The Librarian

Dr. Lavinia Rivers found herself thinking about another Pilar, not the one who was her friend. This time it was the Pilar who was head librarian at the Biblioteca Xeral, the main library of the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. This Pilar held quite a prestigious position, because the university library has an excellent reputation, some of its holdings are extremely old and valuable, and there is still considerable respect for higher education in the city, as in a good part of Europe.

Today Lavinia was hoping to go back to speak with Pilar, if the librarian could spend time for coffee, given her busy days with conferences and staff supervision. However, her text received a very rapid response, which both surprised and pleased the researcher. She was well aware that she might not be on anybody’s A list, given that she was from another country. Was there a reason Pilar seemed so willing to meet, on short notice? Could she possibly have a motive? 

The thought made the back of Lavinia’s neck crawl, or maybe tingle. She had a second sense about things like that. It was what had made her a researcher, which she thought was like being a data detective, a solver of mysteries most people couldn’t be bothered with. A detective who was now regretting her invitation to coffee, just a tiny bit. She had to remember that this part of Iberia was like one huge family, because it had a Celtic or other ancient clan structure. People knew things. People didn’t tell.

There was no real cause for the anxiousness. Lavinia was working on a topic that pointed rather close to the heart of one aspect of Galician identity: their love for their culture. She had returned to the city, and to the Galician Provinces in general, focused on the American photographer, Ruth Matilda Anderson. Anderson had been sent to Galicia by the Hispanic Society of America five times. Among her books was Gallegan Provinces of Spain: Pontevedra and La Coruña. New York, The Hispanic Society of America (1939)

Anderson’s task each time had been to create visual images of the people, their environment, and their customs. She had portrayed the people simply and honestly, at least as well as anyone from another country could. The people who had been photographed were long gone, but cultural memory is extremely well and alive in this part of the world. Galicians saw the value in the American woman’s photography.

That was the most logical explanation for the quick yes from Pilar, Lavinia told herself.

It was her curiosity at discovering that the traveler in the 1920s and 1930s, virtually unknown in the U.S., had become quite respected among the Galicians, even decades after her visits. Lavinia, herself a professor of Gender Studies and Library Science, knew of no feminist study of Anderson. It was shocking. Still, the photographer had caught her attention only when the Art Department of her university was organizing an exhibit of female photographers up to World War II. She’d noticed Anderson because she, like Lavinia, had been to Galicia.

Lavinia also thought that by isolating herself from her usual types of contacts, people in her disciplines, she felt a little disconnected in Compostela. Yes, she had a small group of friends, one of who had become more interesting recently, and she had become quite close to Pilar (the other one, not the librarian, who was just an acquaintance). She longed for certain types of conversations, maybe like architects enjoy discussing designing houses and doctors talk about medical themes. 

We all need communities of different types. We wear many hats. 

Lavinia thought but did not say these words, although she grinned at her intended pun. Few people, if any, knew of how she liked to cross-dress. She called it undercover work, because dressing as a male allowed her to be in different crowds, hear and see different things, than if she were there as a woman. It was almost like being invisible (she was invisible as a woman, but people could see her, see a man in her place, so in that sense she wasn’t invisible…) Some of Lavinia’s dress-changes included hats.

One of the reasons for meeting with librarian Pilar was to ask her if there were any library holdings associated with Ruth Matilda Anderson. Yes, libraries have much more sophisticated technology than just holding hands with the head librarian, but in this case Lavinia also knew that in a medieval city (whose past was still as alive as its present), the person in charge of the repository of knowledge has more extensive information than ever makes it to a digital database. This had already become clear when Lavinia had spoken with the librarian at the Museo do Pobo Galego, the museum she frequently worked in when she managed to avoid other distractions.

Another reason, no less important but one she felt could not tell Pilar, was that it had seemed a bit too much of a ‘happenstance’ that Pilar would be standing in the doorway of the library just as Lavinia walked by on her way back from the Rúa do Pombal. That was no longer the main door to the library and there is nothing on either side of it except the blank walls of the building. Had Pilar been waiting for something? For somebody?

No, it didn’t seem that the timing had been an accident. Even though some odd notion kept Lavinia from asking about the reason why they had both been in that place at the same, perhaps it would help to return to that spot. She could have missed something. It was there, in that chance encounter, that things seemed to take on an air of connectedness. 

Could it possibly be Lavinia’s ‘non-sabbatical’ work - poking around as she tried to figure out the purpose of the items unearthed in the bar A Tertulia on Pombal Street? The poking around was leading to odd dreams about a tunnel going from her bedsit toward the Museo. A nightmare, for someone like her, who had claustrophobia and the occasional anxiety attack…

She also hadn’t stopped wondering about why she’d even been approached in the first place to look at the discovery in the bar. Chef Xan, the one who ran her favorite restaurant, had told her about his friend’s surprise at seeing the things written in English. Xan had known Lavinia would offer to help. 

Galicians are nothing if not wise.

When would these things, their story, connections, secrets, fall into place? The researcher was getting anxious, for various reasons. She was, after all, from another world. It didn’t matter how quickly she was starting to feel at home, even dreading having to leave. She still hadn’t learned enough about the vibrant, rippling, sticky web that was Galician-ness. You often learned things, not by research or reading, or even listening. You learned from the silences, the untold bits and pieces. Those could spin and tip out of place, but did settle into something rational. In Galicia, you also needed to know the language (not Spanish), but then you needed to know when not to speak.

Listening to nothing is harder than hell. It hurts the brain. The anxious feeling definitely was linked to that. But there was also the way Lavinia’s unofficial running after the origin of things that could have been easily lost or concealed before the start of the civil war in 1936 was threatening to suffocate her official, approved by her Chairperson, (and funded) research. 

This lack of focus could spell huge problems as far as her job and any promotion.

Lavinia had more to be concerned about, and rightfully so: there had been those two mishaps: first, the person running past who had sliced her arm seriously; and second, the driver who had knocked her to the pavement pretty hard. Both incidents seemed first like acts of a distracted person. They were unsettling, but Lavinia surmised they were meant to frighten, not seriously injure, her. At least she hoped that had been the case for both injuries.

What would happen, though, as she continued to walk the streets of Santiago de Compostela with her bag containing a laptop and portions of the artifacts from A Tertulia or photocopies of them? Would what she was carrying or believed to be carrying frighten someone enough to attempt to harm her more seriously? Did she have something somebody wanted? Or didn’t want her to have?

Lavinia didn’t have anything like that. That was for sure. For some reason, it seemed the head librarian might have a perspective to share on local ‘currents’. 

She might, but Lavinia also couldn’t help recalling the old monk in the library at the end of Umberto Eco’s tremendous novel, The Name of the Rose. Not a comforting thought, if you know how that story ends.

Meanwhile, Pilar the Librarian had told her assistant she would be out for at least an hour, maybe more. The assistant nodded and Pilar walked to the tiniest, darkest café in the city: O Grau. It was up one of the Algalias. Soon Lavinia arrived as well, and although they barely knew one another, they shared the traditional kiss on both cheeks, first the left, then the right. They both ordered a large coffee, a doble, as if they knew the conversation would last more than fifteen minutes. The server brought a few dry cookies that neither woman noticed.

‘So... does the Biblioteca Xeral have any holdings of any sort that reference Ruth Matilda Anderson’? Lavinia was nothing if not direct.

‘Not much. A few short speeches by authorities she met and photographed. A couple of newspaper interviews’. Pilar’s response was too brief, as if she were holding something back. Lavinia couldn’t figure out why she felt that.

‘Nothing more?’ Her question was blurted out, not completely professional.

Immediately Lavinia felt uncomfortable. It was like she had pressured Pilar, as if she’d suggested the librarian might be avoiding telling her something very relevant.

‘Why don’t you ask me what you really want to know?’ Pilar hadn’t been fooled for a minute. She was another wise one, it seemed.

‘I didn’t do anything to give myself away, did I? Plus, I really do want to know if there was any connection between Anderson and the University. I need to consider all possible sources of information. I just get the feeling...’

‘That I was there in the doorway waiting for you?’

Lavinia looked down, not sure why she was having trouble looking straight at Pilar:

‘Yes. It almost seemed like you were looking down the street and saw me, then looked relieved. Yet you and I had never met.’

‘Perhaps not. But to answer that question before you ask it, yes, I was looking for you. Now you will need to listen to the story of a family secret... however, please listen to the whole story before you judge…’

Pilar’s Story

A very, very long time ago, a small chamber had been created. I cannot give you an exact date, nor can anybody else. From the small area at the beginning, it was later expanded into a sort of catacomb. After a while, the items brought to this place began to diminish in number. When you know the contents, you will see it was a good thing. There was always a woman who served as guardian to the chamber and, later, to the catacomb. More than one woman shared the responsibility, but there was always at least one there at all time. The women who served as guardians were revered. They were like a family of watchers. They kept the secret, like good Galicians and good women.

Nobody knew of the space, except those tasked with honoring and protecting it. This was similar to the decision of the ones who had brought the bones to Compostela for safekeeping, you might think, and in a way you would be right. Just as the Apostle Santiago is said to have arrived in the nearby town of Padrón and his remains remained undiscovered for centuries, so too the remains of fetuses and newborns, or even older children, been put aside, misplaced. Often their mothers went the same route, because they had been nuns. 

How do we know all of this? Do not worry. Both you and I have enough knowledge of how libraries work to know people had various methods of documenting their world, what they thought and did. The place I am talking about is not a typical library, however. It is also - ironically, you will say - a living place. We cannot go many steps forward if we have no past.

We do have proof that often the nuns in convents had constructed or at least allowed the construction of, tunnels. These were built between buildings on church property, meaning that they made a sort of honeycomb or ant colony (odd image, thought Lavinia ) all over, beneath this city. The tunnels were important for so many reasons. They were multifunctional for sure. One of those functions was for ‘trysts’ between members of the Church, sometimes male and female, other times both of the same sex. 

The transfer of bones, even just parts of skeletons, was an attempt to honor the unnamed and the unrecognized. The safety of some tunnels was discussed, and the original chamber was one of them.

Lavinia was listening, but not at all comprehending where this was going, what it had to do with her. The stories of births within or beneath convent walls were told in other parts of the world, even in a novel or two, or in letters. She wondered more who “they” were, who had begun the transfer of the remains, but intuitively knew this wasn’t the moment to ask.

Pilar continued:

When I was little, I had to go with my mother to stand watch, but I didn’t know what the place was, what it signified, its size, its contents. All I saw was a door. My mother always sat on a high, flat stone near an old chestnut tree, and one day she told me what lay behind the weathered door that was all I saw. The door wasn’t noticeable at all because it was set in a stone wall that blended completely into its surroundings, aided by the thickest of moss carpets. I dropped the large ourizos or spiked chestnut hulls immediately, and moved closer, needing to hear it all.

My mother told me the story of the beginning of the chamber and how her - my - family had always worked to preserve the site. They only knew they needed to keep it unobtrusive, secret. My mother had a key hanging from her neck, and used it then. She took me inside and showed me a small part of the ‘sanctuary for memory’ that the old door concealed. That isn’t the best name for it, but as a little girl, that’s what I saw and so I gave it that name. 

I saw, too, that there was writing on some of the bones as well as on some of the wrappings that were wound around about half the items. Rarely, there was a name, although not a whole name, just Ana or Rosa or Margarida. It was hard to make a lot out. Everything was so old and the light was dim. We only had candles.

Finally, there was a volume, a type of register, very ancient, very thick, dusty. It sat on the far edge of a rustic table. In it, although I was too small and clumsy to hold it myself to read, were as much of women’s lives as would fit in its pages. The information included descriptions menial tasks, but there were also accounts of losses and triumphs, poetry, essays. All things nobody expected women to write down, mostly because supposedly women were illiterate and too busy or weary to document anything, let alone write poems and essays. The information was invaluable, but had to be kept clandestine. Everybody knew for how long the Church had placed women in an inferior position.

I remember reaching out a hand, wanting to touch the book, but my mother explained that there would be time to learn everything. She did eventually pass on all she knew to me. There is so much more than I’ve just told you, Lavinia? Do you believe me?

Lavinia thought this all sounded like a novel. Nobody stores that much for that long without it being discovered. And why would it be kept hidden if it was so important? Could she tell the librarian that she didn’t believe her? If she did that, she knew she’d never know why Pilar had been looking for her.

Pilar was not finished:

Eventually, as had been planned, I inherited the position of keeping watch over this treasure, and when I became a librarian, I felt that the wealth that had been so well preserved underground had to be made public. That would be risky, in many ways. That is when some of us began to look at ways to resolve the problem. There was more than one faction, more than one proposal. We were mired in disagreement.

Then it was decided to bring in some more people, more women (and me) who could be trusted to evaluate the materials and reveal their existence here in Compostela. In a word, we needed a team that would bring the necessary knowledge and be honest in their work with the materials we have gathered over the centuries. We need to decide if we can place everything in a safe location and if my idea that the public should know about our holdings. I know it is risky.

You are the first person we have chosen to join us, Dr. Rivers. Lavinia.