The Bookseller's Sonnets Read online

  It is difficult for me to type so I will end this letter. However, I will write to you more about this book until such a time as I am no longer able. My memory is fading, and I am afraid that I will soon forget what happened. But you are young, and you will not forget.

  I hope you will also continue to make sure that the world never forgets.

  “Unbelievable,” I murmured.

  “What did I tell you?”

  “This letter. It’s so strange,” I said. “From someone who says they’ve met me before, but doesn’t say who they are. No name, no address, nothing.”

  We both looked down at the scarred volume. Together, we gingerly turned the pages to reveal whatever was inside, afraid to do even more damage to the fragile structure of spine and binding. A soft smell of dust and mold rose from the parchment. Delicately, we turned a few blank pages, and then suddenly the words lay before us, vulnerable, amazingly, in English – in spidery, elaborate lettering that had been so intricately inscribed, the text seemed to float upon the page.

  The rose that sleeps within this woman’s eyes

  unfolds at last. My mind, an unsealed tomb

  What mystery sleeps low within that bloom!

  This ruby red remembrance of device.

  These fainting lovers with their clustered sighs

  Forsake me not. Upon the fading moon

  Whose light illuminates this sacred room,

  She entertains that honeybee and dies.

  This posy laced with sweet vermillion flame

  Such potent nectar never shall be shared

  By one who calls me ‘wife.’ The insect turns

  Beneath the wrath of artful woman’s game

  And there is crush’d. All those who sue, beware

  My arms, Athene’s; my love is love that learns.

  London, England

  The Sixth day of September

  In the Year of Our Lord, One thousand Five Hundred Thirty Six

  Here are the words of a bride double-bound: first, by the amity of a father and second, by the enmity of a husband. These men — whether the word is inscribed by the holy hand of my precious father or scrawled upon the witless page by the unjust husband, tho’ mortals both, they shall write what they will, and it shall live, for men’s words are turned towards eternity as the bird’s melody is turned eternally against silence.

  Yet these words, a woman’s words in which no God, nor Bishop nor Sovereign believes, are unfit for mortals when inscribed by those creatures whose duties extend no further than marketplace, marriage and motherhood, and thus, fall short of the blessings of Heaven; these very words are a sin of Pride; and my punishment shall be that no mortal shall accept nor remember them.

  My Father, the blessed Instructor, with such love and genuine humility taught his daughters, tho’ cursed by their very sex, to learn and yet fear Wisdom. Yet there are those of the other persuasion—those men—who are taught that they alone are the keepers of Wisdom, who are proud, unseemly, and forgetful of the essential godliness of Humility.

  It is thus, the misnamed wisdom of mortal men that taints Humility, and forces her most modest scholars behind demure veils, her most ardent poets to the childbed, untried.

  Over the parchment page, Aviva’s eyes met mine.

  “1536?” I asked, incredulous. “I’ve never seen anything so old, except for that document from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella that was donated to the collection a few years ago.”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Aviva murmured softly. “The proclamation from Ferdinand and Isabella, expelling the Jews of Spain. This made me think of it. Certainly, the paper looks similar. The handwriting has the same characteristics, the same look from that period of history.”

  Even as I heard the excitement in her voice, I saw her drawing back, both physically and professionally. “But I’m getting ahead of myself,” she said. “We can’t even let ourselves think that this might actually be authentic. Not without reading further. And definitely not without having the paper tested in a lab.”

  “I know,” I reluctantly agreed. “When we got the proclamation, it came with paperwork and provenance and documentation from Spain’s royal archives. This,” I nodded toward the book, “came with nothing. Well, that’s not completely true. We have a date – 1536. And it’s in English, written in London – so we have a location. And a gender – we can assume this was written by a woman.”

  I started thinking about content, context, meaning, history. “The words sound as if she is writing about her father, and raging against men in general. Could she be an early feminist?” I asked. I was thinking about the female religious mystics of the medieval period, like Julian of Norwich and Margery Kemp.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” Her face appeared distracted. “What about the letter?” she asked suddenly. “Can I see it?”

  I passed the paper to Aviva. “Well,” she finally said, “it looks like it’s from someone who knows you.”

  “That’s the weird thing – it’s been a long time, probably a couple of years, since I mentioned to an artifact donor that I am a grandchild of a survivor. I finally realized after so many survivors had asked me questions about where they were taken from and what camps they were in, that I didn’t have enough information from my grandparents to really be able to talk about it in detail.”

  “So, does that narrow the possibilities of who this mystery donor could be?”

  I thought for a moment. “Not really. I mean, how many interviews have I conducted in five years? Four hundred? Four fifty?”

  “Probably more than that.”

  “Let’s say I told two hundred artifact donors in three years. How could I possibly narrow that down?”

  “You could always go through the database,” Aviva said, in her ever-practical way, “and see who’s still alive.”

  “Oh, sure. Because this job isn’t depressing enough.”

  She laughed. “Good point. I didn’t see any clues in the packing material. Did you?”

  I knew where she was going with the question. A few years back we managed to locate an elderly artifact donor who had forgotten to include his name and return address with his donation. We had received a box containing an album filled with photographs of the liberation of Auschwitz, pictures he had taken as a young Army photographer in the closing days of the war. The photo album came to us wrapped in yellowing sheets of his local newspaper, which fortuitously included the cover page and the mailing label. But here, there were no clues. I shook my head.

  The sky had darkened outside our office window. All along Battery Place, the lights burned cold and clear in the winter air. “Listen,” I said to Aviva, “It’s been a long day. If we’re going to keep reading this, I need a cup of coffee. Do you want one?”

  “I can’t, remember?” She patted her big belly. “Wish I could.”

  I glanced at my watch. I knew Aviva would tough it out no matter how tired she was, and I had my own reasons for calling it a day. “On second thought, it’s almost six thirty.” I feigned a yawn. “I promised Michael I’d be home at a decent hour. Do you mind if we pick this up in the morning?”

  Aviva stood and stretched, then rubbed the small of her back. I could see the relief in her eyes.

  “Great, Jill. But let’s get started early. We might have something really amazing on our hands, but, of course, we’ve got to read further and examine this more closely before we can decide to do with it. Why don’t you put it back in the vault?”

  She handed the letter back to me. I folded it back in thirds and taped it to the top of the package. Then I walked back to the vault and carefully placed the wrapped package at the back of the bottom shelf, where it would receive the least exposure to light, or to prying eyes.

  I hated putting it away. I watched as Aviva pulled on her coat, buttoning it up tightly against the bulk of her belly. “Don’t stay too much longer.”

  “I won’t,” I said.

  “Good.” She tied her scarf ar
ound her neck. “Say hi to Michael for me.”

  “Sure.”

  She paused, and then spoke again. “Things okay there?”

  I looked down at my hands as she hoisted her bag over her shoulder and pressed the elevator button. I could hear the muffled sound of the motor starting up. “You know,” I shrugged. “The same.”

  “Your family still giving you problems?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I don’t mean to pry.”

  “That’s one of the things I love about you, Aviva. You never make me feel like I’m being evasive.”

  She grinned as the elevator doors opened. “Get home safe.”

  Later, after I stopped myself half a dozen times from returning to the vault, I pushed the heavy glass doors open and walked outside into the blustery winter night. The lights of the skyline gleamed in the clear cold air and I could feel the skin of my face turning rosy from the chill. I knew Michael would be at home waiting for me. By now he would have opened a bottle of wine, the pasta water would be boiling on the stove, and classic rock would be playing on the radio in the kitchen. I wondered how much longer I would be able to go on lying to my family, to him, and to myself.

  3

  As I opened the door to the fourth floor walk-up Michael and I shared a jolt of the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil came booming from the kitchen. The apartment was warm, and I could smell sautéed garlic and chopped basil.

  “Hey there,” I heard a voice from somewhere in the vicinity of the bedroom. “Just in time. I was about to put the spaghetti in the pot.”

  “Great,” I replied. “Sorry I’m a little late.”

  I heard his light step in the hallway. “No problem.” He emerged from the doorway and I smiled at his tousled shock of dark curls. His nose was peeling where a rosy sunburn had been just a few days earlier, a remnant of our week at the beach. “I just got home about half an hour ago. That’s the problem when you have a conference call with clients in California.”

  I took off my coat and hung it on the rack in the hallway. “Thanks for starting dinner,” I told him. “Do I smell garlic bread?”

  “Of course. You’re freezing,” he said, touching the tip of my nose. “How was your day?”

  “All right, for the first day back after vacation,” I replied. “I had an artifact donation house call that ran late. Then I went back to the office for a while. We received a really strange package today, and looking at it took up a lot of time this afternoon, so I ended up staying later than I should have.”

  “What do you mean ‘strange package’? Strange in the Department of Homeland Security sense of the word?”

  Michael was now an attorney for what he frequently referred to as a “do-gooder” organization. Originally, he specialized in dealing with unfair housing and labor issues, but these days he was often called in to consult on immigration and deportation cases, which meant dealing with the terms of the Joint Terrorism Task force, and the ever-widening parameters of the Patriot Act.

  I was touched by the concerned look on his face. “No,” I hastened to reassure him. “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Well, you know how I worry.” He smiled. “And don’t tell me that I shouldn’t. Because you know that if there weren’t anything to worry about, you wouldn’t have NYPD Special Ops paying surprise visits to your office.”

  He was right. Ever since 9/11, the museum, like many synagogues, Jewish community centers, and other cultural and religious institutions around the city, had been designated one of the city’s “sensitive locations.” This distinction earned us the privilege of having concrete barriers installed in front of our doors, and unannounced, on-again off-again periods of protection by special police teams with names like Atlas and Hercules, who came complete with body armor and bombsniffing dogs.

  “No, nothing like that,” I continued. “It was a book. Actually, a book that looks as if it’s a few hundred years old. It arrived in a package addressed to me and contained a letter from someone who says that they’ve met me, that they’ve donated other artifacts to the museum. But no name, no return address, nothing about who they are or what the book is about.”

  “But it was addressed to you. Was there anything about it that seemed familiar, like the handwriting? Do you have any ideas at all about who it might be from?”

  “No,” I paused for a moment. “I think it might be from a survivor. It’s definitely from someone elderly. And the letter talked a lot about the Holocaust, making sure that the world never forgets. It was also typed out on an old typewriter; it obviously didn’t come from a computer.”

  “That’s weird. I mean, even my parents are online these days. And they couldn’t even work the DVD player a couple of years ago.”

  “Well, a lot of survivors are on fixed incomes. Not every child is good enough – like you – to buy a computer for their aging parents.”

  “Don’t give me too much credit for giving them the desktop when I bought the laptop.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “But speaking of the elderly, your grandmother called.”

  I felt my shoulders tense. “You didn’t pick up the phone, did you?”

  “Of course, I didn’t pick it up. She left a message asking if you wanted to visit her this Saturday.”

  “Oh, no, I think Saturday is Bill’s dinner party.” Michael followed me into the kitchen and together we looked at the calendar on the refrigerator. “Yeah, it is. Maybe I can go see her and then meet you there. But she’ll want me to stay for dinner. I just know it.” I sighed. Suddenly, the day felt even longer. “I don’t want to miss the party. But I haven’t seen her in a couple of months. I really ought to go.”

  “Yeah, you should.” I felt his hand making soothing little circles on my back. “But don’t you think it would be easier,” he said quietly, “if I went with you?”

  I looked at him. “You know what would happen.”

  “Do I?”

  “Haven’t we been through this enough times?”

  “I still don’t understand.” His voice was low and sad. “We found each other. I love you. We have a great life together. Why wouldn’t she be happy about that?”

  “Do we have to talk about this tonight?”

  “No.” He turned away from me and lowered the flame under the pot of boiling water, opened the box of spaghetti and emptied it into the pot. “But we have to talk about it sometime. It’s not like anyone else cares. My parents don’t care that we’re not the same religion, and if my grandparents were still alive, I’m sure they wouldn’t care either. I mean, I understand she’s been through hell. But I don’t want us to have to put off getting married,” his voice softened to a murmur. “Until, well…you know.”

  I opened the refrigerator door and busied myself, shuffling through the crisper drawer. I didn’t want him to see the tears starting in my eyes, or hear the catch in my voice, so I buried my head in the fridge and didn’t say anything.

  He seemed to be waiting for me to speak. When I didn’t, he said, “It just seems like a bad way to start a life together, waiting for someone you love to die.”

  I put the lettuce and tomatoes on the tiny kitchen counter and gently kicked the refrigerator door shut.

  “Look, I agree with you. I’m just not sure what the best thing to do is. And it’s not like we’re waiting for something terrible to happen. Even if some miracle happened – and it won’t, trust me – and she changed her mind and approved of this, we would still have my parents to deal with. And you’ve already seen them in action.”

  He nodded. “I know. But avoiding the discussion isn’t going to give anyone a chance to change their minds.”

  “You’re being optimistic. But I know them, and I just don’t think it’s possible for them to even acknowledge this relationship, much less accept it. I mean, I’ve thought about starting the conversation with them, about how serious we are, many times, but then I can’t bear how I know it will end.”

  He turned from the stove
to look at me as I continued talking. “Always, always, one of them — my mother, or my grandmother— manages to come out with a story about some child or grandchild of one of their friends, who married someone ‘inappropriate’ – that’s always the word they use – and how it was such a shanda, a shame, a scandal. And I don’t know how much of it is my mother’s fault. It’s also my grandmother, it’s what she went through, it’s all about what she suffered. To her, she’ll always think that anyone who isn’t Jewish is the enemy.”

  “But I’m not,” Michael said. “And you’re her granddaughter, her only grandchild. She loves you. She wants you to be happy.”

  “Yes,” I replied. “And all she ever talks about is how her life will be complete when I marry a nice Jewish boy. You know, when she says things like ‘This is why I survived Hitler. This is what it’s all about – my grandchild’s future.’ How am I supposed to answer that?”

  “I gotta hand it to her. When in doubt, mention Hitler.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it. I’ve been hearing it all my life.”

  “But that’s exactly my point. You’re your own person, with your own life. You can’t just live a certain way because it’s what your mother or your grandmother expects you to do.”

  “I know that.” I took a small serrated knife from the drawer, sliced into a ripe red tomato. “But every day at the museum, we talk about ‘the legacy, the generations’ – all of these beautiful poetic words that are meant to underscore the fact that we are losing the survivors. When they’re gone, only the children and grandchildren can keep that legacy going. I know that’s what she wants me to do. She thinks that I should live a certain way. For her, for my mother, there was no other choice – and they think I need to abide by the same rules.”

  “And this certain way, by her definition, means marrying a Jewish guy.”

  I nodded.

  “I know I’ve asked you this before, but is that what you think, too? Is that how you really feel, and you’re just not telling me?”