WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:07.719 I was not supposed to be there. Strictly speaking, My 2 00:00:07.799 --> 00:00:10.279 time as an official catalogia for the Branning Street Brunch 3 00:00:10.279 --> 00:00:12.519 had ended two and a half years earlier, with a card, 4 00:00:12.599 --> 00:00:15.320 a brass paper weight, and a quietly satisfying send off 5 00:00:15.320 --> 00:00:18.359 in the staff lounge. Yet here I was sleeves rolled 6 00:00:18.399 --> 00:00:20.640 to the elbow and knuckles scuff of dust, elbow deep 7 00:00:20.640 --> 00:00:23.640 in the slow, awkward choreography of a library renovation clean up. 8 00:00:24.199 --> 00:00:26.160 Most of the new staff didn't much care for the 9 00:00:26.199 --> 00:00:29.160 lionstone fly at basement. So when Marsh asked, always with 10 00:00:29.160 --> 00:00:31.280 a tactful loot, if I might cast old eye over 11 00:00:31.359 --> 00:00:34.119 some forgotten conners, I had agreed, before thinking it through. 12 00:00:34.719 --> 00:00:37.719 Nothing is ever truly gone in a public library. Some 13 00:00:37.840 --> 00:00:40.880 things only go missing in ways. People stop checking all 14 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:44.799 holiday decorations sat atop broken microphone readers, in small, mumified piles, 15 00:00:44.840 --> 00:00:48.240 score program banners, Britos leaves winked out of battered cotton's 16 00:00:48.280 --> 00:00:51.439 mixed with obsoley projectors, loose electrical fuses, and the lower 17 00:00:51.520 --> 00:00:55.840 propaganda pamphts every branch accidentally inherits. The air felt several 18 00:00:55.880 --> 00:00:58.719 degrees colder than the staircase above. Seasoned with hints of 19 00:00:58.719 --> 00:01:02.679 cardboard aluminum, and tied our city's scent even underground. It 20 00:01:02.759 --> 00:01:05.079 happened as I side stepped to humming dehumidiffire in a 21 00:01:05.079 --> 00:01:07.519 far corner and reached for a stray packing crate, tilted 22 00:01:07.560 --> 00:01:10.439 grotesquely across its neighbor, blocking a narrow stone alcove. I 23 00:01:10.439 --> 00:01:13.319 had never noticed the crate was lighter than it looked. 24 00:01:13.959 --> 00:01:17.040 Behind it, not quite hidden was a slim sholl fashioned 25 00:01:17.040 --> 00:01:18.760 out of what seemed to be old mahogany. The wood 26 00:01:18.799 --> 00:01:21.640 dockned and a morp despite the age, I fixed with 27 00:01:21.680 --> 00:01:24.359 two tiny brass pins. A label of ivory card struck 28 00:01:24.439 --> 00:01:27.040 hand lattered in an elegant looping script, A leaner ronge 29 00:01:27.079 --> 00:01:30.200 claim returns. A first glance, I assumed it was a 30 00:01:30.239 --> 00:01:32.959 lost and found of some sort. But the shelf bristled 31 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:35.640 with books, perhaps forty in all, each clad in faded claws, 32 00:01:35.640 --> 00:01:39.799 covers of blue, sea, green, gold rose. No two bindings 33 00:01:39.840 --> 00:01:42.959 matched exactly, though all bore signs of devoted use. Corner's 34 00:01:43.000 --> 00:01:46.120 dulled head kept frayed. Cozy fingerprints dusted into the cloth. 35 00:01:46.719 --> 00:01:49.120 I traced one gilded title with my finger, the strand's 36 00:01:49.159 --> 00:01:52.680 last lantern. There were no bockers or sbns, just the 37 00:01:52.719 --> 00:01:55.239 slim paste on library stickers from a system phased out 38 00:01:55.239 --> 00:01:58.640 thirty years prior. Inside the front covers, each book held 39 00:01:58.640 --> 00:02:00.719 an inchin slip pocket with the checker card, and on 40 00:02:00.799 --> 00:02:03.400 every card line after a line of uniform entry, always 41 00:02:03.400 --> 00:02:07.719 the same name Alina Row, sometimes tiny, sometimes larger, always neat. 42 00:02:08.360 --> 00:02:10.879 The return dates ranged from nineteen thirty six to as 43 00:02:10.960 --> 00:02:14.039 late as nineteen ninety seven, is span both impossible and arresting. 44 00:02:14.599 --> 00:02:17.199 A library's oddities usually announced themselves with a series of 45 00:02:17.240 --> 00:02:19.719 hiccups and order, a missing invers here, a letter sent 46 00:02:19.800 --> 00:02:22.199 to the ron donor, and an anticipated run on titles 47 00:02:22.240 --> 00:02:24.800 from a school curriculum. But this shell felt like a 48 00:02:24.879 --> 00:02:27.759 musical note heard outside the usual key. Why on earth 49 00:02:27.759 --> 00:02:30.879 would one patron check out so many desperate books, children's adventures, 50 00:02:30.960 --> 00:02:33.960 city estuaries, technical treatises over most of a century and 51 00:02:33.960 --> 00:02:37.039 never reclaim them. Why, for that matter, should every borrow 52 00:02:37.120 --> 00:02:39.280 slip be filled in the same precise, fine pointed hand 53 00:02:39.360 --> 00:02:42.439 decades to par There was no urgency to answer, only 54 00:02:42.439 --> 00:02:45.520 a swelling curiosity, like the rising tide slipping under door. 55 00:02:46.159 --> 00:02:48.759 I scanned the books greedily, fingers brushing the spines in 56 00:02:48.800 --> 00:02:51.120 the order of their arrangement, part of me already imagining 57 00:02:51.159 --> 00:02:54.639 the catalog cards, the careful accession numbers. With that meaning 58 00:02:54.680 --> 00:02:56.680 to I slid a slim, rose colored novel from the 59 00:02:56.759 --> 00:02:58.879 end of the chuffel, little volume called by the Dean's Edge, 60 00:02:58.919 --> 00:03:01.400 stant nineteen fifty two, and slipped it into my satchel. 61 00:03:01.960 --> 00:03:04.280 I told myself I'd examined it over lunch up stairs, 62 00:03:04.319 --> 00:03:06.560 But the truth was, I felt that faint electric anticipation 63 00:03:06.599 --> 00:03:08.960 I'd known only a few times in my career. The 64 00:03:09.039 --> 00:03:11.080 shelf was a story, and I wanted to read on 65 00:03:11.759 --> 00:03:14.919 after lunch. The familiar geometry of the cataloging room seemed 66 00:03:14.960 --> 00:03:17.280 less solid, as if the old marine green tiles and 67 00:03:17.280 --> 00:03:19.719 bow windows no longer fit quite so perfectly into their 68 00:03:19.719 --> 00:03:22.879 decades carved grooves. I've always been drawn to the stavely 69 00:03:22.960 --> 00:03:25.599 warnedges of the browning branch, the walnut boalstrades tracing the 70 00:03:25.639 --> 00:03:28.560 reading room mezzanine, each drafted by thousands of elbows, the 71 00:03:28.560 --> 00:03:30.639 turquoise glazed tile that ran like a river up the 72 00:03:30.639 --> 00:03:33.599 grand staircase, and the great arched windows, often rattling with 73 00:03:33.639 --> 00:03:37.039 the city's salty westwind. Even in its current state, stack 74 00:03:37.120 --> 00:03:39.879 draped and plastic, a fine mist of construction dust glittering 75 00:03:39.960 --> 00:03:42.400 under the bulbs. The library radiated the endurance in stubborn 76 00:03:42.439 --> 00:03:45.120 as unique to survivors of too many well intended renovations. 77 00:03:45.759 --> 00:03:47.599 It was Marshall who first made the branch feel like 78 00:03:47.639 --> 00:03:50.199 a second home. She was the living thread running through 79 00:03:50.240 --> 00:03:53.680 thirty seven years of stories, reference requests, and minor Cressy's. 80 00:03:53.800 --> 00:03:56.159 She remembered the taste of every city council budget and 81 00:03:56.199 --> 00:03:59.680 the names of every staffer's favorite biscuit. Mister forres A 82 00:04:00.439 --> 00:04:02.919 was only slightly younger and considerably more wry, with a 83 00:04:02.919 --> 00:04:06.120 gift for mending both ancient plumbing and shaky moots. They 84 00:04:06.159 --> 00:04:09.599 worked with a collection of regulars, retirees with fur newspaper opinions, 85 00:04:09.639 --> 00:04:12.080 after school kid who ran a while less printer racket, 86 00:04:12.120 --> 00:04:14.400 and the lummy sometimes in the sixties, who drifted back 87 00:04:14.439 --> 00:04:16.600 for a tide of nostalgia to trace old signatures in 88 00:04:16.600 --> 00:04:19.839 the ledger book. Cataloging to me always held its own 89 00:04:19.879 --> 00:04:22.199 quiet lyricism, a dance of order, a way of letting 90 00:04:22.240 --> 00:04:24.639 a collection sustain its secret pulse of information beneath the 91 00:04:24.639 --> 00:04:27.839 dinner of daily use. To describe a book correctly assign 92 00:04:27.920 --> 00:04:29.879 it the right place in the infinite chess board was 93 00:04:29.920 --> 00:04:32.800 never just clerical. It was a species of affectionate attention, 94 00:04:33.000 --> 00:04:35.879 a way of affirming and seen geometry of thought. Most 95 00:04:35.879 --> 00:04:39.800 holes in our collections history I'd found resolved themselves with patients. 96 00:04:39.800 --> 00:04:42.160 A stray book turned up in school bag and encrypted 97 00:04:42.199 --> 00:04:45.079 shelfmocrat by comparing accession dates a shelf for classified and 98 00:04:45.120 --> 00:04:48.560 instantly sensible, But the spasement shell fellner arose on claimed 99 00:04:48.600 --> 00:04:52.639 Rotenza gave off a rarer ore. In conversations with older colleagues, 100 00:04:52.759 --> 00:04:55.360 I'd sometimes heard tales of forgotten caches, and not behind 101 00:04:55.439 --> 00:04:58.120 radiators or panels, but always attributable from a slight hand 102 00:04:58.199 --> 00:05:01.199 or a forgotten protocol. A year, a glimpse to pattern 103 00:05:01.199 --> 00:05:03.879 an aimer could quite link to her memory, handwritting yearly consistent, 104 00:05:03.879 --> 00:05:06.439 a parade of books, familiar, informed by strangers, and content 105 00:05:07.079 --> 00:05:08.959 for all my years in those stacks, For all the 106 00:05:08.959 --> 00:05:11.759 pleasure I took in vanquishing small mysteries, I couldn't recall 107 00:05:11.759 --> 00:05:14.160 a single or Lena wrote in our older log books. 108 00:05:14.560 --> 00:05:17.079 Yet the idea prickled as something long ignored, some secret 109 00:05:17.120 --> 00:05:20.160 tributary running parallel to the main current of the library's life. 110 00:05:20.560 --> 00:05:23.079 Every library is a palm syst overwritten and revised with 111 00:05:23.160 --> 00:05:27.079 new technologies, tastes, and disasters. The Browning branch had seen 112 00:05:27.079 --> 00:05:29.399 its fair share, one infamous with roof leak, a small 113 00:05:29.399 --> 00:05:32.000 fire in the sixties, the slow digitization that left so 114 00:05:32.079 --> 00:05:35.360 many hand stamped cards peeling like sunburn. Paths diverge and reconnect, 115 00:05:35.399 --> 00:05:37.720 Some records slip into cracks and creas no one deciphers 116 00:05:37.720 --> 00:05:40.120 for generations. I had long since shured any fantasy that 117 00:05:40.160 --> 00:05:43.000 collection gaps were proof of great scandals or legends. Still, 118 00:05:43.079 --> 00:05:45.480 something in a lener row shof felt wholly unlike any 119 00:05:45.519 --> 00:05:49.000 minor mystery i'd met. Later the evening, once the workmen's 120 00:05:49.040 --> 00:05:51.439 clumbre ebbed and the staff retreated upstairs to roll up 121 00:05:51.480 --> 00:05:53.920 blueprints and cu kettles, AS slipped into the back office 122 00:05:53.920 --> 00:05:56.160 and powered up an aging axis terminal, the kind with 123 00:05:56.160 --> 00:05:59.439 the navy and cream interface beloved only body ineffatigable. I 124 00:05:59.600 --> 00:06:01.439 entered a few view of Elena Rose book titles and 125 00:06:01.480 --> 00:06:03.759 authors cerces on the estuary, the Queen's chimney, even a 126 00:06:03.800 --> 00:06:06.360 little by the June's edge into the Library's electronic database, 127 00:06:06.399 --> 00:06:10.040 than the National Union catalog. Not then, not even a 128 00:06:10.079 --> 00:06:13.199 phantom hit. Surely something should have slotted into the system, 129 00:06:13.199 --> 00:06:15.560 A record, a variant edition. I was drawn copy, but 130 00:06:15.639 --> 00:06:19.040 the screen returned blank after blank. Each search felt sharper 131 00:06:19.040 --> 00:06:21.680 than the last. I opened a second search window for 132 00:06:21.720 --> 00:06:25.519 out of print publishers indexes. Still nothing. These weren't rare books. 133 00:06:25.519 --> 00:06:29.079 They looked like perfectly ordinary mid century children's capers, city guides, 134 00:06:29.399 --> 00:06:32.120 or idiosocratic hobbyist tracks, the sort that fill British and 135 00:06:32.160 --> 00:06:35.160 American library shelles by the mile. Yet they'd left not 136 00:06:35.199 --> 00:06:37.480 a ribel. I lost myself for an hour in the 137 00:06:37.480 --> 00:06:40.720 physical evidence. The borrowed book from my satchel gave off 138 00:06:40.720 --> 00:06:43.040 that heady perfume of old binding paste, and sun warned 139 00:06:43.120 --> 00:06:46.120 lenin opening it. The text proved as readable and brisk 140 00:06:46.160 --> 00:06:48.720 as any period adventure. Three Neighbor her children, A kindly 141 00:06:48.800 --> 00:06:51.399 but cryptic tram engineer, A Quest for the Dune's Edge. 142 00:06:51.920 --> 00:06:56.000 Pages were doughtured corners feathered by many hands. Several pages 143 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:58.480 bore pencil took sum I've realized in the very same 144 00:06:58.519 --> 00:07:02.040 meat script as Elena rose Chekhov Cards Marsha drifted by 145 00:07:02.079 --> 00:07:04.000 on her way out, peering in with a faint question 146 00:07:04.079 --> 00:07:06.959 in her gaze. I called her over, reading her a 147 00:07:06.959 --> 00:07:10.079 few lines and showing her the stamp cards. She turned 148 00:07:10.079 --> 00:07:12.160 by the June's edge over in her hands, then rowned. 149 00:07:12.800 --> 00:07:15.920 It's all, but it looks right, she said. We always 150 00:07:15.920 --> 00:07:18.519 had little pockets everywhere, books that never matched the official 151 00:07:18.560 --> 00:07:21.800 title list's donations from local authors or oddities. The old 152 00:07:21.800 --> 00:07:23.959 manager's picked up a salvage auctions. But the she off 153 00:07:24.040 --> 00:07:26.560 is that from the old children's annex. It doesn't sound familiar. 154 00:07:27.040 --> 00:07:30.600 She peered at the checkout card Billina wrote. She said, quietly, 155 00:07:31.240 --> 00:07:33.720 I remember handling returns by the name in the old ledges. 156 00:07:33.759 --> 00:07:36.399 Maybe two three times must have been in the early nineties, 157 00:07:36.439 --> 00:07:39.199 but not so many, and not like wellness. There's a 158 00:07:39.240 --> 00:07:42.680 comfort and shared confusion. Mel a visiting archive, is topping 159 00:07:42.720 --> 00:07:45.600 to digitized decades of old checkouts, was summoned by Marsha, 160 00:07:46.279 --> 00:07:49.759 a lean, restless woman always in battered canvas clothes. Mel 161 00:07:49.800 --> 00:07:52.680 prided herself on her recal shadowed nukes in public collections. 162 00:07:53.360 --> 00:07:56.600 She too came up empty. Not a single author or 163 00:07:56.639 --> 00:07:59.879 title called up a memory. The checkout cards, she muttered, 164 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:03.040 studying the column of return dates. Look, this one lists 165 00:08:03.040 --> 00:08:05.759 October nineteen seventy nine, but the whole branch closed for 166 00:08:05.800 --> 00:08:08.480 the sealing refurbishment at autumn. There shouldn't be any checkout's 167 00:08:08.519 --> 00:08:12.160 log that month. I checked the next card June nineteen 168 00:08:12.240 --> 00:08:15.519 fifty five, again marked returned, but the handriton date fell 169 00:08:15.560 --> 00:08:17.920 in the midst of the branches celebrated flood summer, when 170 00:08:17.920 --> 00:08:20.199 the lower stacks sat under eighteen inches of brackish water, 171 00:08:20.240 --> 00:08:23.160 and every checkout entailed a damp adventure. The cards went 172 00:08:23.199 --> 00:08:26.600 on through city strikes, coastal storms, years when no shelves 173 00:08:26.600 --> 00:08:30.040 should have seen use. Yet the evidence was patient, mundane, 174 00:08:30.079 --> 00:08:33.679 somehow real dates and signatures carefully arrayed, a trace of 175 00:08:33.679 --> 00:08:36.919 invisible attendant sold white at the border between plausible and impossible. 176 00:08:37.519 --> 00:08:39.720 I should have felt alarm, but what Groon said was 177 00:08:39.720 --> 00:08:41.879 a thrilling sense of proximity, a hunger to amind, the 178 00:08:41.879 --> 00:08:44.159 sense of a known system veering gracefully out of step 179 00:08:44.159 --> 00:08:48.039 with itself. Catalogs sometimes fail, but for the same pattern 180 00:08:48.080 --> 00:08:50.519 to recur in the cracks of every system, cards ledgers 181 00:08:50.600 --> 00:08:53.440 physical evidence felt in that moment like a kind of gift. 182 00:08:54.320 --> 00:08:57.000 Maybe Meloferd as she replaced the slit. Someone was making 183 00:08:57.000 --> 00:08:59.399 a private keeps it filing abandoned stories for a friend. 184 00:08:59.480 --> 00:09:01.639 The question is how to stay hid in so cleanly? 185 00:09:02.120 --> 00:09:05.480 I couldn't answer, and I knew with prickling certainty that 186 00:09:05.480 --> 00:09:08.360 I couldn't let well enough alone. For the next several days, 187 00:09:08.440 --> 00:09:10.960 the Alina rochelf shaped my waking hours, and more than 188 00:09:10.960 --> 00:09:14.799 once display sensible sleep. I stationed myself on abouted stool 189 00:09:14.840 --> 00:09:17.240 with a borrow teaput, and set about the methodical cataloging 190 00:09:17.240 --> 00:09:20.600 of each book, page by page. A second notebook filled 191 00:09:20.600 --> 00:09:24.080 with tallis titleists, physical notes, theory, fighting against the seductive 192 00:09:24.159 --> 00:09:28.200 logic of order. Every volume presented a fresh contradiction. The 193 00:09:28.240 --> 00:09:31.279 stories themselves were unlike anything in our published stacks. City 194 00:09:31.320 --> 00:09:36.159 adventures featuring lost wharves, muralists, amateur inventors, technical volumes about 195 00:09:36.200 --> 00:09:39.159 marine navigation tools, with names incited in any maritime history. 196 00:09:39.240 --> 00:09:42.480 City memoirs describing festivals and public works projects not just 197 00:09:42.519 --> 00:09:46.360 absent but intraceable. Elsewhere in the Strand's Last Lantern, I 198 00:09:46.440 --> 00:09:49.279 encountered a description of the city's type Perwatramia lipping rail 199 00:09:49.279 --> 00:09:51.480 line clattering from the north Headland to the commercial peer 200 00:09:51.600 --> 00:09:53.840 powered by the daily rise and fall of the estuary. 201 00:09:54.440 --> 00:09:56.840 There was even a fold up map stations named transfer 202 00:09:56.879 --> 00:09:59.919 points noted a careful diagram of a mechanism labeled meritobine. 203 00:10:00.279 --> 00:10:02.399 If the press had ever mentioned such a marvel, I'd 204 00:10:02.399 --> 00:10:04.960 have seen it in the city archives. But the tram 205 00:10:05.039 --> 00:10:07.960 wasn't listed in any city directory from the last hundred years, 206 00:10:08.080 --> 00:10:11.600 nor any technical periodical, nor even the spirited reminiscences of 207 00:10:11.600 --> 00:10:14.480 our oldest alumni. I drafted emails to a couple of 208 00:10:14.480 --> 00:10:16.960 retired staffers, hopeful that even an odd story might linger 209 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:20.840 from their early days. Nothing a scout city planning records, 210 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:25.039 old newspaper microfilm, and the city's own unusual inventions newspaper columns. 211 00:10:25.639 --> 00:10:28.360 No mention of Thai trams, no lant of festivalt has 212 00:10:28.360 --> 00:10:30.879 described in the novel's de nuema, no heroics in the 213 00:10:30.879 --> 00:10:34.279 city's storm chronicles, echoing the book's dramatic knight rescue. I 214 00:10:34.360 --> 00:10:37.120 carried this process out of cross books in the Row one. 215 00:10:37.200 --> 00:10:40.120 The Marine Shadowgraph, posed as a practical treatise for amateurcy 216 00:10:40.200 --> 00:10:42.720 firs and hobbyists. Its diagrams of a shadow plot in 217 00:10:42.759 --> 00:10:45.519 device for nighttime navigation quoted the lessons of our city's 218 00:10:45.519 --> 00:10:47.960 first estuary lighthouse is structure that, as far as any 219 00:10:47.960 --> 00:10:51.159 wrecorture roade, never stood all the tactical jog and fit 220 00:10:51.240 --> 00:10:54.440 precisely within the period and vernacular. The illustrations rendered in 221 00:10:54.480 --> 00:10:57.240 Fining mimit the aesthetic of the city's nineteen thirty youth 222 00:10:57.320 --> 00:11:00.240 engineering handbooks, down to the swooping monogram at the conor 223 00:11:00.279 --> 00:11:03.840 of each diagram. I confronted local history with each new puzzle. 224 00:11:04.279 --> 00:11:06.960 Buildings described in these books, like the Kalpo's head bath 225 00:11:06.960 --> 00:11:09.879 house with its distinctive mistake dolphin arch we simply when 226 00:11:09.919 --> 00:11:13.240 present in photographs, maps, or recollections of anyone I could 227 00:11:13.279 --> 00:11:17.000 find he had the tone, specificity, and unshurey authority with 228 00:11:17.039 --> 00:11:19.639 which the books described them, felt utterly familiar, like coming 229 00:11:19.679 --> 00:11:22.960 across a footnote to one's own earliest memories. The stories 230 00:11:22.960 --> 00:11:25.279 were resonated with the city's salt and copper time, but 231 00:11:25.320 --> 00:11:28.279 belonged to an alternate genealogy. I did not keep my 232 00:11:28.360 --> 00:11:32.759 curiosity contained. I approached Patron's mostly old timers, grandparent outes, 233 00:11:32.799 --> 00:11:35.519 trailing the ineffable scent of coffee and notebooking, seeking memory 234 00:11:35.519 --> 00:11:37.919 trimmers that might anchor the shelf in some plausible past, 235 00:11:38.639 --> 00:11:41.320 you'd ever hear of the light and niparade, I asked 236 00:11:41.360 --> 00:11:44.480 mister wise, retired postman, as he sorted piles of old 237 00:11:44.480 --> 00:11:48.000 magazines over the newspaper wreck. He squinted, shaking his head. 238 00:11:48.559 --> 00:11:50.279 The kind of rings a bell might have been something 239 00:11:50.279 --> 00:11:52.600 the girls from Saint Bridget put on once a decade 240 00:11:52.679 --> 00:11:55.480 parades coming go. I couldn't tell you what year. He 241 00:11:55.559 --> 00:11:57.279 leafed through the city guide I had placed in front 242 00:11:57.320 --> 00:12:00.240 of him, But that tram me now never ran north 243 00:12:00.240 --> 00:12:02.480 of the mariner's own course. A fell a standing around 244 00:12:02.480 --> 00:12:04.360 the depot in the rain could imagine a hundred extra 245 00:12:04.440 --> 00:12:07.559 lions there. Others remembered rumors or stories passed to them 246 00:12:07.600 --> 00:12:10.519 as children, tales of brave tram conductors or a bathhouse 247 00:12:10.559 --> 00:12:13.240 with the wild dolphins in the tiles. No one could 248 00:12:13.240 --> 00:12:15.440 point to a childhood copy of the story a fun 249 00:12:15.519 --> 00:12:19.080 day or newspaper cutting. Their recollection shaded toward the mythic 250 00:12:19.159 --> 00:12:22.600 faint reflections caught in the city's collective mirror. I relayed 251 00:12:22.639 --> 00:12:24.879 these findings to Mail, who took to stopping by each 252 00:12:24.919 --> 00:12:27.960 afternoon for an official joint puzzle session. She brought her 253 00:12:27.960 --> 00:12:30.600 own rotating sample of odd newsprint clippings, and was the 254 00:12:30.600 --> 00:12:32.799 first to comment on the growing pattern. It's like these 255 00:12:32.799 --> 00:12:35.240 books are from a shadow version of the city, she mused, 256 00:12:35.519 --> 00:12:37.919 one that borrowed all our hobbies, right down to the 257 00:12:37.919 --> 00:12:41.200 fine print, but changed course just before publication. I think 258 00:12:41.279 --> 00:12:44.080 for another novel. Pausing at a chapter where children plotted 259 00:12:44.120 --> 00:12:46.720 excursions through an underground arcaid access by the blue door 260 00:12:46.720 --> 00:12:49.759 at the library's and hallway, the passage made me glance 261 00:12:49.840 --> 00:12:51.960 up at the catalog room's north wall, a blitz of 262 00:12:52.000 --> 00:12:55.240 idle speculation running behind my eyes. Even as we laughed 263 00:12:55.279 --> 00:12:57.840 these suggestions away, a part of me grew convinced. Book 264 00:12:57.879 --> 00:13:00.159 after book documented a city that was almost almost to 265 00:13:00.159 --> 00:13:02.960 this one. Yet at every crucial turn, the stories burnd 266 00:13:02.960 --> 00:13:06.240 into the impossible. Children's gains that sparkled with not private logic, 267 00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:09.080 inventions that resonated with local folklorep but failed to appear 268 00:13:09.120 --> 00:13:12.480 in anyone's recollection, Architectures bricked up one could almost believe in, 269 00:13:12.639 --> 00:13:15.519 save for the small matter of evidence. The more closely 270 00:13:15.519 --> 00:13:19.440 I compared details, handwriting, age, repairs, even marginalia, the clearer 271 00:13:19.480 --> 00:13:21.120 it became that all the books were products of the 272 00:13:21.120 --> 00:13:23.799 same hand or at least the same highly idiosyncratic school, 273 00:13:24.320 --> 00:13:26.559 A list of questions formed with relentless patients at the 274 00:13:26.600 --> 00:13:30.200 desk's edge, accompanied by diagrams, snippets from city guides, and 275 00:13:30.279 --> 00:13:33.600 increasingly wild suppositions. Who was a Lena Roe? Was this 276 00:13:33.639 --> 00:13:37.200 a private, staggeringly ambitious project of lost stories and quietly 277 00:13:37.200 --> 00:13:39.919 feed them into the shelves some act of defined preservation. 278 00:13:40.600 --> 00:13:43.440 Were these echoes of Forgoden city experiments, slips in memory 279 00:13:43.519 --> 00:13:46.960 rarefied by repeated narration? Or was this all somehow a 280 00:13:47.000 --> 00:13:49.240 patient ockevel game played at a level just out of reach. 281 00:13:50.080 --> 00:13:52.000 I was beginning to feel as though each night's sleep 282 00:13:52.039 --> 00:13:54.360 was an awkortruce with puzzle, leaving me ever hungrier and 283 00:13:54.440 --> 00:13:57.320 ever less willing to stop at the boundaries of conventional explanation. 284 00:13:57.960 --> 00:13:59.679 Sleep was out of the question. The night I chased 285 00:13:59.679 --> 00:14:01.720 a newth thread through the books and across the library's 286 00:14:01.759 --> 00:14:05.200 real physical space, over and over. A phrase returned in 287 00:14:05.200 --> 00:14:08.159 different stories. The brass handle blue door at the library's end, 288 00:14:08.679 --> 00:14:11.919 not just a motif for little KeyPoint. Characters passed through 289 00:14:11.919 --> 00:14:15.240 it on Treasure Hunt's condestine meetings or to escape summer heat. 290 00:14:15.720 --> 00:14:18.039 Most descriptions located it at the conclusion of the rear 291 00:14:18.039 --> 00:14:20.759 wood corridor behind reference their place, more or less corresponding 292 00:14:20.759 --> 00:14:23.200 to our now locked north corridor, sailed off for storage 293 00:14:23.200 --> 00:14:26.799 since the late nineteen nineties. The librarian's habits die hard. 294 00:14:27.519 --> 00:14:29.960 The next morning, I walked the back corridor, feeling a 295 00:14:30.039 --> 00:14:33.919 rising nervous energy prickling up my neck. Against the shadowed wall. 296 00:14:34.039 --> 00:14:36.279 Topped behind a portable heater and a sheet draped trolley, 297 00:14:36.440 --> 00:14:38.879 stood a narrow, once blue wooden door, his lower throat 298 00:14:38.919 --> 00:14:41.200 dubed with ancient paint, the top pane glazed in old 299 00:14:41.399 --> 00:14:45.399 wavy glass. The original brass handle was blackened but unmistakable. 300 00:14:45.960 --> 00:14:48.720 There was no passage marked on the library's contemporary blueprints. 301 00:14:48.720 --> 00:14:52.080 Mister Florus had said as much when replacing ceiling tiles 302 00:14:52.080 --> 00:14:53.840 the previous folt hound. I could have sworn the area 303 00:14:53.879 --> 00:14:56.600 beyond that door was little more than crow space. I 304 00:14:56.639 --> 00:14:59.720 pressed lightly, The handle jiggled, but refused to turn. Peering 305 00:14:59.759 --> 00:15:01.759 fro through the dusty glass, I saw what might have 306 00:15:01.799 --> 00:15:04.159 once been a slim service stairwell leading down between rough 307 00:15:04.200 --> 00:15:06.960 stone walls, but the darkness swallowed everything. A yard beyond 308 00:15:07.600 --> 00:15:09.639 I took a photo with my phone, more as mora 309 00:15:09.639 --> 00:15:12.600 ill than evidence. Later I reference to it against a 310 00:15:12.639 --> 00:15:16.200 selection of early twentieth century opening celebration photos Marsh fetched 311 00:15:16.240 --> 00:15:19.240 up from the arcaves. In some, the blue door appeared 312 00:15:19.240 --> 00:15:21.799 clearly in the background, and others taken from nearly the 313 00:15:21.840 --> 00:15:24.440 same angle, it was nowhere to be seen. When I 314 00:15:24.480 --> 00:15:27.039 floated the detail to marsh over tea, she smiled crookedly. 315 00:15:27.639 --> 00:15:30.360 That door, she said. When I was a girl here, 316 00:15:30.440 --> 00:15:32.399 it was where we kept winter umbrellas. Then it was 317 00:15:32.440 --> 00:15:34.600 locked by the fire, marshal some years it sures up, 318 00:15:34.679 --> 00:15:36.840 then its forgotten for a decade. Students used to joke 319 00:15:36.840 --> 00:15:39.240 above a secret stairway. But the libraries for you, always 320 00:15:39.279 --> 00:15:42.840 inventing more corners. Mel By, contrast, insisted she had never 321 00:15:42.879 --> 00:15:45.399 notice the blue door, even after cataloging every piece of 322 00:15:45.440 --> 00:15:48.000 furniture and storage in it during her first month. She 323 00:15:48.080 --> 00:15:50.440 looked at the photo, then at me, suspicion and excitement 324 00:15:50.519 --> 00:15:54.240 mingling on her face. Sometimes I think buildings keep secrets 325 00:15:54.240 --> 00:15:57.120 from their own maps, she muttered. It was impossible not 326 00:15:57.159 --> 00:15:59.759 to see the pattern. The books in the physical structure 327 00:15:59.759 --> 00:16:02.879 were reflecting each other with strange confluence, where memory, imagination, 328 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:06.159 and mattaco existed at the gentle angle. Whether the stories 329 00:16:06.200 --> 00:16:09.440 bled into reality, or reality bent gently to accommodate the stories. 330 00:16:09.480 --> 00:16:12.120 I could not say, but I began to regard the 331 00:16:12.120 --> 00:16:14.360 texture of the library not just as a backdrop, but 332 00:16:14.440 --> 00:16:17.799 as a living self, inscribing document, each change, each forgetting 333 00:16:17.919 --> 00:16:21.200 layered lux ediment. It was around this time, sorting through 334 00:16:21.200 --> 00:16:23.240 a half collapsed carton of When Claim Returns on that 335 00:16:23.320 --> 00:16:26.039 same narrow shelf that uncovered the slim volume destined to 336 00:16:26.039 --> 00:16:28.919 reward my understanding of the whole puzzle. At first it 337 00:16:28.960 --> 00:16:31.679 struck me as another dog aired children's journals, coval in 338 00:16:31.720 --> 00:16:34.039 itself and faded to the pink of old postage stamps. 339 00:16:34.639 --> 00:16:37.480 But the title was a single initial worded diary calligraphed 340 00:16:37.480 --> 00:16:39.399 in the same tender script as the check of cards. 341 00:16:40.080 --> 00:16:42.759 Inside I found the first ten pages brimming with dates. 342 00:16:43.480 --> 00:16:46.000 Each was crowned by a set of concise, precise entries 343 00:16:46.279 --> 00:16:50.200 rendered in the same tiny, measured hand. Set five nineteen 344 00:16:50.240 --> 00:16:53.480 twenty three set up three volumes before opening missus Hanratty's 345 00:16:53.519 --> 00:16:55.519 Tale of the Dog Loss under the Salt Shelf, recounted 346 00:16:55.519 --> 00:16:58.080 for local boys who insisted happened to a cousin last year. 347 00:16:58.679 --> 00:17:01.519 April twelve, nineteen thirty one, noted strange drafts by the 348 00:17:01.559 --> 00:17:04.160 rear Window to day misss Obsidian's recitation of the Green 349 00:17:04.240 --> 00:17:06.200 Lant and story claim to have predicted her marriage by 350 00:17:06.240 --> 00:17:09.799 a full decade. Corrected in Catalog June twenty, nineteen forty 351 00:17:09.799 --> 00:17:12.319 sketch for a new book, the Marine Shadow Group diagram 352 00:17:12.319 --> 00:17:14.839 from Fishermen at Wolf, drawn before Tea were right to follow. 353 00:17:15.359 --> 00:17:18.039 Each diary snippet was accompanied by either a brief reflection 354 00:17:18.119 --> 00:17:20.880 on cataloging, shelf hopes for future retrievals, for a reference 355 00:17:20.920 --> 00:17:23.160 to the changing city that I realized I could the 356 00:17:23.200 --> 00:17:26.839 language of the library's earliest stuff manuals I flipped forward. 357 00:17:27.519 --> 00:17:29.960 The later pages described nervousness at the roof lant and 358 00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:32.640 collapse of thirty six and the years of intermittent colt 359 00:17:32.680 --> 00:17:36.160 during building repays. There were references to page and conversations 360 00:17:36.240 --> 00:17:39.000 heard massessed Mby's account of the parade far more plausible 361 00:17:39.039 --> 00:17:41.720 than last week's version, and sketches of possible new book titles, 362 00:17:41.839 --> 00:17:44.880 many of which match volumes I just cataloged. There were 363 00:17:44.880 --> 00:17:47.839 no entries later in nineteen forty seven. None of this 364 00:17:47.880 --> 00:17:50.200 would have meant much, save that when I compared the 365 00:17:50.200 --> 00:17:52.720 handwriting in the diary to our branch's earliest guess book 366 00:17:52.759 --> 00:17:55.079 from the first few months after the library's grand opening 367 00:17:55.119 --> 00:17:58.640 in nineteen twenty three. They matched perfectly. There in those 368 00:17:58.680 --> 00:18:00.599 ten faded ledgers was a lead in a row. A 369 00:18:00.640 --> 00:18:05.440 cataloging assistant Browning Saint Branch recorded daily signature as precise 370 00:18:05.480 --> 00:18:07.839 as ever, then tapering off into absence by autumn of 371 00:18:07.839 --> 00:18:10.559 the opening year. I stared for a long time at 372 00:18:10.599 --> 00:18:14.160 the diary, then at the library's original founding documents. There, 373 00:18:14.240 --> 00:18:16.920 under staffless one assistant was marked as name lost to 374 00:18:16.960 --> 00:18:21.160 water damage. Marsh's scrutinized the entry, blinking in amazement. We 375 00:18:21.240 --> 00:18:23.440 always assumed it was old inc or some lapse in 376 00:18:23.480 --> 00:18:26.480 the office. A contradiction squirmed at the heart of the story. 377 00:18:26.559 --> 00:18:29.400 The diary described the roof Lanton collapse a disaster. Our 378 00:18:29.440 --> 00:18:32.880 official records didn't mention, But digging through dustive folders, I 379 00:18:33.000 --> 00:18:35.359 noted decades old and vis for major roof repairs from 380 00:18:35.400 --> 00:18:39.640 nineteen thirty seven, signed by city official. No narrative of catastrophe, 381 00:18:39.640 --> 00:18:42.480 only the facts of expenditure and repair. How could an 382 00:18:42.480 --> 00:18:45.680 anonymous diary match to invisible city history known only through 383 00:18:45.759 --> 00:18:48.880 buried invs. None of the books described by the diaries 384 00:18:48.920 --> 00:18:51.839 author E. R. Had ever clocked in via accession numbers, 385 00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:54.480 yet that it had subtle documentations of might have beans. 386 00:18:55.200 --> 00:18:57.440 It was as if a Leina Roe had deliberately chronicled 387 00:18:57.440 --> 00:19:00.319 not just impressions, but the invisible moments and stories hovering 388 00:19:00.319 --> 00:19:03.240 at the boundary of forgotten city memory. In the gaptain 389 00:19:03.279 --> 00:19:06.079 beguiling omissions. She seemed to gather not only what people 390 00:19:06.160 --> 00:19:08.799 day of recall, but what they feared would pass forever unsum. 391 00:19:09.400 --> 00:19:12.200 The library itself seemed to hum subtly with new possibility. 392 00:19:12.880 --> 00:19:15.359 I was no longer asking who Alina Rose or what 393 00:19:15.400 --> 00:19:18.079 had happened to her as a staffer. I was asking 394 00:19:18.119 --> 00:19:21.079 what kind of institution, quietly, over decades, sheltered the stories 395 00:19:21.079 --> 00:19:23.880 for which no ledger had space. It fell in a 396 00:19:23.960 --> 00:19:26.160 very gentle way, as though the city's narrative excessed their 397 00:19:26.200 --> 00:19:28.799 moments and details that didn't quite fit had found a sanctuary. 398 00:19:29.400 --> 00:19:31.519 I might have subsisted for weeks on that deepening web 399 00:19:31.559 --> 00:19:33.960 of conjecture if not for what happened during the library 400 00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:37.880 scheduled Frienttilasian colosure. The branch was set to close officially 401 00:19:37.920 --> 00:19:39.839