Chapter 3
Prudencia Prim folded her jade-green kimono neatly and laid it in her suitcase.
The reality was, she thought sadly as she slipped a pair of shoes into a cotton shoe bag, her work no longer detained her.
Her employer’s library was now perfectly catalogued and organized.
The history books stood on the history shelves, the tomes on philosophy were lined up where they should be, and all the volumes of prose and poetry were in their proper sections; science and mathematics were now in their rightful places to the millimeter; and the section on theology—the great passion in that house, the absolute ruler of the library—shone imposingly, neat, and perfect.
Glimpsing her red-rimmed eyes in the mirror from time to time, she recalled her first conversation, months earlier, with the Man in the Wing Chair.
Do you know what this is, Miss Prim?
No, sir.
De Trinitate.
St. Augustine?
Smiling wistfully, Miss Prim kept on with her packing.
She wasn’t going to go away immediately.
She intended to leave enough clothes in the wardrobe for a few days, just enough time to say her good-byes and calmly decide what to do next.
She couldn’t stay. Not now that she knew what she felt; not now that she also knew her feelings would never, could never, be reciprocated.
But where would she go? And, above all, how would she explain her departure?
Slowly she went to her bedroom window, pulled back the curtains, and looked out.
It was a cold morning and the snow shone like polished marble in the sunlight.
She’d woken late. After all, after the previous night’s conversation there wasn’t much left to do other than face her employer and tell him she was leaving.
Despite the overwhelming sadness and disappointment, she also felt relief.
The last few days had been too turbulent for a woman like her, accustomed to order, balance, and neatness.
She’d brooded too much, worried too much, gone over the words again and again, assessed the gestures, registered smiles, analyzed glances.
Romance, she reflected wisely, could be an unbelievably heavy burden for the female psyche.
What she needed now was somewhere pleasant and remote where she could rest, a refuge where she could write, an Eden where she could surround herself with beauty and admire emerald-green lawns and wisteria in flower.
Of course, she was also in pain: she didn’t want to—couldn’t—deny it.
It had been a long time since she had experienced such anguish, had such difficulty organizing her thoughts, felt so acutely the impossibility of scanning the horizon and seeing any glint of light in the darkness ahead.
But it would all pass. Miss Prim was sure of it.
She knew herself well enough to estimate how long the sadness would last. By the spring, or the beginning of summer at most, the sun would come out again.
Tentatively, the librarian opened the door to the study. “Could I have a quick word?”
Bent over a document, the Man in the Wing Chair indicated that she should enter and sit down. She obeyed. For a few minutes, just long enough to rehearse in her mind how she would inform him of her departure, the only sound in the room was the crackling of the fire in the hearth.
“Look at this, Prudencia,” he said, holding out what appeared to be a facsimile of two small papyrus fragments.
With a sigh Miss Prim peered at the Man in the Wing Chair’s face. There was no sign of tension or anxiety, no hint that their conversation in the early hours had affected him in any way.
“Are you all right?” he asked, noticing how pale his employee was. “You look tired.”
The librarian assured him that she was fine and that her pallor was due to lack of sleep.
“We did talk till quite late last night, that’s true. Look at this,” he said, indicating the manuscript. “What do you think? Have you ever seen anything like it?”
Miss Prim examined it closely.
“What is it?”
“A facsimile of P52, commonly known as the Rylands Papyrus.”
“Let me guess . . . A little piece of the Book of Wisdom? Or the Book of Daniel?”
“No luck, it’s neither. They’re verses from the Gospel of John. Look closely, they’re written in koine Greek. See these lines?”
ΡΗΣΩ ΤΗ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ ΠΑΣΟ ΩΝ ΕΚ ΤΗΣ ΑΛΗΘΕΙ
ΑΣ ΑΚΟΥΕΙ ΜΟΥ ΤΗΣ ΦΩΝΗΣ ΛΕΓΕΙ ΑΥΤΩ Ο
ΠΙΛΑΤΟΣ ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ ΚΑΙ ΤΟΥΤΟI
“I’m sure even a distinguished Jacobin like yourself has heard this before. Would you like me to translate it for you?”
Not deigning to reply, she continued to study the two tiny yellowed fragments.
“Is it very ancient?”
“The oldest found so far. It’s been dated to around AD 120.
It was found in the desert in Egypt by Bernard Grenfell, a British Egyptologist. The consensus is that it’s from around thirty years later than the original written by John in Ephesus.
Does that seem a bit much? Come over here, I’ll show you something. ”
He opened an enormous filing cabinet at the other end of his study, and began taking out what Miss Prim could see were facsimiles of papyri, parchments, and codices.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked, pointing to one of them.
She shook her head.
“It’s one of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Have you ever heard of them?”
Miss Prim again shook her head.
“We owe them to Grenfell too. He and Arthur Hunt, another British archaeologist, found them at the end of the nineteenth century in a rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. They excavated many fragments from great works of antiquity. I think you’ll be delighted with the one you’re holding now. It’s an extract from Plato’s Republic.”
“Really?” she said, impressed.
“Really. Do you know how many years separate Plato from the first fragments we have of his works?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’ll tell you: approximately one thousand two hundred. The texts we have of Plato’s thought and, through them, of Socrates’s—the works we’ve all read and studied—are copies made over ten centuries after the originals were written.”
He extracted a thick manuscript from the filing cabinet.
“And this? Any idea what it might be?”
The librarian, who now seemed to have forgotten the reason for her visit, scrutinized the manuscript.
“Let’s see,” she said with a smile. “I can decipher this. It’s Latin, at least. Tacitus?”
The Man in the Wing Chair shook his head.
“Julius Caesar. De Bello Civili—The Civil War. This is the Laurentianus Ashburnhamensis, the oldest remaining manuscript of this work. Do you know when it dates from? No, of course you don’t.
It’s from the tenth century, a little over a thousand years after Julius Caesar wrote the original.
The oldest copy we have of the Commentaries on the Gallic War is from around nine hundred and fifty years after it was originally written. ”
“This is all so interesting!” she murmured.
Her employer took up the copy of the Rylands Papyrus again.
“Interesting doesn’t come close, Prudencia.
It’s absolutely fascinating. Now do you understand what the Rylands Papyrus is?
Do you know how many copies just in koine Greek we have of the Four Evangelists’ writings?
Around five thousand six hundred. Do you know how many we have of the Commentaries on the Gallic War, for instance?
Ten copies. Only ten. And now, look closely,” he said, glancing over another facsimile. “How do you get on with Homer?”
Miss Prim assured him that if she were ever condemned to life in prison she’d want to take Homer with her.
While the Man in the Wing Chair continued talking animatedly of papyri, parchments, and copies, she remembered with sadness why she was there.
She would miss him, that was obvious; and not just him, but everything to do with him—the chats, the reading, the debates, the children, the books, and San Ireneo itself.
“Now that you’ve finished work on the library,” her employer was saying at that moment, “maybe you could help me catalogue all of this. I’m giving a lecture in London next month on the Bodmer Papyri.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” replied Miss Prim, heroically resisting the urge to ask what a Bodmer Papyrus was.
He looked at her, dumbfounded.
“Why not?”
She crossed her legs with a deliberate movement and took a deep breath before answering.
“Because I think my work here is finished. I came to tell you, I’ve decided to leave. I’ve completed the job, so I can’t see any reason to stay.”
Without a word, the Man in the Wing Chair gathered up the documents and returned them to the filing cabinet. Then he went over to the fireplace, freed an armchair from its heap of books, and gestured for his employee to sit.
“Has something happened that I should know about, Prudencia?” he asked.
“Not at all.”
“Has somebody in this house offended or upset you?”
“I’ve always been treated wonderfully well here.”
“Maybe it’s me. Have I said something that’s bothered you? An instance of the insensitivity you continually accuse me of?”
Miss Prim bowed her head so as to hide her face.
“It has nothing to do with you,” she whispered.
“Look at me, please,” he said.
The librarian raised her head, and at that moment it occurred to her that she would have to come up with an excuse or explanation immediately if she didn’t want him to find out or at least guess why she was leaving.
“I have to go to Italy,” she said suddenly.
“To Italy? Why?”
Quivering with nerves, Miss Prim played with her amethyst ring.
“It’s to do with my qualifications. No woman’s education is complete without living in Italy for a time.”
“Surely you don’t need any more qualifications? What would be the purpose?” he asked in consternation. “Are you trying to beat some record?”
Seeing his expression of bewilderment, she smiled faintly.