Bookman's promise

She pushed the rewind button and ran it back to the beginning.

“You’ll hear me on here, asking a few questions. All the rest is Charlie. Just forget me and listen. Just sit and listen and keep an open mind.”

A hissing sound came through the earphones; then, Koko’s voice.

“Who are you? What’s your name?”

There was a pause, followed by the high-pitched voice of a child.

“Josephine.”

“Josephine who?”

“Josephine Crane. My friends call me Jo. J-o, like in Little Women.”

“That’s a good, strong name. May I call you Jo?”

“Yes, of course.”

“How old are you, Jo?”

“It’s my birthday. I’m nine years old.”

“What day is this?”

“September third, nineteen hundred and four.”

“You sound very grown-up for your age.”

“Thank you.”

Another pause. Then Koko said, “Do you want to tell me about your grandfather?”

“What do you want to know?”

“What’s his name? We can start there.”

“Charles. Charles Edward Warren.”

“Tell me a little about his life.”

Now came a long pause. The tape went on hissing for two or three minutes. At that point there was a click followed by several bumps, then Koko’s voice came across in a whisper.

“I’ve moved the microphone back from Josephine’s presence to add a footnote and a description of what’s happening. She seems to be trying to gather her thoughts. Her face is very relaxed, more so than when I have asked this question in the past. Today I will ask her to tell me more about her grandfather’s life, but she can’t go outside her own persona unless she is relating something she personally has heard or read. I would expect her to be limited to what she knew about him at that age, but at times she seems to go far beyond her stated age. She has knowledge and uses words that I would not expect her to know at nine. I think what she’s giving me here are things she has heard him say about himself, coupled with what she read in his own diary after his death.”

From some distance I could hear the child’s voice. There was more scurrying as Koko moved the microphone closer.

“I’m sorry…I missed that.”

“I asked where you went,” Jo said.

“Nowhere, I just needed to move something. Can you tell me about Charlie now?”

There was a pause. I heard a labored breath.

“He’s retired now. When he was younger he was a draftsman. That’s a mapmaker, you know. He says it was a good trade then, there was so much expansion. He worked as a cartographer in and around Baltimore all his life.”

“For a time he worked for the government in Washington, is that correct?”

“Yes.” Another long pause. “He was in the War Department during the administration of President James Buchanan.”

“What were his interests?”

“In his youth…long ago…he liked opera and history, philosophy, nature. He was a bird fancier. Eventually he became an accomplished ornithologist—good enough to write a book and several scientific pamphlets. He liked playing card games. Poker with his pocket money and whist for fun.”

“His picture reminds me of a college professor.”

“He is often told that. My mother sometimes says so.”

“What else can you tell me about him?”

“Ummm…he’s a book collector.”

“Is that how he discovered Richard Burton?”

“Yes. He knew about Mr. Burton long before they met. Even then he had copies of Richard’s earliest books.