BOOKCASE

The sun is rising. A long lavender cloud cruises across the sky in front of the Sun, sending a beam through the small glass domes, the eyes of my grandfather’s bookcase. They glisten with sharp delight. We have a new day before us. The bookcase has become a roommate, as family treasures do. As history becomes the main novel.

Long ago one had bookcases, artful, open-faced cabins, sheltering books, protecting their status, maintaining their neighborhoods. Leather-bound first editions worn by the journey from Kiev to Ellis Island then on to Newark. Tolstoy was displeased to imagine himself living in the East Coast Valley. Mandel Svet who owned this bookcase was my mother’s father. He was one of the Czar’s conductors and also a master violinist. He fell in love with a sturdy, protective pianist named Rosalie. Her very presence gave him confidence. Just after Mandel and Rosalie were married, the Czar was informed that they were Jewish. The Czar was surprised he hadn’t noticed. This was the time of Pogroms. The Svets were given notice to leave Russia. Mandel hired a boat strong enough to bring his favorite piece of furniture.

Shortly after they arrived, they opened a music school in Newark. The street had an audacious air. Across the way there was a prospering catering hotel owned by a vigorous couple also from Kiev, Hugo and Belle Schary. The Scharys had also fled Russia. They brought remarkable silverware to set up their catering place.

I learned the bookcase’s story from my grandfather Mandel. “We always had special cases for treasured history books, other cases for legendary stories, and a rather severe case for books which have a personality of their own and want to maintain a unique identity. But you will see,” he showed me, “that each bookcase has decorative elements which achieve attention.”

Grandpa would be saddened to see certain aging magazines huddled in shame, for they have been moved high in the left side of this case to protect visitors from reading some of my Sixties articles published in Cosmo and Pageant. Inside the theatrical curve of the most previous alcove, the cast of renowned banned books lounge against each other, exchanging appalling stories. And way high up in a ragged rose-colored jacket, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover languishes unread in this unsophisticated community.

On the other side, I’ve sheltered my bravest books by Djuna Barnes, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, and Ed Doctorow. Chekov and Dostoevsky command the top rows behind the magical hand-crafted vase the color of deep, moist sand, etched with the words of James Joyce: "the darling of my heart, sleeping in her april cot, within her singachamer, with her greengageflavoured candywhistle duetted to the crazyquilt, Isobel, she is so pretty, truth to tell, wildwood's eyes and primarose hair, quietly, all the woods so wild, in mauves of moss and daphnedews, how all so still she lay, neath of the whitethorn, child of tree, like some losthappy leaf, like blowing flower stilled, as fain would she anon, for soon again 'twill be, win me, woo me, wed me, ah weary me!" In my will, I am leaving this to the poet Nathaniel Clute.

This bookcase continues, like certain actors, to play many roles. The narrow brass handles on the drawer squint like eyelids, sizing you up. My grandfather’s conductor batons rest here on layers of silk pocket handkerchiefs. There’s a heavy bronze pencil sharpener, many sheets of old music, and old measuring devices with Russian script. On either side of the bookcase are doors like columns, leading to those glass domes which the moon visits, beaming in at night from the balcony. Behind these narrow doors are rows of shelves striped with the bright brims of small books. I have notebooks there. On the other side with no shelves, I have rows of gift wrap and wheels of ribbon.

Perched on top of the bookcase is a menorah and a framed drawing of each of my grandchildren. A stuffed mermaid doll perches at the right prow of the bookcase, so she can see the sun rising from the balcony. In all these little shelves and apertures, I have notes and books and newspaper clippings about my own family. It is, in a sense, a treasure chest for our history, should there be a planet left to support such things as history.

One hopes to have access to books in what we call the third act of life. Long life is no movie, but rather, a drama where one begins to see, as Jon Meacham, Thomas L. Friedman, and Doris Kearns Goodwin do, that the books we imagine in earlier years become poseurs or stand-ins for the flavorsome stories history keeps reminding us to explore. Even history grows worn, repeats old tales. Perhaps history needs some nutrition, a run-through of family stories while we’re still here, to tell you what’s going to happen.

Dear History: enough already.

Historians don’t die young because there are no new horrors, only reruns with new machinery.

Our cherished horses have gone into deep melancholy. Like grandparents, they aren’t part of NOW. Too bad. And cars have lost their élan, imitating each other. Cars were buddies in my best years. You’d go cry in your car, make love in your car, speed up Sunset all night long with his arm around your shoulder.

While I was stroking through the titles in the left hand column of the bookcase, I found a copy of my father’s For Special Occasions, published by Random House in 1963. The red cover was battered inside. He had handwritten For my darling wife Miriam on the dedication page. The book was about his younger years during the Spanish Flu. As I flipped through the pages, I saw that Woodrow Wilson, the president then, had caught the flu, which affected his mind and destroyed his ability to think with any clarity. “The president,” people said, “has gone mad.”

Imagine such a thing!

Nobody quite believed the flue was really that contagious. After all, we had barely recovered from World War One, and the battered Germans were dragging themselves through the wreckage of their cities, looking for food and places to rest, fueled by rage and hunger. Some angry young men were blaming the immigrants.

Back home in New Jersey, young soldiers, still recovering from battle and what would later be called PTSD, were also suffering. Everyone who had money had fled. Needless to say, few people were taking lessons at the Svet Music Academy or having expensive bar mitzvahs at Schary Manor. There were larger houses in those days because immigrant families all lived under one roof. My grandmother had brought my mother’s nurse, a young Russian girl, with them. Everybody grew up then, surrounded by aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and grandparents, all gathered together, taking care of each other. Minnie, my mother’s nurse, began to help Belle with the catering across the street. My father remembered his mother massaging his gentle young sister Frances, rubbing her with alcohol to lower the fever as she was dying. My powerful aunt Lillian survived, as many young talents did, by standing on street corners, singing, playing violins. Some of the young guys would tell jokes for a few pennies. “Did you hear the one about Woody, the president?” When you’re stranded, you keep spirits going and raise funds for young wounded veterans. All the refugee families gathered together and used their talents to survive and recover their heritage.

Bookcase