Black Sheep Revelations

Jayce stepped off the bustling Main Street pavement and through the open doors of Black Sheep Books. He inhaled deeply and smiled as the bibliosmia hit his nostrils. Bibliosmia was not yet featured in any dictionary, but it translated roughly to “book smell” in Greek, which Jayce liked. That sweet smell of wood and smoke always made him think of good times, like the afternoon he’d spent at Atlantis Books this past summer.

Atlantis was, to Jayce, a divine panoply in Santorini, where he and his parents had vacationed over the summer holiday. Constructed from stone, its two circular rooms were stacked floor to ceiling with every type of literature imaginable and the owners had painted quotes in concentric circles on the white, domed ceiling. The blue swirls were hypnotizing to look at, but it was difficult to make out what they said from below. The stairs outside led to a rooftop patio on which Jayce had lounged for hours, reading, sipping coffee, tanning his fair skin and admiring what he believed to be his first true love.

Athena was back at Washington University now, but they kept in touch through Facebook. As he shuffled through the doors of the Black Sheep Bookstore, Jayce pictured her head nestling into his chest under a blazing Greek sunset. He barely noticed as Greg, the shaggy proprietor, looked up from his Texas Instruments calculator to wave hello over the stack of books on his desk that stretched halfway to the ceiling. Black Sheep, like so many other bookstores, was massively overcrowded. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases ran along every wall of the narrow, rectangular room and a row of chest-high shelves divided the shop into two separate aisles down the middle. Fluorescent lights glared off the linoleum floor. Jayce made his way down the first aisle in silence. Lost in his Greek fantasy, he collided with a middle-aged woman who had rounded the corner, coming the other way.

‘Oh my!’ she gasped. She bounced off his chest and stumbled backwards. Jayce reached out to grip her shoulders and prevent her from falling. He steadied her and she looked up at him, wide-eyed. ‘I’m so sorry about that’ she said. ‘I’m so clumsy sometimes.’

‘That’s alright’ said Jayce, releasing her shoulders. ‘Are you ok?’

‘Oh yes, yes I’m fine.’ She poked his chest, ‘hope I didn’t bruise you.’ She smiled warmly. ‘Oh, no, not at all’ he said, waving the thought away. The corners of his own mouth reached skyward. ‘I love your bag’ he said, indicating the white canvas tote hanging off the crook of her left elbow. It sported bold black lettering that read “It’s not hoarding if it’s books”.

‘Oh, thank you’ she said. ‘I got it at Black Bond Books, just down the street. I’d say it’s a little more apt to describe this place than their store, though.’ She chuckled and Jayce joined her.

‘What are you buying?’ he gestured to the book in her other hand.

‘Oh’ she said, glancing at it. ‘“The Wolves at the Door”. Non-fiction. It’s about a female spy who infiltrated German-occupied France during World War II.’

‘Sounds interesting.’

'I think so! My father was actually a pilot. This remarkable woman…’ she shook the glossy red book ‘…actually rescued him when he was shot down. He parachuted down into an empty field. She rallied a search party and managed to find him before the Germans did, thank goodness. He was stuck in a tree, mind you.’ She giggled at that. ‘And he couldn’t reach his bloody knife to let himself down. She cut him down, hid him from the Germans, smuggled him out through Spain and got him home.’

‘That’s incredible!’ said Jayce. ‘I doubt my grandfather was involved in anything so exciting’. They smiled at each other for another moment. The woman extended her hand for Jayce to shake. ‘Well, it was so lovely meeting you…’

‘Jayce’ he said, taking the proffered hand.

‘…Jayce. I’m afraid I’ve got to be getting home to my own kids now, but I hope you have a very pleasant evening.’ They parted ways, stepping around each other. Jayce beelined for the fantasy section, searching for a boxed set of “The Hobbit/LOTR”. Jayce’s dad had sworn he had an old boxed set in the attic that once belonged to his (Jayce’s) grandfather, but he always took ages to find things and there were three copies here for $20. Jayce took the least tarnished of them—He’d been inculcated with his family’s sense of neatness.

Back home, Jayce kicked off his sneakers and bolted upstairs to his bedroom. His English Lit class was going to begin discussing “The Hobbit” on Monday, and he wanted to get a head start. Closing his bedroom door, Jayce flicked the lights on and sprang onto his bed, boxed set in hand. Laying on his stomach, he held the box in front of himself like a rare artifact he had just discovered. He lifted it in front of his face slowly and widened his eyes in mock wonder before roughly upending the box and spilling its contents onto his bed. His eyes drew into narrow, confused slits.

The four books he had purchased lay in a pile. On top of that pile was a fifth book—not a novel, but a notebook—It was half the size of Tolkien’s paperbacks and quite thin. Jayce picked it up. Its matte black cover rustled in his hands. Someone must have stashed this in the back of the box and forgotten all about it, he thought. Jayce flipped through the pages, about half of which were full. It looked like a diary of some sort. Until the last page—that held a series of double-spaced notes that widened Jayce’s eyes. Written in the top left corner was “William Henderson” and under that was “Schweizerische Kreditanstalt”, followed by a long numerical code and the word “Lederhosen”.

Jayce Googled “Schweizerische Kreditanstalt” and gaped. It had become “Credit Suisse AG”—one of the largest financial institutions in Switzerland. Why would his grandfather’s name be attached to an old Swiss bank account? The account number and “Lederhosen” password seemed self-explanatory. But discovering if and/or why this account really existed would require a trip to Crawford Hills Retirement Home, and a bit of finesse.

William Henderson got on quite well, despite his condition. He had his share of lucid moments, but the dementia was obviously a strain. He sometimes failed to recognize the relatives that visited him and would frequently interrupt whoever was speaking to ask where Margaret, his wife, was. Margaret had been buried in the family plot last year. Perhaps William’s fantasy that she was still with him, always in the next room, played a part in his longevity.

Luckily for Jayce, today was a good day. His grandfather resembled the sharp, lucid man that Jayce remembered from his childhood.

‘Grandpa,’ he drew out the notebook. ‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked, flipping to the last page. William’s eyes widened.

‘Where did you find that?’ he asked, nervously.

‘Stuffed in the back of a box. Is it yours?’

‘Yes’ he said, sighing.

‘What is it?’

‘You’re a bright kid, Jayce, you tell me.’

‘Well, I think it’s a bank account…in Switzerland?’

William tapped his own nose.

‘Well, what’s in there?’

‘Money, I’d suspect. Maybe some gold’

‘Come on, gramps, you know what I mean. Why do you have this?’

‘I don’t, you do.’

Jayce was beginning to get frustrated. ‘Fine, I have it. What is it? What do I have?’

William exhaled. ‘You know Margaret and I emigrated here from Germany. Where is she, by the way?’ Jayce had to hurry. William was fading. ‘She’s out with one of the nurses, gramps. She wanted some fresh air.’ Jayce hated lying like that, but he’d confuse his grandpa if he didn’t.

‘Right, well, we left in ’39. Just before the war started. The Nazis had started rounding up Jews and taking every piece of their property could get their hands on. You remember I had a jewelry business back there?’

‘Yes’

‘Well, my partner was Jewish! They would’ve seized all of our assets, so we transferred them because the Swiss had strict confidentiality laws and Switzerland was “neutral”’ he air quoted the word. ‘We wired our money over, packed all our inventory up and went for the Swiss border. Lenny needed extra time to ready his family, so Marge and I crossed first, on our own.’ He shook his head. ‘We had no problems, but Lenny didn’t show. Turns out the Swiss were happy to accept his money, but not him. Or his Jewish family.’ He paused contemplatively. ‘Lenny was stuck, he died in the camps while Marge and I got to sit in a Swiss hotel and relocate undisturbed.’

‘I’m sorry, grandpa.’

‘I loved that man.’ He said, tears welling. ‘And those bastards couldn’t just let him in.’

Minutes passed in silence. ‘What happened to the money?’

William wiped his eyes with his sleeve. ‘I took my half and moved us out here.’

‘How much money do you think is in there today?’

‘How would I know? Half the value of our shop, plus some gold and jewels in the deposit box. Probably a million euros or so.’

Jayce’s eyes bulged. ‘A million euros?!?!’

‘Probably’ William threw his hands in the air.

‘And you just left it there?’

‘That was Lenny’s money, not mine!!’ he boomed, drawing a few glances from people around the room. ‘Why do you wanna know all this anyway, huh? What are you some kind of journalist or something? I’m an old man, it was a long time ago.’

Jayce stopped. He’d lost him.

Jayce wrestled with the decision to tell his father, but went ahead in the end.

‘I know’ he said.

‘You knew? Why didn’t you ever do anything?’

‘Lenny was more than a business partner to grandpa, Jayce. He loved him.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘They were together, Jayce. They were gay.’

Jayce reeled. ‘What about grandma?’

His father sighed, ‘he loved her too, Jayce, just in a different way.’

‘But, but…they had kids. They had you!’

‘It would have been suspicious if they didn’t, kid. You don’t understand, it’s not like today. Lenny had a wife, too. If anyone found out it would’ve been very bad for them. Gay people were hunted back then. If grandpa’s homosexuality got out, they probably wouldn’t have let him across the Swiss border either.’

Jayce processed the revelation. Only after a week of heavy research did he broach the subject with his father again. ‘But how come gramps never took the money out?’ he asked.

His father sighed, ‘it was important to him that Lenny’s money remain untouched. At first, he was holding out hope that Lenny would survive the camps and claim the money after the war. But even after he found out, he wanted to honour Lenny’s memory and keep it there for him.’

‘But you have power of attorney now, right? Because of the dementia? I read online that people leave those to their kids.’

‘Yes, Jayce I was granted power of attorney when grandpa went to Crawford’s. But there’s no need to use it. We can more than afford his care and he wanted Lenny’s money untouched.’

‘Couldn’t he better honour Lenny by actually doing something with that money?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like…giving it to Lenny’s family?’

Turns out Lenny had a sister who had made it through the camps. She had kids and grandkids now, and they were thrilled (understatement) to receive what turned out to be a combined €1,479,233.81 payday comprised of cash and gold. So thrilled, in fact, that when Jayce told them how he planned to reunite with Athena, Lenny’s sister demanded that he do it on her dime. ‘How much do you need?’ she asked. ‘Well’ Jayce said, ‘our housing will be taken care of. So for expenses, probably about $10,000?’

She contemplated, smiled ‘take $20,000’.