Karl Marx sat, those years when he was writing Das Kapital . I will tell you, Miss Runyon, sitting in that seat, I could feel the collective knowledge, like music under the skin, of all libraries from Alexandria onward.”
With a last blink at me, Miss Runyon retreated to her desk and duty.
WHEN I WENT UP to Sandison’s office, I found him standing at its cathedral-like window, trying to peek out at the weather through an eyelet of whorled clear glass. “Damned stained glass,” he grumbled. “What do the nitwits think a window is for?” He rotated around to me. His old-fashioned black suit was as mussed as if he had flung it on in the dark, and instead of shoes he wore scuffed cowboy boots that added still more inches to his height. “The downstairs dragon show you every mouse hole, did she?”
“Quite an educational tour. What I am wondering, Mr. Sandison—”
“Hold it right there.” He held up a rough hand as he moved to his oversize desk chair and deposited himself in it heavily. “When somebody calls me that, I feel like I’m around a banker or lawyer or some other pickpocket.”
To escape that category, I asked, “Then what form of address am I to use?”
He looked across his desk at me conspiratorially. “I’ll tell you what. Call me Sandy. The only other person I let do that is my wife.” He chortled like a boy pleased with a new prank. “It’ll drive that old bat Runyon loco.”
“Sandy, then,” I tried it on for size, none too comfortably. “What I need to know is the scope of my job.”
“I suppose.” Rubbing his beard, he gazed around the cluttered room as if some task for me might be hiding behind one of the piles of books. “Morgan”—there was a dip of doubt in his tone as he spoke it—“how are you at juggling?”
“Three balls in the air at once is a skill that persists from boyhood,” I answered cautiously, “but when it comes to ninepins—”
“No, no—the calendar, oaf, the calendar.” Irritably he pawed around in the pieces of paper that carpeted his desk and finally came up with that item. “People always want to use this damn place, they need a room to hold this meeting or that, you’d think a library was a big beehive. Myself, I don’t see why they can’t just check out a couple of books and go home and read. But no, they bunch up and want to cram in here and talk the ears off one another half the night.” He squinted as if drawing a bead on the offenders penciled in on various dates. “The Shakespeare Society. The Theosophists. The Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Literary and Social Circle. The League of Nations Advocates. The Jabberwockians. The Gilbert and Sullivan Libretto Study Group. And that’s hardly the half of them, wanting some damn night of their own to come in here and take up space. They’ve all got to be juggled.”
“I think I can tend to that, Mr.—”
He shot me a warning glance.
“—Sandy.”
There may have been a cunning smile within the beard. The librarian of Butte, for everything that entailed, settled more deeply into his chair. “I figured if you’re a man who knows his books, you can deal with the literary types who come out when the moon is full.” He passed the much-scrawled-upon calendar to me. “They’re all yours now, Morgan,” said Samuel Sandison with that intonation I came to know so well.
Looking back, that exchange set a telling pattern. You would think, with two persons in one cloistered office, for he had me clear a work space for myself in a corner, that he might sooner or later call me Morrie . Yet that familiar form of address never passed his lips. Each time and every time, he would either preface or conclude what passed for conversation between us with a drawled Morgan? even when it wasn’t a question. As if it were my first name.
As if he knew.
MORGAN LLEWELLYN. That IS my rightful name. Yes, that famous breed of Llewellyn. I know I carry only a minor share of its renown in the
With a last blink at me, Miss Runyon retreated to her desk and duty.
WHEN I WENT UP to Sandison’s office, I found him standing at its cathedral-like window, trying to peek out at the weather through an eyelet of whorled clear glass. “Damned stained glass,” he grumbled. “What do the nitwits think a window is for?” He rotated around to me. His old-fashioned black suit was as mussed as if he had flung it on in the dark, and instead of shoes he wore scuffed cowboy boots that added still more inches to his height. “The downstairs dragon show you every mouse hole, did she?”
“Quite an educational tour. What I am wondering, Mr. Sandison—”
“Hold it right there.” He held up a rough hand as he moved to his oversize desk chair and deposited himself in it heavily. “When somebody calls me that, I feel like I’m around a banker or lawyer or some other pickpocket.”
To escape that category, I asked, “Then what form of address am I to use?”
He looked across his desk at me conspiratorially. “I’ll tell you what. Call me Sandy. The only other person I let do that is my wife.” He chortled like a boy pleased with a new prank. “It’ll drive that old bat Runyon loco.”
“Sandy, then,” I tried it on for size, none too comfortably. “What I need to know is the scope of my job.”
“I suppose.” Rubbing his beard, he gazed around the cluttered room as if some task for me might be hiding behind one of the piles of books. “Morgan”—there was a dip of doubt in his tone as he spoke it—“how are you at juggling?”
“Three balls in the air at once is a skill that persists from boyhood,” I answered cautiously, “but when it comes to ninepins—”
“No, no—the calendar, oaf, the calendar.” Irritably he pawed around in the pieces of paper that carpeted his desk and finally came up with that item. “People always want to use this damn place, they need a room to hold this meeting or that, you’d think a library was a big beehive. Myself, I don’t see why they can’t just check out a couple of books and go home and read. But no, they bunch up and want to cram in here and talk the ears off one another half the night.” He squinted as if drawing a bead on the offenders penciled in on various dates. “The Shakespeare Society. The Theosophists. The Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Literary and Social Circle. The League of Nations Advocates. The Jabberwockians. The Gilbert and Sullivan Libretto Study Group. And that’s hardly the half of them, wanting some damn night of their own to come in here and take up space. They’ve all got to be juggled.”
“I think I can tend to that, Mr.—”
He shot me a warning glance.
“—Sandy.”
There may have been a cunning smile within the beard. The librarian of Butte, for everything that entailed, settled more deeply into his chair. “I figured if you’re a man who knows his books, you can deal with the literary types who come out when the moon is full.” He passed the much-scrawled-upon calendar to me. “They’re all yours now, Morgan,” said Samuel Sandison with that intonation I came to know so well.
Looking back, that exchange set a telling pattern. You would think, with two persons in one cloistered office, for he had me clear a work space for myself in a corner, that he might sooner or later call me Morrie . Yet that familiar form of address never passed his lips. Each time and every time, he would either preface or conclude what passed for conversation between us with a drawled Morgan? even when it wasn’t a question. As if it were my first name.
As if he knew.
MORGAN LLEWELLYN. That IS my rightful name. Yes, that famous breed of Llewellyn. I know I carry only a minor share of its renown in the
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