Running The Books : The Adventures Of An Accidental Prison Librarian Part 24

Prologue Shortly after I left the prison for the last time-which had the miraculous effect of instantly healing my back-I found myself in Copley Square, walking toward the stately Boston Public Library. It was late May. In some corners of the city, the scent of lilacs could hold its own against rush hour's ama.s.sed fumes. The flower of Boston's spring is short-lived, a life-span of mere hours, but it was in full bloom that day.

I thought of Hawthorne's description of the wild roses blossoming next to this city's first prison, "which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him." His prison rose bush struck me as a fine metaphor for a prison library, freely giving a small gift of beauty to a criminal. And as Hawthorne, a fellow fatalist after all, had also noted: this tiny, freely given object of beauty, a rose (or a book), was fragile, a mere token-and probably nothing more.

It had been almost a month since I had walked into a library. I missed it. I mounted the steps of Boston's great marble hall of books. All across America public libraries were, and are, being shut down, while prisons-with libraries-were, and are, being built. This has been a choice the American public has been making for over thirty years. Even in his fatalism-envisioning the New World Utopian dream dashed early by the grim necessity of building a prison-it is doubtful Hawthorne would have imagined so many many prisons, the biggest penal system in the history of the world. America has 5 percent of the world's population, 25 percent of the world's prison population. A population the size of an American city left without a vote. If, as Hawthorne wrote, prison was the "black flower of civilized society," how would he describe the modern American penal system? prisons, the biggest penal system in the history of the world. America has 5 percent of the world's population, 25 percent of the world's prison population. A population the size of an American city left without a vote. If, as Hawthorne wrote, prison was the "black flower of civilized society," how would he describe the modern American penal system?

The central Boston Public Library however was still open, and lovely as ever. Inside, I discovered a crowd that was somehow familiar to me from prison and was suddenly struck by the universal culture of daytime libraries, both those in prison and in the free world: they are havens for all variety of loners and outcasts.

There were manic scribblers, filling legal pads with their musings; schizos, the obsessive and the compulsive; conspiracy theorists sitting with piles of books filling notecards in a careful effort to doc.u.ment their revisionist views of history; skeletal women grimly surveying ma.s.sive tomes with magnifying gla.s.ses; an ancient gentleman smartly attired in a fedora and necktie (with tie clip), shuffling by at a glacial pace. His houndstooth sports jacket may have fit him handsomely during the Johnson administration but now came almost to his knees. There were others. Angry, bearded weirdos. Nap seekers. Grad students with Macs. A librarian snickering over an email.

All were equal in the main reading room, Bates Hall, with its magnificent fifty-foot vaulted ceiling and arched windows set high upon the wall, carefully placed, so it would seem, to remind one that the effulgence pouring through streamed directly from the heavens. Rows upon rows of reading tables dotted in glowing green lamps, like the wonderful affirmation signaled by the endless chain of green traffic lights that occasionally turns Broadway into a joyride through Manhattan.

Somebody stirred nearby.

Psst.

I turned around. I was being summoned with a smile and an elaborate gesture. This man knew me, which meant I probably knew him. But I didn't recognize him. Not until I got close.

"Maestro," he whispered fervently. It was Al, the above-ground swimming pool salesman I'd met in the prison library during the winter. he whispered fervently. It was Al, the above-ground swimming pool salesman I'd met in the prison library during the winter.

"You don't recognize me!" he said, as I took a seat next to him. "I remember you you, Mr. Prison Librarian."

"Of course I remember you," I said. "How could I forget?"

I might have been forgiven for not immediately identifying him. He was generously cloaked, wizard-like, in a fluttering, immaculately white Arabian thobe, with equally well-scrubbed white Air Jordans on his feet. There were the beginnings of a beard.

I remember he once told me that he wore the cap of whatever baseball team was currently the World Series champion. This was a man intent on partaking of greatness. Perhaps there was something like optimism in that-though, as a baseball fan myself, I tend toward more loyal forms of optimism. True to his word, though, he was wearing a new, red St. Louis Cardinals cap that day.

His head was the site of much activity. Over the Cardinals cap was a hood from his red sweatshirt, and thick headphones connected to an iPod. Under the cap, a white silken do-rag. And under that, a white kufi. The final tally: five items wrapped around this man's cranium. Until I arrived, he'd been hunched over an Arabic Quran, with facing English translation. An Arabic-English dictionary sat nearby.

The process of saying h.e.l.lo was pleasantly delayed by his methodical effort to remove each piece of headgear. He peeled off each layer, and with it, an entire persona. First, he doffed the hoodie, headphones and cap, his city garb. He was now left in a white do-rag that clung tightly to his hair and dangled n.o.bly down his right shoulder. Together with the white robe, he was a jewel-encrusted dagger away from being a proud Moorish sentry. Then he ran his hand under the do-rag, removing it, and revealing the hand-knit kufi. Now he was a pilgrim on the hajj.

I told him I hadn't known he was a devout Muslim.

"Is the pope Catholic?" he said to me. "Then why can't I be Muslim?"

As usual, I couldn't quite tease out whether this was wit or sheer nonsense.

"What about Marx?" I asked. "I remember you were into the whole religion thing as a false ideology designed to keep the ma.s.ses-"

"f.u.c.k that," he whispered. "Man's got got to believe." to believe."

I asked him about his star-selling business and about the swimming pools. He seemed uneasy with the questions. I got the sense he'd moved on from these things, or that it had gone sour. Or perhaps it had been nothing more than prison talk.

"I can still get you one...if you want," he said, referring to either a star or an above-ground swimming pool. Possibly both. I didn't ask.

"Nah," I said, "I'm all set."

After playing a bit of prison geography, I told him about my worries regarding Josh and other inmates with whom I was trying to stay in touch. He re-outfitted himself, wrapping and rewrapping his head. We floated out of the reading room together. He told me that he still remembered the jokes I told in the writing cla.s.s (I would often start the cla.s.s with a joke). I thanked him for saying that.

"No man, I'm serious," serious," he told me, as we rounded down toward the grand staircase. "I wrote them all down, that was some serious s.h.i.t you was spinning." he told me, as we rounded down toward the grand staircase. "I wrote them all down, that was some serious s.h.i.t you was spinning."

"That's true," I said. "Jokes are serious. I'm glad you agree."

We turned through the triumphal arch, past a clutter of columns and parapets, into the soft yellow, Siena marble arcade. The grand staircase. Under the murals of Aeschylus, Virgil, and Plato, we began our descent. He grabbed my arm, apparently in need of help balancing. We walked past the stone library lion-libraries really do need lions to protect them, the way that Officer Eddie Grimes had once told me, "the sword protects the pen."

I continued telling him about my issues. It wasn't clear that he was listening. We pa.s.sed through the arched front door. It felt strange to walk about freely with an ex-inmate, with n.o.body watching, no restrictions or checkpoints. We stood under the heavy wrought-iron lanterns on the building's facade. Through the warm air, a swirl of scents reached us, cotton-candy, burgers, and buses. A twist of sewage. It was a Sat.u.r.day-and even though I no longer kept the traditions, I resolved to observe the loveliness of this particular Shabbat day, to walk the forty-five minutes home.

As I rattled on about my concerns for the various people I had left behind in the prison, Al stared out over Copley Square, toward Trinity Church and the reflection of Trinity Church in the mirrored John Hanc.o.c.k building.

Finally, he cut me off.

"Let me tell you a good one," he said. "You told me this one. But I think you need to hear it again."

He told me the joke, getting it mostly right.

A merchant bought a sack of prunes from his compet.i.tor.

I smiled. I knew where this was going.

Opening the sack, he saw that the prunes had begun to rot. He went back to the seller and demanded his money back. The seller refused, and the two men went to see the rabbi to settle their dispute.

The rabbi sat down at a table between the two men and emptied the sack in front of them. Then he put on his gla.s.ses, and without saying a word, he went to work, slowly and carefully tasting one prune after another and each time shaking his head.

After some time had pa.s.sed, the plaintiff finally spoke up, "So, Rabbi, what do you think?"

The rabbi, who was about to consume the last of the prunes, looked up and replied sharply: "Why are you fellows wasting my time? What do you think I am-a prune expert?"

"You did did write those jokes down, didn't you?" I said. write those jokes down, didn't you?" I said.

"I told you, man, that's some deep s.h.i.t."

"What do you think it's about?" I asked.

"I've thought about it," he said, "and I'll tell you exactly what it is: in this life, a man don't got to have all the answers."

"That's funny," I said, "I thought it was about a hungry thief who calls himself a rabbi."

"Nah, man. s.h.i.t. You missed the whole point."

He seemed genuinely agitated.

"It's about a smart guy, okay, but he ain't smart in the right right way, see? Just 'cause you think about something a lot don't mean you know anything about it. Maybe you went to rabbi school, or you're an imam, or whatnot, but that don't mean you know s.h.i.t about no d.a.m.n prunes." way, see? Just 'cause you think about something a lot don't mean you know anything about it. Maybe you went to rabbi school, or you're an imam, or whatnot, but that don't mean you know s.h.i.t about no d.a.m.n prunes."

He gave me a stern look. We descended a few more steps. And I decided to accept his interpretation.

At the curb, Al released my arm-only when he finally let go did I realize how tightly he'd been clutching me. He gave me the Islamic farewell. I followed his lead: we alternated pecking each other's cheeks until he seemed satisfied that the gesture had been properly executed, after what felt like forty, possibly fifty turns. Then we thug hugged. Then fist b.u.mped. Then we shook hands, and parted ways. He in a cab, I by foot.

Acknowledgments My thanks to the following people who, in different and indispensable ways, helped make this book possible.

To Steve Fredman, Anita Leyfell, Lorna Owen, Jed Perl, Marcie Richardson, and Sasha Weiss; to Jennifer Lyons, for her patience and wisdom; to my brilliant and clairvoyant editor, Ronit Feldman, the hard-working staff at Doubleday, and of course to the inimitable Nan Talese.

To Cathy, Charlie, Dottie, Forest, Kamau, Kelly, Mary Beth, Ming, Rick, Yoni, and all of the good people at the Bay.

To Kayla Yonit, yonati b'chagvei ha-selah yonati b'chagvei ha-selah. And to Abba, Ima, and Adena for, you know, everything.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR Avi Steinberg was born in Jerusalem and raised in Cleveland and Boston. His work has appeared in the Boston Globe Boston Globe, the New York Review of Books, Salon New York Review of Books, Salon, and other publications.

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