JD by Mark Merlis Page A

woman of my age, a white woman, is afraid to go to Elizabeth. I have reached the age at which, or I live in a country in which, there are entire cities I am afraid to visit in broad daylight. “If you know what you want to see, we can bring it here.”
    â€œI’m not sure. I mean, I don’t know what’s there.”
    â€œOh. I believe there’s a list.”
    School for Liberal Studies
Houck Library
Manuscript Collection
Collected Papers of Jonathan Ascher (1912-1973)
(by item numbers)
    Manuscripts
Novels (1-3)
JD (4)
Articles and occasional writings (5-141)
Poems (142-261)
Letters
To JA (262-385)
From JA to individuals (386-418)
From JA to newspapers/periodicals (419-1511)
Journals: 1964, 1966, 197O, 1972, 1973 (1512-1516)
Articles about JA
Obituaries (1517-1522)
Reviews (1523-1609)
Miscellaneous or unclassified documents (1610-1743)
    I’m afraid Jonathan’s life is pretty well summed up by the fact that half the collection consists of letters to the editor. But: journals. There are journals!
    I had wondered sometimes. There were just a few spells—stretches of a month or two, scattered across the last years of our marriage—when I thought he might be writing about what was going on. He would head to his office after lunch and close the door. After a minute or two, the clacking of the typewriter. He didn’t say what he was doing, I just surmised it: the stutter of his keystrokes was so continuous, he was clearly not enduring any throes of composition, just spewing forth his feelings about the day.
    What were they for, these journals? He could as easily have sat in the office, lit his Pall Mall, and—if we’d had sharp words at lunch—simply mumbled all he had to say. Just as I, doing the dishes at the sink, ran through everything I should have said. But no: he would rush into the office and hurry to preserve for eternity the last word . That’s what the journals must contain: the last word, with no comeback from me.
    Did he mean to read them himself, later? Would he have liked—those last weeks, when he couldn’t read—would he have liked me to sit and read aloud from the journals? Or did he really mean them for Philip Marks?
    â€œI think I’d like to see the journals.” Feeling, even as I say this, that they are what I do not want to see.
    â€œItems 1512 through 1516?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI’m sorry, but we’ve just missed today’s last pickup from the Annex, and we don’t do them weekends. Would Monday afternoon be soon enough, perhaps after two?”
    â€œYes. Or—no, can I call you when I’m ready to set up a time?”
    â€œOf course.” As she writes the number for me I wonder if there are not books, full of dark spells, that you aren’t meant to open.

FIVE
    I am sitting in a cubicle at the SLS library, next to a sealed window that looks down on Ninth Street. On the table, four loose-leaf binders—the old kind, in light blue cloth, that kids used to carry to school. The labels on them—1964, 1966, 1970, 1972—are not in Jonathan’s writing. Willis, the one who was supposed to write the biography, must have stuck them on while he was still at work. Maybe the labels were as far as he got. For some reason the people in the Annex didn’t send over the fifth volume, 1973. I say there’s no rush. After all, I waited thirty years.
    The first page I turn to, in the 1964 volume, is so faint it could be a century old. I thought they were keeping it under some ideal archival conditions in—where was it?—Elizabeth. Then I remember: Jonathan always used Eaton’s Corrasable Bond. If you made a mistake when you were typing, you could erase it with just an ordinary pencil eraser. Corrasable Bond was expensive, but Jonathan insisted on it, even for rough drafts, even—I learn now—for journals, because he couldn’t stand to leave behind uncorrected mistakes.