SOMEBODY ALWAYS GRABS THE PURPLE
Up a flight of stairs, past the vases and the clock outside the adult reading room, past cream walls, oak moldings, oak bookcases, and the Cellini statue of Perseus was the children’s room of the 123rd Street Branch Library. Young Sammy Farber drew a battered library card out of his pocket and went in. He was a thick-set, alert boy, eleven or twelve years old. He flattened his card on the desk and, while he waited for the librarian, gazed about. There were only a few youngsters in the reading room. Two boys in colored jerseys stood whispering at one of the bookcases. On the wall above their heads was a frieze of Grecian urchins blowing trumpets. The librarian approached.
“Teacher,” Sammy began, “I just moved, Teacher. You want to change it — the address?”
The librarian, a spare woman, graying and impassive, with a pince-nez, glanced at this card. “Let me see your hands, Samuel,” she said.
He lifted his hands. She nodded approvingly and turned his card over. It was well stamped. “You’d better have a new one,” she said.
“Can I get it next time, Teacher? I’m in a hurry like.”
“Yes. Where do you live now, Samuel?”
“On 520 East 120th Street.” He watched her cross out the Orchard Street address and begin writing the new one. “Teacher,” he said in a voice so low it was barely audible, “you got here the Purple Fairy Book?”
“The what?”
“The Purple Fairy Book.” He knuckled his nose sheepishly. “Everybody says I’m too big to read fairy books. My mother calls ’em stories with a bear.”
“Stories with a bear?”
“Yeah, she don’t know English good. You got it?”
“Why, yes. I think it’s on the shelves.”
“Where, Teacher?” He moved instantly toward the aisle.
“Just a moment, Samuel. Here’s your card.” He seized it. “Now I’ll show you where it is.”
Together they crossed the room to a bookcase with a brass plate which said “Fairy Tales.” Sammy knelt down so that he could read the titles more easily. There were not a great many books in the case — a few legends for boys about Arthur and Roland on the top shelf, then a short row of fairy tales arranged according to countries, and finally, on the bottom shelf, a few fairy books arranged by colors: Blue, Blue, Green. Her finger on the titles wavered. Red. . Yellow. . “I’m sorry.”
“Ah!” he said, relaxing. “They grabbed it again.”
“Have you read the others? Have you read the Blue?”
“Yeah, I read the Blue.” He stood up slowly. “I read the Blue and the Green and the Yellow. All the colors. And colors that ain’t even here. I read the Lilac. But somebody always grabs the Purple.”
“I’m pretty sure the Purple Fairy Book hasn’t been borrowed,” the librarian said. “Why don’t you look on the tables? It may be there.”
“I’ll look,” he said. “But I know. Once they grab it, it’s goodbye.”
Nevertheless he went from table to table, picking up abandoned books, scanning their titles, and putting them down again. His round face was the image of forlorn hope. As he neared one of the last tables, he stopped. A boy was sitting there with a stack of books at his elbow, reading with enormous concentration. Sammy walked behind the boy and peered over his shoulder. On one page there was print, on the other a colored illustration, a serene princeling, hand on the hilt of his sword, regarding a gnarled and glowering gnome. The book was bound in purple. Sammy sighed and returned to the librarian.
“I found it, Teacher. It’s over there,” he said, pointing. “He’s got it.”
“I’m sorry, Samuel. That’s the only copy we have.”
“His hands ain’t as clean as mine,” Sammy suggested.
“Oh, I’m sure they are. Why don’t you try something else?” she urged. “Adventure books are very popular with boys.”
“They ain’t popular with him.” Sammy gazed gloomily at the boy. “That’s what they always told me on the East Side — popular, I don’t see what’s so popular about them. If a man finds a treasure in an adventure book, so right away it’s with dollars and cents. Who cares from dollars and cents? I get enough of that in my house.”
“There’s fiction,” she reminded him. “Perhaps you’re the kind of boy who likes reading about grown-ups.”
“Aw, them too!” He tossed his head. “I once read a fiction book, it had in it a hero with eyeglasses? Hih!” His laugh was brief and pitying. “How could heroes be with eyeglasses? That’s like my father.”
The librarian placed her pince-nez a little more securely on her nose. “He may leave it, of course, if you wait,” she said.
“Can I ask him?”
“No. Don’t disturb him.”
“I just want to ask him if he gonna take it or ain’t he. What’s the use I should hang around all day?”
“Very well. But that’s all.”
Sammy walked over to the boy again and said, “Hey, you’re gonna take it, aintcha?”
Like one jarred out of sleep, the boy started, his eyes blank and wide.
“What d’you want to read from that stuff?” Sammy asked. “Fairy tales!” His lips, his eyes, his whole face expressed distaste. “There’s an adventure book here,” he said, picking up the one nearest his hand. “Don’t you like adventure books?”
The boy drew himself up in his seat. “What’re you botherin’ me for?” he said.
“I ain’t botherin’ you. Did you ever read the Blue Fairy Book? That’s the best. That’s a hard one to get.”
“Hey, I’ll tell the teacher on you!” The boy looked around. “I’m reading this!” he said angrily. “And I don’t want no other one! Read ’em yourself!”
Sammy waited a moment and then tried again. “You know you shouldn’t read fairy books in the library.”
The boy clutched the book to himself protectively and rose. “You want to fight?”
“Don’t get excited,” Sammy waved him back into the chair and retreated a step. “I was just sayin’ fairy tales is better to read in the house, ain’t it — like when you’re sittin’ in the front room and your mother’s cookin’ in the kitchen? Ain’t that nicer?”
“Well, what about it?”
“So in the liberry you can read from other things. From King Arthur or from other mitts.”
The boy saw through that ruse also. He waved Sammy away. “I’m gonna read it here and I’m gonna read it home too, wise guy.”
“All right, that’s all I wanted to ask you,” said Sammy. “You’re gonna take it, aintcha?”
“Sure I’m gonna take it.”
“I thought you was gonna take it.”
Sammy retreated to one of the central pillars of the reading room and stood there, watching. The same play of wonder and beguilement that animated the boy’s thin features while he read also animated Sammy’s pudgy ones, as though the enjoyment were being relayed. After a time the boy got up and went to the desk with the book still in his hand. The librarian took the card out of the book and stamped the boy’s own card. Then she handed him the book. Sammy’s round face dimmed. He waited, however, until the boy had had the time to get out of the reading room and down the stairs before he put his worn library card in his pocket and made for the exit.