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Your parents are weirdos, in the best possible way. They do not celebrate birthdays; never in your life have you received a present on the tenth of December. Instead, you are given books on the days that their authors were born.
Instead, they are camouflaged among the English department’s offerings: prime-numbered, with titles so stultifying—such as English 103, Sentence Diagrams—that no sane student would ever enroll without a very good reason.
He is, he explains, the head of the Occult Literature department. The other students all nod eagerly, but you are confused. You signed up because you legitimately enjoy diagramming sentences.
That spring, in the first session of English 211, The History of the Index—actually Occult Lit 211, Dangerous Books—Armitage explains that Galvanic’s library contains more one-of-a-kind, untranslatable, and/or inexplicable volumes than any other collection on earth.
There are books made from silver and bone. There are books with blood on their pages, figuratively and literally. There are books made of feathers; books cloaked in jade; books that ring like bells when you pull them off the shelf; books that glow in the dark.
You are paid to read the classics, and also books that would be classics if any library other than Galvanic’s possessed them.
Corvina interjects: “He’s looking for a very particular book, Mo.” “As are we all, Mr. Corvina, as are we all. Most don’t realize it yet. So on that count, our friend Ajax Penumbra is ahead.”
Traveling up and down the peninsula, Penumbra has come to the conclusion that San Francisco is not actually part of California. The city is pale and windswept; Palo Alto is green and still, with the scent of eucalyptus strong in the air. The sky here is pearlescent blue, not platinum gray.
“The measure of a bookstore is not its receipts, but its friends,” he says, “and here, we are rich indeed.”
The woman with the portable radio inquires about Corvina, then reveals that the bushy-bearded duo orbiting the CINEMA table, George and Francis, are local filmmakers.
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” “New? Ah, no. In point of fact, I am not truly here.”
“Well, you know our saying: ‘It’s not over until you hold the book’s ashes in your hands, weeping at the years you’ve lost.’”
“You share my gift, Marcus,” Penumbra says dryly. “What gift?” “Mr. Al-Asmari called it that. ‘The willingness to entertain absurd ideas.’ ”
