Although one saw more and more then in uniform on the streets these days, one did not encounter many in the library, except in the lobby waiting out the rain. But there was one who was spending-considerable time in the Central Reading Room, and Carolyn Spencer Howell found him very interesting. She had no way of knowing, of course, how long he had been coming into the Central Reading Room before she noticed him; but since she had noticed him ten days earlier, he had come in every day.
He was a Marine, and an officer. She knew that much about the military services. Marines wore a fouled anchor superimposed on a representation of the world as their branch-of-service insignia. Officers wore pins representing their rank on the epaulets of their tunics and overcoats, and in the case of this man, on his collar points. Carolyn had to go to the Britannica to find out that a golden oak leaf was the insignia of a major.
From the time she had first noticed him, the Marine major had followed the same schedule. He arrived a few minutes after nine in the morning and went to the periodicals, where he read that day's New York Tunes, and then the most recent copies available of the Baltimore Sun and the San Diego Union Leader. He could have just been killing time, which of itself would be interesting, but he seemed to be looking for something particular in the newspapers.
When he came into the library every day, the Marine major had with him an obviously new leather briefcase, in which he carried two large green fabric-bound looseleaf notebooks, a supply of pencils, two fountain pens, cigarettes, and a Zippo lighter and a can of lighter fluid. She had once watched while he refilled his lighter. It was unusual to carry a supply of lighter fluid around with you, but it seemed to make sense if you thought about it.
He would make notes in one of the two notebooks, writing in pencil in one of them and in ink in the other. When he had finished reading the newspapers, he would come to the counter-sometimes to Carolyn Spencer Howell, and sometimes to one of the other girls-and fill out the little chits necessary to call up material from the stacks.
The first words he ever said to Carolyn Spencer Howell were "Would it be possible to get the New York Times from November fifteenth, nineteen forty-one, through, say, December thirty-first?"
"Of course," she said, "but it would make quite an armful. How about four days at a time? Starting with November fifteenth, nineteen forty-one?"
"That would be fine," the major said. "Thank you very much."
He had a nice, deep, masculine voice, she thought, and spoke with a regional accent that told her only that he was not a New Yorker. And there was something a little unhealthy about him, she thought. He didn't look quite as robust and outdoorsy as she expected a Marine major to look.
On the plus side, he had nice, warm, experienced eyes.
The second time he spoke to her, the major asked if by any chance the library had copies of the Shanghai Post.
"Well, yes, of course," she said. "Up to when the war started, of course."
"Could I have them from November first, nineteen forty-one… up to the last?"
"Certainly."
While he was reading the Shanghai Post, Carolyn noticed something strange. The major was just sort of staring off into space. There was a strange, profoundly sad look on his face. And in his eyes.
Some of the other requests he made of Carolyn Spencer Howell were of a military or politico-military nature. For instance, she got for him the text of the Geneva Conventions on Warfare, and several volumes on stateless persons. He was especially interested in Nansen passports. (In 1920, the League of Nations authorized an identity/travel document to be issued to displaced persons, in particular Russians who did not wish to return to what had become the Soviet Union. It came to be called the "Nansen passport" after Fridtjof Nansen, League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugee Affairs.)
Most of his requests concerned the Japanese, which was understandable, but what in the world was a major of Marines doing spending all day, every day, in the public library? Didn't the military services have more information on the enemy than a public library could provide?
An even more disturbing thought came to Carolyn Spencer Howell. Was he really a Marine officer? Or some character who had simply elected to put on a service uniform? This was New York City, and anything was possible in New York, even in the main reading room of the public library. This unpleasant thought was fertilized when Carolyn realized that the major's uniforms were brand new. There was even a little tag that he had apparently missed stitched below one of the pockets on one of his blouses.
Yet he wore decorations, or at least the little colored ribbons that represented decorations, on the breast of his uniform. And for some reason she came to believe that these were the real thing-which made him the real thing. Finding out what they represented became important to Carolyn. She thought of it as her "research project."
He had four ribbons. And when he came to the counter, she looked at them carefully and later made notes describing their colors. She checked her notes for accuracy when she had reason to walk through the reading room.
One had a narrow white stripe at each end, then two broader red stripes, and a medium-sized blue stripe in the middle. Next to it was one that was all purple, except for narrow white stripes at each end. And there was a little gold pin on this one, an oak leaf maybe. Another one was all yellow, with two narrow red-white-and-blue bands through it. And there was another yellow one, this one with two white-red-white bands and a blue-white-red band. This one had a star on it.
Carolyn was, after all, a librarian; she was trained to do research. Thus it wasn't hard to find out what the ribbons represented. The one that sat on top of the other three was the Bronze Star Medal, awarded for valor in action. The purple one was the Purple Heart, awarded for wounds received in action. The little pin (officially, according to United States Navy Medals and Decorations, Navy Department, Washington D.C., January 1942, 21 pp., unbound, an oak leaf cluster) signified the second award. Or, in other words, it said he had been wounded twice. The mostly yellow one with the star on it was awarded for service in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater of Operations; the star meant participation in a campaign. The other mostly yellow one was the American Defense Medal, whatever that meant.
That meant that the somewhat pale and hollow-eyed major was a bona fide hero. Either that or that he was a psychotic subway motorman who was enduring his forced retirement by vicariously experiencing the war-dressing up in a Marine officer's uniform and spending his days reading about the war in the public library.
Today, the Marine officer, with an armload of books, came directly to Carolyn Spencer Howell's position behind the counter.
"I wonder if you could just keep these handy?" he asked, "while I go have my lunch."
"Certainly," Carolyn said, and then she blurted, "I see you've seen service in the Pacific."
For the first time he looked at her, really looked at her as an individual, rather than as part of the furnishings.
"I was in the Pacific," he said, and then, "I'm surprised you know the ribbons. Few civilians do."
"I know them," Carolyn heard herself plunge on. "And you've been wounded twice. According to the ribbons."
"Correct," he said. "You have just won the cement bicycle. Would you care to try for an all-expense-paid trip to Coney Island?"
And then his smile vanished. He looked at her intently, then shook his head and started to laugh.
"What were you about to do?" he asked. "Call the military police?"
She felt like a fool, but she was swept along with the insanity.
"I was just a little curious how you could have served in the Pacific and be back already," she said.
"Would you believe a submarine?" he asked, chuckling. He reached in his pocket and took his identity card from his wallet and handed it to her.