Ghost Library

Rose went to the library.

The librarians sat bored, doing something on their computers. Ghost searches. Searches for facts about nothing important. Halloween. That would be her guess. They were unimaginative, unable to create a display that wasn’t seasonal.

A few people sat in the popular cafe, but the library had few patrons. Rose seldom came here. A ghost library. There was no real reason to walk here when she had what she wanted at home. But she wanted to find LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET.

Bradbury, Byatt. Braddon wasn’t there. What? She looked it up on the computer. No entry.

What happened to LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET? she asked the librarian. I’ve checked it out several times.

Well, we discard most books that are over seven years old, said the new librarian.

Do you mean to say you discarded LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET? People do enjoy reading it, you know. And some say it was the first Victorian novel of sensation.

If it’s not in the computer, we did, the librarian said.

Rose was annoyed.

Nobody. Nobody read. Or the librarians thought that. The librarians conspired to throw out the books. This book should be in a city library. Some credited Mary Braddon with inventing the sensation novel. Everyone in the nineteenth century had read her: Dickens, Charles Reade, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thackeray, George Moore, and Wilkie Collins. Collins: her own favorite author. Braddon had obviously influenced Wilkie Collins.

Rose had always believed a librarian was a curator of books.

Obviously she had been wrong.

I’ve got an idea, Rose said. You should include LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET in your Banned Books display. Now that you’ve banned it.

If you’d like to fill out a complaint form...

I would.

Rose filled out the complaint form.

She had heard complaints about the library from friends. Dorrie couldn't find the old reference books she loved and her boss Kent had said the library was throwing out classics. He had gone looking for Marvin Bell’s NIGHTWORKS: POEMS 1962-2000. He had talked to the librarian because he thought it was stolen. She told him, Alas, the patrons hadn’t been interested. It was a small press book.

They had stopped ordering small press books. They had discarded it.
.
Rose hadn’t paid much attention. She knew somebody who had the book, so she brought it to the office. Kent liked Bell’s poem “The Self and the Mulberry.” He admired the anaphora and the anthropomorphization of nature.

“I wanted to see the self, so I looked at the mulberry.
It had no trouble accepting its limits,
yet defining and redefining a small area
so taht any shape was possible, any movement.
It stayed put, but was part of the air.
I wanted to learn to be there and not there
like the continually changing, slightly moving
mulberry, wild cherry and particularly the willow.
Like the willow, I tried to weep without tears.
Like the cherry tree, I tried to be sturdy and productive.
Like the mulberry, I tried to keep moving.
I coouldn't cry right, couldn't stay or go.
I kept losing parts of myself like a soft maple.
I felt ill like the elm. That was the end
of looking in nature to find a natural self.
Let nature think itself not manly enough!
Let nature wonder at the mystery of laughter.
Let nature hypothesize man's indifference to it.
Let nature take a turn at saying what love is.”

Rose also understood the poem. She had to wonder about a library that discarded this poetry. She hadn’t paid much attention to the complaints about the library before. But now she was here and...

She was beginning to understand Kent. She liked him. He was concerned about the library. And the job was better now. She was busy supervising several projects as well as working on what they called Japanese Computers (the real name was unpronounceable). She couldn’t leave the job. Really couldn’t. In the morning’s newspaper the front-page story was that the chief architect at Troy-Ridding had been arrested for dealing marijuana in his suburb.

He had everything. The best architectural contracts, a big house, money. All thrown away.

Kent said wearily. It’s so ridiculous. He should have known he’d get caught.

It is surprising.

He had a plantation in his house. Apparently

Yeah, I read about it.

I’ve had several calls from his architects looking for work.

Will he have to close down?

Well, there’s still Ridding.