The postings generate a lot of traffic from other curiosity seekers like me, but in the past eight years, no one has ever emailed or called to collect a letter or photograph or that tooth I found inGinger Pye. Still I post, driven by the hope that one day I might actually reunite someone with a significant item they’ve misplaced. Restore what was lost to its original owner.
At least once a month Brie and I also find money hidden in the pages of a book, but we keep mum on the cash lest we have a host of people calling to claim it. While kids and adults alike often view their books as safety-deposit boxes, my sister and I have started a real savings account with this extra money in a bank down the street. It’s our own secret stash, more than two thousand dollars now accumulating interest.
I jump at the sound of rustling behind me. Inkspot, our resident cat, hops onto the desk and knocks his tail into my tea, the drops splattering across the vinyl pages of the album. A swift whisk of my sleeve wipes up the liquid, and then I pet his white fur and the perfectly formed black splotch between his ears.
Sometimes I wonder if he’s down here at night with his super vision, reading about poor Tom Kitten or perhaps the Cat in the Hat. Like me, he’s found refuge inside these walls.
Some books, I think, can be like cats. No matter where they’re sent, they have this uncanny ability to find their way back home.
Turning, I lean over and lift a hardcover book from a recently delivered box. It’s a newly printed edition ofDjibi, the tragic story of a cat who liked adventures.
I ordered four books to read as I research for my next monthly post about a children’s author, this one an Austrian man named Felix Salten who wrote in the 1920s and ’30s. Salten wrote stories about a variety of animals, some of the creatures pursued by hunters. Sadly, as a Jewish man, he became the hunted one when the Nazis took over Austria.
“You can read this one later.” I nudgeDjibitoward Inkspot, tapping the cover illustration of a gray cat. “Assuming you know how to read.”
He doesn’t mew in response, but he eyes the cover.
UnderDjibiare three other recent editions of Salten’s books, all of them translated into English.The Hound of Florence.Fifteen Rabbits.Florian: The Emperor’s Stallion. After I publish my blog on Salten, I’ll put all these books on our shelves to sell.
A much smaller box sits beside the one with the Salten stories. The tape is dangling off the edge, and I peel it back to remove another of his stories. Instead of a new copy, this worn, early version has the ruby-red sketch of a deer embossed on its cloth cover, the deer’s eyes seeming to search for a friend.
Bambi: A Life in the Woods.
A 1931 edition, according to Roman numerals on the copyright page, printed in Vienna. It’s a classic I’ve read before in English, a story that bears little resemblance to Disney’s version. Ididn’t order this book, but Brie knows about my featured post for July. Perhaps she’s planning to surprise me with an early edition for my birthday.
Nothing sparks my imagination more than the discovery of an old book in any language. Like an abandoned house, I wonder at the many stories it could tell of its journey, beginning with its birth in an Austrian printing shop almost ninety years ago.
The clock on my phone reads a quarter past two, but I’m still wide awake so I wander out into the bookstore, the oldBambiedition under my arm, and settle into a blue twill beanbag sized for an adult.
Light from the streetlamps filters past the display of books in the front windows, streaming between the shelves in this room. I flip on the bronze sconce high above the castle gate and glance across the shop. Colorful Japanese lights bubble above the front window, and curved bookshelves ripple like sea waves across the carpeted floor, around the dozen or so beanbags that stand like stones in the tide. A hot-air balloon, pieced together from papier-mâché, dangles above the castle, beside the loft. To my left is the front counter with its antique cash register alongside a modern iPad and white Square.
When Charlotte first opened this store to supply readers with French, German, and English resources, she thought it vastly important that children read books that would grow and expand their minds, stories they could cling to as friends when others weren’t friendly. Brie and I followed suit when we took ownership, only buying books for the store that we’d let our own children read. Or read eventually. I don’t have any kids yet, and Brie’s twins prefer picture books over ones with actual words.
In the back corner of the shop is a platform with a puppet theater. I’m no good at puppets, but I sit on that platform every Saturday for my weekly appearance as Story Girl to read the brilliant words of authors such as Dr. Seuss, Robert Munsch, and Doreen Cronin. Lately I’ve taken to wearing a cherry-red cape to match Charlotte’s striped socks since my younger audience members are convinced I’m somehow related to WordGirl from PBS. The youngest kids also think I can fly.
I’ve never bothered to explain that the only time I’ve ever flown is in my dreams, on the nights I’m able to sleep.
Inkspot settles in beside my beanbag on a pink square of rug, and I open the cover ofBambi. Inside is an inscription, written in beautiful script. Thanks to Charlotte, I can read some German.
Annika Knopf
Schloss Schwansee, 1932
I push down one of the corners, bent from wear, as my brain tumbles the words into translation.The Castle of Swan Lake.
Underneath the name of the castle and date is another inscription, simple and yet deeply profound.
Mit all meine Liebe, Mama.
My fingers against the page, I can almost feel the lingering heat from this mother’s love, and my thoughts travel back to the woman who birthed me and then thought it witty to name me Calisandra, after herself and the abbreviation of her favorite state—a woman who moved to Santa Monica when I was two and left me behind with the man who never got around to proposing marriage. Aman who died fourteen years later. Sandra Dermott friended me on Facebook while I was in college. She has a family in California now, four children whom she clearly adores.
What happened to the girl who once owned this book in my hands? Did she treasure her mother’s gift for the rest of her life, or give it away?
The pages are smudged, worn. In the first section are illustrations of Bambi and Faline, and then pictures of the stag and Man.
The book was written a decade before Hitler came to power, but Hitler, I’d read in my research, amplified the anti-Semitism already rampant in Europe. Perhaps Salten saw the scribblings of persecution long before they coated the walls.
Turning the pages, I begin to notice something different about this version ofBambi. In black ink, under the original German print, are extra lines on every other page as if someone decided to add to the story. I recognize many of the German words in the story, but none in the handwritten lines.
