Reliquary

= 24 =

ROBERT WILLSON, librarian at the New York Historical Society, looked at the other occupant of the map room with irritation. Odd-looking guy: somber black suit, pale cat’s eyes, blond-white hair combed severely back from a high forehead. Annoying, too. Annoying as hell. He’d been there all afternoon, making demands and throwing the maps askew. Every time Willson turned back to his computer to resume work on his own pet project—the definitive monograph on Zuñi fetishes—the man would be up, asking more questions.

As if on cue, the man got out of his chair and glided over noiselessly. “Pardon?” he said in his polite but insistent mint-julep drawl.

Willson glanced up from the screen. “Yes?” he snapped.

“I hate to trouble you again, but it’s my understanding that the Vaux and Olmstead plans for Central Park called for canals to drain the Central Park swamps. I wonder if I could look at those plans?”

Willson compressed his lips. “Those plans were rejected by the Parks Commission,” he replied. “They’ve been lost. A tragedy.” He turned back to his screen, hoping the man would take the hint. The real tragedy would be if he didn’t get back to his monograph.

“I see,” the visitor said, not taking the hint at all. “Then tell me, how were the swamps drained?”

Willson sat back in his chair exasperatedly. “I should have thought it was common knowledge. The old Eighty-sixth Street aqueduct was used.”

“And there are plans for the operation?”

“Yes,” said Willson.

“May I see them?”

With a sigh, Willson got up and made his way through the heavy door back into the stacks. It was, of course, in its usual mess. The room managed to be both vast and claustrophobic, metal shelves reaching two stories into the gloom, tottering with rolled maps and moldering blueprints. Willson could almost feel the dust settling on his bald scalp as he scanned the arcane lists of numbers. His nose began to itch. He found the correct location, pulled the ancient maps and carried them back to the cramped reading room. Why do people always request the heaviest maps, he wondered to himself as he emerged from the stacks.

“Here they are,” Willson said, placing them on the mahogany counter. He watched as the man took them over to his desk and began looking them over, jotting notes and making sketches in a small leather-bound notebook. He’s got money, Willson thought sourly. No professor could afford a suit like that.

A heavenly quiet descended on the map room. At last, he could get some work done. Bringing some yellowed reference photographs out of his desk, Willson began making changes to his chapter on clan imagery.

Within minutes, he felt the visitor standing behind him again. Willson looked up again silently.

The man nodded at one of Willson’s photographs. It showed a nondescript stone carved in an abstract representation of an animal, a small piece of sinew holding a flint point to its back. “I think you’ll find that particular fetish, which I see you’ve labeled as a puma, is in fact a grizzly bear,” the man said.

Willson looked at the pale face and the faint smile, wondering if this was some kind of a joke. “Cushing, who collected this fetish in 1883, specifically identified it as puma clan,” he replied. “You can check the reference yourself.” Everybody was an expert these days.

“The grizzly fetish,” the man continued undeterred, “always has a spearpoint strapped to its back, as this one does. The puma fetish has an arrowhead.”

Willson straightened up. “Just what is the difference, may I ask?”

“You kill a puma with a bow and arrow. To kill a grizzly, you must use a spear.”

Willson was silent.

“Cushing was wrong on occasion,” the man added gently.

Willson shuffled his manuscript together and laid it aside. “Frankly, I would prefer to trust Cushing over someone…” He left the sentence unfinished. “The library will be closing in one hour,” he added.

“In that case,” the man said, “I wonder if I could see the plates from the 1956 Upper West Side Natural Gas Pipeline Survey.”

Willson compressed his lips. “Which ones?”

“All of them, if you please.”

This was too much. “I’m sorry,” Willson said crisply. “It’s against the rules. Patrons are allowed only ten maps at a time from the same series.” He glared at the visitor triumphantly.

But the man seemed oblivious, lost in thought. Suddenly, he looked back at the librarian.

“Robert Willson,” he said, pointing at the nameplate. “Now I remember why your name is familiar.”

“You do?” Willson asked uncertainly.

“Indeed. Aren’t you the one who gave the excellent paper on mirage stones at the Navajo Studies Conference in Window Rock last year?”

“Why, yes, I did,” Willson said.

“I thought so. I wasn’t able to be there myself, but I read the proceedings. I’ve made something of a private study of southwestern religious imagery.” The visitor paused. “Nothing as serious as yours, of course.”

Willson cleared his throat. “I suppose one cannot spend thirty years in such study,” he said as modestly as possible, “without one’s name becoming known.”

The visitor smiled. “It’s an honor to make your acquaintance. My name is Pendergast.”

Willson extended his hand and encountered an unpleasantly limp handshake. He prided himself on the firmness of his own.

“It’s gratifying to see you continuing your studies,” the man named Pendergast said. “Ignorance of southwestern culture is so profound.”

“It is,” Willson agreed wholeheartedly. He felt a peculiar sense of pride. Nobody had taken the least interest in his work before, let alone been able to talk about it intelligibly. Of course, this Pendergast was obviously misinformed about Indian fetishes, but…

“I’d love to discuss this further,” Pendergast said, “but I fear I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

“Not at all,” Willson replied. “What was that you’d asked to see? The ’56 Survey?”

Pendergast nodded. “There was one other item, if I may. I understand there was a survey of existing tunnels done in the 1920s for the proposed Interborough Rapid Transit system. Is that correct?”

Willson’s face fell. “But there are sixty maps in that series…” His voice trailed off.

“I see,” Pendergast said. “It’s against the rules, then.” He looked crestfallen.

Suddenly, Willson smiled. “I won’t tell if you won’t,” he said, pleased at his own recklessness. “And don’t worry about closing time. I’ll be here late, working on my monograph. Rules were made to be broken, right?”

Ten minutes later, he emerged from the gloom of the storage room, pushing an overloaded cart across the worn floorboards.