pet bat. 239 00:11:31.840 --> 00:11:34.000 Rif files away plot points with the briskness of someone 240 00:11:34.039 --> 00:11:37.320 telling family history. At least three people recall a character 241 00:11:37.399 --> 00:11:39.679 named Eliot, though whether he is a dog, a grandfather, 242 00:11:39.879 --> 00:11:42.799 or secrets by depends on the teller. A few others, 243 00:11:42.799 --> 00:11:45.000 a pair of retired teachers and a fisherman named Bram, 244 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:47.919 admit they remember the title, perhaps, but not much else. 245 00:11:48.120 --> 00:11:50.519 Wasn't it about the lighthouse keeper's daughter, or there was 246 00:11:50.559 --> 00:11:52.159 a storm at the end that I do you know, 247 00:11:52.720 --> 00:11:55.159 vague or detail. The memories accumulate with the kind of 248 00:11:55.159 --> 00:11:58.960 communal certainty. Each believes fully in their own experience, but 249 00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:01.000 none are able to produce so much as a doggier 250 00:12:01.039 --> 00:12:03.759 copy or a remembered passage with the precision of actual text. 251 00:12:04.519 --> 00:12:07.600 I ask gently if anyone still has their copy. The 252 00:12:07.720 --> 00:12:11.080 room pauses. There are shrugs, a few puzzled looks, then 253 00:12:11.080 --> 00:12:13.120 a chorus. If I must have landed, maybe my sister 254 00:12:13.159 --> 00:12:15.120 has it. I think it was stolen in that flood. 255 00:12:15.679 --> 00:12:18.960 No one curiously seems troubled by the lack of physical evidence. 256 00:12:19.639 --> 00:12:22.600 The book books, by all available accounts, exists or existed, 257 00:12:22.759 --> 00:12:25.799 or maybe just all to have existed. Its precise nature 258 00:12:25.799 --> 00:12:28.159 seems to change depending on whose memory you consult, as 259 00:12:28.159 --> 00:12:31.159 though the act of recollection itself reshapes it. Later. I 260 00:12:31.200 --> 00:12:34.320 try a subtler approach at the Wednesday market, I bring 261 00:12:34.399 --> 00:12:38.000 up Yesterday's lanterns at a stall selling cut flowers. Is Abel, 262 00:12:38.279 --> 00:12:41.000 mother to three former students, laughs and says she used 263 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:43.600 to read it to her eldest at bedtime. She says 264 00:12:43.600 --> 00:12:45.840 she cried over the inning. Though press It is unclear 265 00:12:45.879 --> 00:12:48.039 if the landons belong to children lost in a blizzard 266 00:12:48.080 --> 00:12:50.840 or wistful fishermen on the bay down at the docks. 267 00:12:50.919 --> 00:12:53.279 All but mutters half remembered things about waiting for lights 268 00:12:53.279 --> 00:12:55.000 that never come back, but can't say if it was 269 00:12:55.039 --> 00:12:58.080 a poem, a play, or a fable. I chart these 270 00:12:58.120 --> 00:13:01.200 recollections in my note book. There is no unity, and 271 00:13:01.279 --> 00:13:03.679 yet there is a persistence of stubborn, warm gravity to 272 00:13:03.679 --> 00:13:07.399 the idea. The same book is variously tragedy and comedy, 273 00:13:07.440 --> 00:13:10.399 adventure and documentary, as if fulfilling whatever need for narrative 274 00:13:10.440 --> 00:13:13.679 the speaker carried at the moment. Giona, when I ask, 275 00:13:13.799 --> 00:13:16.759 reacts with blank confusion. I haven't seen anything like that 276 00:13:16.840 --> 00:13:19.759 in a catalog. Sometimes things just go missing for years 277 00:13:19.840 --> 00:13:22.320 then turn up again. A found whole boxes of romance 278 00:13:22.360 --> 00:13:25.000 novels hidden behind the odies stacks that covers all sun bleach, 279 00:13:25.159 --> 00:13:29.279 like they hibernated the shrugs. Pushes up his glasses. But 280 00:13:29.320 --> 00:13:31.320 if we had de batched this old and this well loved, 281 00:13:31.399 --> 00:13:33.600 we'd have accession numbers for them, or at least stamped 282 00:13:33.639 --> 00:13:36.679 labels on the shelves. Later in the arch of room, 283 00:13:36.840 --> 00:13:39.720 I thumb through old accession ledgers, expecting hoping these titles 284 00:13:39.759 --> 00:13:41.480 might appear there to confirm at least a ghost of 285 00:13:41.480 --> 00:13:45.399 their existence. A few pencil scribbles, faint and almost apologetic, 286 00:13:45.480 --> 00:13:48.679 seem to reference the same titles, but they have inconsistent 287 00:13:48.720 --> 00:13:53.120 call numbers, sometimes even switching author initials. The truly peculiar. 288 00:13:53.200 --> 00:13:56.159 Some are annotated with withdrawn, while others are clearly enlisted. 289 00:13:56.159 --> 00:14:00.519 Between perfectly ordinary entries, the marginalia messo still shopless in 290 00:14:00.600 --> 00:14:03.039 complete cross words, as if locals once sat for a 291 00:14:03.039 --> 00:14:07.320 while musing. I pour through the drawers here, too, contradictions 292 00:14:07.320 --> 00:14:10.600 crowd the facts. One half finished note reads in Hurry's 293 00:14:10.639 --> 00:14:14.639 grip reminds Palmerie over Gwy's lantern. Another entry has a 294 00:14:14.639 --> 00:14:17.919 grocery list sand which between two title notes. None of 295 00:14:17.919 --> 00:14:20.919 it feels staged. People spend time with these cards, rode 296 00:14:20.919 --> 00:14:23.120 on them, but what they grows more or pick the harder. 297 00:14:23.159 --> 00:14:25.679 I try to read it at home, a cross reference 298 00:14:25.679 --> 00:14:29.000 everything I've gleaned. The digital catalog offers nothing, and a 299 00:14:29.080 --> 00:14:31.720 determined search online brings only the titles I already know. 300 00:14:32.399 --> 00:14:36.159 No reviews, no references, no hints of self published obscurities. 301 00:14:36.799 --> 00:14:39.440 There's nothing in the indexes of local newspapers, which are 302 00:14:39.519 --> 00:14:41.960 inselves little more than years of dogged local reporting about 303 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:45.879 ferries and rainstorms the community. It is consistent in their inconsistency. 304 00:14:45.879 --> 00:14:48.960 Each story mutates in transit, expanding or shrinking, but always 305 00:14:49.000 --> 00:14:51.399 preserves the conviction that the book exists, or once did. 306 00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:54.120 The physical trace is only in the metadata. In the 307 00:14:54.120 --> 00:14:56.679 shadow of the ledger and the cattle dog slip, the 308 00:14:56.720 --> 00:14:59.279 cover colored shift seems micro from one teller to another. 309 00:14:59.799 --> 00:15:01.840 It it is as if the memory itself is a blossom, 310 00:15:01.840 --> 00:15:05.200 each mind producing a new, if fatally reminiscent flower. How 311 00:15:05.200 --> 00:15:08.600 can so many people with overlapping sprecificities and earnest conviction 312 00:15:08.919 --> 00:15:10.879 recall a thing for which there is no physical trace 313 00:15:10.919 --> 00:15:13.759 at all except for these cards, These ghostly ledges filed 314 00:15:13.759 --> 00:15:15.679 as if waiting for the missing volumes to stroll in 315 00:15:15.879 --> 00:15:19.600 The apologetic overgeebut about book club this week is lively 316 00:15:19.679 --> 00:15:22.559 than usual. The rain has led up, and the familiar 317 00:15:22.559 --> 00:15:25.200 faces are crowded. Closer Cass leaning in Ruth with a 318 00:15:25.240 --> 00:15:27.559 blanket over her knees, Doctor Jue clutching a cup of 319 00:15:27.559 --> 00:15:31.039 TEA debate is materialized again round a recipe for shadows 320 00:15:31.639 --> 00:15:34.799 this time, the argument is almost theatrical, a performance of recollection. 321 00:15:35.480 --> 00:15:38.039 Cass is adamant. It was a ghost story, but not scary. 322 00:15:38.080 --> 00:15:40.360 A girl mixes ingredients that let her see things at night. 323 00:15:40.440 --> 00:15:42.799 The neighbor warns her not to finish the last recipe 324 00:15:42.879 --> 00:15:46.360 or something terrible will happen. Ruth counters instantly, nonsense. It 325 00:15:46.399 --> 00:15:49.159 to children's book. The recipes are solely invisible biscuits and 326 00:15:49.240 --> 00:15:51.279 moon sugar. My mother used to make up the last 327 00:15:51.279 --> 00:15:53.200 one if we were sad before bed. The book even 328 00:15:53.200 --> 00:15:57.279 had drawings tiny balls and wooden spoons. Brahm idly sipping 329 00:15:57.279 --> 00:16:01.840 coffee interjects. Didn't have poems about making pictures with candlelight. No, 330 00:16:02.159 --> 00:16:05.720 says Cass, you're thinking of the later edition. Anne, another 331 00:16:05.759 --> 00:16:09.080 retired teacher laughs. In our family it was a kind 332 00:16:09.080 --> 00:16:10.919 of joke. Every one would add a new recipe as 333 00:16:10.960 --> 00:16:13.080 we read. My boys wrote theirs on the fly leaves. 334 00:16:13.759 --> 00:16:17.759 The group splits, recalling entirely different episodes, themes, even moral messages. 335 00:16:18.440 --> 00:16:22.200 Someone insists the heroine his red hair, someone else corrects brown. 336 00:16:22.720 --> 00:16:26.840 The plot oscillates kaleidoscopic. Every one present is absolutely certain 337 00:16:26.879 --> 00:16:30.360 of their version. I am left almost dizzy. My own memory, 338 00:16:30.399 --> 00:16:32.879 no small thing tested daily by crosswood clues, and the 339 00:16:32.879 --> 00:16:36.200 faces of old students rings empty for every detail. It's 340 00:16:36.279 --> 00:16:40.360 not a realize, just my memory failing. Everyone's recollection is infuriating, 341 00:16:40.399 --> 00:16:43.320 the elastic solid for each speaker, reconcilable as a whole. 342 00:16:43.960 --> 00:16:46.240 No one considers, even for a moment, that the others 343 00:16:46.320 --> 00:16:48.600 might be wrong. They only assign their difference to maybe 344 00:16:48.600 --> 00:16:50.720 it was a different edition, or perhaps had borrowed a 345 00:16:50.759 --> 00:16:53.840 later printing. In the moment, a watch communal memory braid 346 00:16:53.879 --> 00:16:56.759 itself across the table, no single thread strong enough to bind, 347 00:16:57.000 --> 00:17:00.519 yet impossible to dismiss the implications threatened to tip out 348 00:17:00.519 --> 00:17:03.559 of the simplicity I sought to maintain. The phenomenon isn't 349 00:17:03.559 --> 00:17:06.640 about a lost book, a cattalogging error. It is embedded 350 00:17:06.640 --> 00:17:09.799 within the fabric of our collective recollection and invention or adaptation, 351 00:17:10.039 --> 00:17:13.759 or possibly both, shaping itself according to need. The stories 352 00:17:13.799 --> 00:17:16.319 act as placeholders, ghosts of narratives that could have been, 353 00:17:16.400 --> 00:17:19.119 should have been, or were remembered exactly as someone wished. 354 00:17:19.799 --> 00:17:21.880 I think back beyond retirement to when I sat in 355 00:17:21.920 --> 00:17:24.519 this library after school, listening to the slow winding talk 356 00:17:24.559 --> 00:17:27.000 of readers in the corners all time is grumbling about 357 00:17:27.039 --> 00:17:30.039 the books they don't make any more. Tales and local legends, 358 00:17:30.079 --> 00:17:32.759 abandoned stories of sunken ships, of the school that burned 359 00:17:32.759 --> 00:17:34.960 down twice in one night, of the lighthouse keeper who 360 00:17:34.960 --> 00:17:38.960 never left. We repeated them, adjusted them, retrofitted their facts 361 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:41.720 as we saw fit, and always in the corner a 362 00:17:41.720 --> 00:17:44.599 book or two was mentioned. You mustn't read that after dark, 363 00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:47.599 or best left for a stormy day? Had it always been? 364 00:17:47.599 --> 00:17:51.359 Thus a pattern of mutually exclusive yet earnestly told stories 365 00:17:51.440 --> 00:17:54.759 lay down like sediment across the years. I review my notes, 366 00:17:54.839 --> 00:17:58.759 my mental map of the contradictions. Each memory is detailed, persuasive, 367 00:17:58.839 --> 00:18:02.279 yet fundamentally I reckons valible with the others. Every fact 368 00:18:02.279 --> 00:18:05.480 arise wrapped in the certainty of emotion, laughter, nostalgia, sometimes 369 00:18:05.480 --> 00:18:08.759 a gentle melancholy, while the plot points flowed emerred. How 370 00:18:08.759 --> 00:18:11.920 are such mutually exclusive memories fostered? Is it a form 371 00:18:11.920 --> 00:18:14.480 of fouchoor, an innocent by productive of the strange intimacy 372 00:18:14.480 --> 00:18:17.759 of time life? Could the same mechanism occur in other aspects? 373 00:18:17.880 --> 00:18:21.759 Family stories, recipes, half remembers of festivals that everyone swears 374 00:18:21.799 --> 00:18:25.079 happened just at once, I do not know, but the 375 00:18:25.119 --> 00:18:28.799 cushion has sharpened. The unwritten books are more than lost stories. 376 00:18:29.000 --> 00:18:31.720 They are living, breathing contradictions of tradition, as thin or 377 00:18:31.759 --> 00:18:35.119 as thick as the memory of community itself. I decide, quietly, 378 00:18:35.319 --> 00:18:37.240 but with a new sense of urgency to dig deeper. 379 00:18:37.880 --> 00:18:40.799 The truth, if such a thing exists, surely lies not 380 00:18:40.839 --> 00:18:43.559 in the careful facts, but within the structure and limits 381 00:18:43.559 --> 00:18:47.480 of the stories themselves. Who started it? Are these stories 382 00:18:47.480 --> 00:18:50.400 deliberate inventions or the emergent effect of decades of shared 383 00:18:50.440 --> 00:18:54.440 living layered across generations, and more provocatively? Could new ones 384 00:18:54.480 --> 00:18:57.839 be invented, planted here to see them grow? A week later, 385 00:18:57.960 --> 00:19:00.000 on a Saturday morning, thick with the smell of breakfast 386 00:19:00.119 --> 00:19:02.480 drifting from the lunch counter across the street, I find 387 00:19:02.480 --> 00:19:05.319 myself shelving books beside Jonah. We are deep in the 388 00:19:05.319 --> 00:19:08.400 biography section. One wedged next to Mandela batter does jackets, 389 00:19:08.440 --> 00:19:11.240 giving up flakes of old glue. Jonah tries to wedge 390 00:19:11.240 --> 00:19:13.839 in a stack of autobiography donations, but the shelf is 391 00:19:13.839 --> 00:19:17.559 too tight. Mind if I move this over, John says, 392 00:19:17.559 --> 00:19:20.599 putting his shoulder to the shelf, The unit nudges, then 393 00:19:20.640 --> 00:19:24.079 suddenly shifts further than expected. A stale broth, the smell 394 00:19:24.160 --> 00:19:27.119 mold perhaps or just older than the last renovation, creeps 395 00:19:27.160 --> 00:19:29.240 up from the gap. What I first think is an 396 00:19:29.240 --> 00:19:32.119 old utility cupboard appears behind the books, a flush panel, 397 00:19:32.200 --> 00:19:34.400 the paint almost exactly matched to the wall, but with 398 00:19:34.480 --> 00:19:36.319 a faint scene that has not been disturbed in ears. 399 00:19:36.960 --> 00:19:40.799 Did you know this was here? I ask Jonah, wide 400 00:19:40.839 --> 00:19:43.880 eyed and delighted, shakes his head. Not in the least 401 00:19:44.039 --> 00:19:48.519