Love, Death & Rare Books

by Robert Hellenga

  “Eddie was your uncle?”

  “How many times do I got to tell you? You don’t believe me? Eddie took care of me. I was twenty-one when he bought this place. Eddie took care of me and I took care of him. We had a lot of good times in that house. Eddie bought that big restaurant stove in the kitchen and I did the cooking. We always had a dog. Big German shepherds, the German kind, not the American. Big Tony, Hootie, Lucky, Rosetta. That one was named after Raffaele Cutolo’s sister. Nothing was gonna get by those dogs. Rosetta—that was the last one—used to come in the sauna with us. Take a steam. Lie on her back and wave her paws in the air. If I hadn’t broke my hip… God damn it anyway. I’d still be living in that house, and you’d be … living somewhere else.”

  “I’ve got a dog now, a German shepherd–Lab mix.”

  “Yeah?” he said. “What are you doing right now?”

  “I’m on my way home.”

  “I’ll come with you,” he said. “I want to see this dog, and I want to see if the old place is still standing. Before a big storm washes it into the lake. Serve you right.”

  “Did you do anything to stabilize the bluff?”

  “You didn’t see the groins and vaults and those big things like giant pillows, full of cement? The seawall?”

  I nodded.

  “They don’t do much good,” he said. “Enjoy it while you can.”

  Booker greeted us at the door, and sniffed Augie’s shoes.

  Augie looked around. “Porcamadonna,” he said. “You could open a bookstore.” He leaned over to scratch Booker’s ears.

  By this time Saskia and Nadia, who’d come down several times to lie out on the beach, had helped me shift books. The house was still choked with books, but at least you could move around.

  We walked through the house together. Augie pointed out this and that. “It’s a Finnish house,” he said. “That why you got no closets. You still got our big wardrobes upstairs? I should’ve sold those separate. I should charge you for them. And for the sauna too. And for the stove.

  “Eddie set up a billiard room in the back,” he said. “Brunswick billiard table. Inlaid solid mahogany, steer horn diamond shape rail sights, custom cloth, matching cue rack. Three-cushion billiards, that’s all Eddie ever wanted to play. I never got the hang of it myself, though I tried hard enough. Eddie had to pay a couple of guys from Chicago to come down to play against him. Poker, though. That was another story. Big eight-sided poker table too, at the other end of the room. All gone now, but let’s take a look, I’ll show you.”

  The “billiard room” was at the back of the house. Or the front, depending. I opened the door.

  “What’s in the boxes?” he asked. “More fucking books? You read all these books?”

  “Most of them.” Not quite true, but not really false. I knew what they were.

  “Where you got that big table now, that’s where the poker table was. We used to clean up. Me and Eddie.” He stopped suddenly, and I realized how sad he was. But trying not to show it. We walked back to the living room. I’d opened the shutters and the room was filled with light.

  “Fucking books everywhere,” Augie said.

  Grandpa Chaz’s Americana were on a couple of Jefferson bookcases, covered with a sheet, in front of the windows that looked out on the lake. The library table in the living room was covered with books from my old room that I’d been sorting into small piles. Augie picked one up and opened it at random.

  - If there is a cat on the roof and if I stand in the garden and look toward the roof, then I will see something that I will take to be a cat.

  - I am standing in the garden and looking toward the roof.

  - I see something I take to be a cat.

  - Therefore, in all probability, a cat is on the roof.

  “Jesus Christ, what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Roderick Chisholm’s Theory of Knowledge. I wasn’t really prepared to defend Chisholm. “It’s about theories of knowledge.”

  “That’s what it says on the cover. It don’t look to me like this guy’s got a very good grip on reality. I see that you paid fifty cents for it. What’re you going to do, sell it for twenty bucks?”

  “If I can find someone who wants to pay twenty bucks for it. These are books I’m getting rid of. It’s yours if you want it.”

  “You know what you should do with it?” he said, not really a question. “Give it to the dog here. Booker. Good name. A dog likes to have something to think about.” He picked up another book. “This one’s got a little more heft to it.” He was holding a Bollingen edition of Plato’s Dialogues.

  “About two years ago,” I said, “I sold a copy of the first English translation of Plato for fifteen thousand dollars. One of the most important books in the Renaissance, in the Western world.”

  Augie looked up at me and then back at the book, which he’d opened. “The Apology. What’s he apologizing for? I knew a guy named Plato. Greek guy. Used to peddle plum tomatoes on the market—Benton Harbor—plum tomatoes and olives. Used to buy raw olives in Chicago and cure ’em himself. Pretty good too. Those big Greek olives, you know what I mean? Not my favorite, but pretty good. You planning to sell all these books?” He waved an arm at the books on the shelves.

  “A lot of these were our personal books,” I said. “Most of the books I need to sell are still on these bookcases or in boxes.”

  “Who’s gonna buy them?”

  “Collectors, dealers, libraries.”

  “Collectors?”

  “There are some high-end collectors right here in St. Anne—at least four. Ben Warren, Al Bernstein, Ed Janacek, Susan Reynolds, Carl Abrams. That’s five. These are good people. They tell you right up front what’s on their mind: they want the book, they buy it; they don’t want a book, they don’t. They want the book on approval. Okay. They pay right away. It’s always a pleasure to pass on something nice to them.”

  “Carl Abrams,” Augie said. “L’imprenditore negro? I remember when he bought the Compton Funeral Parlor. Some folks blamed the Comptons for selling, but I guess it worked out all right. He lives up in Benton Harbor, right?”

  “He collects books about death,” I said. “He bought a lot of Civil War books from us. That’s when they started embalming, you know. Get the bodies back to the families. Rival undertakers setting up shop right on the battlefields. His brother’s got three or four funeral homes in Chicago.”

  “Al Bernstein I know,” he said. “Got a place on the lake by Grand Mere. Used to hustle high-end bonds. Hunh.” He picked up another book: Intimacy: Sensitivity, Sex, and the Art of Love and started to read: “‘The authors explain the use of the bioloop—the recently developed method of controlling mentally what had previously been thought of as autonomous bodily functions.’ What the fuck. You’re telling me that Al Bernstein’s going to pay money for a book that’s going to tell him how to fuck? You must be thinking of a different Al Bernstein from the one I know. Well, maybe he’s too old now. Maybe that book would help, I don’t know.”

  “He’s moving to Israel.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “That goes with the books I’m throwing out. I don’t even know where it came from.”

  “Like hell you don’t.”

  “Here’s one you ought to like,” I said. “The Boy’s King Arthur. Worth about five hundred dollars. This one I’m keeping. My mother used to read it to me in an Italian translation: Re Arturo. I’ve got it somewhere.”

  “He wants five hundred dollars for a book about Re Arturo,” he said, addressing Booker, “and he wouldn’t give me a decent price for this beautiful house.” He examined the picture on the cover—two knights whaling on each other. “Yeah, I heard of The Boy’s King Arthur. Kind of like the South Brooklyn Boys, right?”

  “Kind of,” I said.

&n
bsp; Augie pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. Booker sat next to him so that Augie could scratch behind his ears. “But you know something? If I was you, I’d want to live life, not just read about it. Take someone like Eddie. Now Eddie knew how to live. And he had a high opinion of himself. Liked to put on a new silk shirt and admire himself in the mirror. We both did in the old days. And the women all liked him, even when they saw through him. We laid enough pipe to reach to Rio de Janeiro and back, and if I was you, I’d be doing the same thing. You got a woman?”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “How about that real estate broad? She’s a looker, but you want to be careful. Let me tell you a few things about her.”

  “I’m not sure I want to hear them.”

  “So, you got something going with her? I’ll keep my trap shut.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “And a couple other broads too, laying out on the beach with their tops undone.”

  “How do you know about that?” I asked.

  “I hear things.”

  “That was my old girlfriend’s daughter,” I said, “and her roommate from the University of Chicago.”

  He touched his cheek with his thumb and twisted his fist. “You should bring them over to The Dunes next time.”

  “They’re lesbians,” I said.

  “Too bad.” He shrugged. “What happened to your old girlfriend?”

  “She turned me down.”

  Augie nodded. “You know, Chicago’s full of women. If I was you… Eddie used to make a call and in about two hours a whole carload of women would show up. Chicago, Cicero, Cal City. I’d get the sauna cranked up, and by the time they’d get here, it would be ready to go. We’d hop in the sauna. You got to be careful, though. Take a shower first. Otherwise your skin can get funny. I guess the bacteria can go crazy in the heat. And no booze either—before the sauna, maybe one drink. But afterwards—nothing but the best. Canadian Club and ginger ale. That was Eddie’s drink. Me, I liked Scotch.” He looked around. “We didn’t need a book to teach us how to live.”

  “So, you’re not much of a reader?”

  “Never saw the need. I never saw nothing like this. What’s the good? What do you know from a book that I don’t know? Tell me one thing.”

  “I don’t know where to begin,” I said. ‘Take your idea of the good life. Drinking whiskey, laying enough pipe to reach to Rio de Janeiro. Most philosophers would say it’s a wasted life. Plato would say it’s like the life of an oyster, not a man.”

  Augie shook his head. “Yeah? Well, I’d rather go to bed with a woman than read a book about going to bed with a woman, I can tell you that. And I don’t think you can convince me different. You ever hear of an oyster fucking a woman? Or a man fucking an oyster?” He waited for the thought to sink in. I didn’t think so.” Another pause. “You want me to make a call?”

  “Who you going to call? A pimp in Chicago?”

  “Nah.” He looked out the window at the lake. “I don’t got the number anymore. I’m lucky if I get a hand job from one of the nurses out at The Dunes. I got to sit down.”

  “You want a cup of coffee?”

  “You got any whiskey?”

  “Beer and wine, that’s all I’ve got.”

  “I got a better idea. You know what we ought to do?”

  “What?”

  “Crank up the sauna.”

  “I don’t think that’s a very good idea. I doubt it’s working.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be working? I had the chimney cleaned every month. Creosote. You don’t want a fire. At first, Eddie didn’t know what to do with it. He was gonna use it to store the booze. But then a guy from the UP come down to take care of some business and showed us what to do. We cleared the booze out. You just got to be careful not to overheat it. I like it about a hundred and sixty degrees. That’s what you call ‘mellow’ heat. Eddie, he liked to crank it up higher. He could take the heat.”

  “Might be a bird in the chimney?”

  “You know something? You worry too much. There’s a screen over the top.”

  “It’s September, for Christ’s sake. Seventy degrees out. You don’t take a sauna when it’s seventy degrees outside.”

  “That’s a popular mistake.”

  “Look…” I was reluctant. I didn’t really want to see Augie naked, didn’t want Augie to see me naked. Didn’t want to sit next to him on a wooden bench moist and slick with steam. “You sure know how to work it?”

  “I did it for almost fifty years and then I kept doing it after Eddie passed in ’eighty-six—till I broke my hip and couldn’t live out here by myself. Me and Eddie used to sit out there. Colder than hell outside. Hotter than hell in the summer. Didn’t matter. And then with the women. You could get eight, ten people in there. A little tight, but that was okay. Good for my sciatica.”

  “In the sauna?”

  “The rocks there on top of the stove,” Augie said. “The Finnish guy trucked them all the way down here from up by Lake Superior. That was before Eddie bought the place. We used to take a steam at a place over in Benton Harbor—but then Eddie got somebody to show him how to work the sauna, and we never went back. You got an extra robe, or a big towel?’ The outside shower working okay? It’s got a special faucet so it don’t freeze. If not, there’s another shower in the stanza di fango. First we got to get some steam.”

  Augie was a little unsteady on his pins. Some old newspapers were stacked next to the woodstove in the sauna and some kindling in a bucket on the floor. “Crumple up those newspapers,” he said, “and add some of that kindling. Looks like there are a couple of those birch logs left. Not in the best shape. They’ll burn quick, but that’s okay.”

  It took half an hour for the rocks to heat up. We sat facing each other in two Windsor chairs in the living room. “You want to let it go full blast for about fifteen minutes. No more. Then you got to slow it down. Close the vent a little. Nice steady heat. Soft heat too.”

  We sat there in the living room. Augie was easy to talk to. Or rather to listen to. Like some women I knew, like the mother of my Polish girlfriend when I was in high school. Nonstop. It was like standing in the rain. It felt good.

  “Where did Eddie get his money?” I asked.

  “Here and there. He had a finger in a lot of pies. We had to lie low for a while.”

  “What I read in the papers,” I said, “was that a lot of people thought Joe Valachi was laying off a lot of his own crimes on Eddie.”

  “Valachi was a bullshitter, but that was okay by us as long as New York thought Eddie was dead. Eddie bought the house in ’forty-nine, Harry Truman was in the White House. Then the Kefauver Commission started poking its nose into everything. That’s why we had to lie low. Then later on there was more trouble with New York. They got long memories. Fifteen years later they send two guys to off Eddie, wearing top coats and fedoras. Dumb as stones.”

  “What happened?”

  “We sent ’em away. We let the dog out the back to come running around and distract them, and then Eddie sent them away. Then they sent two more, and Eddie sent them away too. Four guys, each one dumber than the last. What did they think, they could ring the doorbell and we’d invite ’em in for a shot of Canadian Club and a glass of ginger ale?

  “Eddie did some bootlegging too after he come back from New York. You know, all the fruit grows right here. Plus, the family still had the thirty acres of grapes up by Coloma. Making wine. Some guys got drowned in a vat… that’s why I don’t care for wine. Prohibition was good for Eddie, good for everybody. Capone had a place up by Berrien Springs where they made whiskey. They used to bring the fast boats right up the river. That was before my time. Sold the whiskey in Chicago, said it was from Canada. He had a big going-away party up at the Hotel Vincent.”

 
“You couldn’t have been very old?”

  “I was four years old, still living with my folks in Cicero. But Eddie, he told me all about it.”

  Augie took my arm. We left our robes in the house and walked together down the covered walkway that ran along the side of the house. Between house and garage. Booker declined to join us.

  Augie held on to me in the outside shower. He was all sagging skin, except for his buttocks. I was uncomfortable.

  “Now run some water into that bucket,” he said. “To throw on the stones.”

  The biggest stones were the size of softballs, or grapefruit. The big thermometer showed 130 degrees and rising. We sat for a while. It was hard to breathe at first, but then I started to get used to it and relaxed a little.

  “We’ll let it go full blast for about fifteen minutes,” he said. “No more. Then we’ll slow it down. Nice steady heat,” he said again.

  “My first sauna,” I said.

  “You’re supposed to say SOW-nah,” Augie said, “not SAW-na. Say it. Make the first part two sounds, like SAUerkraut. Ah-oo, ah-ooo.”

  I said it. “SOW-nah.”

  “One time there was these three girls from Calumet City. Beautiful. Just me and Eddie and these three girls… Talk about the good life.”

  The big thermometer was up to 140. Too hot for me.

  “You want to adjust the damper,” he said. “Just turn that little knob at the bottom to the right. And then throw some water on the stones, like I showed you. Just dip the ladle in the bucket. Not too much. About half. You get too much and it kills the steam.” I followed his instructions. “Now don’t this feel good?” he said. “They got a word for it—löyly. Say it: ‘loo-loo.’ Say it.”

  I said it: “Loo-loo.”

  “Like getting your rocks off, but maybe better. This Finnish guy from the UP, he said it a little different, but that’s as good as I can do. Loo-loo. Eddie asked him to say it over and over but we could never get it quite right. You know, people used to be born in the sauna. And they laid out the dead too. Not around here, but in Minnesota and the UP, up around Lake Superior, and in Finland too. All these logs were trucked down from the UP.”