 I was horrified. “How could it just…vanish? That’s not possible.” It was 1959, I was almost 9 years old, and four weeks earlier we had moved to San Paulo, Brazil—the fourth country I had lived in. My father, just 31years-old at the time, was starting a new enterprise: a textile factory. I had gone with him during the machinery installation and loved sitting on a high perch watching it all come together and listening to the language I was just beginning to learn—Portuguese. The men had books with instructions and suggestions for how to make it happen and slowly the design took shape. But today when I came home from school, I found my parents talking animatedly about what happened that day. My mother was waving her arms about in a state of near panic, and my father was trying to console her. “Sara,” he began, “these things happen. It’s not too bad. We’ll fix it soon and we can get back on schedule.” There had been a small fire in the back warehouse of the factory and while some inventory had burned, the machinery was fine, he explained to me. I nodded in understanding, and remembering the large concrete partition between the front and the back, I explained to my mother that it would be just fine. “It’s not like the library of Alexandria disaster,” he said off-handedly. Confused I asked him what that was. “It was a very ancient library that held much of the knowledge of the world. Great writers and philosophers and thinkers wrote on papyrus scrolls—what they used before our modern paper—and stacked them in this huge and beautiful library. Being a librarian there was a very prestigious position which came with a great deal of power and honor. And then almost two thousand years ago the entire library was destroyed by a giant fire. And by neglect. The whole thing was gone.” “None of it was left?” I asked in horror. “No. Nothing. Imagine all of that information and knowledge of the world and of people gone,” he explained. I grabbed my light jacket, told my parents where I was going, and ran down the block to our local library. No matter where my parents moved us to, I always found the closest library and made it a kind of home. I loved sitting on the chairs or comfy couches, surrounded by hundreds of books, and leafing quietly through one or two or three. Sometimes I would walk around the stacks and just run my hands along the book-spines and then let my fingers feel the embossed titles on the sides or the fronts of the covers. My problem came with the language. I had learned my first language, Spanish, in Uruguay, and then learned my next language, English, when I was seven and we moved to my father’s home country, The United States. But now Portuguese was a new challenge. The library clerks were at first surprised to see an eight-year-old who couldn’t speak their language showing up several afternoons a week. They would smile at me welcomingly as I bounced recklessly up and down the aisles. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not yet read any of the books. “No English?” I would ask. “No…” they would respond sadly. But I was not deterred. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I would still show up. We started learning each other’s language. “Book” I would say pointing. “Livro” they would respond smiling. “Pencil” I would say; “lapis” they would answer. And so it went for several weeks. They would sometimes have picture books or art books for me to peruse when I came in. But just walking around in the midst of all of those words between covers waiting for me to discover their secrets was enough of a joy for me. On this day, though, I needed to share this horrific new knowledge about the burnt library. I burst into the San Paulo library and kept repeating that the Alexandria library burned. “Tragedy—tragedia—Alexandria biblioteca,” I blurted breathlessly as I ran into the marble building with socks slithering down my skinny legs, jacket half off my arms, hair tumbling out of my normally tight braids. They looked confused and dismayed. The head librarian came out from the back room and I repeated the words to her. “Ah, si,” she said, shaking her head and sighing the expiration I myself could feel. “Tragedia. Grande tragedia.” And then in Portuguese I could see and hear her explaining to the women about the ancient library and its demise. I didn’t understand most of the words, but I could read the women’s faces clearly. “Tudo?” (everything) one of them uttered in disbelief. “Tudo,” explained the head librarian. And they looked at me, an eight year old disheveled girl whose place of happiness and comfort was where they worked day in and day out; a little girl who could not yet read the words in this world of theirs but somehow understood their power; a little girl standing before them feeling her first encounter with the immensity of loss—and they all reached down to hug me. One by one, with tears in their eyes, they hugged me. And for that moment, on a Wednesday afternoon, in San Paulo Brazil, no words were necessary. Within a month the textile factory was running smoothly. I would visit with my dad and see the weaving of the lined-up threads somehow magically finding their ways through metal to come out changed into cloth. One time I took samples of the various woven fabrics, and over the weekend made bookmarks for my librarian friends which I stored carefully in my pockets. But when I walked into the library that Monday afternoon, they were lined up waiting for me and giggling with anticipation. I was confused. Then three of them pulled out books they were hiding behind their backs. One excitedly said, “We buy books for biblioteca—library.” And they handed me three books in English. The books were about Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. I jumped up and down. “I can read these. I can read these,” I chanted with glee. “Thank you!” And immediately I plunked myself down on the nearest couch and read. When I looked up I could see them beaming. Before I left I remembered to give them the bookmarks I had made which they delightedly accepted commenting admiringly about the different patterns and colors. Every time I went to the library for the rest of the year they ceremoniously and with great joy brought me those three books. And even if I didn’t re-read them each time, I carried them about proudly as I wandered—and sometimes skipped—down the aisles. When I was almost 10 we moved away from Brazil and back to The United States. The day before we left I said good-bye to my librarian friends. “Nos sentiremos sua falta,” they said in unison. I smiled, “I will miss you too,” I answered hugging each of them. One of women solemly continued: “Alexadria not gone,” she said, “it here always,” and she pointed to her heart and her head, and then to my heart and my head. And as I walked out through the large wooden door, they waved good-bye using the multi-colored woven bookmarks I had given them like signal flags on passing ships. Many years later I learned that the government in Brazil during that time had no money for library books in foreign languages. And that these women who had to commute several hours a day to their jobs for very low pay, lived in small homes in the back-country with little running water and electricity. And I learned that for months they had saved small amounts every week so that they themselves could buy those books so that I could read in their library.  The baby blue jay had fallen to the ground and my father ran out to the side yard of our borrowed house in Larchmont, New York to rescue it. It was 1957, I was seven and he was (can it be?) thirty, and although this was the country he was born and raised in, this was the second continent and fifth house I had lived in. “It’s only temporary. Bill lent it to us while he’s in Europe.” Yes, it felt temporary. I still hadn’t gotten used to the new world I was in, and the strange new English language around me. “Abuelo,” I said to my grandfather in Spanish four months ago, before leaving Uruguay, “when will I see you again?” “I will always be in your heart, see?” he said as he showed me the latest drawing he’d made for me of a large heart surrounded by lilies of the valley, my grandmother’s favorite flower. But I knew, even then, even at seven, that only the red heart on the paper would stay together. Mine was going to break. “Papa, Father, Father, it’s there by the rosas.” From inside the dining room window I pointed at the exact spot on the window where I could see the crumpled mass of gray. How strange it was to say “father.” I liked the Spanish sound of “papa,” rounded and formed from closed lips and then a burst of energy and an outward puff of air, and then again, “pa” “pa”. But in English a forcing of air through teeth trapped on the bottom lip, the mouth hinged open and then the tongue thrust out along the teeth and a growl deep in the mouth, “fa th er.” But this was his language and his country and here we were going to live a fine life and be happy. He said so. And I wanted us to be happy. I knew things in Uruguay were bad, and there was never any money or hope. “Plata, “ there. A word meaning “silver,” something shiny and real. “Money,” here. A word that didn’t have a picture and I kept confusing with the first day of the school week. The baby bird wasn’t moving much as my father scooped it up in his gloved hands and to reassure me that it was still alive showed it to me through the window before turning to the tree, turning toward the nest. Perhaps (quizas) had we not been looking at each other through the glass and then at the almost lifeless mass in his outstretched hands, he would have seen the mother blue jay. Her attack came from some high place and was a direct and fierce stabbing of my father’s head. He yelled in pain as she pierced him once, twice, three times. Blood trickled over his ears, down his face onto his shoulders. I saw him look at me through the glass as I stood frozen with my mouth open wanting to call for some help and not finding the words or the breath. The baby in his left hand, waving off the wild mother with his right, he climbed the ladder he had leaned against the tree, and deposited his charge into the nest. When at last he came inside, before my mother saw him and fainted, before we went to the hospital, he said to me, “Sylvia, you see, this is what matters . You must always help others. It might hurt sometimes but you must help the world however you can. Remember this your whole life.”   “La sociededad de mujeres intelectuales y brillantes,” she told me in Spanish. I translated quickly in my head—"The society of intellectual and brilliant women.” Aha. I smiled as I looked at the picture she put in front of us on the table. It was 1974, I was 24 years old, and my grandmother was visiting me for a week. She had come from across the ocean to my home in Maryland. I was embarking on my adult life having just gotten married, bought a home, started my teaching career, and begun my (first) master’s degree. Spanish was the language we communicated in, but it was her fifth language. As a young girl in Lomza, Poland, she spoke Polish, German, and Russian. She told me, “We never knew which language we might need. First one army invaded, then another. We learned to listen and speak what they were speaking. It kept us safer.” “French, too. Yes. I learned the language of fashion and hats when I was young. Oh, that was a musical language.” After she emigrated to Uruguay, in 1930 she quickly learned the native language, Spanish. “You know,” she said, “my name in Polish is Malka, but when I started my women’s hat-making shop in Montevideo, I changed my name to Margot. So much lovelier a sound. I love the sound of words,” and she sighed happily as she sipped her Earl Gray out of my new Wedgewood teacup—the Volendam pattern with a singing bird on a branch by its nest poised to take flight. She had brought some essentials for our visit: good sewing needles of various sizes, a collection of very old buttons, and some photographs. Today she showed me this picture, from 1916, of a gathering of young women. “You see, women were not thought to have very much in the way of brains for higher thought. Ha! How small minded those men were. We didn’t have access to libraries or lectures. But some of us were determined to hear the big ideas of the world. Our town was so small (on the far north eastern border of Russian), but our minds—they were big and they were hungry. We girls got together to talk. Our fathers thought we were discussing food or sewing, but some of our mothers knew the truth. Do you see her?” she said pointing to the girl in the far left chair, “her father was a doctor. When her mother cleaned his library book shelves she would take out books—one a time so as not to create suspicion—and leave them on the floor near the door. Annika –who was prohibited from setting foot in that room—would walk by, put the book under her skirt and bring it to our meetings. One time Greta—the girl with the tie standing up—paid a young peasant boy to go into the library and steal a book (a Martin Buber book!) because we were so desperate to read those ideas.” She paused to nibble on the chocolate chip cookies I had baked that morning. I knew that her father wouldn’t let her go to the university, and that she made money modeling hats in fine stores which she used to pay her way so she could secretly earn a degree as a pharmacist. (“No one knew I was a Jew. They would not have allowed me in. Hard enough I was a woman!”). But I had never heard of her life before that. “You know, Abuela,” I said to her as the sun shone through the big picture window of my living room, “even now in 1974 they tell me that women should not worry about getting higher degrees—being doctors or lawyers or philosophers or college professors. When I graduated from high school the best universities didn’t allow women to enter. Even now it’s such a small number.” I slumped lower into the couch beside her. “Look at this picture,” she said almost violently pointing. Look. You see these girls? We got together. We found a way. We began. See Elza there?” she said pointing to the girl with her chin resting on her hand, “she learned Morse code and helped get Jews out of our town in 1935 by tapping on walls and floors. She lives in Israel today and works as a translator. And Ada, sitting with her hand on her temple, she dressed as a German soldier in 1939 and led 25 children to safety. Then she became an artist.” She smiled and looked at the picture again. “And that’s me,” she said pointing to the slim girl on the far right leaning on the cabinet. “I’m going to be the first one of this group with a granddaughter who will get a doctorate degree.” I laughed and said, “Abuela, I’m only just beginning a master’s degree. I don’t know if I can go that far.” She put down her cup, grabbed me by the shoulder and looked me squarely in the eye, “Yes you will. Women have their own, personal, individual stars inside of them and we find a way—we find a way—to shine brilliantly.” Thirteen years later, eleven years after she died, I framed my newly earned degree in gold.  |
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