Wordbrain

Please note: 

For more information on who Lavinia Rivers and Ruth Matilda Anderson are and their relationship to each other, please see previous stories with these characters. They are going to merge into a larger piece.

***

“I know nothing in the world that has much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it until it begins to shine.”

~ Emily Dickinson

Ruth Matilda Anderson had revealed to Lavinia that she, Ruth, was not responsible for the photographs that has made her so famous. She had given all the credit to the Galician land and its people for what had, in effect, been a seduction. Ruth had just insisted she allowed herself to go where she was sent and to photograph what she had been told to photograph. It was like she had begun to feel bound, tied to this part of the world, despite not having been quite prepared for it. Prepared, that is, for a situation that would start to develop somewhere inside of her.

Ruth obviously had a lot more of what back then people called ‘spunk’. She followed instructions, but she also had a brain of her own and expertise in her field. That type of person is never going to be an empty receptacle, of course. Don’t be fooled by photos you might find of her, a roundish farm girl face outlined by a cloche hat to typical of the 1920s, sensible shoes, ample coats. Do NOT even attempt to whisper ‘old maid!’ if you expect this conversation to continue.

What an intriguing woman. All those transatlantic voyages. A lot of time and effort. A lot of time being chaperoned by her father even though she was an adult. She must have loved photography… Lavinia thought to herself.

However, Lavinia was now faced with a real dilemma. She had come to Galicia with a research plan that was supposed to be centered on the way the people here saw the woman photographer who came repeatedly in the 1920s and 1930s, how they remembered and respected her. Now Ruth had pulled the plug on that project. She was insisting that she had simply been the conduit for the photos and that her little-read book was vital; it was the key to understanding what went into the recording of the images. 

The proverbial monkey wrench lay in the fact that virtually no Galician had read the long book in English. It didn’t help that the book had been published in 1939, when the civil war was ending. People were looking to survive at that point in history, not read in a language nobody ever studied. A lot of things were unwise to do or think after the fascist Franco came to power. Acquiring knowledge happened to be one of those things.

Should I just pretend I don’t know this, that the book is key?, thought Lavinia. 

She could continue to focus on the photographic images and forget the words put down in a book by Ruth. Nobody else would know. Ruth had been gone for several decades and her words of caution had only come to the attention of the academic in gender studies and library science. Nobody would say anything if Lavinia ignored the words. Everybody else had ignored them, including the English speakers who could have read the book if they wanted to. 

Gallegan Provinces of Spain: Pontevedra and La Coruña would just have to wait for another researcher to come along. That wasn’t Lavinia’s concern. Moreover, she was already struggling not to let herself be distracted by the mysterious box of items she’d been asked to inspect after they had been unearthed during the renovation of the bar called A Tertulia, Ruth had shown up to take more wind out of the researcher’s sails. 

Maybe I should just pack up and go back to the States, she thought.

The box from A Tertulia contained mostly manuscripts, texts, things written or translated, some in print, others still in longhand. The other artifacts had been odd companions: a piece of a quilt block, some lace, and perhaps more. Lavinia couldn’t be sure because it seemed more and more things kept appearing between her visits to the bar to study the contents of the box. The new items turned up as if they had been slipped in among the others and Lavinia had simply overlooked them the previous times. Except that hadn’t happened. She was a thorough, careful researcher.

“What am I going to do ?” Lavinia queried of the silent swirls of light that had filtered in through the old, old windows of her bedsit. The rectangles of the windows sliced the swirls into prisms and there was little to do for the moment except stare at them, admire them. The occupant of the place wanted to run her fingers along the heavy iron mechanism that latched the windows shut. Maybe that would bring her some resolve, some strength, so she could decide.

“I feel powerless,” thought Lavinia. 

At that point her face had both a scowl and an anxiety around her eyes that would have frightened her if she’d been foolish enough to look in a mirror. 

“I really am interested as much, or more so, in the words women wrote, the way they wove so many threads together when telling a story.” 

As a result, as feminist critics had revealed, their means of expression were more complex than most people realized. This might sound overly academic and analytical, and Lavinia didn’t realize she’d thought this but she was right. Women were definitely not ‘what-you-see-is-what-you-get’.

“If I don’t study Ruth’s book along with the photographs, am I silencing her?” worried Lavinia. 

“I can locate virtually everything published about her here, which is written in Galician and Spanish, but the photographer say what she did is really located in her words, not in the portraits of this culture and its people.”

She felt paralyzed. She didn’t know what to do, which way to go. This required some serious assistance, and Lavinia knew she would need to contact Pilar. With a jolt, she realized immediately afterward that she had said Pilar without knowing if she meant her close friend or if she had been thinking of the librarian. Or was it both?

Lavinia decided to start with the librarian, so she headed toward the Biblioteca Xeral, the main library for the university. She was fortunate to find her in the spacious office she occupied as director.

“Pilar, could you help me? I knew there is a digital catalogue for the library’s holdings, but you seem to know more than the databases do. Is there anything, anything at all, about Ruth Matilda Anderson?” 

Lavinia quickly clarified that she didn’t mean just the exposition catalogues or the book of articles published on the photographs. She hadn’t been that lax in her investigations. That much she had accomplished in her hours sitting in the biblioteca of the Museo do Pobo Galego, the Museum of the Galician People and its vast library. But why did she think Pilar the librarian could add anything to the material already consulted at another site? The answer wasn’t long in coming.

“Actually, yes. We’ve - I’ve - been hoping somebody would come to me with exactly that question. You see, we do have a few items, but they might not be readily identifiable as pertaining to Anderson, even though they are very related to her life and work.”

“Why’s that? Shouldn’t library patrons, researchers, be able to access those materials? How can they do that if they can’t locate them?”

That was when Pilar smiled, but it wasn’t a smile that was the result of feeling pleased at the question. There was a hint of irony in both her tone and the expression on her face.

“Some things need protection. Researchers from around the world have been known to enter with razor blades concealed on their persons. They have sliced out invaluable illuminations from medieval codices. They have wrinkled or folded ancient manuscripts. They have even gone so far as to write notes in the margins, as if they were photocopies. You probably also recall the theft of the Códex Calixtinus back a few years.”

“I understand,” replied Lavinia, thinking how the thieves of valuable artifacts were indeed very sad people, in addition to being very selfish.

“We have some items that were left by Anderson on her trips - you know she made five of them in seven years, I assume?”

“Yes, I know.” Lavinia was unable to control her curiosity. “Might I see them?”

Pilar acted as if she hadn’t heard the request and went on.

“We also have items that people over the years have asked be donated to the Anderson Collection, as I call it, although no such thing actually exists. Those donations have not been catalogued and are not housed in the library, well not in this library.”

The librarian had lost her expression of subtle irony, and seemed to stiffen. Maybe that wasn’t accurate. Maybe she simply stood up a little taller, her voice becoming more authoritarian, as if she knew what she was saying and what she was saying was important.

“Could I see them?” Lavinia felt the need to repeat the request, because she was desperate to know what was contained in the collection she had only just now found out existed. She wasn’t being patient, but couldn’t figure out what was making her so pushy. It was not a good thing for a foreigner to do that, be pushy, in Galicia. That attitude could close more doors than it would ever open. She tried to soften her request by explaining the reason for her urgency.

“I can’t do anything more on my research if I can’t see them.” And indeed, she felt powerless. It wasn’t a feeling she liked very much.

“Yes, I would be glad to have you study the contents. We - I - know you take your research seriously. Somebody will have to stay with you at all times, however. That is just the protocol established after all the marauders of manuscripts we’ve had. I do apologize, but we can’t make any exceptions.”

“I fully understand. Would I ever be able to see the collection with another person - somebody not from the library - present?”

Pilar thought carefully, her index finger pressed against her lower lip, then said:

“Yes, as long as we know the person is coming, and know who it is.”

Not thinking, because she hadn’t discussed this with her, Lavinia gave the name of her friend Pilar. Pilar the librarian’s expression altered slightly, but it was in a good way. One side of her mouth turned up. It almost looked as if she had adopted an approving expression, as if she knew the other Pilar. It didn’t matter that the name was rather common. She definitely seemed to know the person to whom Lavinia was referring.

In a few hours, Amiga Pilar was in the library with Lavinia. She hadn’t hesitated with her response after Lavinia begged her to come look at the materials. At the same time, she stood in the research area and was acting puzzled, seemingly wondering what she might do to help her friend. Lavinia had only gotten as far as knowing she wanted both of them to look through the collection together. She insisted that Galician eyes were needed as well as a researcher’s. That remark alone caused both Pilars to look at one another, but the American researcher didn’t notice. Lavinia was a very observant person, but she had missed that exchange of glances.

All three women don gloves to work with the archives. The sight of the blue latex fluttering above the oak table, polished and shiny as oak can be, were like indigo buntings or Blue Morpho butterflies. The six hands moved with skill and dedication, but treaed the items with utmost care. 

Somebody recalled the symbolism of the blue butterflies, “the color blue is a butterfly is believed to symbolize joy, beauty, and luck. Sometimes, a blue butterfly is considered as a wish granter. Lavinia had seen that somewhere on the internet and laughed at herself for recalling it word for word. She had no use for made-up symbolisms.

The women find several types of things: memoirs, recipes, personal diaries, scraps of cloth, pressed leaves and flowers. They also find: descriptions of women’s intimate concerns that Ruth hadn’t dared share, let alone publish. They also find a number of novels and a list of women professionals in the US. There might be more things that needed to be unearthed, bu they had run out of time. The library was closing in a few minutes.

Amiga Pilar then played devil’s advocate, saying something like

How nice! We get to see the girl side of our friend Ruth Matilda. Here she can’t hide behind her photographs of other people.

Lavinia exclaimed: 

What a treasure, yes!

She wasn’t feeling so powerless now. She could feel something akin to hope.

Suddenly she stops and thinks of the items in the box that the workers had unearthed in the bar A Tertulia a few weeks ago in Santiago de Compostela. She saw that there were strong similarities between those items and the ones in the secret - ‘nonexistent’ - Anderson Collection. In fact, there were too many parallels for the box and the library’s collection not to be connected in some way.

Lavinia turned away from the box in front of her to look at Amiga Pilar, and caught the latter smiling. It was a smile with lips slightly puckered and lifted, but only on one side of the mouth, not the whole mouth. It made Pilar look slightly guilty, but something told Lavinia to follow the thread that tied both women named Pilar together. She needed to follow that thread at the same time as she followed the thread of the box and the collection.

She had no idea why she knew she needed to pull on those connecting filaments, but she did know she was up to the task. Just because she had responded to the complexity of the city, Galician culture, and women’s silenced stories, she found herself in this situation. She wasn’t distracted and she wasn’t incapable of doing what she had to do. She simply needed to pay attention.

Pilar the Librarian and Amiga Pilar knew each other already, Lavinia was certain. Neither had mentioned they were acquainted, however. She had only deduced it from the exchange of glances by the Pilars, plus there was the body language of people who are comfortable with each other. 

In Gender Studies classes, which Lavinia been teaching, they spent a lot of time comparing body language and movement through the social space. She felt she was pretty good at identifying relationships just by watching for a few features, like length of eye contact, movement inward of head, shoulders, etc. Yes, the Pilars clearly knew each other well. Why hadn’t they mentioned this?

They all needed to go their separate ways when the materials were put away, the library had closed, and Pilar the Librarian promised they could continue inspecting the boxes. Unfortunately for the readers looking for the revelation of an important, very mysterious, or valuable object, that will not happen in this story. Things take time in Galicia.  

Nevertheless, Dr. Rivers would eventually see an image, one of those threads. It seemed they had a warp and a weft, that the loom was... Maine or Galicia. The weft - the threads or yarn or string that goes left and right, side to side, was the Atlantic Ocean. The warp must have been created by the voices of many women, twisting itself around the weft that flowed from eastern shore to western shore and back again. She could allow herself to feel powerless, similar to an insect caught in the great spider web of time and dreams, plans and perils.

I don’t need to do this alone. I don’t need to fear the sense that Ruth is worth her weight in words. I can figure out why I’m really here, in this land that nobody with five senses can resist. Five senses, ten fingers, and a brain.