Nina Sankovitch - Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair

My Year of Magical Reading

Nina Sankovitch

In Memory of Anne-Marie Sankovitch and for Our Family

We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea inside us.

FRANZ KAFKA,
letter to Oskar Pollak, January 27, 1904

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.

HENRY WARD BEECHER ,
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

Contents

Prologue
On the Cliff

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.

THOMAS KEMPIS

IN SEPTEMBER 2008 MY HUSBAND, JACK, AND I WENT AWAY for a weekend, leaving our four kids in the care of my parents. We went by car from suburban Connecticut out to the Atlantic beaches of Long Island. We had a Windsurfer lashed to our roof and a bike shoved in the back on top of our few bags filled with clothes and books, enough for three days away. Our vacation weekend was my present to Jack in honor of his fiftieth birthday. I had signed him up for an advanced windsurfing workshop, booked us into a hotel off Montauk Highway, and finagled a dinner reservation at a local hot spot that was notoriously difficult to get into.

On our first day there, while Jack was out riding the wind, I took off on my bicycle. I headed east to Montauk, carrying a book in my bike basket, Dracula by Bram Stoker, along with a water bottle and a packet of chocolate. I rode the winding hills of old Montauk Highway, a road that stays close to the ocean shoreline, buffered only by scrubland, fir trees, and cliffs. After a half hour or so, I stopped my bike by an opening cutting through the brush. There, down a little path, I found a perfect spot. A wooden bench stood rooted to the edge of the cliff, faded to a light and shiny gray by sand, wind, and rain, as if buffed and polished. Sheltered from the sun by an overhanging scrub tree and facing out over the Atlantic Ocean, the bench was both solitary and encompassing. I could sit there and be alone, and then look up and see the world unfolding before me in a cascade of blue-and-white waves and glittering sunlight over water. I leaned my bike against a rock, took the book, chocolate, and water out of the basket, and sat down on the bench to read.

I spent my day on that bench, getting up occasionally to stretch and at one point, riding off in search of a bathroom and lunch. But I returned to read again, caught up in the gothic journey of Dracula from Transylvania to England, and back again to Transylvania. I traveled over mountains and past crazed villagers, dodging vampires and accompanied by the good guys, Jonathan Harker, Van Helsing, and Mina. We were fighting to save the world from vampire takeover.

The suddenly shifting cold breezes of early evening brought me back to where I was, sitting on a bench on a Montauk cliff. I had to return to the hotel and get ready for our dinner out. On the bike ride home I stopped at a farmers market and picked up some apples, a chunk of blue cheese, and a loaf of bread. I stopped at a liquor store for red wine and then swerved my way to the hotel, my bike basket overflowing.

Jack wasnt back yet. Great, I thought to myself . I wont get ready for dinner; Ill just keep reading. To stave off hunger, I cut some cheese for myself, loaded it onto a crust of the bread, and poured out a generous slug of wine.With my hand curled around the glass, I continued to read. Van Helsing was hot on the trail of Count Dracula, closing in on the bloodsucking aristocrat.

I was asleep on my book, drained wineglass on the floor and half the entire blue cheese consumed, when Jack got back from his windsurfing. I didnt even feel him as he slipped in on the couch beside me. When I woke up at ten thirty, he was there behind me, snoring away, smelling salty and sweaty. Our dinner reservation was long past. I wriggled into an upright position, poured myself another glass of wine, and finished off Dracula .

The next day I realized I had done it. I had read a book in one day. And a very hefty book at that, more than four hundred pages in all. Of course there had been other days in my life when Id devoured a book in one sitting or in paced feastings over the course of one day. But this book on this day had been a test for me. And I knew now that I was ready. I was ready to read a book a day for one year.

When Jack took off after breakfast for another day of windsurfing, I rode my bike over to the restaurant wed skipped out on the night before. I arrived sweaty and dusty, eager to explain to the matre d how, last night, we had just slept through our reservation. She was a tall, statuesque beauty, and she laughed as I told her my story.

Ive never heard that one before, she said as she penciled us in with a star for eight oclock.

At dinner that night, I raised my glass of Italian white, just poured out by our efficient waiter, and looked Jack in the eye. I had his attention.

To my year of reading, I announced.

Youre really going to do it? he asked.

I nodded.

A book a day? How about a book a week? he asked.

No, I needed to read a book a day. I needed to sit down and sit still and read. I had spent the last three years running and racing, filling my life and the lives of everyone in my family with activity and plans and movement, constant movement. But no matter how much I crammed into living, and no matter how fast I ran, I couldnt get away from the grief and the pain.

It was time to stop running. It was time to stop doing anything and everything. It was time to start reading.

To your year of reading, then, Jack seconded, and clinked his glass with mine. May it be everything you want it to be, and more.

Chapter 1
Crossing the Bridge

It is from knowing that he is dead that he wants to protect his son. As long as I live, he thinks, let me be the one who knows! By whatever act of will it takes, let me be the thinking animal plunging through the air.

J. M. COETZEE,

The Master of Petersburg

MY SISTER WAS FORTY-SIX YEARS OLD WHEN SHE DIED. During the few months between her diagnosis and her death, I traveled back and forth from home in Connecticut to New York City to see her. I usually came in by train. On the train I could read. I read for the same reasons Ive always done it, for pleasure and escape. But now I was also reading to forgetfor just a half hour or sothe reality of what my sister was going through. She had been diagnosed with bile duct cancer. The cancer advanced relentlessly and quickly. It left pain, helplessness, and fear in its wake.

I always carried with me on the train a book or two for Anne-Marie. After finding out about her cancer, Id done a furious Internet searcheveryone hit by the diagnosis does itand Id read that reading funny books can help fight the illness. Escapist books would also help with fighting off the evil cells, but the articles advised me to lay off any heavy reading material. So I brought in Woody Allen and Steve Martin for Anne-Marie, and I also brought in lots of murder mysteries. Murder mysteries involve death, and none of us wanted to think about death, but Anne-Marie had always used mysteries to unwind and relax. As an art historian, shed spent her days poring over dense texts and examining architectural details, plans, and photos. Mysteries were her candy, her vodka tonic, her bubble bath. She loved mysteries rich in detail, deep with atmosphere, and dark in motive. There was no way I was going to deny her now.