The Librarianist

It was not uncommon to see a priest, or more often a pair of priests, making use of the library. There was a seminary some miles away in Forest Park and so Bob came into regular contact with their ilk. They were unimportant-question-askers and very-small small-talkers, remarkable for their sameness and, according to Bob’s experience, uniformly desirous to make contact with the world outside of their own. Not one among them could ever simply check out his books and depart; he had to contemplate this or that author, ask for recommendations, review the day’s weather or the weather of the day preceding. Their reading favored current fiction of a page-turning sort: cozy mysteries, tales of wartime adventure, espionage — just so long as the narrative moved at a nice clip and was devoid of art and sex and vice. Bob had no particular care for or opinion of the priests. When they spoke to him, he picked up a labored modesty that was the result, he supposed, of their belief that they were representing God on Earth. As a nonbeliever, Bob found this weary-making but endeavored to think of the priests as eccentric rather than boorish.

The two who came in the day Connie’s father was barred from the library were well known to Bob. There was the full-faced, florid priest, a squat fellow of thirtyish years, and his senior, a priest of the classical Irish mold: tall and rangy, bushy eyebrows and thick white hair combed back. They walked among the stacks, the white-haired priest pointing out this book or that, while the florid priest listened with an attentiveness that did look embellished, sycophantic. Bob was pondering their dynamic when he noticed Connie’s father, a wolfish grin on his face, edging closer to the pair. Connie stood behind her father; Bob couldn’t see her expression behind the hood but her physicality read as worried, bothered: she held her hands together at her chest and crept forward, forward, then halted. She knew something had to happen, and that it would not be pleasant, and that there was nothing to do but wait for it, to watch it, and now it began: the white-haired priest was reading a book’s back jacket when Connie’s father moved in and snatched it from his hand. “Excuse me,” the priest said, “I was looking at that book.”

“Yes, and getting your dirty handprints all over it!” said Connie’s father. “You should be ashamed to come in here with hands as dirty as yours.”

The priest was surprised by the outburst, so much so that he couldn’t find his language; he turned to his colleague with a look of incredulity, an invitation to become involved on his behalf. The florid priest took up the challenge, asking Connie’s father, “Look here, what is this? What are you after, eh?”

Connie’s father turned. “And you!” he said. “Walking around with filth all across your face. How dare you speak to the likes of me with your face in such a state!” He batted a hand across the florid priest’s nose. It was not a blow of true violence; it did not injure the man, but he was startled by the physical contact and drew back in a flinch, raising a hand to shield his face against any further molestation. Connie’s father was pleased by the effect his behaviors had upon these two, and he considered them bettered. “What is it, don’t you have running water up at that buffoon’s academy you live in? Or are the pair of you simply too lazy to maintain the most basic levels of hygiene?”