Reference — City Library

Note-taking from one of the tomes here into his supermarket exercise book. Thin, sharp features, erect thinking pose. Unusually clean for the street, even with the clothes tattered like that—both shoulders of the jumper torn half-off. 

         Sturdy Scandinavian or Slav, though race might recede in cases such as these. When he chuckles at the announcement over the loudspeaker the hint of the inner order seemed clearly confirmed.
         — The special-effects make-up workshop in the first floor seminar room will kick-off shortly, swelling female voice of almost radio smoothness.
         Low and short, but an audible chuckle, given without any lifting of the eyes. 

         There is no opportunity to convey an acknowledgment to the man; nor does he seek it.
         Notes flowing steadily, pauses between the thoughts; at least two or three pages filled in the course of the hour. Quiet, steady concentration. Like the Boozers, he’s crowned with a full head of almost white hair (not older than mid-fifties); chest-long saint or seer’s beard holding more of pepper. Light in the glassy blue eyes undimmed. 

         Pernickety roughhouse autodidacts used to be found in the libraries here only fifteen or twenty years ago.
         It was the second snort that raised the doubt. Another look suddenly showed the eyes dubious. Was that some hollowing? A slight jerkiness every now and then.
         It took a time to cast down from the magisterial visage to the exercise book. 

         This was no fine, cramped hand—a cursory initial glance had given the impression. The entire lined white sheet held nothing other than little squiggled patterns of an inch and a half square, a kind of cross-hatching clustered at various angles and achieved without any swiveling of the paper.
         The switch of eyes to the open page of the book was a blind. No sightline was being taken—there was no focus within the dense source text.
         Some kind of mimicry being acted out. In the hour and more one page after another had been slowly filled. A little flourish in page turning might have given an earlier clue. Was his father a priest? A commemoration of sorts?...
         When the man rose to return the first book to the shelf the spine showed from ten metres. 

         AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. 

         Next the choice fell on the Britannica, before a progression to an information digest on one of the continents.
         With the door closed the piano near the toilets was muffled. A surprise that the quiet reigned here again. A year or so ago the place had become a kind of lounge. In the comfy chairs that have been removed to make way for the influx of foreign students some of the street people had often kipped.