Not just four halls—on the back of the backpage of the schedule was a map—everything was a mirroring. My fellow Americans were all in Hall 8, apparently.

Halls 5 through 8 inclusive reminded me of malls, best measured not in square meters but in parsecs. I walked through them and sidestepped their conveyors. I walked between them, and there was Frankfurt’s skyline, like apocalypse does Dallas. Your friendly neighborhood global banking headquarters—Deutsche Bank’s logo of a blue square slit diagonally has always read to me like the desolate vagina of a war widow.

She was being positioned, canted, bolted, this survivor of the gender wars, arm up, arm down, legs spread wide as if to imply a corresponding wideness of taste—a mannequin of Charlotte, whether her first name or last they’d only posted that, the first female printer in history. Paris, reign of Francis I. Alongside her pose was pasteboarded a polyglot factsheet about homosexuality and publishing. Friedrich Koenig, no umlaut for him, invented the first nonmanpowered, but steampowered, press, an unwieldy replica of which anchored the display. The Asians, despite all their advances, their innovation of paper and ink and styli before Europe, were underrepresented, inevitably. Theirs was just another but scanty polyglot boardtext noting all their innovation of paper and ink and styli before Europe. Clay and wood and bronze. Lead and tin and antimony. Samples. Gutenberg and his moneylenders were dummied prominently, don’t doubt.

The translation’s typography was blackletter Textura, Fraktur, the spelling unstable, incunabular: “Johanes.” Mainz was referred to as “the once rival of Frankfurt.” Once upon a time. Snobs. The installation featured animatronics, rather inside the cases were Poles and the murmurs reverberant from behind the plastic sheeting were in Polish responding to yelled German. They were running late. They were running with screwdrivers to tighten the screw on a press. It was the same as the oil principle, the crushing of seed, nut, olive. Smithing. Gemcutting. Platen. Windlass. Gutenberg’s father, Friele Gensfleisch zur Laden, was employed by the ecclesiastical mint. My speculation, exactly. Chirography, typography, money mania. A coin is minted by mold, the metals are poured into it, and an image is stamped on the surface. Given that a nickel now is just a quarter nickel, it’s strictly the image that coins the worth, glyphs of tetrarchs and portraits of feudal royalty, with time becoming kitschy graphics of livestock and wheat. Given that paper’s still paper it’s the scripting that authenticates the bill, the signatures of presidents or primeministers, treasurers, reserve chiefs. Pecuniary inscription being a residuum of the regent’s seal or signet ring, the guarantor of authorship and so, of authority. Sphragides, sigilia, specie and fiat currencies, movable type, all systems of writing to date, in each instance an arbitrary materiality is forcibly impressed with transitory value. Proof of identity. Colophons of self. I told the registration guards my name was Aaron Szlay, and though I’d left my pass back in the room I could show them my swipecard in its sleeve with that name on it. They consulted their list, credentialed me, couldn’t have been nicer.

I entered under scaffolding. Let history record that in my lifetime most major public spaces were being renovated and not many ever utilized their main entrances.

Stamping through literatures familiar and not. Books everyone in America who reads has already read, now finally new again in translation. Books that nanocosm of literate America will pretend to be familiar with, if given the opportunity. The same book in multiple editions, the memoirs of a writer, his wife, her lover, of some kidnapped juvenile who grew up to become the first democratically elected female CEO of Muslim Africa, each language’s copy cut into the shape, the mapshape, of the land in which that language obtained, the books arranged to puzzle Europe. They were cutting the final books, the jigs and jags of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, with saws. Still on the schedule was when they’d gather the 10 thickest volumes published since last fair and toss knives at them or shoot them. As if to determine the densest. A banner tugged taut, into an expressionless mouth: this year, the fair’s theme was either the Future of Books, or the Books of the Future—sometimes with German all I get are the nouns.

America, at last.

Stomping past my publisher, expecting Finn, his bosses. Other publishers had pavilions, mine had a breakaway republic. Hostile sovereign Midtown territory. I wouldn’t have been surprised by a functional military. An intense assisterhood whose mufti concealed all variety of weaponry. The jaded. The coy. The derisive. I kept my head down to flatter myself. The intern of my enemy is not my friend, the extern of my enemy is, forget it.

Finn must’ve been elsewhere.

The agencies all had the same style of booth crowded clustered at center hall, foldingchairs but upholstered in oxblood, foldingtables but teak. Placards bearing agency name and Messe directory number propped atop. To be a truly venerable publisher you have to be European or owned by Europeans with a vast backcatalog of pogrom tracts or Nazi agitprop to rely on. To be a decent agent all you have to be is American and social. Convince, be competent. Smile.

“Seth,” which wasn’t my memory but his lanyarded tag, was skinnysuited with a skinny tie, a quiff. Hipbony, hipstery, novelty Masonic tieclip and links.

“I’m interested in making a bid for rights,” I said. “I’m an editor at a discerning house in Sri Lanka.”

But Seth’s face was off wandering behind me, as if Sri Lanka were there.

“The new book by Caleb Krast, specifically. I’m told it’s a novel. We’ll bind it in coral. Dustjacket of leather, porpoise or whale. Targeted advertising and outreach to blogs. We’re the best and only operation on the island—I’ll translate it myself.”

Even Seth’s wince was forced, as he came around the table and said: “First off, Sri Lankans are a linguistically diverse people who tend to read Anglo-American writers of quality in the original. Second, Sri Lanka, as a former colony of Britain, is a member of the Commonwealth, and so its territory is typically covered under the terms of a UK agreement, which we’ve already concluded, prefair, in the case of Mr. Krast.”

“Concluded lucratively?”

“With all respect, Mr. Cohen,” but then she ran between us and cut him off.

She: Seth held her and shook her, and only then did I have her—it was Lisabeth Block. She was shaking crying and holding her nose, emulging. Seth let her go. He was diligent with a tissue.

Lisabeth was a bucktoothed and fawnish blonde braided by the better schools. Aar had hired high, and highstrung. She’d never needed this job, she’d only needed something to blame, to have some purpose to the days between breakdowns, ballets, Montauk, and Maine. She’d had a relative on the Mayflower but only Aar ever remembered his name. She was 22 years old, rather she’d been that age in my mind for over a decade. Not much more than a voicemail, the voice that put me through. I’d try to banter, I’d flirt with myself. She’d kept her distances, played close to the varsity vest, pencil skirt snug at the thighs.

But now she clung to me, and because I wasn’t sure why, it was my fault—I read all of Rach’s grievances graven across her cheeks, inconsolable.

“What’s wrong?” I said. “Why don’t you pick that up?”

Lisabeth stepped away and dabbed her lipfuzz, “What?”

I said, “A very small person’s having a conniption inside your very small purse,” and then Seth said, “That might be her.”

By the time Lisabeth’d broken a nail to her Tetheld the ringtone had stopped. “I can’t,” she said, but went to ID what she’d missed and as she did the ringtone started again and with her crying the effect was of sirens.