The Librarianist

THE GUILLOTINE WAS WHEELED INTO THE WINGS, AND JUNE AND THE dogs went away to the tower to rehearse in private while Bob and Ida sat in chairs facing one another on the stage, and Ida made to teach Bob how to play a snare drum. She got an almost frighteningly serious look in her eye when she performed the drum roll, what she called a press roll. The drum rested on her lap, the sticks held at odd angles in her hands as she drew them across the drum and toward herself, over and again, evenly, machinelike. Ida had mastered this percussive effect so that it did not sound like many individual raps upon the drum but rather a whole and complete sound: dense, sustained, fraught. She was staring hard at Bob as she made her demonstration, and she continued drumming as she spoke: “The drumsticks are loose are in my hands. I am not banging; I’m not tapping. I am exerting an even pressure as I drag the hopping sticks over the skin of the drum. Press, roll, press, roll.” The sticks were blurred smudges in the air. “What is this sound?” she asked, while still making it. “What does the sound say?”

Bob said, “Pay attention.”

“What else?”

“Something is coming.”

She abruptly ceased drumming. Ida looked pleased, or less displeased than her usual. “In any language, Bob, in any town on earth, that’s what a press roll says, yes. It’s an important signal and a critical aspect of the last scene of our coming performance. I’d like for you to take the drum to your room and practice what I’ve shown you. We have a phonograph recording of a press roll that we could use in a pinch but we always prefer the true human activity. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m telling you that if you can arrive at a place of proficiency with this particular flourish, then we should welcome you to join us.”

She passed the drum and sticks to Bob and he set them on his lap, wondering at their shape, materials, weight. June returned with the dogs, and she wore the face of defeat as she told Ida, “It was a fine idea and I hope you know I appreciate it but I just don’t believe it’s possible to teach a dog to goose-step, and I’m sorry.”

Bob was relieved of his duties for the afternoon, and he took the drum to his room and sat with it on his bed. Recalling what Ida had said about holding the sticks loosely, he understood that what he was after was a bouncing effect; it was gravity at work, the player collaborating with natural law. He soon could summon a consistent roll with his right hand, but not his left. An hour passed like nothing when there came a knock on the door and there was Mr. Whitsell, who began with a casual appraisal of the afternoon weather but soon admitted that Bob’s drumming was making him nervous. “And a little angry,” he said. “The sound is making me nervous and angry both, and I’m happy you’re bettering yourself, but please take pity on an old man with a frail and fussy disposition, won’t you?” Bob carried the drum and sticks down the stairs and across the highway to the seashore; and here he sat and practiced. It was good to practice beside the even roar of the ocean because he could hear his drumming but the noise didn’t travel and so could not disturb anyone. Periodically he would cease drumming and there was a tingling in his hands and up his arms, but when he returned to it then the tingling went away, or was hidden somewhere, subsumed by his activity, just as the sound of the drum was subsumed by the sea.

BOB AND IDA AND JUNE AND THE DOGS WENT TO THE DINER FOR DINNER but the diner was closed. There was a note taped to the front door: The diner’s shut b/c the cook’s run off. We don’t know where. Do you? Management. As there was nowhere else to go, the group returned to the hotel; when Mr. More saw them shuffling in, and when he learned of their not being fed, he became gladly agitated and proposed an impromptu dinner party in his and Alice’s quarters. Ida protested that she would prefer to eat in her room but Mr. More, not understanding, or pretending not to understand, said he wouldn’t hear of it, and he rang the bell to rouse Alice with instructions to prepare the wine and then to seek out Mr. Whitsell and encourage him to join the festivities. “Friendly but firm,” he called to her as she trudged up the stairs.