The Philologist

Her father adored her. Just before Molly would come home for summer break she would frequently boast to her friends that no trip to Italy or studying abroad could compare with the spoiling she enjoyed when she returned home. 

This summer was different. A rising senior in college, Molly was in shock from the news she received only two weeks before heading home. Her father had suffered a massive heart attack and was in critical condition at the hospital. She was on her way home by train, but she was not truly on the train. Her mind wandered to destinations and times now forever lost, grasping and aching for comfort among her memories.

Molly loved her father. Not because he was a good man. Not because she enjoyed such luxurious doting when she was home. No, Molly loved her father because he loved her. He had seen to it that she received an excellent education at a prestigious American university with myriad connections in her field of study—philology. Ever since her mother had left when she was nine years old, Molly had looked to her father for guidance in every part of life.

Her father was old. He was erudite. Molly had been born when her father was in his forties and now he was sixty-five. All his life, he had accumulated a library of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Earnest Hemingway, Steinbeck, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, and the like. He was an avid reader. The only thing he loved more than his books was his daughter. 

—-

Molly came into the sterile hospital room well before she realized she was there. It was like losing focus and then suddenly realizing she had been walking or driving for the last 10 minutes without any awareness of the passage of time. She found she was sitting beside her father’s bed and he was looking expectantly at her. 

She could barely whisper. She felt pressure in her chest and sinuses stronger than anything she had felt before. She did not know where to put the fear of loss and regret. 

“Daddy, I love you.” She said to him with a voice she could only guess he heard. 

“I know.” He replied in a hoarse whisper akin to hers. 

They sat there in silence in the room. The only noise was the monitor on the wall giving a steady beat and the muffled commotion from outside their room. The doctor said that her father was lucky to be alive and that there was a grave risk he might suffer a repeat heart attack. The doctor had him under close watch. The medical devices were a strain on Molly’s senses—she could only imagine what it was doing to disrupt her father’s composure. 

Her father finally spoke. 

“Molly, I need to tell you something.” 

“I can’t right now, Daddy. Can it wait?”

“I’m afraid it can’t. You know what I found in the cellar in our home?”

The question seemed so strange and irrelevant. What did the cellar have to do with any of this? Still, Molly was sure that if she listened it would encourage her father and so she indulged him.

“No, what?”

“I was looking for a cabernet last night and…” 

He took a breath. 

“and the strangest thing happened. When I went to grab the bottle, I saw a glint from behind the cellar rack.” 

He took another breath. Molly could see that her father was working hard to find his words. She leaned in and held his hand tight. 

“The glint was something I had never noticed before… the cabernet I found was in the back by the corner and the rack was nearly empty, so all I had to do was give the shelf a pull and move it aside to get at what was behind it.”

Now his eyes began to brighten. 

“Well I did. And to my surprise, that glint was an old bronze hinge. Attached to it was a square cutout in the concrete foundation. I went and found a crowbar to pry the thing open.” 

“Molly, I found something. I think left it on the floor of the cellar. When I saw what it was, I felt a sharp pain and the next thing I knew I was here.”

The help must have found her father shortly after his heart attack. Molly’s heart began to race. She loved old things. Especially hidden old things, or lost and forgotten treasures that promised new hope or intriguing remembrances.

“I want you to…” his eyes closed and he grimaced. 

“Daddy?” She forgot the cellar. “Daddy, are you alright?”

“I’m fine, I just need to rest now. Go to the cellar and tell me what you think.” 

“I’m not leaving your side.” Molly responded. “Cellars can wait.”

“Not this one. I will be fine. Please do it for me.”

The hospital was close to home. Molly knew her father. She knew that he was serious. If whatever it was that was in that cellar had placed him in the condition he was in currently, it had to be of tremendous import. 

“I’ll go, but you have to promise me you won’t go anywhere while I am gone. It will only be 10 minutes.” 

“Go.”

—-

When Molly stooped down in the cellar to grasp the papers lying in a heap on the floor, she wondered what they could contain that would be so important. 

When she flipped to the second page of the pile, she had to strain to read what it said. Everything was handwritten in a delicate script. It was English. There were scratches where words had been replaced or removed by the original author of the document. She flipped to the back of the document and read the name written on the bottom of the page.

Molly gasped. “In our cellar?” she thought. “How did it get here?” 

Molly collected the papers, placed them gingerly in a chest on the bottom shelf of the rack closest to the cellar exit, locked the chest, and then hastily made her way back to the hospital. 

When she returned, Molly whispered to her father in a flavor of conspiracy rather than dread: “Daddy. I can’t believe it.” She realized she could feel the pressure in her chest subsiding as she saw her father again and could tell he was already looking better.

“What a find! It is incredible.” 

“I know. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read the name on the last page.” Life was returning to his face and his eyes glinted with life the way they had when Molly had seen him last. 

—-

When Molly returned to school the following fall, she had something else to boast about. Her father was in possession of the first draft of “To Kill a Mockingbird” with all of the initial edits, annotations, and ideas that Harper Lee had scribbled so long ago.