In the British Museum Reading Room
Under the great glass dome
The old circular reading room still smells faintly of dust and paper, though the scholars are long gone. The dome rises above like the inside of a whale’s ribcage, and every sound, a footstep, a turning page, arrives a second late, softened by the years. The room is closed off, viewers look on from the perimeter.
Dowdy Pickles as the man standing off to one side with a gardenia in his lapel, which is how I was told I would recognize him. Behind him, the great catalogue drawers, once the brainstem of the British Library, still stand like organ pipes, silent, their brass handles dulled to the color of forgotten coins.
I come over, introduce myself, recommit to the promise of privacy, and he gestures towards an empty chair. I sit down and we begin.
Q: An astounding place to meet…
A: Well, once upon a time we would have met at the old British Library. But they moved the reading room here, and I go with it.
(The author glances up toward the dome as if the ceiling itself were listening, then continues.)
I used to come here when I was young. You had to apply for a reader’s ticket, you see. It was the most thrilling form of permission, better than any passport. You could sit in this circle and feel, quite literally, surrounded by the world’s thinking.
Q: Did you have a favorite place to sit?
A: (He gestures toward the center of the room, now roped off.) Bram Stoker wrote there. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, there. Imagine that. No, I don’t have a favorite seat. All are holy to me.
