A Novel Death

by Judi Culbertson

  That still left the puzzle of JRK. John Keats? No, I had seen the small stone house next to the Spanish steps in Rome where he died, and I was sure he had succumbed around 1823. Just a friend? Jane Rebecca? Jasmine Rachel? Perversely, I could not think of one notable turn-of-the-century woman with the initials J. R. K. Famous men were not plentiful either.

  Was I trying to make something from nothing? The odds were that the book was inscribed to a friend, not to anyone famous. The people I knew who signed books of poetry, Colin and his friends, were more than happy to write something memorable for any stranger who approached them with $12.95 for a volume the size of a brochure.

  Outside on the path to the parking garage, I realized that I had forgotten something crucial. This was not my book. All I was supposed to do was keep it safe for Margaret. Still, what could it hurt to figure out to whom the book had been inscribed?

  Back in the barn, I checked my e-mail and was happy to see that there were three new book sales. Two were quite modest, but the third was for a $55.00 copy of Tarzan the Terrible, complete with dust jacket. And there was a nice e-mail from a buyer in Pennsylvania telling me how thrilled her mother had been to receive the copy of Skippack School by Marguerite De Angeli.

  When I finished responding to the buyers, I logged into my Internet dealers' site, BookEm. I enjoyed reading the rants of other booksellers, whether about customers or each other. As cantankerous as members could be, there were bookmen and women in the group whose experience took my breath away. Most of what I knew about bookselling I had learned on this list. As with the Oracle, if you asked a stupid question, you would be held up to ridicule. On the other hand, members vied with each other to tell you what they knew.

  Again I ran through all the names I could think of beginning with J-James, Joshua, Jedadiah-but came up empty. Impulsively I clicked on the New Message icon, and then stopped. What was I doing? Wouldn't this advertise that I had something valuable-like Margaret's find? Yet as far as I knew, none of the Long Island dealers belonged to this list. They operated in parallel universes: selling to private collectors, issuing catalogs, auctioning books on eBay, running a brick-and-mortar shop. BookEm wasn't even the only site for Internet booksellers. My question was tangential to the book itself anyway. People asked questions like this every day. I just hoped that JRK was not a famous personality who every other bookseller would know instantly. In the headline, I put:

  QUERY: Identifying Inscription Initials

  Good morning,

  Can anyone identify these initials from an inscription: JRK?

  There is a connection with India ca. 1900.

  Thank you for your help!

  As soon as I sent the e-mail off, framed that way, I had a nagging feeling that I already knew the answer. But it stayed stubbornly beneath the surface.

  Reaching for a yellow-lined pad, I made a "To Do" list:

  1. Find out if local calls to your phone line can be traced.

  2. Drive around the area and look for houses under renovation where caller might be working.

  3. Call Marty and ask if he knows who the mystery seller is and if he thought Margaret was researching more than one book.

  But before I embarked on any of those activities I had to list some of my own books for sale.

  There were fewer orders than I had hoped that day, none from Barnes & Noble or Amazon. Things slow down in the summer, but it is odd: Whenever you upload twenty-five or thirty new titles, there is a jump in orders-but not necessarily for the newly listed books. It is as if a psychic spotlight has been turned on your entire collection, making people notice titles that have been languishing for months.

  On the other hand, online competition had increased even as the economy waned. As I climbed the stairs to the loft, I imagined myself wiping down tables at McDonald's. Yet better that than wiping little faces under Loretta's benign glare.

  When describing books became as onerous as writing book reports in fourth grade, I turned to my to-do list and decided to call Marty. I pulled his card from a collection in my small file box.

  Marty's was a real business card, the kind my brother-in-law Ben would approve of, with raised black printing on a cream surface. There were no cat photos or the perforated edges that came from making the cards yourself. The front was simplicity itself, with CAMPAGNA ARTS LTD in the center and Fine Paintings and Literature underneath. In the lower left-hand corner was a nod to his cesspool-business roots-We pay cash!-and in the right corner a phone number, a Web site, and an e-mail address.

  Knowing how Marty roamed Long Island, I figured I would have to leave a message. As I dialed, I wondered if his restlessness had been inherited from his inventive grandfather, and if his grandfather had been as scornful of wealth's trappings as Marty was. He usually looked as if he was about to crawl under his old Caddy and work on the brakes. When I first met him, the bridge of his black glasses had been repaired with duct tape.

  The call was picked up on the second ring. "Marty here"

  "Hi, this is Delhi Laine. I'm the-"

  "Right. Blondie. What's up? How's Margaret doing?"

  "Better. She's out of intensive care, thank God."

  "She say what happened?"

  I hesitated. "Not yet."

  "So what's up?" he repeated.

  "This guy, this kind of strange guy who's renovating a house, called me last week. About some books he'd found."

  "Oh, yeah. He was planning to take bids?" Marty gave a snort. "He hasn't got anything."

  "Who is he?"

  "I don't remember his last name. Shawn something."

  "He'd mentioned something about a children's book I might be interested in. But I didn't get his phone number."

  "I have it here somewhere. I don't even talk to people unless they give me their information first."

  My first mistake.

  After a moment he read the number off to me. "You're lucky you caught me at home."

  "Yeah. Thanks." But before he could hang up, I asked, "Was Margaret trying to research more than one book?"

  "Could be. Why?"

  "I'm trying to figure out why she and Amil were attacked. If there were several valuable books, it might have been worth somebody's while."

  "Didn't tell me anything." It was his usual dismissive tone.

  "Did you smell anything when you were in the bookstore?"

  "Only Howard."

  I laughed.

  When I hung up, I dialed the number Marty had given me and let it ring twelve times. Shawn was probably still at his day job, renovating houses-or stealing rare books. No answering machine came on. I checked for a reverse address at whitepages.com and got a No Match.

  Too restless to sit at my desk any longer, I decided to head out to the university library. I could check the Coles Reverse Directory there for better information. The real reason, which I barely admitted to myself, was to see if they had a biography of Helen Bannerman with a clue to JRK in the index.

  It was the kind of day outside that reminds people why they chose Long Island. A sky the Kodachrome blue of 1950s National Geographics, warm sunshine, and a breeze off the Sound to keep the air fresh. The dusky sweetness of a thousand flowers in bloom. And, as always, the tang of saltwater just out of view.

  I drove to the university with the windows down and parked at the edge of the campus near the LIRR station, and then walked on past athletic fields and brick dormitories. A number of students were playing tennis, and another group was tossing a Frisbee across the grass, teasing a small red setter by sluicing the yellow disk just over his head. The metal glint off a window frame reminded me of Detective Marselli's badge on my porch yesterday when he flipped the holder open, but I quickly pushed it aside. On this perfect day I didn't want to think about all the things I had seen in the bookshop. I especially didn't want to relive my terror when I thought he was about to catch me there.

  Climbing the wide library steps, I entered and hurried past the display cabinets to the Reference Room.
Another bookseller had taught me about Coles Reverse Directory. When a promising sale was listed in Newsday with the address, he used it to find the phone number and call for a preview. I needed the opposite now. For no real reason, I trusted Coles more than the Internet. There didn't seem to be the same level of responsibility online that there was from a published book.

  But today even Coles couldn't help me. Next to Shawn's number was NP for "not published." I wondered crossly why so many kids had unlisted phone numbers.

  But now that I was here... Helen Bannerman.

  I wasn't surprised to find that only one biography had been written about her. Unfortunately the library did not own it. The only thing they had was a booklet that was kept on reserve. Not just on reserve, but in a director's office. Not just in a director's office, but in a top-secret place. I had to sign for it and let them keep my driver's license as collateral.

  The broad-beamed young woman with the honey-colored braid to her waist eyed me sternly. "Which department did you say you are in?"

  "What department?"

  "You're not on the faculty?"

  "My husband is."

  She shook her head as if I were a panhandler trying to pass myself off as a charity.

  "The library isn't open to everyone?" I asked.

  "The library is, but-this material can't leave the room. And you can't photocopy it!"

  "What?"

  "Those are the rules." She held the booklet close to her heavy denim thigh as if one misstatement would forever forfeit my chances of even a glimpse.

  "Okay. Sure."

  She paused, as if trying to come up with another condition, and then reluctantly handed it to me. I sensed her vigilant eyes on my back as I carried the booklet to a library table. Sitting down, I took out a pen and notebook to prove I was a serious scholar.

  I saw immediately why Sambo was getting such restrictive treatment. Although the booklet had been published in 1976 by the Racism and Sexism Resource Center for Educators, it contained far more inflammatory images than Helen Bannerman's drawings. If photocopied, the illustrations could be enlarged and used in destructive ways.

  Two of the worst offenders were illustrators whose other work I admired. John R. Neill, who did the charming illustrations for the Wizard of Oz books, portrayed Sambo's mother as a three-hundredpound caricature in a polka-dotted apron and matching bandanna. Johnny Gruelle, best known for Raggedy Ann and Andy, put the family in minstrel blackface with exaggerated lips and eyes. There was even an unfortunate contrast of Helen Bannerman's drawing of Black Mumbo helping Sambo into his new jacket placed next to an illustration from her unfinished book, Little White Squibba, in which the child and her mother, standing in front of a mirror, looked like an illustration from Dick and Jane.

  Quickly I scanned the text. It corrected misinformation about the author's nationality. Helen Bannerman, nee Watson, was not English, but Scottish, and had lived in India with her physician husband between 1890 and 1917. In her thirties she gave birth to four children. It was for her two older daughters, not for publication, that she first created Little Black Sambo.

  But Sambo was an immediate success in London, and reached the United States in 1900, courtesy of the publisher Frederick Stokes. Once here, despite the copyright, it was treated as a folktale and fair game. Twenty-five different companies pounced on the story, each with their own illustrators. Sometimes the setting was Africa, sometimes the American South. Helen Bannerman's later books were largely ignored, though she caused a blip in 1936 with Sambo and the Twins. The twins, Little Black Woof and Little Black Moof, had been stolen by wicked monkeys and were rescued by Sambo and a friendly eagle.

  Up through the 1960s Little Black Sambo was highly recommended on children's literature lists: many educators felt that Sambo's heroism created a positive image for black children. Yet even in the 1940s, a few black librarians were wondering about a Black Mumbo who had been fattened up like a Macy's balloon and given a red polkadotted kerchief. Perhaps they also learned that Sambo had been a popular name for a doltish character in minstrel shows and that Black Jumbo's striped trousers were part of that traditional costume. The rationale that the story was set in India, not Africa, didn't appease them. It took place in "the Jungle," and who thought of India that way?

  But how could the Scottish daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman be familiar with American blackface? Someone suggested that Helen Bannerman had based her drawings on those from a German book, Der Struwwelpeter (Slovenly Peter), a moralistic tome more likely to be found in religious Scottish homes.

  One story had a "black-a-moor" with a green umbrella who is teased unmercifully by three young toughs. When they did not stop, they were snatched up by Saint Nicholas and doused in an inkstand. I caught my breath at the picture of the "black-a-moor" of 1846 striding with his umbrella, juxtaposed next to Sambo with his. The stiff-legged stride of both boys, their exaggerated features in profile, were too close to be an accident.

  Borrowing, to put it kindly-but why not? When you are making up stories for your own children, you pull in elements from everywhere; you aren't worried about charges of plagiarism. If it were true that Little Black Sambo had been intended as a way of keeping in touch with her daughters when they were sent back to school in Scotland, she might not have even realized what she was doing.

  But just as I was consoling myself with that thought, I imagined Bruce Adair's voice. "Really, Delhi, you can't fall for that old Victorian conceit. Do you really believe that Alice in Wonderland was written for one little girl or that Winnie-the-Pooh was intended only as a bedtime story for Christopher Robin?"

  Yet no matter what its conception really was, I saw how the illustrations, even the name Little Black Sambo, could cause problems for black children. Again, publishers responded. By 1970, there was a red-haired and freckled Little Black Sambo, with a slim white Mama in a leopard-skin sarong. Other versions sent him back to India. Looking at both the politically correct illustrations and the ones that made me cringe, I felt that the original pictures were intrinsic to the story. Better banned than whitewashed.

  When I turned the last page, I sat looking out the window at the leafy green campus. I was sure that this booklet would mysteriously "disappear" now that someone had shown an interest in it. I turned and saw that the moral guardian at the reference desk had been replaced by a Chinese student. But it didn't matter. I would never join the community of book thieves. Besides, I needed my driver's license back.

  With a smile I returned Little Black Sambo, A Closer Look to the reference desk. "Make sure Brunhilda sees that it's back," I said.

  Expecting puzzlement, I was gratified when he laughed.

  But I still did not know who JRK was.

  When I got back to the barn, I found out.

  Clicking on my e-mail icon, I found I had thirteen new messages. Five of them had the heading QUERY: Identifying Inscription Initials.

  I opened the first, from a bookseller in Minnesota.

  Hi Delhi,

  Though I can think of several writers with those initials, with the date you suggest the most likely is Rudyard Kipling. Although he never used it, his first name was Joseph. Hence: JRK.

  Of course! I stared at the screen, quickly checking whether he had sent the message just to me. No. He had cc'd the entire BookEm list. And why not? It is more gratifying to have your expertise acknowledged by many. Yet nobody jeered at my ignorance. There were four similar messages, one also mentioning the remote possibility that it might be a John R. Kippax, best known for his book Churchyard Literature: A Choice Collection of American Epitaphs, which was published in London in 1877. Another added, If you have Ruddy's monogrammed handkerchief, don't dry clean!

  Ha. But the implication that his initials could be found on something I owned bothered me. Rudyard Kipling! Kipling had his own devout following. Lawrence Block may have exaggerated their fanaticism in The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling, but I knew there was an army of them out there. And this was
a book that he had actually touched, one that had been inscribed to him.

  Maybe. No wonder Margaret had been trying to research the book. She would have known the significance of the initials immediately. Had she had a chance to find out if Rudyard Kipling and Helen Bannerman had been friends? It should be easy enough to check their biographies. I reminded myself again that it was Margaret's book, not mine. But that didn't mean I couldn't find out about it.

  I sent thank-you messages to the people who had responded and was about to leave the barn to nuke a Lean Cuisine pizza for dinner when the phone rang.

  "Secondhand Prose!"

  "Delhi? It's Jack Hemingway. I left a message earlier for you." The voice rolled on richly, leaving me no time to wonder why he had called. "I've been thinking about the Charlie Chan. I didn't mean to grab it from you; it was an automatic reflex. A bad one. As my wife often tells me, I can be a boor. It fit in with an article I was writing and I didn't think. But of course you can have it."

  So it wasn't worth as much as he had thought, my inner cynic pointed out.

  "No, that's okay," I said. "It's not in my area, and it was one you really wanted."

  "Well ..." He allowed that that might be so, but that he was still willing to sacrifice it for me. "I'd love to see your books sometime. I bet you have some interesting stuff!"

  "Actually, you can go to my website on AbeBooks or Alibris and check my listings. Just type in Secondhand Prose under Sellers"