THE 20 CENTURY BARD @ THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Shakespeare's coach and tutor, a fellow named John
Lylie, told the young actor and promising writer that in
order to make a friend be prepared to share a bushel of
salt, not knowing three hundred and seventy years later it
would be a machine instead of salt.
******
Whether that advice would be given to any young man today in the Reference
Library, third floor of the New York Public Library,
depends on whether the young man has a friend like Lylie
and whether he is another Shakespeare.
But, according to our agent who operated the elevator at the library, there
neither has been another Lylie nor a Shakespeare to come
to the third floor since he's been operating the elevator.
"And that goes back to the time when I failed to get my
jet engine mechanic card, figuring like I did that
conventional engines would still be around for a long
time.
How was I to know progress was knocking at the door
faster than I thought I could run this elevator up to the
top floor and through the roof. I had just come out of
the Air Force in Texas and I didn't know nothing about the
life.
"Third floor reference library. All out."
******
A young lady, twenty-four years old with an
all-knowing eye of four years in college and two years
working in the garment district, originally hailing from
Reading, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a dentist and a
school teacher and now living in the East Fifty-Second
Street area of Second Avenue, stepped off the elevator.
"Thank you," she said, walking long leggedly, her full
five feet and ten inches behind her aggressive stride.
She turned to the right and pounded into the reference
room, her breath but only a little wane.
"Micro film 17654321," she murmured, her right hand slyly coming up to
her sensuous lower lip as though she was bent on a mission
as nefarious as the pumpkin papers of the forties when men
were no longer men but agents of Foreign Powers and the
former Vice President of the United States was only a
conscientious Congressman from Whittier, California.
*******
She stood at the counter, the right forefinger of her
hand tapping the scarred wood of the desk as though the
resonance in her fingers sought out a solitary heart beat
in rhythm with her own.
"Here you are, the 1948 December 13th edition. Have
fun," said the librarian, her wispy, graying hair wind
swept and snow flavored, falling over her pince nez
glasses until she took thetime to gracefully take her
left hand to throw back the strands of darkness for some
of the library's incandescent Edison lighting.
And the young damsel with the graceful walk, sped into the
reference room of the library. The heavy-set guard
growled, "No books, lady. I'm sorry," but the tall girl,
her mind bent on the passion of the moment - scrutiny of
the innards within the small boxes under her arm smiled.
And the guard wilted under the glowing rapture of this
most secretive smile. His head, topped by wavy black
hair, slowly turned. He drew in his lower lip, and with
his right hand he opened up his gray uniform jacket
showing his girth at mid season of his age and you knew he
was studiously studying the form of this tall, almost flip
gook of a girl.
"Okay, I didn't know. I thought you were holding
books."
She ran while she walked, her long strides bounding
the wooden floorboards of the 42nd Street Library. Her
eyes flashed a warmth, only a girl in the garment center
of New York could have. Of knowing New York's garment
center bounded on the west by Seventh Avenue and the east
by Broadway, between 28th and 41st, was he own.
She seemed so casual in her belonging and yet so
aggressive, as though she knew audetes fortuna juvat.
******
And at the same time, he came......
Wearing his J.S. Bach sweat shirt, he swept through the revolving door of the Fifth Avenue entrance,
beamed a smile of staggering
proportions upon the library watchdog who made sure the
eleven and half million populace of the city did not
fleece any masterpieces from the stacks of the reference
room.
*****
He strode into the elevator like a Spanish
conquistador of the past, only momentarily himself
returning to the 1960's of the Twentieth Century so he
could find proof of his earlier incarnation.
Again he beamed the big smile toward the elevator operator and the
elevator man's eyes of deadness stared out at the sweat
shirt.
"Man, I thought I saw everything. When did they
get Mozart on sweat shirts?"
"It isn't Mozart. It's Bach. J.S. Bach," said the
young old man completely oblivious of the library's rule
not to talk to the operator while the car is in progress.
He was wearing a J.S. Bach and the hell with rules and
axioms. Here was a greater violation. Of a false
identity and if this wasn't the overriding issue of our
day. The question of identity and who you are. Then
human life was only part and parcel of the animal kingdom
and humans were but two-legged animals in growing up but
became three-legged when they reached old age and had a
cane.
A sorrowful state if you reached the age of the
cane and you still didn't know who you were.
No matter if you had a couple of million or even a couple of thousand
it would make no difference. Your question mark was your
doom.
*****
But the elevator operator and the occupant of J.S.
Bach's sweatshirt didn't think of such a vital question
while riding the air and the rope up to the third floor.
"Third floor, reference library. All out."
*****
J.S. Bach ran down the hall which only a few moments
earlier had seen the heels of our garment district sketch
artist and which since had seen the footprints of hundreds
of other humans bent on the search for knowledge. The man
in the sweatshirt knew what he wanted as he strode down
the hall to the reference room.
*****
"John Lylie''s tutoring of William
Shakespeare?" he asked the librarian, her wispy graying hair wind-swept and snow flavored falling over
her pince nez.
"Young man, you must look in the card catalog under
the author's name... By the way, is that Handel?"
His blue eyes flared dangerously, and thinking he was
still a heroic figure from the past of another time and
another day, he lunged forward and with the cold steel of
his blue eyes he tapped the most vital organs of the
enemy.
*****
"Young man, I believe the card catalogs are behind
you. We can't spend more than a minute a man. And even
less when the customer is occupying a dirty sweatshirt."
"But it isn't like it's any old sweatshirt. This is
the sweatshirt of one of God's chosen ones. This is...."
"Nonsense with all that stuff. You bringing such
garbage into the library. Why, I would call the guard
right now if he wasn't so busy inspecting the bag
