My Father’s Books

Autodidacts

44 Auto­ did­ acts Hav­ ing left the Bal­ kans in their youth, one to Con­ stan­ tin­ o­ ple, the other to Paris, they had many pas­ sions, like all young peo­ ple, but it was their love of books that re­ mained most en­ graved upon them. Al­ though they had both stud­ ied at great uni­ ver­ sities, one at the Uni­ ver­ sity of Con­ stan­ tin­ o­ ple, the other at the Sor­ bonne, they both still had much to learn; they re­ mained great auto­ did­ acts, and they re­ mained for­ ever fas­ ci­ nated by how time gath­ ered in li­ brar­ ies, in re­ li­ gious build­ ings, in­ bridges. But, in their im­ pov­ er­ ished Bal­ kans, noth­ ing re­ mained eter­ nal—no­ bridge, no place of wor­ ship, no li­ brary. In their rest­ less Bal­ kans it was their books that could be car­ ried along, that could en­ dure, that could come to life. They be­ lieved that the full­ ness of life, which they them­ selves for­ ever ­ lacked, ­ rested in their books. The peo­ ple in the Bal­ kans never had the op­ por­ tu­ nity to heal them­ selves: just as one war ended, an­ other war ap­ proached. Just when they be­ came ac­ cus­ tomed to com­ mu­ ni­ cat­ ing in one lan­ guage, an­ other came along. It was a hell­ ish sit­ u­ a­ tion. Peo­ ple ­ viewed our ­ father and Mr. K., with their books, as some sort of out­ dated mis­ sion­ ar­ ies, as men with a dif­ fer­ ent turn of mind; no one could under­ stand their great love of books. Those con­ founded books were a ­ source of under­ stand­ ing or mis­ under­ stand­ ing. My ­ father and Mr. K. be­ lieved that peo­ ple would under­ stand them and would ac­ cept their love of books. Each ­ worked his own li­ brary, his own lit­ tle part of the world, his Gar­ den of Eden. At the same time, they built their own small Tow­ ers of Babel with se­ cret walls made of those books that fate had as­ signed to them at that first turn, at all turns. The un­ cer­ tainty that they might not fully suc­ ceed in shap­ ing their li­ brar­ ies ate away at them. 45 These ­ self-taught men, these Don Quix­ otes of the Bal­ kans, came here at the wrong time. They had great and ten­ der ­ hearts; they had­ within them the heart of all books. ...