A Passion for Books Read online

  His attorney came toward him and, showing him this Bible, said:

  “I can save you, look!”

  Giacomo took the book and looked at it.

  “Oh! I who believed that it was the only one in Spain! Oh, tell me, tell me that you have deceived me! May misfortune attend you!”

  And he fell in a faint.

  The judges returned and pronounced the sentence of death upon him.

  Giacomo heard it without a shudder, and he seemed calmer and more tranquil.

  They gave him hope that by asking pardon from the Pope, he would perhaps obtain it. He did not wish it at all and asked only that his library be given to the man who had the most books in Spain.

  Then, when the people had dispersed, he asked his attorney to have the goodness to lend him this book. The man gave it to him. Giacomo took it lovingly, dropped some tears on the leaves, then tore it with anger and threw its fragments at the person of his defender, saying to him:

  “You have lied about it, Mister Attorney! I told you truly that it was the only copy in Spain!”

  © 1980 by The New Yorker magazine, reprinted by permission of Sam Gross.

  Bibliomania

  BY ROGER ROSENBLATT

  The following is an excerpt from Bibliomania, a one-man show written and first performed by noted essayist Roger Rosenblatt at New York’s American Place Theater in 1994.

  The custom of borrowing books confutes nature. In every other such situation, the borrower becomes a slave to the lender, the social weight of the debt so altering the balance of a relationship that a temporary acquisition turns into a permanent loss. This is certainly true with money. Yet it is not at all true with books. For some reason a book borrower feels that a book, once taken, is his own. This removes both memory and guilt from the transaction. Making matters worse, the lender believes it, too. To keep up appearances, he may solemnly extract an oath that the book be brought back as soon as possible; the borrower answering with matching solemnity that the Lord might seize his eyes were he to do otherwise. But it is all play. Once gone, the book is gone forever. The lender, fearing rudeness, never asks for it again. The borrower never stoops to raise the subject. . . .

  There’s no spectacle that is as terrifying as the sight of a guest in your house whom you catch staring at your books. It is not the judgmental possibility that is frightening. The fact that one’s sense of discrimination is exposed by his books. Indeed, most people would much prefer to see the guest first scan, then peer and turn away in boredom or disapproval. Alas, too often the eyes, dark with calculation, shift from title to title as from floozie to floozie in an overheated dance hall. Nor is that the worst. It is when those eyes stop moving that the heart, too, stops.

  The guest’s body twitches; his hand floats up to where his eyes have led it. There is nothing to be done. You freeze. He smiles. You hear the question even as it forms: “Would you mind if I borrowed this book?” Mind? Why should I mind? The fact that I came upon that book in a Paris bookstall in April 1969—the thirteenth, I believe it was, the afternoon, it was drizzling—that I found it after searching all Europe and North America for a copy; that it is dog-eared at passages that mean more to my life than my heartbeat; that the mere touch of its pages recalls to me in a Proustian shower my first love, my best dreams. Should I mind that you seek to take all that away? That I will undoubtedly never get it back? Then even if you actually return it to me one day, I will be wizened, you cavalier, and the book spoiled utterly by your mishandling? Mind?

  “Not at all. Hope you enjoy it.”

  “Thanks. I’ll bring it back next week.”

  “No rush. Take your time.” [Liar.]

  Never lend books—nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me.

  —ANATOLE FRANCE

  The Book Action

  BY SOLLY GANOR

  Solly Ganor’s tale of survival told in his 1994 memoir, Light One Candle, includes the following remarkable story about the rescue of books during the horror of war and persecution. As a boy, Ganor befriended Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat who provided thousands of exit visas for desperate Jews facing certain death in Dachau and other concentration camps.

  By the end of 1941 thousands of frozen German soldiers were being transported by rail back into Germany. Although the campaign had inflicted staggering casualties on the Soviets, it had also taken an enormous toll on the Wehrmacht, which lost some 800,000 men. The Russian offensive had been halted, however temporarily, by “General Mud” and “General Winter.” German supply lines were stretched to the breaking point.

  But somehow the Wehrmacht had to be supplied and supported. On January 20, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, the “blond beast,” chaired the Wannsee Conference on the Final Solution of the Jewish question. There he proposed to a group of top Nazi officials that the Jews of Europe be worked to death building roads into Russia.

  In the occupied territories the Germans pressed local industries into service. Few Jews had any illusions about their fate after the “Big Action,” but remaining useful to the Germans seemed to be our only hope for survival. The Jewish Council organized ghetto work-shops, which produced necessary goods for the Germans in exchange for food and erratic token payments.

  Unlike the Jewish councils and capos in most ghettos and camps, the Kaunas Council and its Jewish police force managed to hold the community together, opening vocational training schools in carpentry and other basic skills for the youth. The classes provided effective cover for more traditional education and for the operations of Zionist youth organizations. Through these and other clandestine means, the Council and the ghetto inmates struggled to keep some remnants of civilization alive.

  The deportations to Riga on February 6 were soon followed by more sad news. Late that month the Germans ordered all books in the ghetto to be turned over to the authorities. Anyone caught with books after the deadline would be executed. The people of the book, as we had been known throughout the ages, were to be separated from our ancient companions.

  Earlier in the year the Germans ordered an area about a block from where we lived to be evacuated, and that part of the ghetto remained abandoned. There were strict orders not to enter it, but it wasn’t long before Cooky and I were sneaking in to look for scraps of firewood or whatever else could be salvaged from the place. It was risky, but it was clear to me that unless I took a few risks my chances for survival were nil. I figured I didn’t really have anything to lose.

  After several such “raids” we discovered the best of all treasures— an attic with some old books in it. It could be reached only through an opening in the ceiling, and after some scavenging we managed to put together a rope ladder we could haul up behind us. It became another good hiding place, and it was perfect for what we came to call “operation library.”

  When Cooky joked that we could probably hide half the books in the ghetto in our new attic, he immediately regretted it. He knew exactly what I was thinking, and he didn’t like it. Even though he had regained some of his old vitality since his visit to the Ninth Fort, he no longer had any nerve. I had to push him.

  Nearly everyone complied with the order and began delivering their precious books to the assembly point.

  It snowed the night before the deadline, and the ghetto was covered by a thick white blanket the next morning. My mother had tears in her eyes as she helped me load her beloved books into my homemade sled. The final load consisted of ten volumes of Russia’s best authors, all bound in red leather with gold embossed lettering. Tolstoy, Lermontov, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Pushkin, Gogol—the thoughts, passions, ideals, and feelings of literary giants were in those books. The set was a wedding gift from Jochil.

  I felt a deep compassion for my mother. She had never quite recovered from Herman’s disappearance behind the walls of the Seventh Fort, and now her brother Jochil had been deported to Riga, perhaps never to be seen again. Mother rarely laughed or smiled these days. Like m
e, she escaped from her grief by reading. She would sit almost motionless for hours, only moving two fingers to flip the pages. Nothing else existed when she read. Not even food interested her. And now they were even taking her books away.

  “Keep them, Mommy,” I wanted to tell her. “We are all going to be killed anyway. You might as well enjoy your books while you can.” But I kept my silence. Mother found it difficult enough keeping in touch with our terrible new reality.

  “Make sure you take these books straight to the German storage center,” she said to me sadly, and as if sensing my thoughts, she added in a stern voice, “Don’t even think of hiding them, you hear me? It isn’t worth getting shot on account of books.”

  I quickly averted my eyes. My mother could always sense my thoughts when she looked into my eyes.

  Cooky waited for me on the corner of Gimbuto. He also had a sled loaded with books, and he looked jittery.

  “Let’s go,” I said firmly. I knew he hated this idea, but I also knew he would follow me. We quickly crossed the road leading to the forbidden quarter, and within half an hour we had hauled all the books into the attic.

  The same day we brought four more loads of books given to us by neighbors who had no sleds and were glad that someone would take them away.

  But I wasn’t satisfied, and I had an idea. Cooky put up a bigger protest this time, but in the end he went along. I got both of us work sorting the books brought to the assembly point. The man in charge, Mr. Grodnik, was sorting the books by language and subject matter, and he was glad to let us carry the sorted stacks from the first floor to the second. When I reported for work the next day, I announced that Cooky was at home sick. He was actually waiting behind the house, below a small window in the stairwell. All day I ran up the stairs with a load of books under each arm. As I rounded the first landing, I dropped the stack under my left arm out the window into the snow below, where Cooky waited, then continued up the stairs and deposited the remainder in stacks as instructed. After about an hour I could almost do this without breaking stride.

  It was risky business, and despite the cold I was soon dripping with sweat. After two or three days of this Cooky was caught by a German guard. He gave the guard the story we had concocted, that he was delivering books and looking for the entrance to the building, and the German believed him, giving him only a kick for his stupidity. Cooky wet his pants in fright that day and refused to go on with the scheme. By then, however, we had accumulated quite a stash. A few ghetto inmates saw us trundling the books to our hiding place, but they paid us no mind. As it turned out, others in the ghetto were doing the same thing we were.

  I sneaked books back to the house only one at a time and kept them hidden from the family. But it weighed on my conscience. Here we were with this rich collection of literature, and we only used it for our own selfish ends. Soon Cooky and I began giving out books, first to our closest friends and relatives, later to more and more people who became “customers.” The word got around.

  Cooky and I both began attending trade school, in carpentry. One day I was approached by Mr. Edelstein, our instructor, who taught mathematics before the war and tried to instruct us in math when we weren’t pounding nails. He asked me point-blank if I could get hold of any textbooks, especially in mathematics. I first denied that I had any sources, but when he insisted I told him I would inquire. Cooky had in fact cursed me for saving some schoolbooks, especially those in mathematics. He hated math. “Is this what I risked my neck for?” he yelled when he saw them. There was one newer-looking geometry book among these that I smuggled into school for Mr. Edelstein. He was so delighted that he gave me a big hug. “Do you know what a treasure this is? Look! It’s in Hebrew and was printed in Tel Aviv only a few years ago. Where on earth did you get it?”

  We’d just put the textbooks in the corner and I never really looked at them. I told Cooky about a dream I’d had in which I’d let animals into the Ark, two by two, and Cooky thereafter called the schoolbooks our alligators, snakes, and hyenas.

  Mr. Edelstein, a rather shy man with big brown eyes and thinnish hair, had taught at the high school in Kaunas. He came from a small town where Lithuanian partisans locked the Jewish population into the synagogue, then set the building on fire. His whole family had been burned alive. Despite what he’d experienced, he still believed in noble ideals, and was convinced that good would eventually triumph over evil.

  He had no relatives in the ghetto, and like nearly all single men, he had “adopted” a family that no longer had a working male at its head. The Jewish Council made such assignments in order to protect single women, children, and elderly people. S. A. Lieutenant Gustav Hermann, the German head of the labor office, apparently understood that his workers’ morale depended upon keeping their families intact insofar as possible, so the Jewish Council created many fictitious families where none existed. Mr. Edelstein lived with a family of five.

  Mr. Edelstein had grown very fond of his adopted family, and like others often traded with the Lithuanian guards to get them extra food. When I brought him the book he put it in a bag full of clothing he was carrying. That afternoon when I left school I passed him at the gate, where he had stopped to trade with the guard. Evidently Mr. Edelstein asked for more food than the guard was willing to give him. Suddenly the Lithuanian began shouting, “What’s this you got hidden there, Jew boy? A book? And in your heathen language, too. You know I could shoot you for possessing books. How would you like that for special payment?”

  I was only about ten yards away and turned to see what was happening. A German military car approaching the gate from the other side came to a stop, and an SS officer stepped out, demanding to know what was going on. I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach.

  Mr. Edelstein stood ashen-faced while the Lithuanian showed the book to the SS officer. The German turned the pages slowly, then demanded to know where Mr. Edelstein had gotten that book. I couldn’t hear Mr. Edelstein’s answer, but the German slapped him a few times and shouted, “Don’t lie to me, you filthy Jew! This book was printed in Palestine and is in some kind of code! Who is your contact? Where did you get this book? Tell me or I will kill you!”

  I stood frozen in horror as he and the guard began beating my teacher. Any minute I expected Mr. Edelstein to point a finger at me, but instead he made a barely perceptible gesture for me to go.

  With that I found my feet and started running. I was turning into a side street when I heard a shot. I looked back to see Mr. Edelstein fall to his knees. The German put his pistol to his head and fired again, and Mr. Edelstein fell over and lay still.

  That night I had a terrible nightmare about the Ninth Fort. Cooky and I were falling into that mass grave, and I could see Lena far above me, falling. Suddenly she was on top of me and the hole in her throat kept getting larger and larger, pumping out a thick mass of blood that covered my face, my mouth, my nose. I was drowning. I woke up screaming, although the screams were only in my mind. For five minutes I just lay there trying to catch my breath. The reality I woke up to wasn’t a great improvement. My teacher had been murdered, and it was my fault.

  I stayed home from school and cried the whole day. Finally Cooky came over and tried to cheer me up, but I was inconsolable. Me and my stupid books. For the first time I fully realized the danger I had exposed everyone to with my foolishness. My mother was right. It was senseless to get killed on account of books. I wouldn’t listen to her, and now Mr. Edelstein was dead. To this day I remember his feeble gesture waving me away from there. All he had to do was point in my direction to save himself, but he would not.

  “Don’t be stupid. You don’t really believe that the German would have let him live if he had betrayed you! He obviously would have shot both of you, and Mr. Edelstein realized it,” Cooky tried to argue. “Besides, he should have been more careful.” But no amount of logic was going to bring Mr. Edelstein back.

  He was buried in the ghetto cemetery, only a short distance from where he was
shot. Except for the family he lived with and a few of his pupils, including Cooky and myself, few attended his burial. He had no relatives, and violent death was such a common occurrence in the ghetto that nobody paid much attention.

  There was no funeral, as all religious practices were forbidden by the Germans. Only the boys he shared a room with were crying as the burial party slipped him into the grave. I just stood there stunned, unable to utter a sound, until sprinkles of rain and a blackening sky sent everyone scurrying for shelter.

  For the next ten days I didn’t go to the trade school. I was too ashamed to face the other teachers and pupils, who all probably blamed me for Mr. Edelstein’s death. Instead, I once again became an “Angel” replacing Isaac Trotsky at the airport. The “Angel” system had become common practice in the ghetto: boys my age replaced the ill and received food in exchange. I spent most of my time breaking the hard clay ground with a pickax. It was heavy, and you had to have real strength to wield one for any length of time. In their weakened conditions many adults could barely swing them. For this they were abused and given murderous beatings by the Ukrainian foremen.

  I stuck it out both because Aunt Dora fed me and because she was the one person who could help when it came to my teeth. I spent many sleepless nights with terrible toothaches, which were sometimes so excruciating that I would run all the way to Dora crying like a baby. With her limited resources she could only help a little, but it was enough. It was partly out of gratitude that I agreed to replace Isaac at the airport, usually one day at a time. It took him ten days to recuperate from his most recent beating, however, and at the end I could barely stand on my feet. Somehow I staggered back to the ghetto that day, and more or less collapsed on Dora’s step. I had not yet turned fourteen and was undernourished, and those ten days were too much.