Daniel is the 18 month old I take care of most of the day. He has the blondest hair and the bluest eyes I've ever seen; his mother is a Greek/Italian, so obviously those Arian genes he inherited from his father really are dominant. Daniel, like (I hope) most other children his age is interminably curious and always wants what he cannot/should not have. Perhaps I should not think something so devious of someone so young, but I believe he feigns injury so that I will pick him up and he can then get his fair little hands on things at adult eye-level. Complicating this matter is the fact that the apartment Daniel and his family lives in is not baby-proofed, which leads to my following him around and taking from him the things which could inevitably lead to injury and possible death. In the past two weeks this has included but is not limited to pens, magnets, coins, a hairdryer, utensils of all shapes and sizes, and those really heavy fake Chinese relaxation balls with chimes in them. Daniel's parents think this is funny and cute. Daniel's parents are not his primary caregivers.
One day last week Daniel started taking books off the lower level shelves in the family room. Finally! I thought, something that won't kill him. I let him take the books off the shelves and flip through the pages. He seemed fairly interested, so I figured I had a good ten minutes before he got bored and waddled into the next room. After about forty-five seconds, however, Daniel's grandfather and namesake walked into the room, said to Daniel "Nein! No! No librettos per Daniel." He then looked at me and said "He destroy books."
I was a bit taken aback, given that the grandfather sits around all day and reads novels (we had a halting conversation in Italio-English about A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court the other day) while his wife and I chase the little ones around -- surely he wants to instill a love of books in his grandchild? What better way to kill this nascent curiosity than to disallow any encounters with the material of a book itself? It's half the fun, I dare say. The musty smell and worn-in spines of old books, the crisp, stuck-together pages of new books that have a spine so straight it seems like they are resistant to letting you read them. These are experiences a child Daniel's age can appreciate, even if the letters on the page mean nothing!
So, I must admit, I have been letting Daniel take books off the shelves and play with them - under my watchful eye of course. If he even looks like he is about to tear a cover, crinkle a page, or place the spine in his mouth (the tool of choice for curious toddlers), the book gets taken away, along with an explanation of why. For with a love of books and their form, I want to also instill respect. Daniel and I had a breakthrough the other day with a small English-Italian dictionary when he got it out, thumbed through the pages, and then placed it back on the shelf exactly as it had been. "Bravo Daniel!" I cried and clapped my hands. He smiled. I thought I had gotten through to him.
This, however, is not my confession.
Back at the end of May when I was haphazardly packing all of my belongings to move to a house a mere seven spaces down on the same street, I almost forgot that a friend and former roommate has asked me to be temporally responsible for one box of books belonging to her. Around 11:00 pm of the night before I was to leave the city, I remembered the forgotten books in the basement, ran down, and began placing the books in one of the empty boxes of another roommate who has not yet begun her arduous process of packing. This operation should have taken five minutes tops, but with a toddler-like curiosity I examined each of the thirty or so books before putting them away. Most of the books I had heard of, many I had read or at least read parts of, but one entitled Life in Macondo I never knew had even been written. As the last new novel I read had been 100 Years of Solitude, on the recommendation of the roommate who owned the books, I was quite interested. I tossed Life in Macondo in my own bag, finished packing up the rest of the books, figured my roommate would be nonethewiser, and I could tell her after I finished it that it was a handling fee.
Daniel Levi had not yet entered my life.
Yesterday, as Daniel was playing with books on his parents' bookshelves, I walked out of the room to check on his lunch. At sixty seconds, I was obviously out of the room for far too long and got suddenly nervous when I didn't hear the child. I ran back into the room only to discover that Daniel had taken my purse down from a high shelf and gotten the book I am currently reading out of my purse, that is, Life in Macondo. A half second of triumph (out of all the things in my purse, he chose the book!) was followed by horror as I realized he had torn the dilapidated cover clear off the collection of short stories. I could no longer tell my roommate, who shares my love of books, that borrowing her book was a handling fee. Life in Macondo has been sacrificed to the gods of curiosity at the hands of an 18-month-old Arian. Would Márquez approve?
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