Love, Death & Rare Books

by Robert Hellenga

  I’d picked up the Audubon at the Barstow sale in Philadelphia—Helen Barstow’s inventory had been auctioned off at Freeman’s—not the double elephant folio that sold for $11.5 million at Christie’s in December, but a later seven-volume octavo edition, which actually had more prints. I hadn’t intended to buy anything, but it was a way of paying my respects to our old friend Helen, and we’d made a nice profit on it.

  Dad managed to pour himself another couple fingers of Scotch. The whiskey was fueling his rant. “Book collecting isn’t a hobby—like collecting Hummel figurines; and it’s not an investment—like putting together your portfolio. Our vocation isn’t to locate high-spot books for dot-com millionaires. It’s to help collectors put together in-depth collections that mean something to them, and to other people too—Al Bernstein’s holocaust books for children, Ben Warren’s rivers collection, Parker Abrams’s African-American books and pamphlets, your grandfather’s early Americana and all the books about the Midwest that he bought for the special collections at St. Anne: the Great Lakes, the Civil War, Lincoln, Chicago, the Great Migration, the Haymarket Riot, Detroit, the Mississippi River Valley, the Wisconsin Glacier. Now the high-spot collectors and the new investors are driving the prices out of sight.”

  “So what do you think we should do?”

  “I’ll tell you what you should do. Send your grandfather’s Americana to Swann’s—it’s the only auction house that’s a member of the ABAA. The others don’t want to be bothered with a code of ethics. Send the rest to Cohn and Son. Marcus can sell them for you on commission. At least you know he won’t cheat you. Then you’ll have a healthy income stream. Marry Olivia, for Christ’s sake; cocker up your genius and live free; sell this place and go to the south of France, or Italy—a rooftop apartment in the middle of Rome, by the Campo dei Fiori. Like your mother. Or buy a little villa in Tuscany or in the south of France. Some olive trees. A little vineyard. Make your own olive oil, your own wine. Live your life, don’t just read about it.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” I said, “but I never expected to hear it from you!”

  “I need to lie down,” he said, and turned over on his side.

  “Marry Olivia?”

  I walked over to Borders on Fifty-Third Street to see Olivia because I didn’t know what else to do. It was February, but I hadn't worn a coat.

  By this time—five years after she’d moved back to Hyde Park—writing had appeared on her wall too. Borders had outsourced its online business to Amazon back in 2001 and was struggling to get it back, struggling to break free from Amazon and establish its own online presence with a new interactive browser window featuring “The Magic Shelf.” But it was an uphill struggle, and Borders, which had posted a $187 million loss in 2008, was hoping for an extension on a loan from a hedge fund company—Pershing Square Capital Management—that had invested heavily in Borders stock, which was now at an all-time low.

  Olivia looked up when I walked into her office. “Livy,” I said, “we’re going to have to close the shop,” and saying those words brought me to tears. It was embarrassing, but I didn’t care. I picked up a large yellow paper clip from her desk and bent it out of shape. I was aware that this kind of vulnerability brings out tenderness in women. In some women. But there was nothing I could do about it.

  “Oh, Gabe,” she said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. For your dad especially.”

  “He’s blaming the Zeitgeist. He’s been reading The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in a Digital Age.”

  “Amazon’s come out with a second-generation Kindle.”

  “Depressing. Do you think the printed book stands a chance?”

  “I hope so. But I sit in front of a computer screen all day long. The Internet is only a click away. The e-mails keep pouring in. No thought goes unexpressed. There’s always something else I should be doing—like cutting another staff person—and doing it faster. I need to get away from that. I need to slow down and read a book.”

  “What are you reading now?” I asked.

  “I’m seeing through other eyes,” she said. “It’s not like anything.” The phone rang. She answered it, asked the caller to hold, and covered the mouthpiece. “Hemingway’s Garden of Eden. I gave your dad a copy. You should read it too.”

  “I thought you disapproved of Hemingway.”

  “This is different, Gabe. This isn’t your grandfather’s Hemingway. This is like—No, listen,” she said (to me). “I’ll bring some supper over later. I’ll pick up something at the Medici.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said, but she pointed at the phone in her hand and waved me away, flicking her fingers toward the door. I walked home. It was February, very cold. I hugged myself to keep warm.

  Dad perked up when Olivia arrived that evening with three Styrofoam containers of spinach lasagna in a large heavy-duty paper sack. I was glad to see this sign of life. Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward was folded around his thumb, but there was another book open on the bed—an Armed Services Edition of Tortilla Flat. Olivia noticed. “Is that your backup?”

  “It’s like drugs,” Dad said. “You’ve got your downers and your uppers, your amphetamines and your opioids.”

  “You shouldn’t be mixing downers and uppers.”

  “Pfuck it.”

  The smell of the spinach lasagna was starting to fill the room.

  “If I have one more drink,” Dad said, “I’ll ask you to marry my son.”

  “Da-ad.”

  “He’s pfifty years old. You must be pforty-pfive, pforty-six. Pfuck these pfricatives. God damn it anyway.”

  “It’s okay. It’s nicer to say ‘Pfuck’ than ‘fuck.’”

  “Pfuck it. I’m serious.”

  “Would you like it if I said ‘fuck’ or ‘pfuck’ all the time? No. And I think Gabe can look after himself.”

  “You mean his little guitar teacher can look after him? Athena? What’s her name?”

  “Atene Oikonomides,” I said. “I haven’t had a lesson in over a year.”

  “Some goddess of wisdom. What did she teach you every week? Besides pfucking?”

  “Dad, please, you’ve had too much whiskey on an empty stomach. We’d better eat something.”

  “What’s the matter with you two? Is this some kind of pfucking comedy where the audience can see what’s what but the lovers can’t? Benedict and Beatrice?”

  “Dad, enough.”

  “Mr. Johnson.” Olivia sat down on the edge of the bed. “Read my lips. Watch how I do this and do what I do. Close your lips and say ‘puck.’”

  “What the—” But he did it. “Puck.”

  “Now keep your lips apart. Put your bottom lip up against your top teeth. Keep your top lip up. Open your mouth a little. Touch your lower lip to your front teeth.”

  Olivia was the only one who could get away with this.

  “Now let your breath out: fuh fuh fuh.”

  “Pfuh pfuh pfuh.”

  “No, keep your lips apart. Fuh fuh fuh. Hold your tongue back.”

  Dad laughed. “Pfuck pfuck pfuck. God damn it anyway.”

  Olivia took hold of his upper lip with her finger and thumb and pulled it up. “Now try it.”

  I had to look away. It was too intimate, the sort of thing that should be done in private. But I could hear Dad saying “Fuck fuck fuck.” And Olivia asking, “How does that make you feel?”

  “Better,” he said. “Now let me ask you something: why don’t you marry my son?”

  “I don’t think Gabe wants to invite disaster into his life. Besides, I haven’t got time.”

  “Livy, you were never a disaster. Besides, you’re getting older. You look good, but you’ve got some miles on your face. Living all alone in that condo over on Hyde Park Boulevard all by yourself since you came back from Ann
Arbor. I hope your aunt left you some money when she died.”

  “My daughter lives with me.”

  “When she’s not in the dorm. You know she still comes into the shop. I see her studying her Arabic on the third floor. Hard to believe. She’s reading bits of the Koran. We become different people when we read, you know.”

  “It’s very difficult,” she said.

  “Are you religious at all?” Dad asked. “I think you are.”

  “Do you want me to say a prayer for you? I’ll do it, you know.”

  “That sounds like a threat,” Dad said. I could see that he was a little embarrassed. “The lasagna’s getting cold,” he said.

  “I’ll get some plates and silverware,” I said. “And glasses and a bottle of wine.”

  Olivia went down to the kitchen with me.

  “Tortilla Flat,” she said, using two hands to hold on to three plates and three Duralex glasses. “That’s one of the worst books I’ve ever read.”

  I laughed. “You just don’t appreciate its mythic qualities.”

  And then she laughed. “He’s just overwhelmed right now,” she said.

  “Me too,” I said.

  Back in Dad’s bedroom, we dug into the spinach lasagna, which was delicious. How could they make spinach taste so good? It was good, really good, but it wasn’t good enough to wash the taste of shame and humiliation out of my mouth. I couldn’t imagine Fifty-Seventh Street without Chas. Johnson & Son, Ltd. Antiquarian Booksellers.

  Dad wanted a poem. He’d been memorizing poems so he could say them to himself on his death bed. “‘The Bishop Orders His Tomb,’” he said. “That’s what I want.”

  He had a nice edition of Browning’s Dramatic Personae (Chatto & Windus) next to the bed, bound in full tan morocco, but he wanted me to read it in a different edition, the edition he’d read as a boy. He wasn’t sure of the title, but it had “Suitable for boys and girls” on the title page, which he found amusing. Grandpa Chaz had given it to him, and he’d given it to me, and I found it amusing too. It was in my room next to a Dover Thrift edition of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon and Robert Browning’s Shorter Poems, edited by Franklin T. Baker.

  I went to look. When I came back into the room, they were working on fricatives. Dad pulled his tongue away from Olivia’s finger and thumb and asked me to fix us drinks.

  “Bourbon or Scotch?”

  “Surprise us.”

  I went to the kitchen and brought up three Waterford tumblers, Donegal pattern, and our last bottle of Balvenie 10, though I thought there was still another bottle at the shop.

  I poured him two fingers and two fingers for Olivia and two for myself. I fluffed the pillow behind his head and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Read it with a Southern accent,” he said, flipping through the pages, so I knew he was in the mood for a laugh. He handed me the book.

  “How about faux French?” I protested.

  He shook his head.

  Olivia took the book out of my hands. She looked it over for about a minute and then began to read: “Draw raoun ma bay-ed, iz Anzelm keep’n’ back?”

  Dad nodded his approval, and she went on.

  “Nefiuz, sunz mahan, ah Gahd, I know naht.

  Whale, she main wudd have t’ be yer mother wonzt…”

  The bishop can’t trust his sons to build the magnificent tomb he wants. He threatens to leave everything to the Pope, but he can’t trust the Pope either. Dad closed his eyes. When Olivia got to the line about horses and brown Greek manuscripts and mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs, he still had his eyes closed and I thought he might be asleep, or maybe dead, but he was smiling. She kept on reading.

  When she came to the end—“Az stee-ul he envied me, so fay-er she wuz”—he struggled to sit up. “Most people think the bishop had it all wrong,” he said. “But I think he got it just right. He never gave in to the shadowy world of spirit.”

  Dad was exhausted. He lay back down. I was glad to see him hanging on, like the bishop, rather than letting go. I sat there for a while, trying to think about what I could say. I thought Dad had gotten it right too, and I was looking for the right words to tell him, I couldn’t do better than the bishop.

  “Is there any more of that Scotch?” Dad asked. “You know, they’re not making Balvenie 10 anymore. It’s going to be Balvenie 12 from here on out.”

  “Just a tick,” I said. I poured another finger.

  “What do you think I should have on my tombstone? he asked. “‘Of the making of books there is no end’?”

  “How about ‘My soul is an enchanted boat’?” Olivia suggested.

  Dad looked at her to make sure she was joking. I handed him the tumbler and he swirled the whiskey around and we admired the way the Waterford picked up the light.

  “Let me see the book.” Olivia handed him the book. He turned the book over in his hands. “Spine a little darkened and faded in places,” he said. “Corners square but rubbed through. Front internal hinge cracked. Binding somewhat loose. Some foxing throughout.” He looked up as if he’d surprised himself. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s what I want on my tombstone.”

  “Congratulations,” Olivia said. “You’re getting your fricatives right.”

  “Now I’ve got to pee again,” he said, “and then I’m going to sleep. I’d sleep better if you two would get married.”

  “Good night, Dad,” I said.

  Why didn’t Olivia and I get married? Marriage would have made a lot of sense. I was forty-nine years old, Olivia was forty-six. Olivia had been divorced for two years. Atene had accepted a teaching position at the Manhattan School of Music in New York and had left already.

  I think we didn’t get married because we’d congealed, we’d become who we were going to be. If you’d seen us drinking coffee in the Medici, you would have taken us for a divorced couple talking about the book trade, or about the Internet, or about a letter from Atene, inviting me to come to a program of Renaissance music at the school in New York, or about the latest book fair; or about David’s new book—A Symptomatic Reading of Wordsworth’s Prelude—or about the new priest at St. Paul and the Redeemer, or about Saskia, whose childhood had come to an end and who had switched from French to Arabic because she was in love with her roommate at the University of Chicago—Nadia, who was from Jordan—or about the books we’d been buying and selling and even reading, or talking quietly, as if we were making decisions about the kids, about money, about things in general. If you’d been sitting in the next booth, you might have heard us discussing problems in the book Olivia was writing about literary experience: The Varieties of Literary Experience. “Profound ideas are a dime a dozen,” she liked to say. “If you’re looking for profound ideas, go to the sympathy card section at Walgreens.”

  We walked down Blackstone, past Poop Corner Number One, and then over to her condo on Cornell. We said good night on her doorstep and I kissed her on the cheek. Dad was asleep when I got home.

  X. BLESSED IS THE TRUE JUDGE

  Mr. Patterson’s advice was still on the table when Dad died in his sleep in the middle of July. Nothing had been decided, no course charted, the ship was dead in the water, waiting for a freshening breeze.

  Instead of a eulogy at the funeral, there was a poetry reading—some of the poems that Dad had memorized so that he could always have them on the tip of his tongue when he needed them—but at the end, Marcus, who’d flown in from New York in the morning, stood up and said a few words about how much Dad had meant to him when he was an undergraduate at the U of C, working at the shop. Dad had been a second father. And then he said something in Hebrew that I didn’t understand but that some people did, because they repeated it: Baruch dayan emet.

  That evening Olivia asked Marcus about it: “What was it you said at the funeral?” Six of us were c
rowded into a booth at the Medici—Olivia between Marcus and me on one side, Delilah, Saskia, and Nadia, Saskia’s roommate, on the other.

  “Baruch dayan emet—Blessed is the true judge.”

  “Which means?”

  “Even when it comes to death, we need to bless the true judge.”

  “I think it’s a way of acknowledging that death is beyond our understanding,” Olivia said. “We need to accept whatever God gives us.” She looked around the table as if she expected someone—me—to challenge her, but our pizzas arrived and we were hungry and we opened the second bottle of wine that we’d brought from the house, since the Medici didn’t have a liquor license.

  That night Marcus and I drank the last of Dad’s Balvenie 10 in the rare book room at the shop, surrounded by beautiful books. “Infinite riches in a little room,” he said.

  I’d gone to New York to be with Marcus, right after 9/11. Marcus’s wife had taken the kids up to Rhinebeck to stay with her folks, and Marcus and I were sleeping in the shop. We’d gone to the Caplan sale at Christie’s in Rockefeller Center and had seen a Shakespeare First Folio—the one Olivia and I had once seen displayed in the Fellows’ Lounge at the Newberry Library—knocked down for a record $5.6 million (plus the buyer’s premium, which put it over $6 million) to an anonymous telephone bidder. Arnold Perlberg, who’d sold me our copy of Montaigne’s Essais at the Boston Fair in 1995, was the underbidder. A beautiful copy of Blake’s Songs of Innocence brought over $600,000; $358,000 for a copy of Newton’s Principia; over $200,000 for Isaac Walton’s Compleat Angler.