Veritas
You ask me why I love books? I think it’s because I associate them with my grandparents. My grandmother’s hot soup on cold winter days after school, her cheese sandwiches chilled in the refrigerator when the weather grew warmer. I would arrive from school hungry and go straight to my grandparents’ bookstore, entering the glass door under the sign Veritas Books in large Gothic letters. My grandmother would usually be behind the counter, or perhaps by one of the stacks helping a customer. As soon as she saw me she would shout, “David, the boy is here!” and my grandfather would emerge from the back room. He then would take over behind the counter or with the customer, while my grandmother took me upstairs to their one-room flat and fed me.
After I ate, I would go back downstairs, and my grandfather would ask me, “What did you learn in school today?” He would listen carefully to my answer, nod his head and say “hmm, hmm,” like a doctor listening to a patient’s heartbeat.
I would stay in my grandparents’ bookstore until my mother arrived to take me home, sometimes late at night. You know how it is with single parents—she was our family’s only breadwinner, so she needed to take advantage of every opportunity to earn overtime.
As I got older, after I finished my homework my grandparents would ask me to help out in the store. I would unbox the new arrivals and place them on the shelves. I soon learned to distinguish between fiction—arranged alphabetically by the author’s name, surname first, then given name—and non-fiction, arranged by subject. My grandfather helped me identify each non-fiction book’s subject, and by the time I started middle school, I could do that myself.
One day, deep in the back of the storeroom, I found an old box. “Grandpa, we forgot about these books!” I called. He came over to me. “No,” he said quietly, “we don’t put those books on the shelves.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“They’re not suitable,” he answered.
Mr. Smith would visit the bookstore occasionally. At least we called him Mr. Smith. “Good to see you, Professor!” he would call to my grandfather when he came in. He never bought anything, but always looked at all the shelves and had a quiet but intense conversation with my grandfather. My grandfather always seemed troubled when Mr. Smith left.
“You should feature Rebecca Crey’s book this month; she’s going to be interviewed on Channel 11,” I once overheard Mr. Smith telling my grandfather.
“I read an advance copy of the book,” my grandfather answered. “It doesn’t have a lot of literary merit.”
“She will be on Channel 11,” Mr. Smith replied. “I’m sure you know what that means.”
“Yes, of course I do,” my grandfather said.
Later, my grandfather turned to me and said, “Benny, help me arrange the Featured table.” Together, we placed Rebecca Crey’s book on a stand at the front of the table and a dozen copies on either side of it.
My favorite subject, in school and in the bookstore, was history. Because, well—it’s a story. I would imagine myself living in each historical period as we studied it. I especially liked imagining myself during the War of Independence. There I was, conspiring with the Founders to overthrow the foreign oppressor. “We shall die for freedom!” they cried, and I responded with the others assembled, “Freedom! Freedom!” I was there when they adopted the Declaration of Independence that declared, “God has set all Men free.”
So, I was excited to enter the Young Scholar of the Homeland competition in high school—and was even more excited when I won first place. The competition involved writing an essay about the values of the Founders; the award was based on an evaluation of the essay by the prize committee plus a teacher’s recommendation. My school held a ceremony in which I was given a certificate declaring me a Young Scholar of the Homeland. That afternoon, when school ended, I rushed to the bookstore to show the certificate to my grandparents.
“Amazing, I’m so proud of you!” my grandmother gushed when I showed her the certificate. But my grandfather seemed less enthusiastic. “You are a very good student,” he said, nodding.
Later, I overheard him saying to my grandmother, “He’s just like his father.”
I had never heard anyone mention my father before.
The next day I asked my grandfather, “What did you mean I am like my father?”
He thought for a moment, took a deep breath, and said, “He also liked history.”
“How did he die? Was it before I was born?”
“It’s a long story, Benny. One day when we have time, I’ll tell you.”
We stood there for what seemed like several minutes. Then my grandfather said, “Benny, you like to read, yes?”
“Yes, I do like to read,” I answered.
“In that case,” my grandfather said, “come with me.”
We went to the back of the storeroom, to the old box with the unsuitable books. My grandfather bent over the box and took out a book. The book was called 1984; the author was George Orwell. It looked like it had been published a long time ago.
“Have you heard of this book?” my grandfather asked.
“No,” I said.
“I think you will find it interesting. But you must go upstairs to read it. And when you are finished reading, put it back in this box. Do not take it with you.”
From that day on I no longer helped my grandparents in the store; instead, I would read a book my grandfather chose for me from the old box. We started with novels; then, after a while, my grandfather started giving me history books—books about events that I had never been taught in school, or that described events differently from the way I had been taught.
One day I found my grandfather speaking with someone who I had never seen in the store before. He was rather tall, with black hair and a short beard. “Hello, Benny!” my grandfather called to me when I came in.
The visitor turned and looked at me. His eyes grew soft. “Hello Benny, nice to meet you,” he said, and put out his hand.
I hesitated. Customers didn’t usually ask to shake my hand. “Benny, be polite,” my grandfather said.
I shook the visitor’s hand. “Nice to meet you,” I said meekly.
The visitor started to ask me questions. “What grade are you in? Do you enjoy school? What is your favorite subject?”
I gave one-word answers. When I said my favorite subject was history, he said, “I love history, too. But it is very powerful. You should be careful with it.”
That evening was one of the nights my mother came from work late. After a few words with my grandparents, she seemed upset. “Sammy was here, and you didn’t ask him to wait for me?” I overheard her saying.
“You know he couldn’t do that,” I heard my grandfather say.
That night my mother was silent all the way home.
“Is everything ok?” I asked her.
“Yes, of course, everything is fine,” she said.
“Did you know the man who was in the store today?” I asked.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
In the months that followed, my reading continued. My grandfather would give me a book, each of a different genre and from a different time period, but none of which I had ever seen on the shelves.
When I was about to start my final year of high school, my grandfather said, “I think you are ready for this one,” and he pulled out a thick book in a brown cover. The book was The War of Independence: A Reconsideration by Samuel J. Baker.
The book’s language was heavy and academic. But I was fascinated, because it said things about the founding of our country that I had not learned in school. Had I missed those parts? That could not be, because I had lapped up every detail of the founding like a thirsty puppy. In that case, many of the things the book said must not have been true. But if so, why did my grandfather give me the book to read?
I looked at the inside of the book jacket to read the author’s biography. It said he was a professor of history at the university. Above the bio was a picture. It looked like the man who had shaken my hand in the bookstore.
“I have some questions about the book you gave me,” I told my grandfather the next day.
“Wait until we close, then we’ll go upstairs and talk about it,” he said.
That night, after my grandfather pulled down the shutters and locked the door of the store, I went back upstairs with him. Instinctively, I went to the kitchen table and put myself in the chair I always sat in. My grandmother set a tall glass of the lemonade she knew I liked in front of me.
My grandfather sat down next to me. Before I could start asking my questions, he said, “I used to teach history at the university. Sammy was my student. He was brilliant—always questioning, coming up with original ways to approach historical events. We found ourselves getting into intense discussions and losing track of time. But he was taking up all of my office hours, leaving no time for the other students. So, I invited him to my home. He started coming to dinner almost every evening, and we would talk late into the night. That’s how he met your mother.”
I looked at the photo of the author in the book. “You have his eyes,” my grandfather said.
“So, he didn’t die?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how to refer to him—my father? the author?—so I just used a pronoun.
“He got a combined teaching and research position at the university. He was so gifted, it was easy to convince the department to hire him. When his book was published, it was hailed in academic circles as seminal.”
My grandfather took a long look at me.
“Benny, do you ever follow elections?” he asked finally.
“No, they’re not interesting because they’re just formalities,” I answered.
“You’re too young to remember this, but elections weren’t always formalities. They used to be competitive; sometimes the opposition would win.”
He looked at me and smiled. “Yes, I can see you’re surprised. But hard as it is to imagine today, it’s true; power would change hands every so often.”
“What does that have to do with him? My father?”
“Some of Sammy’s students became radical. They started demonstrating against the country, saying it was illegitimate. Soon they were joined by ideologues from outside the university. They may have gotten aid from a hostile foreign government; there’s no way to know for sure. In any case, the demonstrations eventually expanded to other universities.”
“And it was very bad for your heart,” my grandmother chimed in.
“Yes, the whole controversy was too much for me, so I resigned from my position at the university and opened the bookstore instead,” my grandfather said.
“But what did that have to do with the elections?” I asked.
“One of the candidates started drawing attention to the protestors. He said they were internal enemies who wanted to destroy our country. The protests were mostly peaceful, but every once in a while someone would throw something at a police officer or harass a passerby. News reports would focus on these incidents, giving the impression that things were out of control. Eventually a group broke into one of the university’s buildings and occupied it, holding maintenance staff hostage. That provoked widespread public revulsion.
“Public perception of the protests probably helped the candidate win the election. Although, I have to say, the election was very close, so there’s no knowing what made the difference, or if it was any one thing. In any case, once he got into office the new leader quickly moved against the universities. He declared that they had to stop teaching ‘fake history’. All history courses had to follow a ‘patriotic curriculum,’ or the government denied all funding—even funding that had nothing to do with history, like grants for medical research or financial aid for students. The universities had to submit all hiring decisions to the government for approval. They were forced to fire Sammy. Eventually we started fearing for his safety, so he went into hiding.
“This took place over a period of several months. The opposition party was in disarray and did not know how to respond. Meanwhile, the new leader also took on the news media. He accused outlets who reported critically on him of being in league with the country’s enemies in the universities. Since the largest media outlets were owned by corporations that also had other businesses, and those businesses sometimes needed government approval for things like mergers and acquisitions, they muted anything that might be seen as critical of the leader. Only some small media outlets that reached relatively few people remained independent.
“By the time the next elections came, the opposition had a hard time getting its message out. Did I mention that the government also manipulated the election rules to give its candidates an advantage? The next few elections were not completely one-sided, and the opposition came pretty close, but after a while it became clear they were only going through the motions.”
“Tell him about Mr. Smith,” my grandmother said as she put a sandwich in front of me.
“Honestly, I don’t remember when exactly Mr. Smith started visiting us,” my grandfather said. “I do remember it was an unusually hot afternoon, so it must have been in the summer. Actually, yes, it was in the summer because it was shortly before the start of the school year. The government had prohibited teaching certain books in school, saying they were inappropriate for children. Those books also had to be removed from school libraries. Mr. Smith came and looked at all the books in the store. He told me he was an inspector from the Department of Education and that we had to remove those books that had been prohibited in schools.
“I told him, ‘We’re not a school bookstore,’ but he said, ‘School children come in here, or they might. We don’t want them to be exposed to things that might harm them. The well-being of our children is a top priority for us.’ And he gave me a list of the books I needed to take off the shelves.
“From his tone of voice and the look on his face, it was clear to me there would be serious consequences for us if we didn’t do what he said. But I didn’t want anyone telling me what books I could or couldn’t sell in my store. So, I decided to close the store. But your grandmother said—”
“I said, David, you can’t keep quitting and trying to find new ways to earn a living,” my grandmother interrupted. “Whatever else you find, they’ll make trouble for you there too. And you’re already starting to have health problems.”
“I had to admit she was right,” my grandfather continued. “We still needed the income, and I couldn’t come up with a better alternative. So, I removed the books on the list.
“Mr. Smith kept coming regularly. Each time he had a new list of books to take off the shelves. They started including books that were never in any school—books of academic research, then works of fiction, anything that reflected an approach the government considered ‘unpatriotic.’ Your father’s book was among them of course.”
My grandfather paused.
“With time, Mr. Smith started coming less frequently. But still often enough, at random intervals, that I had to keep the banned books off the shelves. Besides, I didn’t want some customer to see a banned book and maybe report it to the authorities.”
Another pause.
“But I realized Mr. Smith never went into the storeroom. So, I put the banned books in a box and kept it all the way in the back, thinking one day maybe I will be able to display them again.”
That was the end of my reading adventure with my grandfather. When I entered university, I decided to switch to something more practical and studied engineering. But I still love books. Fiction, non-fiction on any subject—whenever I have time, I grab a book.
Ok, I can see you have questions. You’re wondering what happened to that box. The truth is, I don’t know. My grandparents eventually retired and sold the bookstore. When I asked him about the box, my grandfather said only, “Don’t worry about it.” I never saw my father again either.
And I can tell that you don’t believe elections were once competitive. That people didn’t know ahead of time who would win. It’s hard for me to believe, too. But that’s what my grandfather told me, and he never lied to me.
~