The Archivist Read Online Free Page A

wrote fairly often to Conrad Aiken and possibly to Van Wyck Brooks. His Harvard friends. Undoubtedly to others I’m not aware of,” she answered.
    “Ah,” I said, nodding. Then I stood, reaching into my trouser pocket for my keys. She’d done well, displaying both erudition and modesty — a winning combination, yet one she hadn’t overdone.
    “Your library card,” I said. She produced the card quickly. It bore a photo in which her hair was once again loose. Her university code listed her as a graduate student in English literature.
    “Roberta Spire,” I said. “What sort of name is Spire?”
    “It’s from Spier,” she said. “German. My parents changed it.”
    “I see,” I said, and paused before launching into my caution-ary speech. She watched me closely as I talked.
    “Your ability to enter the library will be permanently compromised if you break any rules,” I said. “I’m taking you into a special archive. Only a few scholars are admitted there. You understand me?”
    “Yes, I do,” she said, without a touch of either obsequiousness or sarcasm. I was expecting one or the other, and the well-maintained evenness of her tone surprised me. I put her card in my breast pocket.
    As we walked down the quiet hallway, I could feel a battle of wills take form. She had passed the first test, but I still didn’t trust her. I knew she wasn’t after any letters to Conrad Aiken. Her high-heeled shoes and my old crepe-soled ones alternated in a loud-soft dialogue that might have been an argument, and though I led the way, I could see her determined walk as clearly as if I stood to one side of us both, watching a clash in the making.
    At the door of the Mason Room I stopped abruptly, but she had kept her distance and didn’t pile awkwardly into me, as hovering students sometimes do. She stood to one side as I produced my keys and opened both locks on the door.
    “The receptionist is at lunch,” I said. “Ordinarily she lets people in after I’ve approved their research requests. Come in. Shut the door hard behind you.”
    The battle took a turn at this point. It entered a lull. Roberta’s object was clearly to throw me off, to fool me into thinking that she would perhaps settle for less than her initial request. We looked together at about a dozen of Eliot’s letters — a few written from Paris to Aiken, the rest sent from Harvard to his mother and brother in the Midwest. I was struck by Eliot’s descriptions of Paris, the wet dark streets at night, whores in doorways gesturing at him. We read in silence.
    Roberta seemed restless. She tapped her heels lightly on the Mason Room’s parquet floor. I decided to complicate things. Opening one of the combination-locked cabinets, I produced a surprise, a set of galleys for “The Waste Land.” In them Eliot’s markings mingled with the printer’s in a delightful mash of the poetic and the technical. Leafing through, I pointed to where “extra leading” was scrawled in a rough hand after the ominous “Consider Phlebas.” Eliot had edited the line in careful pencil, adding that necessary “once”: “Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.”
    Without taking her eyes off the galleys, Roberta nodded. She smiled now and then as she turned the fragile pages with what I had to admit was real dexterity. Clearly she knew something about old manuscripts. Partway through, she paused and pointed, careful not to touch the print.
    “‘Those are pearls,’” she read, “‘that were his eyes. Look! Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, the lady of situations.’”
    She turned and gazed at me.
    “Do you know what ‘Belladonna’ means?” she asked. Her voice had lowered slightly.
    I am unused to having students quiz me, and her question threw me off.
    “Of course,” I said. Immediately I regretted my defensive tone.
    “Literally it means ‘beautiful lady,’” she said, as if I hadn’t answered. “Also it’s the name of a