Inside, the carriage house appeared much too small for broad-shouldered Daniel, who seemed to stoop when he stood to relieve her of the pizza boxes and lager. But the one-room house might not have felt so small if it hadn’t surrendered a foot of wall space on every side to shelves, which reached from the floor to the ceiling. The effect was of a book-lined box, with additional shelves visible through the small archway that led to the kitchen alcove. Tess wondered if there were books in the bathroom as well. The books felt like three-dimensional wallpaper, the endless lines of shelves broken only by a small fireplace on the south wall. The rough pine floors appeared to buckle, just a bit, under the weight of all those volumes, and Tess could see gaps in the floorboards, revealing a dirt floor a few feet below. There was very little else in the room, just a table, two chairs, and a sofa, presumably one that opened up into a bed.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that a librarian has so many books, but this is a little overwhelming,” Tess said, drawn instantly to the shelves, studying the spines of the books. Many of the titles were unknown to her, but those she did recognize were all nineteenth-century novels and histories: Dickens, Melville, Austen, Thackeray, Cash, Olmsted. Poe had his own shelf, as did Hawthorne and Longfellow. “In a good way, I mean.”
“Well, you’ll notice I don’t have many contemporary novels,” he said. “Working at the library, I have easy access to the newest books, the minute they arrive. Why are you smiling?”
“You just reminded me of one of my favorite writers, Philip Roth. In Goodbye, Columbus , the fatuous fiancée says something like, ”Oh, but you must get all the bestsellers first‘ to the librarian-protagonist. The one who’s romancing Ali MacGraw.“
“Ali MacGraw?”
“In the movie,” Tess amended. “It’s not much good-the movie, I mean. But the story is exquisite. He wrote it at some unforgivably young age, twenty-three or something like that.”
“A story with a male librarian as its hero? I need to check that out. Would you believe I’ve never read anything by Roth? I guess I’m a nineteenth-century man, through and through. Besides, older books are cheaper than new ones, if you know what to look for-and where. This set of Jane Austen, for example”-he pulled a small green book from the shelf-“it cost thirty dollars, or six dollars a book, and I found it at this rinky-dink flea market, where most of the stalls sell baby clothes and imitation designer purses. Anew hardcover will set you back that much.”
“So you’re a collector?”
“Not a serious one, because I couldn’t bear to own something I couldn’t use. I never understood that particular compulsion.” He flipped through the Austen, inhaling the pages’ smell with as much pleasure as he had sniffed the pizzas. “The irony is, if I didn’t work in a library and I had to buy new fiction the moment it appeared-and I confess, I am prey to the occasional fit of instant gratification-I’d probably have a world-class collection of modern firsts right now. Instead, I just have these old beat-up books that look valuable. Impresses girls, though.”
“Really?”
He tried for a roguish smile but ended up looking merely bashful. “Well, some girls. The male librarian doesn’t cut a lot of ice in a world where everyone else has stock options and new cars and condos with water views, but there’s a certain bookish subcult that is amenable to our charms.”
Tess, who had a matchmaking gene from her Weinstein side, made a mental note to throw Whitney into Daniel’s path. Lord knows, she had enough money of her own to overlook someone else’s lack thereof, and she did like books. Liked them more than boys, truth be told. She also shared Daniel Clary’s outdoorsy bent-he had a ten-speed hanging in the corner, and a pair of cross-country skis in his umbrella stand, along with a thick walking stick that looked as if it had been made for bagging peaks.
“I bet,” she said, her tone light and teasing. She decided to say out loud what she had thought the first time she saw him. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you had groupies who come to the library on made-up missions, just to talk to you.”
He blushed, but he didn’t deny it. “So let’s see this poem.”
She had photocopied the poem, although the original was probably so corrupted by her own fingerprints that this precaution made little difference. Still, she was trying to do the right thing, or so she kept telling her nagging conscience.
Daniel sat at the old wooden table that obviously did double duty for deskwork and dining, scanning the page. He read quickly, even more quickly than Tess, who fancied herself quite fast.
“Hmmm,” he said. “And this was the second one?”
“Yes. The first one brought me to the library and the sign on Mulberry Street. But it was relatively straightforward. This one has me baffled.”
“I know Poe’s tales better than I do the poems, and the horror stories better than the detective tales. Still, this seems familiar.” He got up and pulled a volume from the shelf, a black-bound book, small and frail-looking. “Yes, here it is. ”Alone.“”
Tess looked over his shoulder. “It’s all marked up; you’ve studied it.”
“The whole book is marked. It was like this when I bought it.” He flipped through the pages. It was, in fact, full of underlines and hash marks, with an occasional exclamation point in the margin. “I would never write in a book, not even a new one. But, as I said, there’s a reason these books are affordable.”
“So what does ”Alone‘ tell us?“
“What do any of Poe’s poems tell us? He was technically brilliant, an exacting craftsman. Wait, I love this.” He put down the first book and went to the shelf for another. “Poe wrote this, in a preface to his poems:
These trifles are collected and republished chiefly with a view to their redemption from the many improvements to which they have been subjected while going random at “the rounds of the press.”
“Clearly, Poe knew the press well,” Tess said. He continued to read.
If what I have written is to circulate at all, I am naturally anxious that it should circulate as I wrote it. In defence of my own taste, nevertheless, it is incumbent upon me to say, that I think nothing in this volume of much value to the public, or very creditable to myself. Events not to be controlled have prevented me from making, at any time, any serious effort in what, under happier circumstances, would have been the field of my choice.
Daniel looked up. “I love that. It’s so… naked. He’s trying to be self-deprecating, but his ego really comes through, as well as his resentment of the material circumstances that prevent him from writing full-time.”
“Yes,” Tess agreed, then tried to prod him back to the topic at hand, ever so gently. “But the poem? My poem? What does it mean?”
“I haven’t a clue. My guess is he wants you to know he’s not a dilettante or a poseur, who knows only ”The Raven‘ and “Annabel Lee,” or even “The Bells,” with their tintinnabulation. But I can’t see any other real significance. He left a few lines out, assuming it’s a he-“ His index finger pointed to four missing lines on the page.
From the same source I have not taken, My sorrow I could not awaken, My heart to joy at the same tone, And all I loved, I loved alone.
“I can’t see any significance to those,” Tess said.
“Neither can I, other than the fact that he was worried about fitting it on one piece of paper. I’m sorry. I’m not much help, am I?”