I don’t like writing about myself, as a rule. When I do, I disguise it as a poem or a listicle, or I try to pivot as quickly as possible from my own life to some strange, abstract point about The World.
But the case of my first crime—that story deserves to be told.
It begins in Charlottesville, Virginia, where my spouse and I were unpacking box after box—half of them books—after moving from New Jersey. We’d left a few bookshelves in Princeton because 1) IKEA furniture and U-Hauls don’t mix and 2) our friends, like us, owned too many books and could use the shelves. So a couple dozen, er, hundred books were lounging in bins for the first few weeks of our Virginia residency.
Then, the set up. It was Thursday of our second week in Charlottesville, and I got a text from one of the staff members at Princeton’s special collections library, where I used to work. “Have you seen that Livy manuscript leaf with the illuminated N?” she asked me. “We can’t find it and it’s not in the box with the others.”
Strange, but not surprising. I’d worked through a box of thirty-some manuscript leaves that summer, making sure the minimal descriptions we had of them matched what they actually were. The Livy leaf was one of the best: it came from a fifteenth-century Italian copy of Livy’s history of Rome, Ab urbe condita, and since it was the first page of chapter it had a beautiful illuminated letter at the beginning: an N made of gold leaf, surrounded by a gorgeous pattern of blue and red inks. In an era when colored inks meant rare stones and crushed bugs, it was, if not an extravagant luxury, a sign of careful labor and monetary investment. But its temporary disappearance was not surprising, I thought, because archives are a bit like kitchens: everything has its place, but that doesn’t mean things stay there.
“No, I’m pretty sure it was in the box last I saw it,” I typed back, and didn’t think of it again.
Until the next day, when a successful trip to the second-hand store opened up a little more shelf space in our apartment. I was unpacking yet another third-tier book box (theology I hadn’t read, poetry I’d skimmed sporadically, mass market paperbacks that, while charming, ruin the shelf aesthetic a bit) when I saw Livy. In its labeled folder and everything. When I picked it up in disbelief, the beautiful initial N stared (yes, manuscripts can stare) into my soul.
After stewing in confused shame for a few hours, I opened my messages app. “Okay I have literally NO idea how this happened, but…”
I think I was appropriately suppliant: I profusely expressed my bewilderment, my guilt, my eternal subservience. Well, not quite. I didn’t offer to drive it back to New Jersey that very day, but I did promise the safest, highest-priority transportation the United States Postal Service could offer.
Silence.
I would’ve been feeling worse—would’ve been in a fetal position in the bathroom, probably—if I didn’t have the sneaking suspicion that something wasn’t quite right.
See, sometimes eighteen years of Sunday school come in handy:
Then Joseph commanded the steward of his house, “Fill the men’s sacks with food, as much as they can carry, and put each man’s money in the top of his sack. Put my cup, the silver cup, in the top of the sack of the youngest [Benjamin], with his money for the grain.” And he did as Joseph told him. … [Then] Joseph said to his steward, “Go, follow after the men, and when you overtake them, say to them, ‘Why have you returned evil for good? Why have you stolen my silver cup?’” (Genesis 44:1-4)
Had I been Benjamin’d?
But how? I certainly wouldn’t have accidentally put the leaf in a bin, and I was even more certain my spouse wouldn’t have without raising an eyebrow. We did have some friends helping us pack the U-Haul, but the book boxes had been finished by then, sealed as tight as Target bins ever seal, books covered by a six-inch cushion of clothes. And, as far as I knew, I had never removed the leaf from the special collections room in the first place. That would be breaking library rules, after all. Which I (book nerd, enneagram 5, firstborn, conflict-averse) don’t do.
Plus there was the folder’s careful placement: flat on top of four equally tall stacks of books, protected on all sides by other books. The bin had practically been turned into an archival vault. This wasn’t a rush job. What had happened? How had I been framed?
I didn’t solve the mystery. I ended up needing it laid out for me, Sherlock-to-Watson-style. But you, reader, maybe you’re more perceptive. Have you solved it yet?
If not, here are a few more clues:
1. Over the summer, our stuff (books included) had been stored in a friend’s apartment while we were traveling.
2. Librarians make great forgers.
3. You might hear more in four days.
Josh Parks graduated from Calvin in 2018 with majors in English and music, and he is currently a PhD student in religious studies at the University of Virginia. When not writing, he can be found learning the alto recorder, watching obscure Disney movies, and making excruciating puns.
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I’m on the edge of my seat!
I too am on the edge of my seat!!!