The Librarianist

THE REHEARSALS TOOK PLACE IN THE AUDITORIUM, SO-CALLED, which was actually just the dining hall with the tables removed and the chairs set up in rows before a stage built up against the farthermost wall. Bob quietly ushered the dogs into the room and took a seat in the back row, that he might spy on June and Ida and learn something about their coming performances.

The stage was lit by footlights, a warm, yellow-gold glow against the painted backdrop, a realistic rendering of a public square in the eighteenth century. A full-size guillotine was set up center stage, and Ida fixed in its stockade, her face and hair made up to resemble a filthy and dejected man, a prisoner on the verge of execution. June was the executioner in pointed black leather hood, leather vest, and elbow-length leather gloves. Bob paid close attention to their words and behaviors; eventually he realized they were not rehearsing anything, but had interrupted their rehearsal to have a disagreement. Ida, the angrier, said, “How can I be meant to represent a criminal’s emotional reality if I don’t even know what crime I have committed?”

“I say again that you’re thinking too much about it,” June said, reaching under her leather hood to scratch her chin. “It doesn’t matter what the crime was. Actually, Ida, and in a way, that’s the point. I don’t think of your character as a hardened criminal, but rather, one due to have his head lopped off in reply to an infraction.”

“But what was the infraction?”

“It is irrelevant.”

“It isn’t.”

“It is in that an infraction must never result in the lopping off of one’s head, for it is merely an infraction. The function of the scene is the description of a man’s costly error in a savage era.”

“It is just as savage now.”

“Yes, but in a newer way.”

“It is no less savage, June.”

“Fine, yes, I didn’t say I disagreed with you. But that’s to the side of the point, just as the man’s crime is.”

Ida said, “You don’t know the crime in the first place, do you?”

“As a matter of fact I don’t. I have not authored the crime because it is superfluous.”

“May I author a crime?”

“You may not.”

“Perhaps I’ll author one in my mind and keep it hidden from you.”

“Ida, it is far too late in the day for you to succumb to your lunatic nature.”

Ida wagged her finger in a style that said she would not be deterred from her principal point: “By inhibiting this process you are intentionally demeaning the quality of our work.”

“All right!” said June, and she punched the air with her black gloves. “I’ll name the crime. But you must promise me now that you won’t succumb. You are already dipping a toe in, you know that you are, and I demand that you promise me you’ll not fully indulge.”

Ida said chastely, “I do promise it.”

“Because I can see the lunatic rising up in you and I must insist that you halt her from taking shape.”

“Yes, yes,” said Ida. “What is my crime?”

“Let me think.” June paced in her creaking leather garb. “You are many seasons in arrears with your land tax.”

Ida made the face of thinking. “No, not that.”

June said, “You slapped an officer of the court in a tavern.”

“Well,” Ida said. “Was I drunken?”

“Quite drunken, yes.”

“But,” said Ida, “I’m not a common drunk.”

“No, you had some bad news, someone has died, and so you went to the tavern to drink away your sorrow.”

“My own son had died.”

“Died by drowning,” said June.

“He drowned in the quay and he was my one and only boy.”

At this last word, Buddy commenced making a needful growling noise, and then Pal also did, and June and Ida ceased their discussion to look out into the darkness. June held her gloved hand over her eyes. “Is that Bob out there, and does he have the babies?”

“Yes,” Bob called.

“How did it go, Bob? Are our comrades alive, and unafraid, and did they behave, and did everyone enjoy everyone’s company?”

“Yes,” Bob called.

The dogs both were whining and pulling against their leashes, and June said, “You may set them loose, Bob.” Bob did as instructed, and the dogs were off. Pal had the lead; he beelined for the stage, taking its lip in one leap, then soaring up and through the air and into June’s arms, while Buddy bounded up the steps to the side of the stage, hurrying to Ida and licking her all about the face. Ida, powerless to stop this, flapped her manacled hands and cried out bloody murder that her makeup should be ruined.