Journal of a UFO Investigator Read Online Free PDF Page B

about what I might find. At the entrance was a turnstile. Just inside, to the left, were a desk with a sign saying J. MARGULIES and, behind the desk, several file cabinets. No one sat at the desk or at the large reading table in the middle of the room. Rows of books were locked behind a thick chain-link barrier, ceiling to floor. No windows; no apparent sign of life.
    I’ll leave , I thought, and come back later.
    But the turnstile would go only one way. I didn’t feel much like climbing back over it. My best bet was to wait and see if this “J. Margulies” might turn up.
    Framed exhibits, pages from old manuscripts and books, hung on the walls. One of these caught my eye. The page within the frame was about twelve by eighteen inches. Dense lines of writing, in a delicate undulating script that I supposed to be Arabic, surrounded a beautifully colored central picture. The picture’s focus was something that looked like a winged horse with a human face, flying through the night sky. Its rider wore a turban and ornate, flowing robes. Above horse and rider, enormous stars glared out of the deep indigo.
    The exhibit to the right was also interesting. Here again was a central picture framed by the mysterious, delicate writing. A large, voluptuous woman, with huge black eyes and flowing hair, grasped the clothing of a smaller, young-looking man. The artist had dressed both of them elaborately but managed to leave much of the woman’s bosom naked.
    I examined the picture closely. I read both labels. The one, of the winged creature that had first attracted me, read: MIRAJ-NAMEH, PERSIA, FOURTEENTH CENTURY. The other was labeled JOSEPH AND ZULEIKHA, MUGHAL INDIA, SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
    â€œ May I help you?”
    I turned, startled, to see a young man towering over me. That at least was my first impression. It took me a moment to realize he was a teenage boy, just a few years older than myself. He was tall, well over six feet, and extraordinarily thin. He had brown hair and slightly buckteeth. He was neatly dressed, in a blue blazer, a dark tie, and a white shirt that looked heavily starched. How he’d gotten so close without my hearing him, I couldn’t imagine.
    â€œ May I help you?” he said again.
    â€œYes, certainly.” That was all I could say. I could not for the life of me remember what I’d come here for. Then it came back to me. “They told me this was the place to find Jewish calendars.”
    â€œJewish calendars? You mean, those things the funeral homes put out? Well,” he said. Then he said: “What do you want those for?”
    I hadn’t expected the question. Could I tell him I wanted a moon-based calendar to “count the days” backward in lunar twenty-nine-day cycles? Suburban burglary . . . UFO encounter . . . and so on, back through the cycles, through the years, until unexplained events of every sort were brought into the pattern? Impossible. I’d be packed off to the loony bin for sure.
    â€œNever mind. None of my business, is it?” He threw himself into the swivel chair that was behind the J. MARGULIES desk, spun around in it, and began rummaging through one of the file drawers. “What years do you want?”
    â€œOhhh . . .” I started to say, Back through 1947. That was when the UFOs first began to appear, two and a half years before I was born. But he looked up at me and frowned, suspiciously, I thought, and it seemed wiser not to ask for too much. “Let’s just try the last few. Start with 1960.”
    â€œHmmm.” He leaned back and stretched as he pondered this. The chair, which wasn’t in the best condition, lurched backward. “That means we need to go back to Rosh Hashanah 1959. What year is that in the Jewish calendar, do you remember?”
    I didn’t. Still, it was some comfort he’d heard of Rosh Hashanah and seemed to know it falls a few months before everyone else’s New Year.