Silence in the Library

[warcode]

Silence in the Library, 4k




*

In a flat in Cardiff there lived a bookseller. Not a nasty, dirty, cheap flat, filled with peeling paint and a musty smell, nor yet a bare studio with nothing in it to sit down on or to read: it was the flat of a bookseller, and that means comfort. And also books.

The inhabitant of this flat was considered somewhat eccentric by his neighbors for the very fact that he was so perfectly ordinary; he came and went at regular hours every day to do his shopping and acquire the post, he took public transport and always had a smile and a kind word for the people he met along the way, and the little secondhand bookshop he owned on the ground level of his building performed the way little bookshops were expected to. One could never say they saw very many customers there, and wondered how the owner could possibly keep up with his bills, but the shop persisted as if by force of sheer inertia. It had always been there and would always be there.

(Never mind that it had not always been there, Fell & Young's Used and Rare Books had opened its Cardiff branch only three years ago, after the proprietor suffered a terrible Accident in London, a car collision, that led him to swear off both the city and cars in general.)

Mr. Ezra Fell also gave that particular impression of inertial timelessness, being the kind of person that might have worn sweater vests with ties and carried a pocket watch and smoked a pipe even in his teenage years, if they could be imagined. Ezra smoked only occasionally, disapproving of any habit in excess (and justifiably fearing the flammable nature of his business), but rather enjoyed having the pipe between his teeth when he was reading, if only to keep himself from constantly reaching for the biscuit plate. The only real certainty to his age was that he had to be upwards of thirty, or possibly seventy. His wavy and slightly unkempt ash blond hair showed no trace of grey but he comported himself with the hapless charisma of someone's grandfather, admonishing children not to play in the streets and waxing poetic over the lifting of rationing in the post-war years as though he'd been there. He spoke several dead languages fluently and kept an excellent stock of wine and never served tea without biscuits arranged on his good dishware, and enjoyed food the way some people enjoyed religion, deeply and whole-heartedly. He used the expression 'dear boy' without irony. He was forever inviting his neighbors to concerts, or to walk about the local parks and feed the ducks, or to try any new restaurant that might have opened nearby, and most of his acquaintances tutted to themselves over his apparent loneliness, though he had visitors down from London often enough. Some of the older women in the area found him charming enough to inquire after, for despite his academic ways and sturdy figure he had eyes the color of a perfect summer sky, typically hidden behind his reading glasses, and a shockingly beautiful singing voice when he could be coaxed to reveal it.

Ezra treated these inquiries and a few subsequent outings with the sort of bewildered courtesy inherent to the natural bachelor, and eventually the female community came to the following opinions: 1.) that terrible Accident of his had left him widowed and/or cruelly scarred, 2.) he was immune to the prospect of carnal relations without a dowry and a medieval handfasting ceremony being involved, or 3.) he was immune to the prospect of carnal relations with women.

(Two of these were in fact true.)

The Accident itself remained the one subject that Ezra could not be persuaded to speak of, turning instead pale and anxious when it was sprung on him without warning in conversation. It was rumored that he quite refused to shed his layers of twill and argyle even on the warmest of days in order to hide the aforementioned hypothetical scarring, though of course no one knew for certain except Mr. Fell himself. The couple that ran the tea-and-palm-reading shop next door, the Shadwells, took it upon themselves to lecture the unwary about speaking of the Accident when Ezra had clearly come to Cardiff to escape its memory. They were among the few that saw his light burning in the middle of the night and imagined him the victim of insomnia, or found him staring perplexedly at the curb as though he expected someone to pull up for him at any moment.

"It's that PTSD," Mrs. Shadwell (known during business hours as Madame Tracy) would say, nodding sagely to her own customers over their tea leaves. Her admonishments that others should not gossip on the subject of Mr. Fell's past did not, of course, extend to her own observations. "London's a dangerous place, you know. There's gangs and such, and he used to be right downtown. He told me someone even burned his first shop down, fourteen years ago, poor thing." She paused while the person across from her made the expected shocked, sympathetic noises. "I'll tell you what though, someone else was hurt in that Accident of his, not just himself, maybe even someone killed. I know what a man looks like when he's running."

Mr. Shadwell grunted his agreement from the counter, minding his coffee and a copy of the Weekly World News. He'd offered the opinion before that a veteran could recognize another veteran, but that led to pointed, uncomfortable questions about what exactly Mr. Shadwell had been a veteran of, and even if his former occupation as a Sergeant in the Witchfinder Army had landed him the employment opportunity that had prompted him to move to Cardiff in the first place, it wasn't the sort of thing that one could discuss with civilians. More to the point, it also invited the question of what sort of military force a man like Ezra Fell could possibly be a veteran of, and Shadwell had no good answer for that despite knowing it was true in the deepest, most fundamental sense.

Despite his mysterious and greatly romanticized past, however, Ezra was thought of as a respectable pillar of the community, never doing anything unexpected or untoward. One could almost always presume the opinion of Ezra Fell on a given subject without having to go to the bother of asking him, especially on subjects such as 'bebop' and 'youth these days.' He even spoke Welsh well enough to pacify some of the natives who had been prepared to despise a Londoner from Soho on sight, and could be counted on to direct tourists towards the little places that most needed customers.

He was engaged in this particular practice one fine, quiet morning, standing in the doorway of his shop having a last cup of tea before officially opening for the day. Respectable in all other areas, Ezra did not consider himself bound to the ordinary rules of business running and often waited until after elevensies to unlock his doors. The books were not going anywhere, after all.

He was telling a pair of tourists that they should try Madame Tracy's shop (for the tea, not the fortunes), when a man came round the corner looking harried and anxious. He was tall and dark-haired, and wore a comfortable-looking blue cardigan that Ezra immediately approved of.

"Good morning!" he said, and meant it, as the tourists vanished into Madame Tracy's and the little bell over her door jingled cheerfully. "Lovely weather today, isn't it?"

The man gaped at him for a moment. "Sorry?"

Ezra understood at once, the man's accent was American. Americans sometimes had difficulty understanding the Queen's English as Ezra himself sometimes had difficulty understanding persons under the age of twenty-five. He repeated himself more slowly, waiting for the light of comprehension to dawn in the man's eyes.

It didn't come. The American continued staring at him until Ezra began to feel a little uncomfortable.

"Are you here on holiday, then?" he ventured.

The American blinked once and then visibly composed himself. "Business. This is-- business." His speech was strangely stilted, as though he was having trouble recalling the proper words.

"Oh I see. Have you been to Cardiff before?"

"No. I'm-- it's my first time. I think."

Now sorry that he'd engaged the stranger in conversation, Ezra didn't allow his smile to falter. He laughed dutifully in case that last remark had been a joke, but the American didn't laugh with him, and so Ezra quickly occupied himself with unlocking his own door and flipping the sign to OPEN, fussing needlessly with the way it hung in the glass.

"Well," he said brightly, gulping down the last of his tea, "I'd best be getting in to work. Do come in and have a look around, if you're inclined, or if you're looking for a decent cup of tea you might try next door, Madame Tracy has quite a wonderful collection of exotic teas--"

He kept up the babble until he was safely inside the gloom of his shop, not looking behind him as he sailed all the way to the little room in the back to dispose of his teacup and saucer. Americans! They were stranger on television, perhaps, but certainly less discomfiting than when they were standing on your front stoop acting like you'd grown a second head when all you'd done was tell them good morning.

Still, it was something to tell the neighbors. Perhaps the man would even take his advice and go next door, and Mrs. Shadwell would have all the novelty of his strange conversation and then be sure to report it back, so that Ezra might hear of it without any risk to himself.

(Ezra frowned upon gossip, certainly, especially when it pertained to his own person and history, but there was gossip and then there was news, where all the uncomfortable questions had already been asked and answered and it was no harm in simply sharing what had already been spoken willingly.)

Yet when he returned from the back room he found the American was standing in front of the counter, though Ezra did not remember hearing the bell above his own door. The man was looking about himself at the piles of unsorted books with a bemused expression, and then with more interest at some of the rarer books kept under glass. His blue eyes lingered as though he could actually read the archaic Latin on the pages.

Ezra pasted on a smile. He could stand to sell something today, even if he secretly preferred keeping all his books safe within the confines of his shop, like a dragon with its hoard. "Good morning again! Were you looking for something particular?"

The man shook his head. "I'm looking for someone, actually." Now inside the shop he seemed to relax a little, his speech flowing more naturally. He flipped open the manila folder he'd been carrying. "A man named Ezra Fell, of Fell & Young's Used and Rare Books."

Snap, Ezra thought, but smiled all the brighter. "Whatever for?"

Now the American looked embarrassed. "It's going to sound kind of strange, actually, but I'm here to offer him a job. We-- my organization, we're looking for a translator."

"They don't have translators in America?" It was out before Ezra could stop himself.

But the man laughed, startled and self-deprecating as if he'd heard that before. "Not with these qualifications, no. My, uh, boss is looking for someone with very specific experience to help manage a private collection. Latin, the Aramaic dialects, Enochian, and about twelve other things."

"That sounds like you're looking for a religious scholar."

"Sort of." He held out a hand suddenly. "My name's Jimmy Novak, by the way."

Trapped, Ezra could only grasp the offered hand firmly and shake it. "Oh, yes of course, I'm sorry, I'm--"

"Ezra Fell." The corner of Jimmy's mouth quirked. "We sent some e-mails, but your business partner in London said it would honestly be easier just to send someone to speak to you in person. He said that you were, ah, very old-fashioned when it came to technology."

Now it was Ezra's turn to be embarrassed. His business partner and godson was absolutely correct, Ezra didn't even own a computer and could never remember the password to get into his phone's voicemail, but there was no call to send someone halfway round the world to deliver a message when a letter might have done. He dithered, flustered. "There was no need for that, surely, I'm sorry that you should have been put to such trouble... I don't know why Adam would have given out my name in the first place, I'm hardly a linguistics professor--"

"He said you had practical experience with everything we needed," Jimmy interrupted gently. "He said you would be able to help us."

Adam said a lot of things, apparently, and right now Ezra could have cheerfully throttled him. "I really don't think--"

"Can you read this?" Jimmy produced a sheet of paper from his folder with a Polaroid clipped to the top; it was an image of a brown clay tablet that had been shattered into pieces and painstakingly reconstructed, its surface carved with columns of symbols.

"Mr. Novak, please..." But Ezra looked down despite himself and immediately frowned, plucking the paper from Jimmy's hand in order to turn it on its side, squinting at the writing. After a moment he tsked. "No, no, this piece here?" A well-manicured finger tapped the edge of the tablet in the photo. "This one is part of a different word, it cannot possibly belong to this tablet. Your historian or archeologist or whoever you have in charge of reconstruction simply must check their work, it's an easy mistake to make if one isn't paying close attention--"

"This tablet is one of twenty-seven, all of them in several dozen pieces," Jimmy explained, satisfied, while Ezra made horrified faces at himself internally. "I've got a whole stack of photographs just like this one in a box in my hotel room. We've got teams on everything back home, but we could really use an expert-- an enthusiast's touch," he amended hastily, provoked by whatever protest was currently forming on Ezra's tongue.

Ezra shut his mouth and looked unhappy. "This job is in America, I presume."

"The collection is in Lebanon, Kansas."

"...and that's in America."

Jimmy smiled. "Yeah."

"I could not possibly."

"All your expenses would be taken care of, I assure you, and we'd be happy to help you handle any arrangements with your bookstore."

"Money is the least of my concerns," Ezra responded firmly, despite this being a very grand lie. "I'm very sorry, but I simply can't. I came here to... to retire, I suppose, and live quietly, without adventures or trans-Atlantic journeys, thank you, no matter what my godson may have said. I'm perfectly happy here. No no--" he held up a hand to stop Novak from saying anything further, "no, I'm sorry, but I must put my foot down on this, perhaps I could help out if I had some more of these photographs to look at, certainly, but I am not going. I cannot go."

Silence followed this statement, and then Jimmy said, very cautiously, "I understand you were injured in a car accident several years ago."

Ezra stiffened but Jimmy continued, solemn and earnest. "I know you have your reasons for being here, Mr. Fell, but we really do need your help badly. Your godson seemed to think--"

"My godson," Ezra spluttered, feeling very cornered and not a little betrayed, "is an author of adventure and travel fiction, and entirely obsessed with the idea that people are improved by giving into reckless and wild impulses, such as going overseas without any sort of careful preparation. I am not hiding from anything, I am simply content here, as I said, yes, very content." He pushed the photograph back across the counter firmly. "If you wish you might come to tea tomorrow, and bring your box, and I will translate what I can of the photographs you have. But I'm afraid I must decline your offer. Traveling to America would simply be--"






***





"Magnificent!" Mrs. Shadwell declared.

"Very good for you," Anathema Device-Pulsifer said approvingly.

"Been there done that," Pippin Galadriel Moonchild aka Pepper said, eyes on her smartphone, "but totally worth it for the ice cream."

Ezra stared in despair at the lot of them. He'd come over to find some moral support in his refusal only to find Pepper, his godson's erstwhile fiance (of five years, they were taking things as slowly as possible out of some notion that an engaged couple were free to have more adventures than a married couple), and Anathema, a lovely young woman who had frequented Ezra's London bookshop to the point where they'd become friends, despite her being a customer, all in residence at Madame Tracy's tea shop. They had known very well that Ezra was set to receive an American visitor and hadn't the basic decency to warn him, apparently on Adam's advice.

(Ezra had left a very strongly-worded message on Adam's voicemail, even going so far as to be blunt in his opinions on this whole business. His globetrotting godson was, of course, never in residence and possessed of three different mobiles, so Ezra was obliged to leave the message three different times, and by the third repetition his outrage had degenerated into a more plaintive whinging.)

"But I simply can't go haring off into the blue," he protested to Anathema, the most potentially sympathetic of the three. Pepper loved travel and adventures as much as her fiance did, and Mrs. Shadwell had always wanted to visit America and often wished loudly that someone would go for her and report back about it, so he had no allies there. "I've got responsibilities, there's the shop to mind--"

"Handled." Pepper didn't look up from her texting. "Wensleydale's going to set you up for online orders like we are, said he'd need a couple weeks to get everything running smoothly between here and London. He and Brian will be down tomorrow. They can sell a book or two if someone walks in."

"They have no idea of my filing system, they wouldn't be able to find a thing!"

"Oh, I do," Anathema volunteered, smiling cheerily as she dashed Ezra's hopes of a sympathetic intervention. "I could teach them. Newt's due for a holiday, and his parents have Agnes for the week."

Ezra made a beseeching face at his teacup. "Doesn't anyone care that I don't want to go to-- to the colonies? They call football 'soccer,' and throw tea into their harbors, and they're all very rude on television."

The three generations of women at the table looked at him with identical expressions of benevolent indulgence. It was like being gently chastised by a triple aspect goddess.

"You can't hide away here forever, love," Mrs. Shadwell said, reaching out to pat his hand. "The world still needs you for something, and it won't take no for an answer. So you may as well take lots of pictures, especially of any celebrities you might see!"

"I'll go on the plane with you," Pepper offered. "I've never been to Kansas, it's where the Wizard of Oz begins."

"Your shop could use a new coat of paint, too," Anathema put in. "We've just re-done Agnes's room so we've still got everything, she wanted orangutangs painted everywhere and a giant turtle on the ceiling, after those books you lent her, but we persuaded her to settle for blue and yellow to match the raincoat girl in that movie, and a lot of posters."

"But... but... " Ezra cast about himself for any further excuses. "But I can't leave Crawly!" he announced triumphantly, hitting upon one. "And you know perfectly well what he's like when I'm not around to keep him from mischief, he won't mind anyone else except Adam."

Crawly was Ezra's rather startling pet, a twelve foot long snake of indeterminate species that had apparently been abandoned by the previous owner of Ezra's flat, for he had been waiting patiently in his lavish terrarium in the middle of the bare floor when Ezra had first come to unlock the door. Ezra had been shocked at first, and then indignant over the gall of someone abandoning a pet in such a fashion, and then guilty over the fact that Crawly was almost certainly some kind of illegal exotic species and Ezra didn't feel comfortable taking him down to the nearest shelter or veterinary clinic or zoo, where his story would undoubtedly sound rather thin. For a giant, evil-looking black snake, however, Crawly was remarkably civilized, even accepting Ezra's amateur offerings of fruit (he particularly liked apples) before a hastily acquired book on snake care corrected him. Crawly's terrarium took up an entire corner of the room and Ezra kept it scrupulously clean, which might have had something to do with the frequency with which Crawly escaped his tank and turned up calmly on the sofa, or underneath Ezra's bed, or even downstairs in the bookshop proper, where he handily took care of any vermin incursions. He had baffled even Wensleydale's research abilities when it came to his particular species, for the vaguely triangular shape of his head implied that he was venomous, but he also willingly draped his heavy coils around unwary persons (namely Ezra and sometimes Adam) in a way that implied a constrictor.

He was excellent for disposing of unwanted company (not that Ezra would ever deliberately stoop to such a thing), and would certainly not take kindly to any other caretaker.

"Tell them he has to go with you, or deal's off." Pepper was back to texting furiously.

"Would they agree to that, do you think?" Mrs. Shadwell asked her anxiously, her by-proxy overseas vacation on the line. "It's a bit rockstar, but they are Americans, after all."

"Now hang on just a moment--"

Anathema frowned thoughtfully. "He'd probably not be allowed past customs."

"There, see."

"You ought to ask. You said your American is coming back for tea tomorrow, didn't you?"

"Yes, but I really don't want to--"

"Oh, you certainly ought to ask."

"I'd much rather not--"

"There's no harm in asking."

"I don't--"

"Ask," they all said decisively.