The Librarian Spy

by Madeline Martin

Their eyes were bigger than their brains. It was what her brother, Daniel, had once proclaimed after Ava groused about the common phenomena—one she herself had been guilty of—when he was home on leave. Ever since, the phrase ran through her thoughts on each encounter of an abandoned collection. Not that it was the fault of the patron. The philosophical greats of old wouldn’t be able to glean that much information in an afternoon. But she liked the expression regardless and how it always made her picture Daniel’s laughing gaze as he said it.

She even wore red lipstick on a regular basis, springing for the costly tube of Elizabeth Arden’s Victory Red, the civilian counterpart to the Montezuma Red servicewomen were issued. Ruby lips were a derisive biting of the thumb at Hitler’s war on made-up women. And she would do anything to bite her thumb at that tyrant.

There were many ways in which one could read. Either tucked into the corner of the sofa with a strong cup of coffee or lying in bed with the book hovering above one’s face—though admittedly this is not done without peril. But there were also unconventional methods, like while cooking dinner or crossing the street—sometimes even while brushing one’s teeth if the story was truly that engrossing. Apparently, sequestered in the window seat aboard a metal tube barreling far too fast tens of thousands of feet above the earth was yet another way. Thank the stars for Daphne du Maurier and her gripping tale that helped Ava forget about being on an airplane. At least for the most part. When the plane was gliding through the sky like a bird in flight on a clear day, it was easy to lose herself in the book spread between her fingers.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt. The quote from Abraham Lincoln

Aristotle once said that patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

following Jo March’s lead with the example in Little Women of finding solace in the written word.

“There is an art to these,” he explained after handing her a small stack to tuck into her handbag at a soiree at the Estoril bar one night. “It is resistance among oppression, words rivaling heavy artillery, seemingly insignificant and yet still efficacious. This is strength in its rawest form. It is beautiful.” Lamant was a rare soul who saw some element of magnificence in most things. She smiled at his assessment. “That’s poetic.” “You must look beyond the page.” He lifted his drink but paused before taking a sip. A sliver of lemon bobbed in the clear liquid. “To the men and women who worked so seamlessly together. Not only the author who wrote it, but the typographer who meticulously assembled it, to the person manning the complexities of the printing machines, to the courier who delivered it and the citizen who smuggled it from French soil to end up here in Portugal.” This was one of the things she enjoyed about the rare moments she spent with Lamant. Never had she considered more than the authors or the piece itself. But he was correct in his appraisal, at the string of involvement to bring these clandestine papers to her hand. “Even you.” Lamant gestured to her with his glass, his cheeks slightly reddened from spending too much time by the ocean. “Those papers would die here in Lisbon. They would become rubbish over time, tossed out with the rest of the trash. History discarded. But you are sending them on to America. You are preserving these moments in time so all w...

Drawing in a deep breath, she refocused her efforts and tried again. “I mean that this present we live in is tomorrow’s history. You ask if this is important. This is the education for our future, to learn from the mistakes that have been made now and never let atrocities such as this continue or be repeated.” The room fell silent.