by Renee Rodin
On the Amtrak down, I kept thinking, “I’m taking Anthrax.” I sat next to a young man who, at this point, would be deemed by many to be Public Enemy Number One. “Oh boy,” I thought, “this guy will never make it across the border.” He’d come from far away (his native language was Urdu) to live in Montreal and was pleased that I too was from there. But within minutes he began to criticize one of its neighbourhoods, because of its many immigrants, who, he claimed were bringing down the economy. I reminded him that just about all of us, except for the First Nations, had come relatively recently to North America and that he too was a newcomer. And revealed that I’d been raised in the very neighbourhood, Park Extension, he found so offensive.
Though I was tickled by the irony and figured his maligning was only a matter of him trying to find someone lower on the social pecking order, I was also ticked off and said nothing as he squirmed with embarrassment and said, “I can’t explain myself.” When I let him off the hook by changing the subject, he was so grateful he invited me to his brother’s wedding.
Aside from a charged episode when a customs officer strutted through with a nightmare-sized bomb-sniffing dog, the group on the train was very chatty. Partly out of nervousness about our destination. A middle-aged civil servant from Ottawa tried to strike up a conversation with an attractive young Separatist from Trois-Rivières by saying, “I never learned to speak the language but I sure know how to French kiss.” He seemed incapable of making anything but obnoxious remarks and was eventually frozen out by everyone except for a four-year-old to whom he introduced himself by saying, “Call me anything, but don’t call me late for dinner.” But even she got fed up with him.
I couldn’t help overhearing the American couple behind me who had their speakerphone on as they engaged in a boisterous discussion with a caller about their mutual friend, also an American but of Mexican heritage, who’d just converted to Judaism and was now in a quandary about how to describe himself.
When the train pulled into Penn Station, I was overjoyed to see my sons, who seemed as well as ever, though I could sense their underlying fatigue. Soon I was rigid with fear because we were in a packed, enclosed public space in New York City—an ideal target.
Their apartment in the Lower East Side was close enough to the towers that Noah and Daniel had seen the attack. It took us less than forty minutes to walk to Ground Zero the next day. Enroute we passed several shrines: small memorials in windows and on street corners, fresh flowers left beside weather-tattered photographs of those who had died in the disaster.
The air was putrid all through the city but the closer we got to the site the more poisonous it became. Acrid, bitter, corrosive—like a combination of sulphur, burning rubber, singed hair. The stores in the vicinity were now coated in soot and ash, strewn with furniture and broken glass. I felt I was in an eerie old ghost town from another century.
Several blocks had been cordoned off to separate the visitors from the soldiers and the volunteers probing, examining, sifting through the rubble. Many of the surrounding smaller buildings had been totally razed. The ground had been reduced to muck.
Mephitic smoke rose from the epicentre—layers beneath the towers were still burning. Oddly, the smoke was the freest thing there. To be at this wrecking ball of history made me disoriented, dizzy, as if I’d fallen off a steep cliff and landed in an alien landscape, on another planet.
Looming over us were monumental ruins, twists of cement and steel, melts of iron, bursts of concrete guts. Massive, mangled heaps. All on the verge of toppling over. A giant had slammed his fist down on another giant’s sandcastle. The worst was to look into the abyss and to see nothing but to imagine the dread of some, the determination of others, on the doomed planes, the ghastly phone calls from those who knew they were about to die, the bodies buried in the buildings, the jumpers holding hands with each other or hurling themselves alone off the fiery structures. The rescuers who had gone into those death-traps and never came out.
Throughout my life I’ve had the privilege of peace and had never seen, except in the media, the ravages of war, what people have had to live with, or die because of. Though there were hundreds of visitors that day at Ground Zero, the quiet was astounding—we were witnesses to something impossible to absorb. There was no wailing at this heart-and head-smashing scene.
Many bystanders were wiping tears or taking pictures—dabbing, snapping, snapping, dabbing. Framing, capturing the mythological postcard. Some just stared at the gaping holes, at what was and what wasn’t, what had become an expanse of sky and cloud. Incongruous. How to lament the sky?
Grey matter spat down, spun around, flickered into us, infiltrated our eyes, nostrils and lungs; God knows what we were breathing in. The aroma of apprehension, spoor of the threatened, panic was the most pervasive odour at Ground Zero. The frantic were attempting to control an out-of-control reality, bewildered that others would hate them so much they would kill them randomly, wretched that this degree of atrocity, previously inconceivable, could happen again. Nothing jibed.
Everywhere reeked of rabid helplessness, as helpless as tears, of disgust, of powerlessness, of disgust at powerlessness. I too stank of insecurity—emitted a cloying noxious odour, whose very perfume clung to me as I clung to it.
Sunday morning was relaxed until Bush’s face stretched across the TV screen, announcing he was bombing Afghanistan, already decimated by decades of war and the tyranny of the Taliban. The undeniable truth of September 11 had been driven to its most false conclusion—war. Once again the battlefield was remote. His message was “be vigilant” (watch your neighbour), “this will be a long war”(we will slaughter all opposition),“expect a hundred-percent chance of retaliation” (be prepared to die). More jolts to the trauma ward that was New York.
Newspapers at kiosks were at a premium, bookstores were mobbed with customers buying histories of the Middle East, the Koran, anything to help them comprehend. Low-flying helicopters circled overhead in a relentless patrol. American flags shot up by the minute. The largest one I’d ever seen was in the East Village draped outside the headquarters of the Hell’s Angels.
There was no sleep for me that night in my sons’ glassed-in apartment on the seventeenth floor, as I cowered in bed waiting for the explosion, the flash to finish us off. In the morning, my sons went out to work and I went out of my mind. All the news was propaganda transmitted by lunatics about other lunatics. Foaming and fomenting. Until I found a public radio station whose voices were resolved to analyze rather than revise history.
That it was still possible to hear points of view other than the bellicose refrains of the mainstream media, centred me and gave me the courage to go out on the street. The police, the National Guard, were visible everywhere—they, along with any uniformed security, even doormen, were being acknowledged with nods of gratitude by passersby.
In New York you have to look like you know where you’re going and look everywhere. Because they are street-wise, New Yorkers know when they can be friendly. Today they were kinder than ever—even on Orchard Street where a vendor pretended to be insulted because I wouldn’t buy a cellophane-wrapped shirt marked “seconds” unless he let me inspect it. He ripped the shirt out of my hands, but chastised meekly, “Lady, you don’t trust me, I don’t trust you.” At any other time he’d have hollered at me. But these days no one was hollering. Despite their tremendous exhaustion and edginess, or maybe because of it, almost everyone was patient and accommodating. Tender.
I ventured over to the Marian Goodman Gallery on 57th Street to see a show by German artist Gerhard Richter. If listening to the radio saved my sanity, looking at this work saved my soul. The paintings were neither black nor white, they were hues of grey, with no polarities, no dichotomies. Fields of colour free of dogma they allowed me space in which to contemplate and reflect, rather than to react.
Wandering through Chelsea galleries I kept hearing remarks about how depressed people were. If others found out I was Canadian t
hey’d comment on the great support Canada was giving the US war effort. And that we have the best navy in the world—what?? By late afternoon the atmosphere was slingshot taut, as the city braced itself for the counterattack. To be above ground was hair-raising but to descend underground required another act of faith. New York was rife with reports of anthrax attacks and nowhere was the risk greater than on the subway where it could be invisibly inhaled. The paranoia was palpable.
Now passengers were cringing because I happened to be the only one carrying a parcel and its contents could be deadly. What was in the bag that was scaring everyone so much was a book, The Joy of Cooking, which I’d just picked up for my father. After eighty-seven years, he’d finally run out of women to feed him and wanted me to teach him how to cook.
That evening I made an enormous roast chicken dinner, so that Noah and Daniel would have lots of leftovers for meals to come. During this fraught time, we’d kept casually vigilant about the whirl around us. We were seeking and giving each other reassurance that the crisis would soon pass. But before I left, I asked the kids to consider moving away from New York, though I anticipated correctly that they would see leaving as surrender and choose to stay in this great city. I can’t describe what it was like to say goodbye to my sons. They did not see me cry.
Returning to Montreal, I mentioned to another passenger I had gone through three security checks with the wrong date on my ticket. She said, “Nothing bothers me anymore. My husband was on the eighty-sixth floor of the WTC. He still can’t sleep but he’s in therapy. All I care about is that he’s alive.” We were rerouted because of a bomb scare at the border and everyone, including the armed guard, got involved in guessing which one of us was the plainclothes agent who we’d been informed would be on the train.
The only person who was detained at customs for questioning, because she had a set of tiny woodcarving knives for her work, turned out to be a neighbour of my friends Carole Itter and Al Neil in Vancouver. She told me she and her New York hosts had barely slept since Bush had declared war, they were petrified that the city was about to be attacked again. We both saw Canada as a bit of a haven.
Montreal was reeling from its own anthrax scares and feeling its proximity to New York. At a sidewalk café, a wooden box fell off a passing truck and we all leapt to our feet. But I could tell things were at least superficially back to normal a few weeks later when my father’s favourite radio station was again airing the debate about Quebec’s possible separation—the familiar “oui ou non” now a comforting litany.
Abe’s repertoire of dishes was expanding. I’d taught him a bit about food, but he’d also learned by osmosis from being around so many good cooks all his life. He was still driving, doing Tai Chi for seniors at a community centre, and taking Dahlia out of her dismal residence whenever possible.
During the stifling flight back to Vancouver I beam peaceful vibes out the window just in case the plane that might be escorting us thinks we’re hostile and decides to shoot us down. My seatmate and I compare tales of dealing with the massive line-ups and disorganization at the airport because of the heightened security checks. We laugh about the plastic knives we’re given with which to eat rubbery food we’re served.
He tells me that in Switzerland, where his son lives, this is Vacances de patates, a holiday which originated when kids had to stay out of school to help their parents harvest potatoes. That’s exactly what I intend to do when I arrive, dig up the potatoes I’d planted. My luxury to have a garden, I missed it so much.
Though I know we’re all vulnerable, the West Coast feels more removed from the fray and I wish my whole family were with me, here in my kitchen, where I could feed them. If September 11, 9/11, has mutated into 911, a state of perpetual emergency, it has also provided the opportunity for us to reaffirm what really matters.
On my hands and knees as I dig into the earth on the hunt for potatoes, I notice a lot of comings and goings next door, visitors dropping by with food and flowers. Finally the star appears with her adoring new parents. She is eight days old, the best sight I have seen in a long time, the most sustaining image.
A Naif’s Story
In the 1980s I worked at Octopus West, a wonderful used books store in the 2100 block of West 4th Avenue in Kitsilano. “Brownie” (P.R. Brown) and her partner, Juils Comeault, had bought it in the seventies from Bill Fletcher.
On my first day, when the other staff person went for a five-minute break, a customer came in to buy some paperbacks from the window. Their prices, 25, 35 and 50 cents, were clearly marked on their covers. So that’s what I charged. I soon discovered I had sold my co-worker’s private library of highly collectible pulp fiction, brought in for display purposes only, for next to nothing.
After Juils died, Brownie wanted to concentrate on Octopus East, her store on Commercial Drive, near where she lived with their baby, Rosie. When she decided to sell Octopus West, I wanted it. Brownie offered me a generous installment plan for the payments, and I bought the store in the fall of 1986 with Billy Little.
Billy, who died in 2009 on Hornby Island, had been a close friend of Juils and had also worked at Octopus. We changed the name to R & B Books because of our names, but we left it open to our customers to interpret what it meant. Rhythm and Blues, Reading and Books, were some of their guesses.
In December, just before the Christmas season, which every bookstore is very dependent on, a fire broke out in one of the apartments upstairs. Although smoke could be seen across the city I was alone in the store and had no idea the building was ablaze until a passerby came in to get me out.
The person upstairs was not so lucky. A pioneer recycler, Barry had piled masses of newspapers on top of what turned out to be a faulty extension cord, and he died in the fire. Another tenant became hysterical because her pet had been trapped. The next day’s front-page headline in the Vancouver Sun was all about how the firemen had saved the rabbit.
We salvaged the few books that weren’t completely waterlogged before the building was razed to the ground. Our insurance just covered the move to a tiny spot at 2742 West 4th Avenue, which was next to the Naam Restaurant, and in the same block as Ariel Books run by Margo Dunn.
Billy, who remained involved in the store for its first couple of years, suggested changing our name to R2B2 Books to signify our second time around, and even though we sold little science fiction the name stuck. Ours was a general bookstore, but the bulk of the stock was literature and poetry—new and used. We also carried small press books and hand-made treasures.
Poetry was as vital to my generation as music and films. In Montreal I’d loved to go to hear poets read in bookstores and at coffee houses. After I moved to Vancouver, I attended readings at Milton Acorn’s Advanced Mattress, and at Intermedia. There were great events curated by Trudy Rubenfeld at See Site, the photography workshop she ran with Rhoda Rosenfeld, both of whom were my oldest friends from Montreal. Over the years Mona Fertig’s Literary Storefront, the Western Front, Women in Print and Michael Turner at the Railway Club also hosted engaging series. Brownie and Juils held memorable readings at both their stores, as did Lisa Robertson at her bookstore, Proprioception. The Kootenay School of Writing continues to organize excellent literary events.
For me, hosting readings was part and parcel of having a bookstore, so I started a weekly series as soon as R & B Books opened in October 1986, and continued it after we became R2B2. Fine new writers were attracted to these events because of the other well-established writers from across Canada, the United States, Australia and Britain who also had read there. The audiences were extremely attentive, so it was a good place to try out new work.
Because of its size, worn carpets and comfortable chairs, R2B2 had the feel and intimacy of a living room. The readings were often so crowded, with people squeezed together sitting on the floor or pressed into tight corners, that on four separate occasions audience members fainted from lack of air. In each case, after the unfortunate person who had passed out was
revived, sometimes by ambulance attendants, the reading would resume.
For bpNichol, who read on a warm summer evening, we sat out back on a patch of grass behind the store. bp read by candle, star and moonlight. It was magic.
The dream is that you can sit and read endlessly in your own bookstore, but there was always work to be done. And, though there were days when there were more requests for the music tapes I played, which weren’t for sale, than the books, there was always someone around.
I developed many warm relationships with people who’d regularly wander in to look at books and to chat, and there were other lovely social occasions, such as when Roy Kiyooka dropped by and we’d talk and smoke. Browsers either inhaled or fled.
In the nineties the economy was very tight and a new sales tax on books didn’t help. I had no cushion to ride out the rough times and it became impossible to compete with the ever bigger stores who could offer ever bigger discounts. I made a sign that said “C’mon In. We’ve Raised Our Prices.” But I never did.
After I decided to pack it in, ten other small Vancouver bookstores also folded. All had been run by women. Mainly because of the reading series’ reputation, I was able to sell R2B2 in 1994 to Denise and Trent Hignell, who renamed it Black Sheep Books. They continued the readings for the next four years before they sold the store to George Koller, who ran it for another three years. The weekly series went on for fifteen years in all. It was fabulous and I miss it.
The events I hosted were free, but I sold beer at them, which helped pay the rent. After the readings, when lively literary discussions often turned into lively parties, it was easier to just give the beer away. My biggest pleasure as a bookseller was when someone found an out-of-print book they’d been searching for, or I turned someone on to a book I loved no matter how little it cost.