Equitone

What kind of a name is “Equitone”?

Google has led me to believe that it has no nationality, no history, no etymology, and no living person who owns it. The best I can find, it is brand of fiber cement.

I want to know, because a man named Equitone has just given me twenty thousand dollars. Or, more accurately, a man named Equitone abandoned twenty thousand dollars, and I found it. That’s the story. I wish there was more to it, but really I was just in search of a book. I pulled it from the top shelf, and down fell a fat envelope, stuffed with cash and a handwritten letter:

To whomever finds this,

In this envelope, I have enclosed twenty thousand dollars. The money is yours. However, it is only right for you to know how I came by it.

(At this point I stuffed my pockets, looked over my shoulders, and walked casually – as casually as a robot programmed to walk casually – out of the Thindler Library. The guard gave my bag a casual glance and didn’t stop to consider my pockets, not even for a moment.)

Yes, a crime has been committed. But in my opinion, I am not the criminal.

(The letter went on, though it eerily echoed my own thoughts.)

The Vandergram Library – they are the criminals. They talk to no end of their expertise, their taste, that they are “curators” while we are “librarians”. Well, you will see how wrong they are.

The Vandergram Library is supposed to house our university’s “special” collections – books deemed too valuable to check out, too precious to read, books kept in pretty boxes and temperature-controlled chambers. Books which are too good for your hands or mine. We here at the Thindler, they say, are in the “business of information,” while they are in the “art of curation.” So whenever a donation comes to the university, the Vandergram's curators, so-called, sit in judgement. They cull the most precious books, and leave the tattered remains to us. They take what they want. They even send hit squads of curators – they really do call themselves that! – to scourge the Thindler’s shelves, looking for books to kidnap into their own special collections.

Well, the fault for this episode is theirs.

I hope you will not think me a braggart when I say that I am somewhat a scholar of T. S. Eliot, having written my thesis comparing and contrasting his great poems, and having been a paying member of the T. S. Eliot Society for over fifteen years. Some have called me an expert, and some have even said that I belong at the Vandergram Library, that they would do well to have someone such as myself among their curators. Can you imagine? I’d like to be offered such a post, just for the chance to tell them how lowly I regard their work. If I have such a chance, this is the story I’ll tell them.

We here at the Thindler take pride in the organization of our books. A person – a child, even – who had never before set foot in library could find any book they sought in five minutes. Less even! Our shelves are the envy of the university. (I have heard, by the way, that researchers are sometimes made to wait upward of fifteen minutes for their books to be called up from the Vandergram’s vaults.)

Shelves do not organize themselves, and it is the duty of every librarian here at the Thindler to patrol the aisles, keeping an eagle-eye for volumes which have strayed from their place. It will not surprise you, that when a book had been misplaced among the T. S. Eliot volumes, I immediately caught it in the act!

I swooped in on the stray volume, but recoiled, hardly able to believe my eyes.

The book was small, small enough to fit in a large pocket, and bound in black cloth. It might have been mistaken for a notebook or journal (indeed, must have been, by the curators of the Vandergram). But a keen eye could never have made such a grave error. A keen eye wouldn’t even need to read the gold lettering on the spine, spelling, “THE WASTE LAND,” to know the little black book’s contents. It was, as a matter of fact, The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot. Moreover, as my limp jaw attested, it was the first edition.

I drew the volume from the shelf and opened it. A novice curator might have flipped lackadaisically through the pages for markings or notes, trying to determine the condition of the precious book. I knew better. I turned immediately to the colophon, to the spot where each copy contained its own number – numbered one through one thousand.

I nearly lost the book to the cold floor. (Perhaps this is exaggeration: I would sooner lose my arms.)

"Of the one thousand copies printed of The Waste Land this volume is Number 12!"

Number twelve. The book was number twelve. The twelfth copy of the greatest poem ever written, the poem which, in my thesis, I had described as, “The turning point between old poetry and new poetry.” It is a spiritual guide. A mystical scripture. In other words, a horoscope. It was as if I had discovered the twelfth commandment, or the twelfth amendment, tucked away in the Thindler’s shelves!

The book was absolutely priceless. It would fetch at least at least forty thousand dollars.

I clutched the precious thing to my chest. I saw its fate at once. It had escaped Vandergram’s clutches, somehow, but it could not do so forever. Sooner or later it would be found here at the Thindler, and taken.

I had to act quickly. I hope you will forgive me, for bowing to impulse. But as I have said, I am hardly the criminal. I slid the book into my pant leg, and walked out of the library. “Good afternoon, John,” I said to the guard. I immediately regretted it, as I had never spoken to John before. But John barely looked up, and I was relieved.

My relief did not last long. Alone in my room with the incriminating little black book, I grew anxious. Sweats. Sleeplessness. I hid the book further and further within the room, but like the tale-tell heart it beat only louder. Its presence, before long, became intolerable. I sold it.

The book fetched forty-thousand dollars. (You will recall this is exactly as I had predicted.) But the money was no better. It, too, haunted me.

You have already surmised what happened next. I split the money, put half in an envelope and returned it to the place I found the book – yes, exactly where you stand.

As I have said, the money is yours. Do with it what you want, or, if you deem it right, find me and return it.

Your patron, EQUITONE

An update: I have plied the internet for information on Equitone, but have come up with nothing. I searched for employee directories at the Thindler Library, membership roles of the T. S. Eliot Society, authors of theses like the one he described, but all I found are lists of names, with no clue as to which one is my Equitone. With nowhere else to look, I turned to the poem itself. Ironically, the Thindler didn’t have a copy, so I made an appointment at the Vandergram to see theirs. I wanted to read the poem, in the hopes that some idea would shake loose.

In the Vandergram lobby, the thin receptionist, hunched under a wiry mass of gray hair, greeted me in a flash of yellow teeth. I mumbled that I had come looking for something in a book. “What book?” she asked. I told her, she signed me in, and ushered me to a somewhat underwhelming reading room with dull portraits hung haphazardly over baby blue walls. I was told to wait while the book was being brought up from the Vandergram’s vaults.

After five minutes, it appeared in a little elevator, and was presented to me on a massive foam wedge. I was told that the book and wedge should never part, and then left to my own devices.

The little black book was exactly as Equitone had described, and I wondered where in the world its twin, Equitone’s copy, had gone. I turned the cover gingerly, and began reading the poem. My discovery came at once. Or, two discoveries. The first is that Equitone is not a man, but a woman. The second is that she is not a woman, but a fictional character. I found her finally in the poem itself:

Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,

Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:

One must be so careful these days.

The name was a dead end… It wasn’t a name at all. It was an allusion. I felt almost relieved. There was no way I could find my patron, with a fictional name. No way I could return the stolen money, even if I wanted to.

I closed the book, but not before something flashed in the turning pages. I was struck. There, on the reserve of the title page, was written: Of the one thousand copies printed of The Waste Land, this volume is Number 12. I was in such a state of shock that I jumped when a folded sheet of copy paper fell from the pages and onto the table. It was an invoice. I seized it and saw that it detailed the sale of the book, in 1996, for $20,000, to the Vandergram Special Collections by an anonymous seller.

Equitone had sold the book to the Vandergram. And she had left me not half, but the whole sum...

A tap on my shoulder. It was the gray receptionist from the front desk. “Have you found it?” she asked eagerly.