You Don't Know Erasmus From Your Elbow

"Ms. Stamp!"

"Hello, dear."

"Have you used your stamp today, Ms. Stamp?"

"No, dear."

As research librarians go, Ms. Stamp rested comfortably and definitively at the very top, where no other could hope to approach. She was fastidiousness transcended, the non plus ultra of researchists, a veritable god of library science. Ms. Stamp was also rather gloriously unattractive, being so unfortunately shaped as to be reminiscent of an unhealthy pear. She carried her body after the manner of Christ carrying the cross, and every aspect of her physiognomy was, and would always remain, woefully unsung.

I often wondered where she went after the library closed - it seemed more plausible that she simply curled up among a pile of unsorted books, with a small ill-fitting blanket, rather than suffer the long walk home on some poor cracked sidewalk, offering no narrative at all, with each step meaning less and less until finally she arrived home, or, that is to say, nowhere.

"Ms. Stamp?"

She raised her head a few perfectly amiable degrees, revealing an uncommonly graceful neck, while keeping her eyes lowered on the desk below.

"How do you find Erasmus?"

"3rd floor, 2nd row left from the elevator," came the response, softly, anonymously, eyes still on the desk.

"No, no -" I said, fixing abstractly on a box of pencils, "I mean, what do you think of him?"

Time, we can all agree, is a thing noted primarily for its constancy, even in places like libraries, where silence and stillness and things untouched - Russian transliteration tables, Ms. Stamp - all conspire to make time more tenuous, to soften its inevitability. With that modest disclaimer I'm going to advance the rather immodest and no less embarrassing claim that, when Ms. Stamp lifted her eyes from the desk to address me, time stopped altogether.

Instead of her telling me what she thought of Erasmus, she looked at me and I knew I was looking back at him- looking at his gaunt cheeks, lined over long years of placating popes and bishops and defending his love of moderation, softly resisting Luther's love of immoderation, nursing a Utopian dream where only Latin, Greek and Hebrew were spoken, all - Ms. Stamp wasn't a librarian, no, nor did she suffer some mal-shaped body or a loveless existence, she was filled beyond capacity with love, and her voice, while unspoken, was that of a choir, endlessly numerous, singing the body of all humanity!

Love, O, I'm in love! Ms. Stamp! She who admires nothing, loves nothing, knows nothing, is everything! Darling dear, I devote myself to thee, my blood, my service, my soul!

" - Oh, I don't remember - how nice that you're interested in him, though! Is this for school? I had to do a paper on him once, and it was such a bore, but - oh, but I'm sure you'll just love him. Go on, we close in 15 minutes."