Which way? Back the way I’d come? The dog had gone ahead. I did not want to lose the dog. I could see, looking farther down the tunnel, two or three smaller aisles branching from the main walkway. William said, “Take your first right through Minor Elizabethan Drama. Comedies will appear on your left and tragedies will be on your right. Keep going past Ralph Roister Doister and The Spanish Tragedy. About three shelves after Gorboduc, you’ll come to a narrow fork. Do not continue through Shakespeare because that whole section is flooded and you’ll ruin your shoes. Instead, you’ll want to detour through Cavalier Poets and Writers of the Couplet. Go straight all the way to Hobbes. Follow Hobbes through The Age of Dryden, then veer left. This brings you face-to-face with Pope and Swift. You will not have noticed anything in translation. If you do encounter any French political writing, you’ll know you’re in the wrong corridor. You’ll have to make a half-turn and backtrack through Sir Walter Scott. This is tricky. Be careful not to go too far because the Waverley novels will return you, inevitably, to The Castle of Perseverance, and you’ll never get out. It’s better to remain in the nineteenth century if you can get there. As you know, we’ve had shelving problems, so don’t panic if you see Russians mixed in with the triple deckers. Put your head down and charge through the War Poets. By now you’re smack in the center of The Modern Era. From here you can choose any number of directions. Pay attention because if you take the wrong route, you’ll wind up running around in circles and you’ll have to start over from Beowulf. Are you paying attention?”

“Yes.”

“The New Critics. Stay with The New Critics and you’ll get where you’re going.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Minor Elizabethans were not hard to find. These decrepit volumes were crammed onto shelves that sagged beneath the weight of crumbling bindings. Dust from the leather covers smelled oddly sweet; it was not unlike the smell of a very old person, a corporeal sweetness of glue and rotting paper and fading pigments. I was reminded of Hiram and promised myself I’d give the man a piece of my mind about friendship, kindness, and ordinary reciprocity in relationships. I could hear my brothers rampaging in the distance. And there were other ominous noises, things crashing and thudding. What in the world was happening in our red library? I forged ahead and soon, as William had promised, arrived at oily black water covering uneven floor beneath Shakespeare. “Gunner, what’s taking you so long?” I whispered as I squeezed past neglected poets. It was tight in these aisles and I was afraid I’d get stuck. You could insert yourself into a cramped corner and get hopelessly trapped, and no one would hear your calls for help, and you could waste away and die while your brothers drank and broke furniture, or so I thought in my terror of the darkness and the solitude. How long had it been since anyone had come this way and taken down one of these privately printed old chestnuts with the pages that had probably, for all anyone knew, never been cut? Years? Decades? It seemed to me, as I shouldered my way through, that no one had ever been in this place—or ever would be again, once I had found my way out to the open spaces where a person could think and breathe clean air that was not contaminated with such horrible smells, the kinds of smells that make you want to run away, were it not so dark that running would be dangerous.