Trevanian News/Letter to a Librarian

Soon after our arrival in Albany my mother, who was determined that my sister and I would get all the culture the city could offer...for free, got library cards that gave the three of us access to the fussy brownstone Victorian edifice that was already becoming run down as the growing slum began to absorb her. Because I was only eight years old, I was issued a child's card that restricted me to a basement Children's Library that had cheery messages cut out of colored paper on the walls, and a corner for toddlers with little chairs and plenty of picture books for them to rip up and eat. For older kids, there were story books with salubrious moral parables, collections of things to do around the house on rainy days, and so-called Youth Books obviously written by middle-aged people who had had children described to them in considerable detail, but had never actually met one. I quickly used up the few good books, like Howard Pyle's splendid illustrated adventures, and I had just about given up on finding anything else of interest when, one long, rainy afternoon in autumn, I noticed a cast-iron spiral staircase in the corner most distant from the librarian's desk and hidden from her by a ceiling-to-floor bookcase that blocked off access to the stairs. While the librarian sat working at a table, I squeezed in behind the bookcase and noiselessly climbed the spiral stairs, inching up into a dusty, enticing darkness, until my outstretched hand discovered a door which I was sure must be locked. I was tired of giving Fate a chance to thumb its nose at me, so I turned to go back down. But the devil told me to try the handle. It wasn't locked. I eased it open a crack and peeked in to find myself in a dark corner of a Victorian-Gothic room with oaken paneling and tall, narrow windows with ornate stained-glass depicting events in the history of Albany. It was the home of the De Witt Clinton Memorial Collection, bulging with bound manuscripts, diaries, records, personal memoranda; all rare, all arid, few read. Other than occasional staff meetings, the only use made of this room was to store trolleys of returned books that were left there until an over-worked librarian had time to re-shelve them.

For three years I used the De Witt Clinton Room as a cozy hide-out. After selecting one of my personal books from where I stashed them behind a row of over-sized volumes on a lower shelf, I would scramble up into the deep niche of a Gothic stained-glass window, and there I was warmed by rising currents of air from the ornate radiator at my feet, and the ancient plumbing would alternate deep intestinal gurglings with long soulful sighs as I read by light diffused through colored glass. My most comforting memories of the years in Albany are the hours I spent reading in that hidden nest, dark and cool in summer, cozily warm in winter, but best when hard-skinned raindrops rattled on the stained glass behind me, and color rippled over the page of my book, while I lost myself in the story, safe, dry, and warmed by my sighing, gurgling radiator.