The Rule of Four

known.

No. Not at all. He lifted his hands. We're here, aren't we?

He placed the faintest emphasis on we.

In the silence, I looked at the three books on his desk. Strunk and White, the Bible, The Belladonna Document. Princeton was a gift to him. He could forget everything else.

Chapter 5

Paul, Gil, and I continue south from Holder into the belly of campus. To the east, the tall, thin windows of Firestone Library streak the snow with fiery light. At dark the building looks like an ancient furnace, stone walls insulating the outside world from the heat and blush of learning. In a dream once, I visited Firestone in the middle of the night and found it full of insects, thousands of bookworms wearing tiny glasses and sleeping caps, magically feeding themselves by reading stories. They wriggled from page to page, journeying through the words, and as tensions grew and lovers kissed and villains met their ends, the bookworms' tails began to glow, until finally the whole library was a church of candles swaying gently from left to right.

Bill's waiting for me in there, Paul says, stopping short.

You want us to come with you? Gil asks.

Paul shakes his head. It's okay.

But I hear the catch in his voice.

I'll come, I say.

I'll meet you guys back at the room, Gil says. You'll be back in time for Taft's lecture at nine?

Yes, Paul says. Of course.

Gil waves and turns. Paul and I continue down the path toward Firestone.

Once we're alone, I realize that neither of us knows what to say. Days have passed since our last real conversation. Like brothers who disapprove of each other's wives, we can't even manage small talk without tripping over our differences: he thinks I gave up on the Hypnerotomachia to be with Katie; I think he's given up more for the Hypnerotomachia than he knows.

What does Bill want? I ask as we approach the main entrance.

I don't know. He wouldn't say.

Where are we meeting him?

In the Rare Books Room.

Where Princeton keeps its copy of the Hypnerotomachia.

I think he found something important.

Like what?

I don't know. Paul hesitates, as if he's looking for the right words. But the book is even more than we thought. I'm sure of it. Bill and I both feel like we're on the cusp of something big.

It's been weeks since I've caught a glimpse of Bill Stein. Wallowing in the sixth year of a seemingly endless graduate program, Stein has slowly been assembling a dissertation on the technology of Renaissance printing. A jangling skeleton of a man, he aimed at being a professional librarian until larger ambitions got in his way: tenure, professorships, advancement-all the fixations that come with wanting to serve books, then gradually wanting books to serve you. Every time I see him outside Firestone he looks like an escaped ghost, a purse of bones drawn up too tight, with the pale eyes and strange curled-red hair of a half Jew, half Irishman. He smells of library mold, of the books everyone else has forgotten, and after talking to him I sometimes have nightmares that the University of Chicago will be inhabited by armies of Bill Steins, grad students who bring to their work a robotic drive I've never had, whose nickel-colored eyes see right through me.

Paul sees it differently. He says that Bill, impressive as he is, has one intellectual flaw: the absence of a living spark. Stein crawls through the library like a spider in an attic, eating up dead books and spinning them into fine thread. What he makes from them is always mechanical and uninspired, driven by a symmetry he can never change.

This way? I ask.

Paul leads me down the corridor. The Rare Books Room stands off in a corner of Firestone, easy to pass without noticing. Inside it, where some of the youngest books are centuries old, the scale of age becomes relative. Upperclassmen in literature seminars are brought here like children on field trips, their pens and pencils confiscated, their dirty fingers monitored. Librarians can be heard scolding tenure-track professors to look without touching. Emeritus faculty come here to feel young again.

It should be closed, Paul says, glancing at his digital watch. Bill must've talked Mrs. Lockhart into keeping it open.

We are in Stein's world now. Mrs. Lockhart, the librarian time forgot, probably darned socks with Gutenberg's wife in her day. She has smooth white skin draped on a wispy frame made for floating through the stacks. Most of the day she can be found muttering in dead languages to the books around her, a taxidermist whispering to her pets. We pass by without making eye contact, signing a clipboard with a pen chained to her desk.

He's in there, she says to Paul, recognizing him. To me she gives only a sniff.

Through a narrow connecting area we arrive before a door I've never opened. Paul approaches, knocks twice, and waits for a sound.

Mrs. Lockhart? comes the reply in a high, shifting voice.

It's me, Paul says.

A lock clicks on the other side, and the door opens slowly. Bill Stein appears before us, a half-foot taller than either Paul or me. The first thing I notice is the gunmetal eyes, how bloodshot they are. The first thing they notice is me.

Tom came with you, he says, scratching at his face. Okay. Good, fine.

Bill speaks in shades of the obvious, some stopgap between his mouth and mind gone missing. The impression is misleading. After a few minutes of the mundane you see flashes of his aptitude.

It was a bad day, he says, guiding us in. A bad week. Not a big deal. I'm fine.

Why couldn't we talk on the phone? Paul asks.

Stein's mouth opens, but he doesn't answer. Now he's scratching at something between his front teeth. He unzips his jacket, then turns back to Paul. Has someone been checking out your books? he asks.

What?

Because someone's been checking out mine.

Bill, it happens.

My William Caxton paper? My Aldus microfilm?

Caxton's a major figure, Paul says.

I've never heard of William Caxton in my life.

The 1877 paper on him? Bill says. It's only at the Forrestal Annex. And Aldus's Letters of Saint Catherine— He turns to me. Not, as generally believed, the first use of italics— Then back to Paul. Microfilm last viewed by someone other than you or me in the seventies. Seventy-one, seventy-two. Someone put a hold on it yesterday. This isn't happening to you?

Paul frowns. Have you talked to Circulation?

Circulation? I talked to Rhoda Carter. They know nothing

Rhoda Carter, head librarian of Firestone. Where the book stops.

I don't know, Paul says, trying not to get Bill more excited. It's probably nothing. I wouldn't worry about it.

I don't. I'm not. But here's the thing. Bill works his way around the far edge of the room, where the space between the wall and the table seems too narrow to pass. He slips through without a sound and pats at the pocket of his old leather jacket. I get these phone calls. Pick up… click. Pick up… click. First at my apartment, now at my office. He shakes his head. Never mind. Down to business. I found something. He glances at Paul nervously. Maybe what you need, maybe not. I don't know. But I