Read The Incident Report Online
Authors: Martha Baillie
I waited for Suitcase Man to tell me more, but he got up from his chair. He was blushing. I could not tell if the colour suffusing his cheeks expressed shame or restrained anger. It seemed to me clear that the university had concluded that Suitcase Man was the very person they needed to keep out of Suitcase Man's office.
He stood in front of me, speaking in great haste and so softly that I could not understand a single word. Then he bowed politely, picked up his suitcase and walked briskly out of the library.
At 8:25
PM
, five minutes before closing, I made a quick tour of the children's area to be sure no patrons remained. On the puppet stage in the story room, a sheet of paper caught my eye. Its message was in a handwriting with which I was becoming familiar. It encouraged somebody's daughter to weep.
        Â
Weep, weep, child, weep, let your tears flow, flow on my heart. Weep, weep, weep, let your tears flow on my heart. Weep, weep, weep, let your tears flow on my heart, weep on my heart, weep on my heart, ah, on my heart, ah! Let your tears flow, my daughter, my daughter, on my heart.
I folded the note and slipped it into my desk drawer, though perhaps it was not directed to me. No mention was made of freckled hands.
We, the staff of the Allan Gardens Library, closed up the building for the night. We turned out the lights, set the alarm and left by the back door. A few staff walked to the streetcar stop, others drove home, and I climbed on my bicycle and rode. As I glided
slowly through the warm dark of the summer side streets, I started to cry, not only for my father but for Suitcase Man as well. The air felt soft. Then not far off a man began whistling. It wasn't a song I knew. I stopped pedaling. In the middle of his tune the whistler changed directions, embroidering something new.
“You are reading my book on Rothko?”
“I can't read it. It's in Slovenian. I'm looking at the pictures.”
“More ginger tea?”
“It says, âJanko' in the front, and also âLizaveta.'”
“The book was a present. It was given to both of us.”
“She was the woman you lived with in Ljubljana? The one with the cat that climbed up into trees and couldn't get down again?”
“Yes. But not just trees, rooftops also.”
“Lizaveta.”
“The first time I saw a painting by Rothko I did not see just one. The room was full of them. I fell in love with Rothko's work.”
“Did Lizaveta have dark hair, a small, sharp nose, a heart-shaped face and skin like cream?”
“No.”
“That's how I imagine her.”
“Why?”
“Her name and her cat.”
“The first time I saw a Rothko I was living in Paris.”
“I didn't know you'd lived in Paris.”
“I lived there only a short time. One day I wanted to see paintings by Chagall. I didn't care which ones, so long as they showed how he used proportion and colour. But the gallery in the Centre Pompidou was closed for repairs. They sent me to the Musée d'Art Moderne at the Palais de Tokyo. People were waiting outside in the rain. They held their umbrellas over their heads and formed a long line from the steps of the Musée all the way along the sidewalk and around the corner. I had to wait with them. They'd come to see a special Rothko exhibit.
“I knew very little about Rothko and thought I did not care about his work. When at last I got inside, I asked a guard if they had any Chagalls. “But of course, sir,” she answered. “We all have great sorrows.”
“Because of my terrible pronunciation she'd understood “chagrins” not Chagallsâ“Avez vous des chagrins?”
“I told her that I agreed, about everyone having many sorrows. We laughed together, and then I went on my way. I passed quickly through several rooms until I came to the one small Chagall that was on display. There was only the one, and it disappointed me. I wandered into the Rothko exhibit.
“The exhibit was a retrospectiveâroom after room of his work. His paintings covered every wall, they erased the walls. His colours opened themselves
wide, more open than windows. Nobody was moving. Yet everyone was travelling. They were going inside his colours. There were no lines to say, this part is closed and separate. But layer upon layer, and from between the layers light was escaping. Light leaked around the edges. No line declared, âLook in that direction over there! That way is the horizon.' Everyone was travelling though nobody moved.”
“Do you still love Rothko?”
“Not the way I did, that day I came out of the rain and his paintings surrounded me and felt more real than my hands. That will not happen again. It does not need to happen again.”
“How long did you stay in love with Rothko's work?”
“Five years. Maybe six. More ginger tea? Shall I make some more?”
“Why more real than your hands? Why not more real than your legs or your feet?”
“I don't paint with my feet and I've never lost a toe.”
“You've started worrying about your hands.”
“I haven't.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“You're anxious. I've told you too much about Rigoletto. He's unsettling.”
“I'm not worrying. Are you?”
“He may be Suitcase Man.”
Grocery lists slipped into booksâI told this to Janko, who sat up alert. I reminded him of the opera score left on the photocopier, though perhaps by someone else.
“At work you've told Irene, yes?”
“Yes, Irene. And of course Nila finds out everything.”
“I'm glad you've told Irene. Such things must not be kept secret.”
“Should I be frightened?”
“I don't know. Are you?”
“I would love more ginger tea.”
Janko placed his hand on my arm.
A patron came to the Reference Desk at 3:04 this afternoon to report that a man was standing in the street in front of the library, directing traffic with a tea bag.
At precisely 2:00 this afternoon, I received a telephone call from a patron who complained that the library ought not to hire librarians who “look like terrorists.” I thanked the caller for his advice and assured him that his concerns would be taken into consideration. He suggested that if all our librarians were dressed in cheerful uniforms, the public would feel less threatened by the severe demeanor and foreign physique of certain librarians. As soon as I'd hung up I reported his suggestion to our Branch Head, Irene Frenkel, thereby carrying out my end of the bargain. I remained uncertain as to what constituted his end of the bargain.
The time was 11:00
AM
, and the library quiet. I'd arrived at that place in “The Juniper Tree,” by the Brothers Grimm, where the stepmother offers her young stepson an apple, then cuts off his head. She uses as her knife the sharp-edged lid of the trunk into which the boy leans to select the piece of fruit she's promised him. Next, she sits the boy's body in a chair by the door, and balances his head on his neck, tying a red kerchief around his wound.
When the boy's young sister returns home and sees her brother sitting with an apple in his lap, she asks for one also. The stepmother instructs the young girl to go ask her brother for his apple.
“If he won't give it to you, slap his cheek.”
The girl does as she's told. When her brother does not answer, she slaps his cheek, causing his head to fall off and roll on the ground. Overcome with horror, she runs to her stepmother.
“See what you've done? You've killed him,” chastises the stepmother. “But I'll protect you,” she reassures. “Nobody needs to know.”
And the stepmother chops up the boy and cooks him in a stew. She sets the table, and calls in her
unsuspecting husband. When he asks why his son has not come to dinner, she explains that she's sent the boy on an errand to a neighbouring village.
The father declares that the stew is delicious and requests a second helping. The little girl, weeping for her brother, crawls under the table where she gathers her brother's bones in her handkerchief.
Outside the house, the little girl buries the bones, and out of the ground springs a tree, and in the tree's branches a bird alights and sings. This bird, eventually, will bring about the death of the stepmother, who will sink into the ground from which the boy will rise and come back to life.
I wondered if the story was suitable to read to the adolescents I was preparing to visit at Covenant House, a shelter for teenagers living on the streets, runaways from their parents and perhaps themselves. I suspected they might relate to the violence and treachery in “The Juniper Tree.” It was a story that stared without wincing at human connivance. The stepmother's horrible jealousy, her starkly exposed, calculating cruelty released an undeniable and fearsome energy. And the little girl's love and innocence felt instinctive, not sentimental.
I looked up from my reading. The unconjugated afternoon unfolded.
This afternoon, at precisely 2:25, a male patron in his early twenties began weeping uncontrollably. I approached him where he sat, at computer #507, and asked if he was all right.
“No,” he shouted at me. “I'm in love and I'm dying. I need my mom. Can someone take me home?”
Tears ran down his cheeks and he attempted to dry his eyes with the back of his hand. The police were called. They were summoned by Nila Narayan. They arrived swiftly and took the man awayâto a hospital, they promised.
The time was 6:00
AM
when Janko woke me to tell me about my ears.
“Did you know, Darkest Miriam, that one of your ears is larger than the other?”
“You woke me for this? It's not. I would have noticed.”
“Oh, yes. This left ear, it grew during the night.”
My hand went wandering. First it found Janko's knee, then his navel. “Did you know that you have only one navel, and cannot grow another?” I asked.
While I waited for his answer, my hand moved very slowly, and through my palm I could feel the heat of everything growing inside him.
While I was shelf-reading from M to Z, in adult fiction, to see if all the books were in their proper places, a man passed behind me three or four times. With each passing his coat brushed against me. I dismissed these fleeting moments of contact, and concentrated upon my task.
Again the man walked by me, and this time his hand shot out and grabbed my breast. The time was 11:15
AM
. I yelled. What I yelled does not matter, nor do I recall what I yelled. The man walked quickly on. He left the library, taking his hands with him. I filled out an incident report.
At 2:48
PM
, on a table in the children's area, I found a letter written in navy-blue pencil on a piece of scrap paper, in a familiar insistent hand.
        Â
To you who dared to touch her breast,
              Â
Do you think I see nothing? Not one of your actions escapes me. Ah, vile scoundrel! Even weaponless this hand will soon be bathed in your blood, you silly fucker; a man has nothing more to fear on earth, if he defends his children's honour. Ah, you're all against me! All against me! Well then, I'll weep. You're silent! Woe is me! Give me back my daughter; she's everything in the world to me! Have pity, have pity, sir, have pity. Ah, vile shit. But you shall be avenged, Gilda. Oh, my Gilda of the freckled hands. Now that I have found you, I will not let you from my sight. No further harm, that is my promise to you.
I made a quick tour of the children's area, but discovered nothing unusual. I did not feel frightened but experienced a curious floating sensation. I thought
of Suitcase Man, but suddenly realized he could not be the writer as he'd not come in all day. “It's not Suitcase Man,” I announced to myself, and I no longer wanted an answer. I willed myself to remove my hands from my pockets.
The time was 1:00
AM
. On the inside of Janko's thigh, I arrived at a place that was very smooth. It was a small place.
This evening, a sultry summer evening under clear skies, at precisely 7:05, a worker from a local group home returned a number of itemsâten in totalâwhich she had retrieved from the room of Kevin Winkler.
Mr. Winkler, a former resident of the group home, had torn the barcodes and library labels off most of the items. Some were charged out on his record, others presumably stolen. Several he'd ripped apart and used as wall decorations. Most were between six and eight months overdue.