speaker’s interest, or was just feeling difficult, I gave them theory: uncanny doubles, split subjects, the subversive feminine sublime. The listener’s eyes would squint, indicating concentration; then they would relax back into blankness. He or she would offer a quick nod, feigned comprehension, a signal to move on to a new topic. If I liked the person, or was a little drunk and expansive, I went straight to the story: blood-soaked ghosts, wandering exorcists, flesh burning with illegible magic. I was always a little surprised when that didn’t win them over—usually it didn’t. You would think everyone could appreciate a good ghost story.
The librarian was tall but not too tall, with cheekbones just subtle enough and lips just thin enough to save him from being pretty, and his eyes were just squinty enough from screen time to hide their brightness.
And yet I still gave him the first answer.
“Feminist postmodern psychoanalytic critique of exorcism in the British Gothic tradition.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Well. You were ordering so many—”
“Why are you following my book orders, anyway?” I had been feeding search criteria and requests into an electronic processing system, never a thought about the person on the other end. It was like he had been reading my thoughts. I didn’t like that, no matter how nice he looked—actually, that made it worse.
“It’s been a slow summer,” he started. “Look, I’m sorry if—I thought it might be helpful. The book is kind of hidden. I was researching for months before I came across it.”
Of course, I knew the Wandering Jew had found other scholars—I had read thousands of their pages—but here, at this university, it had just been me and the immortal. I never considered that while I combed through the pages of Enlightenment Europe in the narrow halls above, someone was in the basement, conducting the same search through rambling American apocrypha.
“Researching what?”
“The Human Geography Project, with the Anthro Department, and Near East Studies. A digital map of folklore migration. The Wandering Jew. Other stuff too. I’m doing another degree in information science. This—” He gestured to the empty loan office, the buzzing air conditioner, the sullen girl reading a book, her feet on the counter. “Day job.”
“Okay, thanks for the book,” I said quickly. “I don’t do the Americas. And I do my own research. So. If you see my name. You know. Ignore it.”
He exhaled. “Sure. Sorry, Marjorie.”
Suddenly I wanted to backtrack. I could tell him about the story. He would find it interesting, my Wandering Jew, with magic written into his skin. I could tell him my family never asked about my research, confess that I was too possessive to discuss my work with the other students in the literature program, and that I had no one to talk to about the tale around which my whole life turned. I had a rough morning, I could say. I’ve been working so hard. I haven’t been sleeping well. The White Magician was a rebbe, and Grandpa had never told me.
“I’ll take the book,” I said, by way of apology. He just shrugged.
I opened it in the nearby reading room. Whether the text proved relevant or not—and I was sure it would be the latter—the book itself was a comfort: a return to my work, quiet study rooms and surprises that were only scholarly in nature.
The chief Rabbi of Monterrey suggested the mysterious stranger was Joseph Della Reina, the medieval rabbi who could no longer bear the suffering of his people’s exile, and was thus determined to force the coming of the Messiah.
One of Della Reina’s disciples died, one went mad, and one gave himself to apostasy. The rabbi himself went into a new kind of exile, fated to be born again and again, generations of penitence, until he might redeem himself, just himself, and not all of mankind. Meanwhile, the Messiah remained lost in a great desert beyond a river of stones.
But this
The librarian was tall but not too tall, with cheekbones just subtle enough and lips just thin enough to save him from being pretty, and his eyes were just squinty enough from screen time to hide their brightness.
And yet I still gave him the first answer.
“Feminist postmodern psychoanalytic critique of exorcism in the British Gothic tradition.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Well. You were ordering so many—”
“Why are you following my book orders, anyway?” I had been feeding search criteria and requests into an electronic processing system, never a thought about the person on the other end. It was like he had been reading my thoughts. I didn’t like that, no matter how nice he looked—actually, that made it worse.
“It’s been a slow summer,” he started. “Look, I’m sorry if—I thought it might be helpful. The book is kind of hidden. I was researching for months before I came across it.”
Of course, I knew the Wandering Jew had found other scholars—I had read thousands of their pages—but here, at this university, it had just been me and the immortal. I never considered that while I combed through the pages of Enlightenment Europe in the narrow halls above, someone was in the basement, conducting the same search through rambling American apocrypha.
“Researching what?”
“The Human Geography Project, with the Anthro Department, and Near East Studies. A digital map of folklore migration. The Wandering Jew. Other stuff too. I’m doing another degree in information science. This—” He gestured to the empty loan office, the buzzing air conditioner, the sullen girl reading a book, her feet on the counter. “Day job.”
“Okay, thanks for the book,” I said quickly. “I don’t do the Americas. And I do my own research. So. If you see my name. You know. Ignore it.”
He exhaled. “Sure. Sorry, Marjorie.”
Suddenly I wanted to backtrack. I could tell him about the story. He would find it interesting, my Wandering Jew, with magic written into his skin. I could tell him my family never asked about my research, confess that I was too possessive to discuss my work with the other students in the literature program, and that I had no one to talk to about the tale around which my whole life turned. I had a rough morning, I could say. I’ve been working so hard. I haven’t been sleeping well. The White Magician was a rebbe, and Grandpa had never told me.
“I’ll take the book,” I said, by way of apology. He just shrugged.
I opened it in the nearby reading room. Whether the text proved relevant or not—and I was sure it would be the latter—the book itself was a comfort: a return to my work, quiet study rooms and surprises that were only scholarly in nature.
The chief Rabbi of Monterrey suggested the mysterious stranger was Joseph Della Reina, the medieval rabbi who could no longer bear the suffering of his people’s exile, and was thus determined to force the coming of the Messiah.
One of Della Reina’s disciples died, one went mad, and one gave himself to apostasy. The rabbi himself went into a new kind of exile, fated to be born again and again, generations of penitence, until he might redeem himself, just himself, and not all of mankind. Meanwhile, the Messiah remained lost in a great desert beyond a river of stones.
But this
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