The weight of water - Anita Shreve [14]
I am trying to remember. I am trying hard to remember what it felt like to feel love.
I enter the building with the tall, arched windows and shut the door behind me. I follow signs upstairs to the library. I knock on an unprepossessing metal door and then open it. The room before me is calm. It has thick ivory paint on the walls, and heavy wooden bookshelves. The feeling of serenity emanates from the windows.
There are two library tables and a desk where the librarian sits. He nods at me as I walk toward him. I am not sure what to say.
“Can I help you with something?” he asks. He is a small man with thinning brown hair and wire glasses. He wears a plaid sport shirt with short, crisp sleeves that stick out from his shoulders like moth’s wings.
“I saw the sign out front. I’m looking for material on the murders that took place out at the Isles of Shoals in 1873.”
“Smuttynose.”
“Yes.”
“Well… we have the archives.”
“The archives?”
“The Isles of Shoals archives,” he explains. “They were sent over from the Portsmouth Library, oh, a while ago. They’re a mess, though. There’s a great deal of material, and not much of it has been cataloged, I’m sorry to say. I could let you see some of it, if you want. We don’t lend out materials here.”
“That would be—”
“You’d have to pick an area. A subject.”
“Old photographs,” I say. “If there are any. Of people, of the island. And personal accounts of the time.”
“That would be mostly in diaries and letters,” he says. “Those that have come back to us.”
“Yes. Letters then. And photographs.”
“Have a seat over there at the table, and I’ll see what I can do. We’re very excited to have the archives, but as you can see, we’re a bit short-staffed.”
I have then an image of Thomas with Adaline and Billie. Each has a vanilla ice-cream cone. The three of them are licking the cones, trying to control the drips.
Thomas said, “I’ll go find Adaline.” He did not say, “I’ll go find Adaline and Billie,” or “Adaline and Rich.”
The librarian returns with several books and folders of papers. I thank him and pick up one of the books. It is an old and worn volume, the brown silk binding of which has cracked. The pages are yellowed at the edges, and a few are loose. Images swim in front of me, making an array of new covers on the book. I shut my eyes and put the book to my forehead.
I look at an old geography of the Isles of Shoals. I read two guidebooks printed in the early half of the century. I take notes. I open another book and begin to riffle the pages. It is a book of recipes, The Appledore Cookbook, published in 1873. The recipes intrigue me: Quaking Pudding, Hash Made from Calf’s Head and Pluck, Whitpot Pudding, Hop Yeast. What is pluck? I wonder.
From the folders the library has given me, papers slide out onto the table, and I can see there is no order to them. Some papers are official documents from the town, licenses and such, while others are clearly bills of sale. Still other papers seem to be letters written on a stationery so fragile I am almost afraid to touch them. I look at the letters to decipher the old-fashioned penmanship, and with dismay I realize that the words are foreign. I see the dates: April 17, 1873; November 4, 1868; December 24, 1856; January 5, 1867.
There are a few photographs in the folders. One is a portrait of a family of seven. In the photograph, the father, who has a beard and a full head of hair, is wearing a waistcoat and a thick suit, like a captain of a ship might have. His wife, who has on a black dress with a white lace collar and lots of tiny white buttons, is quite plump and has her hair pulled severely back off her head. Everyone in the photograph, including the five children, appears grim and bug-eyed. This is because the photographer has had to keep the shutter open for at least a minute,