Confessions of a Librarian Read online

  “There’s something I’ve wanted to do since the first moment I saw you, darling. May I?”

  “Why not?” The wine had plunged me into a lethargic reverie. The scene assumed a fin-de-siècle aura reminiscent of a novel by d’Annunzio.

  Mesmerized, I watched Petrillio fling open two drawers brimming over with makeup. Other drawers in a delicate lacquered chest were bursting with hairnets, rollers, and hair conditioners.

  “Sorry, darling, but your eyebrows are so...” he searched for a word. “Yuck! Like they’ve been sprayed with DDT. The hairs scraggly every which way. No arch to speak of, tch tch. Let me fix them, pretty please?”

  Before I could say Estee Lauder, Petrillio started plucking away. Expertly, he wielded the tweezers across my brows. Da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa could not have been more intent on his task. Foundation, powder, rouge and lipstick were applied with the same agility.

  Next Petrillio covered me with a plastic cape and took out a professional scissors. While he snipped away, he supplied highlights of his biography.

  “I wanted to be a stylist since I played with Grandma’s curling irons back in damned Ohio. My parents, ’specially tight-assed Dad, insisted I study architecture. The bastard died last year. Left me some money, and soon I’ll have enough to quit drudging away. Hell, let those snooty, philistine clients of mine live in a sewer.”

  Venting his irritation, Petrillio threw a brush across the room.

  “I’ll find women to beautify, even if I have to chase them down Broadway. No more men’s suits either. Before the great drag queen in the sky pulls down her shade, it’s gonna be gowns and champagne at the Four Seasons for this tootsie.” While applying pomade to my hair, Petrillio chortled merrily.

  “Let me look, please,” I murmured half-expectant, half-fearful. Like moths, Petrillio’s hands flitted around my face and throat.

  “Trust me! In you I shall reanimate Rita, Ava, and Marlene. Stars then were glamour girls. Not like those anorexic twits on screen today. Turn right, chin up, my lovely.”

  Petrillio moved my face around to different angles to check if the colors were coordinated and flattering. Was he going to make me look like Mae West?

  Finally, after I couldn’t sit still one more second, Petrillio brought over a hand mirror. As he sprayed my hair with jasmine-scented mousse, I examined his handiwork, which had turned a boring shingle cut into a layered fantasy of curls that made me look years younger.

  “What d’ya think?” he inquired, fists clenched. The artist wanted to be certain the canvas on which he’d painted his masterpiece had the right proportions. Meanwhile he rubbed heavy dabs of setting gel on his grey hair that now looked shellacked.

  “A red streak, gold eyeshadow!” For a moment, I hardly recognized myself. Alchemically, Petrillio divined from my soul the audacious way I had always wanted to look but never dared.

  This chic, yet funky style eventually caused a renaissance in my social life. I bought form-fitting clothes, ventured into offbeat clubs, bought spiky, black-heeled shoes with ankle straps. As though I were a car, Petrillio gave me a complete overhaul, including a crash course in cosmetology.

  But at this time, I wanted a lover—not a cross-dresser. I remembered John Lennon’s words: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

  FIVE: OH, INDIA, ABSURD AND MARVELOUS

  Great Ganesh with your single tusk and conch shell in your hand,

  What is on the other side of the blackness? Michael McClure

  One bright late fall day Marilyn invited me over. At last the barrier at Fourteenth Street was down and I could walk unimpeded to her town house on Gramercy Park. Tour guides going through the historic neighborhood pointed out Marilyn’s elegant two-story dwelling, covered outside with intricate terra cotta decorations. Inside, Marilyn hugged me so tight the beads on my carnelian necklace nearly shattered. Her heart-shaped face looked haggard. Smelling Marilyn’s strong lavender perfume, her signature scent, reminded me of our upbeat meetings here before 9/11.

  As my feet headed toward the winding iron stairs that led to the second floor where our women’s group had met, Marilyn warned: “Don’t go up there, sweetie!”

  “Why not?” I responded. Downstairs was usually terra incognita, reserved for her private patients.

  “I seldom go upstairs now. Makes me too sad, remembering our group’s splendid meetings. Every two weeks I looked forward to them. Trust me, the downstairs parlor’s comfy too.” Three charming pusses, one a Persian female, Demeter, with silky hair, and her sister Miss Mops, pattered after us. Normally they lolled on the furniture like wise Egyptian priests. Only male Robespierre, a dark tiger, showed signs of recognition by rubbing up against my legs and bumping his head on my toes.

  Once we entered the parlor, furnished in Danish modern with a shrink-style couch in the center, Marilyn placed me in an armchair. She walked over to a piano jammed into one corner. Pulling out the bench, no music in front of her, Marilyn launched into a medley of torch songs: tear-jerking Billie Holiday intermixed with Gershwin and Porter. Was she a reincarnation of Josephine Baker transplanted to Gramercy Park?

  “I’m aware my heart is a sad affair. There’s much disillusion there...” Was Marilyn singing or sobbing? Sadness radiated from her to blanket the room in a palpable gloom. Even the pusses drooped. Lifting her fingers from the keys, Marilyn whirled around to peer at me with relentless brown eyes, accustomed to stripping away her patient’s armor. “When did you last have sex?” she demanded. “A while ago,” I gulped, disinclined to supply particulars. I knew Marilyn would find my double life psychologically unsound. My free and easy married life had its strains but was a comfort zone in which I could always take shelter.

  “It’s not just sex, I’m so damned lonely,” Marilyn sighed. “I need a hand to hold, lips to kiss. I’ve forgotten what a stiff penis inside me feels like.”

  Eager to change the subject, I asked, “Tell me, have you heard from the gang? Tiffany won’t call me. I’m too reactionary for her.”

  “Ran into Tiffany last week,” replied Marilyn. “She’s writing poems to heroic firemen. She has more guts than me.”

  “Guess we won’t be seeing her for a while.” I was both relieved and put out that she wouldn’t be around to stir things up.

  “Sure, that limousine-liberal can be a pain, but probably she’s had more men than I’ve had patients. Before anything can happen, I bolt. Last year in Morocco, for example...”

  Abruptly Marilyn opened a drawer to produce a heavy silver necklace studded with turquoise and tiger’s eye stones. “Take this. Christmas is just a few weeks away. I bought several on a tour to Marrakech.” Marilyn hung the necklace around me.

  “This necklace accompanied me wandering round the medina, the native quarter. At night, I ditched my fellow Americans, blabbering in the hotel lobby about this and that. Winding among a maze of dark alleys, I stumbled into a cafe that looked like it belonged in The Arabian Nights.

  Two men in a back corner were playing cards. Their eyes gleamed. One had a huge black moustache drooping over his lips, the other wore a fez with a long tassel. You should have seen the bump under his robe. The fez guy spoke to me in French. ‘A glass of mint tea?’ I think he asked. Were my panties wet!”

  “What then?” I asked, trying to imagine Marilyn intimidated.

  “I ran back to my hotel room and curled up like a fetus. Such cowardice would amaze my patients, or the group, who think I’m superwoman. Speaking of the group, we could have a meeting next week, even if everybody doesn’t show up.”

  But Marilyn wouldn’t let go of her self-examination. “I’ve never let myself go on a sexual binge. Have you? Or do you chicken out, like me?” Before I could answer, the three cats crept up to me, ears perked up.

  “A little of both. On my trip to India in the eighties...”

  “Wow! Sex near the Ganges,” interrupted Marilyn. “How cosmic! Go on, tell me a steamy story. No, wait while I get some
tea.”

  While Marilyn served the Earl Grey tea, I pulled out an episode from my backpack to read her about the half-amusing, half-terrifying events of my pilgrimage to India. I was doing research for a biography of Alexandra David-Neel, the French Orientalist. Some research! If the Earl could hear, he would turn over in his grave.

  The train pulled into Bombay’s Churchgate Railway Station. Scorching air blasts nearly asphyxiated me. Had I confused the months and mistakenly arrived in August rather than February? From creaky wheelcarts legless beggars, with shriveled arms covered with canker sores, grabbed my dress. They jostled each other to disgorge rupees from the dazed foreigner. Derelict about changing dollars in New York, I needed to find rupees to placate this ragtag army!

  As hordes rushed about, some with scraggly poultry in tow, the enormous station felt stifling. Any moment the masses might panic and trample me. Had Bombay’s thirteen million inhabitants congregated in this smelly station? My queasy stomach had rebelled against the sluggish rock and roll of Indian trains; now hungry among these swarms, I was leery about drinking or eating anything. Flies buzzed around the vendors’ carts, landing everywhere, especially on my nose. Smothering in heavy clothes, I looked ridiculous next to Indians in flowing cotton garments.

  A grant from my university, which involved interviewing Indian librarians, made the trip possible. But I had a more pressing mission: to do research for a biography my husband and I were writing of Alexandra David-Neel, the French explorer of Tibet and its occult practices. She had spent extensive time in India. The previous year the curator of Asian antiquities at the British Museum had given me the Bombay address of Dr. Murghesan, who had studied Eastern occultism. While David-Neel had spent twenty years in Asia, at times facing-down wild animals, would I be hardy enough to make it out of the station?

  I handed my bags to a hovering porter, who rescued me from beggars trying to touch me as though I were a Hindu goddess. He escorted me to the government office that changed money. After I plopped down a pile of travelers checks, the bored official deposited an indeterminate amount of rupees in my sweaty palms. Too giddy to count the money, afterward I realized that he had awarded himself an enormous tip. To thank the porter for bundling me into a taxi, I handed him a wad of filthy rupees. He squealed with such delight that I must have given him large bills. Weaving through a maze of animals, cars, and rickshaws, the driver deposited me at the Nirvana Guest House.

  Conveniently located on Marine Drive, the guest house had a few basic rooms plus a garden where birds and butterflies cavorted. The room was clean and quiet, an unexpected luxury in a metropolis that rumbled from dawn to dusk, where traffic zigzagged in every direction. A shower restored my good humor although the night felt hotter than the day.

  Next morning I purchased several cotton outfits, which made it possible to move around without fainting. I decided to spend a week in Bombay before moving on to New Delhi for my library research. This gave me an opportunity to reread David-Neel’s first book on India, the talisman I carried with me in order to stay calm while being jostled by crowds that swarmed like bees in a hive. Her descriptions of India captured the essence of the simultaneously grimy and glorious land where illusion and reality blend.

  Braving the scorching sun and dust, buttressed by a drink of coconut milk from a sidewalk vendor’s stall, I hunted down my quarry—the scholar I hoped would reveal secrets about the mysterious David-Neel’s life. Dr. Murghesan’s shop was located near Chowpatty Beach. Scuttling along the sand like a crab plucked from its shell, I breathed in a facsimile of fresh air.

  In need of perking up, I got a vigorous head massage from a malish-wallah. His impersonal hands made me long for someone to touch me erotically all over. Then I would feel less lonely in this land of graceful men whom I suspected were learned in the arts of love. “Concentrate on your research,” I repeated to myself as a mantra. However, the moist air laden with sweet and tart scents kept me off balance.

  In late afternoon, I found the modest curio shop grandiosely named the British Museum. Dusty windows obscured its contents from view. Going through a door wobbly on its hinges, I met the proprietor who ushered me inside. Floor to ceiling cases full of eastern statuary and jewelry were jammed together in makeshift fashion.

  When Dr. Murghesan heard that I had been sent by a learned colleague, he behaved like a host rather than a proprietor. He insisted I call him by his nickname, Murga, and handed me a cup of tea from a pot brewing on a primitive burner that rested on a mammoth encyclopedia. Sweets dripping with honey were served on porcelain plates that looked as though they belonged to a maharajah.

  Small with ebony skin, Murga came from Trivandrum in the deep south of India. He wore his grey stringy hair shoulder-length. Tiny glasses with gold rims kept falling off his nose. His extraordinarily long, pinkish-colored fingers, never still, moved in hypnotic patterns. An ingenious system of small fans made Murga’s shop the coolest spot in Bombay. After Murga heard I worked as a librarian in a university, he made me promise to return every day for philosophical discussions. When I asked him about Alexandra David-Neel, he changed the subject.

  Next morning when I showed up, Murga lectured me on the pantheon of Hindu gods and goddesses. To illustrate his stories, the dignified proprietor danced on tiptoe to imitate the blue boy Krishna, or he lumbered from side to side simulating the clumsiness of the elephant god Ganesha. Wearing a white smock while dusting the cases, Murga spontaneously chanted in a heavenly voice, “Jaya Shivaya,” paying homage to the multi-faceted Shiva.

  Boldly, after much tea and high-toned chatter, I approached a bookcase that had caught my eye. Since I was accustomed to a sensible cataloguing system, the symbols blazoned on the spine of each book confused me, and this weird system made it impossible to find anything. Selling books seemed the farthest thing from Murga’s mind. Suddenly my glance fixed on a battered brown book. When Murga placed this volume in my lap, the second on India written by David-Neel, I clasped it tightly and the damaged binding fell off.

  “There are naughty things in this French book, inappropriate even for profane eyes,” admonished Murga. Grabbing the book away, he tied the binding together with a blue silk cord.

  “See, I own the first volume.” Dipping into my large shoulder bag, I showed him L’Inde Ou J’ai Vecu, which had never been translated into English. “I’ve been carrying this one with me. The second one is very rare. Where did you find it?”

  “Never you mind! This book gives Indians a nasty reputation. It makes foreigners think we have phalluses twenty feet long, that we carry on with sex continuously for weeks, and prefer disgusting positions for the act.”

  “Sell me the book, please, for my research,” I pleaded with Murga, who vehemently tilted his head from side to side the way Bombay denizens do to emphasize a point.

  “No, no! I cannot! Save your rupees for souvenirs.” Indicating a high-backed rattan chair, Murga sat me down and placed the book in my hands.

  “Read it here during business hours.” So that I would not spirit the book away, Murga planted himself at a desk piled high with antiquities—which he sorted through—directly across from me. If I made a sudden move, he eyed me suspiciously. For several days, because of my rusty French and the faded pages, I progressed slowly.

  At the end of the fifth day, I reached chapter six in which David-Neel discussed the subject respectable Indians spoke about in whispers: tantric sex. Had she personally participated in this arcane ritual whereby a devotee gained occult powers by employing physical sex to gain spiritual enlightenment? For fear he might exile me from his magic shop, I hesitated to question Murga about the subject.

  Next morning, as I was about to read the tantric sex chapter, a smiling male, about forty, bounded into the shop. It was impossible to ignore this huge presence whose complexion shone with a rosy vigor that lit up the dim shop. The stranger’s shoulders were so broad they almost got stuck in the narrow door. When they hugged, Murga’s head barely reached the o
ther man’s chest. The visitor wore a sleeveless saffron-colored robe that exposed long, slender arms that were graceful rather than muscular. A gold bangle encircled his left wrist. While I pretended to read, his lustrous eyes flirted with me.

  “Rhadu, darling boy, it has been ages since we went to the Ganesha festival together. Three years or five? My cobwebby brain forgets so many things. And you keep getting taller and younger. Someday perhaps you will move back home from Canada? How long will you be in Bombay, dear boy?” Murga, holding the stranger’s hands, gazed up at him hopefully.

  “Only two weeks this time, uncle. My real estate business demands that I be on hand. Mother sends her regards. So does auntie Mira.”

  I watched the relatives gab about family matters, pretending to read until both approached my chair. Abruptly, Murga wrested the David-Neel from my hand.

  “Reading, reading, all day long. What have you seen of Bombay, foolish woman? Did you come from New York to sit in a bookshop all day with a dried up fossil like Murga? Out, out with you!”

  “Rhadu, take her to see the caves at Elephanta Island. Show her the sights hereabouts that we natives treasure.” Murga winked at his nephew.

  “But I want to finish this chapter.” Too shy to mention tantric sex in front of the handsome stranger, I placed the volume on a front shelf so I’d be able to find it again. Murga hurriedly introduced us, then summoned the driver of a rickshaw stationed on the street corner. As we headed into the swirling dust toward the harbor, Murga waved goodbye.