library

A LOT HAD CHANGED in my old elementary school back on Long Island, but the basic layout of the building had been maintained. The hallway led me to the left and I knew very well where it would terminate: at the school library. But the classrooms had been converted into greenhouses. I could see students through the glass, watering tomato plants or checking in on cucumbers. Piles of hay and fertilizer had drifted into the hallways and it seemed as if the roof had been removed all together as the hot sun beat down and some chickens clucked on by.

I was rather impressed. The school’s redirection into horticulture made some sense, it was a return to the area’s pastoral roots. In the 19th century, this had been a farming community. Outside the boys’ bathroom, just before the library, I checked the wall for that old memorial. In the 1930s, one boy had died on the mill pond trying to save another who had fallen through the ice. The fallen boy had been rescued and survived, but his rescuer sadly had perished. Sure enough, the memorial plaque, which had been in the building since that time, was still there.

At the library, things had also changed. Chairs had been set out and a librarian informed me that I was expected to give a lecture on writing. Before I did so, I wanted to have a look around the old library, I told her. I wondered if it had that same old musty smell. And what was the name of that old librarian, the one who first told us that all of the card catalogues would be digitized? Wasn’t it Mrs. von Steuben? At the front of the library, I was surprised to see that there was now a toy store, selling plastic figurines and assorted merchandise from Guardians of the Galaxy, Aquaman, and other Marvel and DC movies. “Whose bright idea was it to put a toy store in a library?” I asked the librarian. She said that the library toy store had been there for at least a decade. “That came long after you left the school,” she said. “Even before I came.”

Just then I had an idea, that I would tell the students the story about how I once borrowed John Lennon’s biography, only to find a biography of one VI Lenin on the shelf beside it and, intrigued by the man’s bald head submerged in a sea of socialist red, took it home at once and read it quietly, so that no one could see. Other than Mein Kampf, was there any more seditious a book in the late 1980s, the era of Glasnost and Perestroika? Perhaps these books were still on the library’s shelves somewhere. They would make good props. I looked out across the library, but didn’t see any books there. Just toys and computers were everywhere. “But where are the books?” I asked. “We’ve stored the books in other parts of the library,” the librarian told me.

Thus I began my adventure in trying to locate the library’s hidden old books. The ones that had been stored elsewhere. I went down a hallway into a section of the library that seemed ancient, as if it hadn’t been renovated since the Victorian Era. Light was streaming into the hall through a series of stained glass windows featuring various Biblical scenes. There were some old dusty books here, but they were more intended for children. At the back of the hall, I made a left and went into a darker system of corridors where there was no lighting. I ran deeper and deeper, closing doors behind me along the way, until I emerged at the library toy store again.

“I couldn’t find what I was looking for,” I told the librarian. “But all of our titles are available electronically now,” she said. “There’s no need for physical books.” About 10 pupils in white t-shirts looked up at me. They were all holding tablets. “Do you remember what you agreed to teach them?” the librarian said. “No,” I told her. “You’re supposed to introduce a writer to them and then teach them how to write in the style of that writer.” “Am I getting paid for this?” I asked. “Yes and quite well,” the librarian said. “Very well then, let’s do Ian Fleming,” I told the class. “I want you to start with Goldfinger, Thunderball, Dr. No,” I said. “Then Moonraker.” “You seem very sure of yourself,” the librarian said. “Are you sure you can do this?” “Naturally,” I said. “I could do it in my sleep.”