A Novel Death (18 page)

Climbing the wide library steps, I entered and hurried past the display cabinets to the Reference Room. Another bookseller had taught me about Coles Reverse Directory. When a promising sale was listed in Newsday with the address, he used it to find the phone number and call for a preview. I needed the opposite now. For no real reason, I trusted Coles more than the Internet. There didn't seem to be the same level of responsibility online that there was from a published book.

But today even Coles couldn't help me. Next to Shawn's number was NP for "not published." I wondered crossly why so many kids had unlisted phone numbers.

But now that I was here... Helen Bannerman.

I wasn't surprised to find that only one biography had been written about her. Unfortunately the library did not own it. The only thing they had was a booklet that was kept on reserve. Not just on reserve, but in a director's office. Not just in a director's office, but in a top-secret place. I had to sign for it and let them keep my driver's license as collateral.

The broad-beamed young woman with the honey-colored braid to her waist eyed me sternly. "Which department did you say you are in?"

"What department?"

"You're not on the faculty?"

"My husband is."

She shook her head as if I were a panhandler trying to pass myself off as a charity.

"The library isn't open to everyone?" I asked.

"The library is, but-this material can't leave the room. And you can't photocopy it!"

"What?"

"Those are the rules." She held the booklet close to her heavy denim thigh as if one misstatement would forever forfeit my chances of even a glimpse.

"Okay. Sure."

She paused, as if trying to come up with another condition, and then reluctantly handed it to me. I sensed her vigilant eyes on my back as I carried the booklet to a library table. Sitting down, I took out a pen and notebook to prove I was a serious scholar.

I saw immediately why Sambo was getting such restrictive treatment. Although the booklet had been published in 1976 by the Racism and Sexism Resource Center for Educators, it contained far more inflammatory images than Helen Bannerman's drawings. If photocopied, the illustrations could be enlarged and used in destructive ways.

Two of the worst offenders were illustrators whose other work I admired. John R. Neill, who did the charming illustrations for the Wizard of Oz books, portrayed Sambo's mother as a three-hundredpound caricature in a polka-dotted apron and matching bandanna. Johnny Gruelle, best known for Raggedy Ann and Andy, put the family in minstrel blackface with exaggerated lips and eyes. There was even an unfortunate contrast of Helen Bannerman's drawing of Black Mumbo helping Sambo into his new jacket placed next to an illustration from her unfinished book, Little White Squibba, in which the child and her mother, standing in front of a mirror, looked like an illustration from Dick and Jane.

Quickly I scanned the text. It corrected misinformation about the author's nationality. Helen Bannerman, nee Watson, was not English, but Scottish, and had lived in India with her physician husband between 1890 and 1917. In her thirties she gave birth to four children. It was for her two older daughters, not for publication, that she first created Little Black Sambo.

But Sambo was an immediate success in London, and reached the United States in 1900, courtesy of the publisher Frederick Stokes. Once here, despite the copyright, it was treated as a folktale and fair game. Twenty-five different companies pounced on the story, each with their own illustrators. Sometimes the setting was Africa, sometimes the American South. Helen Bannerman's later books were largely ignored, though she caused a blip in 1936 with Sambo and the Twins. The twins, Little Black Woof and Little Black Moof, had been stolen by wicked monkeys and were rescued by Sambo and a friendly eagle.

Up through the 1960s Little Black Sambo was highly recommended on children's literature lists: many educators felt that Sambo's heroism created a positive image for black children. Yet even in the 1940s, a few black librarians were wondering about a Black Mumbo who had been fattened up like a Macy's balloon and given a red polkadotted kerchief. Perhaps they also learned that Sambo had been a popular name for a doltish character in minstrel shows and that Black Jumbo's striped trousers were part of that traditional costume. The rationale that the story was set in India, not Africa, didn't appease them. It took place in "the Jungle," and who thought of India that way?

But how could the Scottish daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman be familiar with American blackface? Someone suggested that Helen Bannerman had based her drawings on those from a German book, Der Struwwelpeter (Slovenly Peter), a moralistic tome more likely to be found in religious Scottish homes.

One story had a "black-a-moor" with a green umbrella who is teased unmercifully by three young toughs. When they did not stop, they were snatched up by Saint Nicholas and doused in an inkstand. I caught my breath at the picture of the "black-a-moor" of 1846 striding with his umbrella, juxtaposed next to Sambo with his. The stiff-legged stride of both boys, their exaggerated features in profile, were too close to be an accident.

Borrowing, to put it kindly-but why not? When you are making up stories for your own children, you pull in elements from everywhere; you aren't worried about charges of plagiarism. If it were true that Little Black Sambo had been intended as a way of keeping in touch with her daughters when they were sent back to school in Scotland, she might not have even realized what she was doing.

But just as I was consoling myself with that thought, I imagined Bruce Adair's voice. "Really, Delhi, you can't fall for that old Victorian conceit. Do you really believe that Alice in Wonderland was written for one little girl or that Winnie-the-Pooh was intended only as a bedtime story for Christopher Robin?"

Yet no matter what its conception really was, I saw how the illustrations, even the name Little Black Sambo, could cause problems for black children. Again, publishers responded. By 1970, there was a red-haired and freckled Little Black Sambo, with a slim white Mama in a leopard-skin sarong. Other versions sent him back to India. Looking at both the politically correct illustrations and the ones that made me cringe, I felt that the original pictures were intrinsic to the story. Better banned than whitewashed.

When I turned the last page, I sat looking out the window at the leafy green campus. I was sure that this booklet would mysteriously "disappear" now that someone had shown an interest in it. I turned and saw that the moral guardian at the reference desk had been replaced by a Chinese student. But it didn't matter. I would never join the community of book thieves. Besides, I needed my driver's license back.

With a smile I returned Little Black Sambo, A Closer Look to the reference desk. "Make sure Brunhilda sees that it's back," I said.

Expecting puzzlement, I was gratified when he laughed.

But I still did not know who JRK was.

When I got back to the barn, I found out.

Clicking on my e-mail icon, I found I had thirteen new messages. Five of them had the heading QUERY: Identifying Inscription Initials.

I opened the first, from a bookseller in Minnesota.

Hi Delhi,

Though I can think of several writers with those initials, with the date you suggest the most likely is Rudyard Kipling. Although he never used it, his first name was Joseph. Hence: JRK.

Of course! I stared at the screen, quickly checking whether he had sent the message just to me. No. He had cc'd the entire BookEm list. And why not? It is more gratifying to have your expertise acknowledged by many. Yet nobody jeered at my ignorance. There were four similar messages, one also mentioning the remote possibility that it might be a John R. Kippax, best known for his book Churchyard Literature: A Choice Collection of American Epitaphs, which was published in London in 1877. Another added, If you have Ruddy's monogrammed handkerchief, don't dry clean!

Ha. But the implication that his initials could be found on something I owned bothered me. Rudyard Kipling! Kipling had his own devout following. Lawrence Block may have exaggerated their fanaticism in The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling, but I knew there was an army of them out there. And this was a book that he had actually touched, one that had been inscribed to him.

Maybe. No wonder Margaret had been trying to research the book. She would have known the significance of the initials immediately. Had she had a chance to find out if Rudyard Kipling and Helen Bannerman had been friends? It should be easy enough to check their biographies. I reminded myself again that it was Margaret's book, not mine. But that didn't mean I couldn't find out about it.

I sent thank-you messages to the people who had responded and was about to leave the barn to nuke a Lean Cuisine pizza for dinner when the phone rang.

"Secondhand Prose!"

"Delhi? It's Jack Hemingway. I left a message earlier for you." The voice rolled on richly, leaving me no time to wonder why he had called. "I've been thinking about the Charlie Chan. I didn't mean to grab it from you; it was an automatic reflex. A bad one. As my wife often tells me, I can be a boor. It fit in with an article I was writing and I didn't think. But of course you can have it."

So it wasn't worth as much as he had thought, my inner cynic pointed out.

"No, that's okay," I said. "It's not in my area, and it was one you really wanted."

"Well ..." He allowed that that might be so, but that he was still willing to sacrifice it for me. "I'd love to see your books sometime. I bet you have some interesting stuff!"

"Actually, you can go to my website on AbeBooks or Alibris and check my listings. Just type in Secondhand Prose under Sellers"

But he already knew that, of course.

"There's nothing like seeing books alive and close up," he purred. "And you must have some that aren't online. I'm always looking for the unusual. You know Papa Jack!"

"Aren't we all."

"I mean, I'll spend the bucks. You're located in Port Lewis?"

"Jack, I don't have a signed Rudyard Kipling if that's what you're looking for." What other fallout would there be from BookEm?

He chuckled, unconvinced. "Just furthering your education online, eh?"

Instead of answering, I said, "You know, I thought I saw you in Port Lewis Monday night." The proverbial shot in the dark. I should have used it with Roger, my West Indian friend.

"Port Lewis? No."

"Kind of late?"

"No. We didn't go anywhere. Stayed in with a pizza and a good flick. You can do that every night when you're retired."

"Hm. Guess it was someone who looked like you"

"How's Margaret?"

"Still unconscious. You heard about Amil?"

"Her assistant? I've been following it on Channel 12. But it still isn't clear what happened."

"I don't know either."

"What a world, huh? But listen, Delhi: If you get anything interesting, anything at all, keep me in mind!"

Just what Roger had said. Just what every bookseller on Long Island would say. Had rare books gotten that scarce? It reminded me of a short story I had read once in which the stock for sport fishing on Long Island had gotten so rare that charter captains strapped humans to the bows of their boats to attract sharks for their customers. Would that happen with books, with desirable fiction becoming so scarce that dealers had to kill each other to get it? Even the rumor that Margaret had made a find had stirred everything up.

Automatically I clicked the NEW MESSAGE button and three more came up. The first was a chatty message from my daughter, Hannah, that the brakes on her car were about to fail. The second was a BookEm question about whether taping Priority Mail envelopes was allowed. The last subject heading was blank, with an unfamiliar e-mail address of [email protected]. Good, a book buyer. I clicked on the icon to read the message and large green letters jarred me: WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR IT?

I glanced again at the subject line, as if the name of the book this rude buyer wanted would belatedly appear. But it remained blank. The oversized letters were threatening. But they couldn't be talking about Margaret's book. Lurkers on BookEm might guess I had something, but no one would know what. The e-mail address gave no clue; anyone could hide behind a Hotmail account. It was a trick question anyway. If I said it was not for sale, it sounded as if I had something. I clicked REPLY, typed in I don't know what you're talking about. Then I clicked SEND and waited.

Several minutes later there was a second message from oceans9 @ hotmail.com. A little shakily I opened it.

WHAT'S YOUR PRICE?

We pay cash.

I stared at the pulsing green letters. Someone, somewhere in the world, was sitting in front of a computer, sending aggressive messages and knowing exactly where I was.