Love, Death & Rare Books

by Robert Hellenga

“I feel like I’m already there, in the Holy Land.”

  Booker stopped to say hello on his way down to the beach, where he was joined by Whitefoot and Barley. They ran back and forth along the edge of the water, they chased each other in circles and jumped over each other, and then Booker herded them into the trees.

  “It’s like Wordsworth,” I said. “‘Our souls catch sight of that inland sea… and see the dogs sporting on the shore.’”

  She laughed. “It’s ‘immortal sea,’” she corrected me: “‘Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea.’”

  “I like ‘inland sea,’” I said.

  “Another sailboat,” she said, raising an arm to point. “Do you still know how to sail?”

  “It’s been years,” I said. “But maybe it’s like riding a bicycle. I looked at some sailboats when I moved down here.”

  “I think you should get one. Carla and Adam are sailors. They could help you pick out a boat. You could go out together. Maybe we could all go together.”

  “We could charter a sailboat,” I said. “They’ve got two-hour charters throughout the day. And there’s a sunset cruise.”

  “I could drink another cappuccino,” she said. “Are you allowed to have two in one hour, or do the Italians have a rule against that, like not having a cappuccino in the afternoon?”

  “You can have whatever you want,” I said.

  “You’d make an excellent barista,” she said. “Why don’t you bring up the paper so I can look at the schedule for day cruises? I think an hour would be my limit.”

  The next morning I explained the previous day’s mysteries. “Ore is stuff from which you can extract metal. The ship was the Calumet, and it was huge, longer than two football fields, but it wasn’t an ore boat. It could haul more than a thousand semi-trucks. It had picked up a mixture of limestone and dirt in Marblehead, Ohio, unloaded half of it in Marysville, Michigan, and the other half in Sarnia, Ontario. It picked up limestone in Meldrum Bay, Ontario, and took it to Grand Haven, which is not that far away. Fifty miles. It unloaded the limestone at a power plant and then went to South Chicago to pick up a load of coal. It was on its way to South Chicago when we saw it yesterday. It’s going to unload the coal today in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and then load limestone at Port Inland, Michigan. And then take the limestone to South Chicago and pick up another load of coal.”

  “And how do you know this?”

  “I asked Jack Donnelly, the harbor master. He likes to keep an eye on things.”

  “See,” she said, “not so mysterious after all.”

  I also explained the second mystery: “When you’re on the high seas,” I said, “the captain’s the boss. His word is law. But when you’re entering or leaving a port—or a river—the local pilot takes over. There’s also a docking pilot, who directs the tugboats, and then a harbor pilot, who takes the ship out to open water.”

  “But what about taking a man off the ship and putting another up on board?”

  “Here’s what happened—at least I think it’s what happened—when I came back from Italy on a student ship one time. When the ship left the harbor in Genoa, the pilot was in charge. Then a boat brought the captain out to the ship. So the captain got on board and then the boat took the pilot back to the pilot house. Then in New York the pilot boat brought the pilot out to the ship and picked up the captain and took the captain back to the pier, and the pilot brought the ship into port.”

  “Another mystery solved.”

  We’d gotten up early. Booker didn’t join us till shortly after first light. I gave him his breakfast and he went out to join Whitefoot and Barley on the beach.

  “I want you to tell me something you’ve never told me before,” Olivia said. I thought that what she really meant was that she had something she wanted to tell me.

  I thought for a minute. “I got a letter from my mother after Dad’s death,” I said. “After the shop closed.”

  “Gabe. You didn’t! What did she say?”

  “Not a lot. She was sorry to hear that Dad had died and that the shop had closed. She said she was happy. The funny thing was, she said she was living in Florence, not Rome. But she didn’t explain.”

  “Did you answer it?”

  “No. I was still angry. How could she leave us like that? And not a word of apology in the letter.”

  “Calm down, Gabe. It’s all right. It doesn’t matter now. But you have to answer it. You have to.”

  “You’re right, and it doesn’t matter that David invited his first wife to come and live with you, and it doesn’t matter that he’s got another wife now.”

  “You’re right, Gabe. It doesn’t matter. But I want to see the letter, the one she wrote.”

  “It’s in Italian.”

  “You can read it to me in Italian, and then translate it.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “I want to see it, and I want to look at the mystical experience questionnaire David sent.”

  “Do you want to try the psilocybin?”

  “Just the questionnaire. It’s in my e-mail somewhere, but I think he copied it to you too. Isn’t that what you said? We could take it together.”

  “You have to look at it online, on a website. They’ve fixed it so you can’t print it out.”

  “We can bring out my laptop and we can look at it together. It might be fun. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Look,” I said. “Two sailboats. Do you suppose they’re the ones we saw yesterday? They each have two sails, but they aren’t quite the same. One of them has two masts. That makes it a ketch.”

  She held out her hand for the binoculars, but she couldn’t hold them steady enough to see the boats. “The geraniums keep getting in the way,” she said.

  “I think the other one’s a sloop,” I said. “But it’s hard to tell.”

  We watched till they disappeared over the horizon. “They must be going somewhere, Michigan City, or Chicago. That’s how you can tell the earth is round. Ships disappear over the horizon.” I put the binoculars down on the little table. “What about you?” I asked. “Do you ever wish you’d learned to sail?”

  “I am learning to sail. I’m sailing right now.” And then she said, “Did you look for your mother when you were in Italy?”

  “I was in Rome most of the time, living with Franco Arnulfo and his wife, who had a big shop on Via Condotti. It was Dad’s idea. I could polish my Italian and apprentice with the ‘dean’ of Italian antiquarian rare book dealers. I always looked for Mamma on the streets, and I went to the Ufficio Anagrafe but she wasn’t listed as ‘Johnson’ or ‘Bennison.’ That was her maiden name.”

  “What was the name of the man she ran off with?”

  “Rossi. Do you have any idea how many Rossis there are in Rome? Thousands.”

  We sat for a while, watching the sailboats till the dogs finished up their games and the beach began to fill up with summer children and their mothers or baby sitters, and Booker appeared on the balcony. He sat next to Olivia, who fed him some treats that she kept in an old pill container, and we were joined by Saskia, who was going down to the beach for her morning swim.

  “Have you guys reached any conclusions?” she asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Do you think you will?”

  “I’m sure we’ll come up with something.”

  “How about Brentuximab Vedotin?”

  “Give it a rest, Sasky.”

  On our third morning, Olivia said she’d had a dream about my mother. She, my mother, had come into our bedroom and was sitting on the edge of the bed.

  “How did she look?” I asked.

  “She looked good,” Olivia said. “Beautiful.”

  “She was beautiful. And smart too, and she had a charming accent.”

&nb
sp; “Did she say anything?”

  “She said something that sounded like what you said after we had our premarital conference: sani e salvi, something like that.”

  “Sani e salvi,” I said. “We made it through safe and sound.”

  “I want to see the letter. I want you to read it to me this morning.”

  The letter was in a box on a shelf in my study, a big orange and black box marked letters, big enough to hold legal-size paper. It was filed under M. It was a light green aereogramma with three decorative edges.

  I showed it to Olivia. “Caro Gabriele,” she looked it over before handing it to me. I read it in Italian, and then I translated it.

  31 agosto 2009

  Caro Gabriele—

  I was sorry to learn that your father died, and that you had to close the shop. I heard about it from the book dealer in Piazza Santa Trinità—Sig. Ungaretti—where I sometimes stop to chat and to smell the old books. It’s always very sad when an old bookshop has to close. It’s happening here too.

  I never thought I’d be living up north. We have a lovely apartment on Via Fiesolana, right in the center, but I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the food. They don’t put salt in the bread, you know, but there’s a Roman bakery in Piazza Ciompi where you can get pane salato, and a trattoria on Via Verdi where you can get carciofi alla giudia and spaghetti cacio e pepe, like I used to make for you.

  I don’t want you to worry about me. I’m Piccarda, not St. Teresa. Any more happiness would be wasted on me. The only thing that might make me happier would be a letter from you.

  —Mamma

  As I was reading the letter, I could picture my mother sitting on the edge of my bed the night before she left, and I could hear her voice too, “Mi trovo un po’ in difficoltà.” I find myself in a little trouble.

  “Have you answered the letter?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know how she can be so happy after what she did. Besides, I didn’t know what to say. I meant to write, but I kept putting it off, and after a while …”

  “I’m happy,” Olivia said. “After what I did.”

  “You didn’t abandon your husband and your son.”

  “No,” she said. “But listen, Gabe.” She stopped and took a deep breath. “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone, not even David.” She paused for breath.

  “You already told me. About giving David the 1820 Keats I gave you for Christmas.”

  “Something else.”

  “I’m bracing myself,” I said.

  “I’m the one who called David’s wife and told her about our affair.”

  “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you. Why did you do that?”

  “Because I was in love. I thought I could explain it to her. I thought when I explained it, she’d step aside. But she wouldn’t listen. She went crazy. I caused a lot of pain, Gabe. And then when they got back together, I thought I was off the hook.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  She shook her head. “It never goes away, and now it’s part of who I am. If I were an alcoholic in a twelve-step program, I’d still have to make amends, wouldn’t I? Isn’t that one of the steps? But I wouldn’t know how to do it.”

  “And you’re okay now?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You weren’t okay when you got back from that retreat.”

  “That’s because I didn’t understand what was happening when I was there. We had to be quiet all the time; we couldn’t talk to anyone, not even at meals. I’ve never been so lonely, so frightened.”

  “What was happening?”

  “I was learning to turn towards the dark, toward the sharp edge, instead of backing away from it.”

  “And you’re happy now?” I said.

  “I’m happy now,” she said. “I’m happy because you’re here with me and because we’re being carried by great winds across the sky. Remember when we saw that painted on the side of a VW van, on the Outer Drive?”

  “I was with Dad when that happened,” I said. “We were on Stony Island, not the Outer Drive.”

  “Well,” she said. “You must have told me about it. And I need to lie down now.”

  When I got to the shop that morning, a man was waiting for me. I was expecting a collector from Indianapolis who wanted to look at our copy of Tortilla Flat—not the ASE copy that had been on Dad’s bed when Olivia brought over the spinach lasagna from the Medici—but a signed first edition, first printing—Covici Friede Publishers, New York, 1935, in fine condition with the original dust jacket, also in fine condition.

  But it was David. We’d never met. But I knew right away who it was. He looked like me. Brown hair a little too long, jeans, retro glasses in metal frames, sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

  “I had to come,” he said.

  “I see,” I said. And I did see, though I wasn’t exactly pleased.

  “I brought some psilocybin,” he said. “I know you didn’t ask for it, but it could be important. It’s LSD, but much safer. Used by Native Americans. It would be good for you too. I could walk you both through it.”

  “Haven’t we been through this already?”

  “I’m not leaving till I talk to her.”

  “I can’t leave the shop now,” I said. “I’m expecting a man from Indianapolis.”

  “I know how to get to the house,” he said. “I looked it up on the Internet. I brought capsules,” he said. “Easier than chopping them up and putting them in your tea. As long as she can swallow.”

  And something snapped. No, “snapped” is the wrong word. More like “let go.” Like a downrigger releasing the lead weight when a fish strikes. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be home early afternoon.”

  The man from Indianapolis showed up an hour later. He already had a first edition of Tortilla Flat, but his wasn’t signed and didn’t have a dust jacket. He had an interesting list of books he wanted to trade for our signed copy, which I’d priced at seven thousand, but he didn’t have the books with him, and I told him I’d have to see the books myself. Or I’d send Adam, who was going to an estate sale in Indianapolis at the end of October, after the Michigan Book and Paper Show in Lansing. I introduced him to Adam, and then I sat alone in my office and wondered about the truth about love as I imagined David and Olivia together in our bedroom.

  Where was Montaigne when I needed him? Probably snoozing on the sofa up in my study. I sat alone in my office for a while and then drove home.

  The trees had turned Pier Road into a dark green tunnel, but I could see Saskia, sitting on the lowest limb of the copper beech tree where Pier Road became our driveway, her back against the trunk. She was chewing on a lock of her own hair and didn’t wave. She’d inherited her mother’s high cheekbones and wide mouth and long fingers, which were gripping her knees, and I realized that she was twenty-two, the age the age Olivia had been when we set up the Orwell exhibit. Like Olivia, she’d always been so sure of herself, but she wasn’t sure of herself now. I saw her as a tiny baby, five minutes old, and my arms remembered how heavy she’d been, dense. I saw her as she had been when she came into the shop on Fifty-Seventh Street to do her homework—fifteen years old, just starting to develop a secret inner life—and I saw her as she was now, perched in a tree like a wild bird, and I saw her as I hoped she would be in the future. Happy, confident, unafraid. But she wasn’t happy, confident, and unafraid now.

  “Your dad here?” I couldn’t see David’s car from where I was at the end of the drive.

  Saskia didn’t answer: “She’s going to die, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “She won’t listen.”

  “This is about the miracle drug, isn’t it?”

  She indicated that it was by moving her arm. Like flapping a wing.

 
“Do you know—Dr. Kerry says you can’t have those injections till you had at least two courses of chemo. The list of side effects is a mile long: neutropenia, neuropathy, fatigue, nausea, anemia, upper respiratory tract infection, diarrhea… That’s just the beginning.”

  “I know that,” she said. “But it might not be the same in England.”

  “You have your agenda, Saskia. Reverend Sarah has her agenda. And your father has his agenda.”

  “And you have your agenda too. You want her to die.”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  It took her a long time to answer. “Not really,” she said. “But it’s hard to see her just passing right through our lives like this.”

  “We’re passing through her life too,” I said.

  “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” she said. “But what should we do?”

  “I think that what we can do for her now instead of fighting against her is just keep our eyes open, look hard, try not to miss a thing. Our ears too. Let’s listen to her and smell her and touch her so we can carry that with us.”

  “You left out ‘taste her,’” she said, and I understood that she was passing the torch of anxiety on to me. “When did you become so wise?” she said.

  “Me?” It was my turn to laugh.

  In the kitchen I fixed a sandwich and drank a beer, which I didn’t usually do in the middle of the day. And waited, letting the truth about love sink in. I waited till David came downstairs. “You’ve got to talk to her,” he said. “She could take the psilocybin right now. You could take it too. I’ll stay right here to talk you through it.”

  “David,” I said. “How about a liverwurst sandwich?”

  “Liverwurst? Now?”

  I knew what he meant. He was on the edge of tears and I was offering him liverwurst. I put an arm around his shoulder. “Why don’t you take Saskia to lunch. She knows where to go. You can go to Stefano’s, or you can grab a hamburger at Atkinson’s.” I guess you could say that I was glad he’d made the trip from Ann Arbor, but Olivia’s spiritual journey was going to come to an end without the help of psilocybin, and I was going to travel with her as far as I could go. In the end, though, she’d have to go on alone, like Everyman in the old play.