Endpieces (a story)
Schwartz, Hillel
HILLEL SCHWARTZ Klapisch was looking for an heirloom. It would have been better, of course, if he already had one, but there had been too many migrations, too many divorces in the family, some...
...Erotica, he supposed the man would call it...
...Stupidity...
...It was a synagogue, or a dozen of them dumped together, all the trappings, the old European silver candlesticks, the Torah covers in velvet and gold, the silver pointers shaped like witches' fingers, the tall spice boxes with their minarets, the heavy wine cups, several old free-standing arks, Torah scrolls leaning up against a mahogany reader's desk, pewter plates, bronze, copper, more gold...
...Klapisch followed more slowly, careful of the back aisles where dozens of clocks in walnut cases leaned over the counters at unwise angles...
...It's not like down here, it's got—what can I say?—it's not so capital A, there's some, a. . . ." The owner abandoned his own spiel, smiling as if it should be understood between them that what lay above, upstairs, was as far beyond words as, oh, the Lord...
...I found," Klapisch said, standing up and brushing himself off, "I found—" shouting now, "—I found nothing...
...He did not go out of his way to find excitement, and he was not unpleased with the way he'd led his life...
...You know," the owner said, "you just bought my grandmother...
...Except once, in 1926...
...But a granddaughter should walk around New Delhi with an SS leash in her purse...
...I know," the owner said...
...At the top, the owner stopped before a door...
...What had he gotten himself into...
...She lay in an Oriental pose on a sofa so small that it could have served only as a prop...
...His shoes were old, the suit too small, but the tie was spotless and the knot perfect...
...I'll make you a museum...
...It's not often I get the chance...
...He had been nudged out of the first four after it had become clear that he was interested neither in art nor posterity, although it seemed still unclear, these hours later, what it was that would interest him...
...He opened the door and walked inside, nodded Klapisch past him, then closed the door behind them...
...The owner finished the gift wrapping...
...Klapisch happened to like the hairpin...
...It was an expert job, handsomely done, in the pre-war style of those Prague shopkeepers who kept fancy papers hidden under their ledgers for their special customers...
...And then, looking up at Klapisch from his cash register: "You want to know anything about that tintype...
...This is his first appearance in moment...
...Help me, you bastard...
...the owner said, paying little attention and leading Klapisch down to the main floor and the showroom...
...The owner's key ring was out again...
...The fifth store today...
...this store, like the others, was a stockyard of pain, war, loss, ruin...
...You understand me...
...Klapisch went to the stairs...
...It must be a joke...
...That was wrong, of course, and he knew it, so he stopped...
...I'm not here to sell you anything, I'm just looking for an heirloom...
...The owner put the brass key into the lock and a bolt slid free...
...If the staircase seemed narrow, it was less the original architecture than this second skin of lights—and the hundreds of small Japanese dolls tied along the curving banister—that made the air seem tight and the steps precarious...
...Klapisch looked at the man...
...An old man should have known better...
...He picked up an ornately-framed tintype of a Parisian prostitute whose face reminded him of someone...
...Klapisch followed through the corridor to the erotica, then paused...
...Yes," Klapisch insisted, "and I'd like it wrapped as a wedding gift...
...Klapisch himself rather appreciated the sounds of the different metals striking a somewhat Chinese lyric as the owner moved through what might have been a Tang musical scale...
...No, not nonsense...
...Right...
...Klapisch went up, suspicious...
...He began to leave with his package...
...Klapisch stood up and walked down into the synagogue...
...He took a surprisingly large ring of keys from his suitcoat and thumbed around it, obviously enjoying the ritual...
...I have fancy pieces here, solid capital A merchandise, I do a good business, but to you I wouldn't have sold even a soapdish...
...No," Klapisch said, "you don't understand...
...I'll stay down here...
...And then, gesturing to Klapisch to follow him, he fingered a rather small brass skeleton key and walked swiftly to the back of the shop...
...the owner called after him...
...What was the point...
...Fancy is extra," the owner said, writing out the bill...
...The Kamasutra illustrated in color, stuffed animals, a contraband synagogue and here...
...Forgive me for such arrogance," the owner said, "but you'll see I do...
...I need an heirloom," he would say...
...He had warned everyone as early as 1926, he had seen it all coming, he'd gotten out, taken his entire family—those who would believe him...
...They were dark and he had to go down so slowly that it seemed to take forever...
...For you," the owner continued, "there is an upstairs...
...But now he wanted an heirloom, and he was standing in yet another antique store looking at porcelain...
...What was he supposed to feel...
...They keys are not for sale," the owner said...
...Sarah's not going to carry around some picture of the children deceived in a Jewish day school in 1934 in wherever...
...Klapisch was still banging, his hair white with fallen plaster Junk...
...Not for a mijlion...
...If the good old days had been so good, none of these antiques would be here...
...The suitcase of wigs, the passports with the stamped stars, the burnt book, the prayer shawl sewn into a quilt in the pattern of a German eagle...
...What was he supposed to regret...
...Most of her clothes had been pushed down toward her knees, but her hair was up in an extraordinarily intricate weave...
...Klapisch laughed...
...How many years since he'd been inside one of these places...
...think a man like you would have such bad taste...
...Anne Frank," the owner said, smiling, and he pushed aside what had appeared to be a tall bookcase stuffed with talmudic folios...
...Look around...
...Out here I have the showy items, the big pieces people go for right off when what they want is Antique, you know, the capital A, the label, the certificate...
...You wish a museum...
...Twenty years old and a foulmouth, they called him...
...And Klapisch was more or less dragged past several rooms of stuffed animals, horsecollars, armor, old pipe fittings...
...Get yourself together," the owner said, mistaking Klapisch's slow stern speech for a shortness of breath...
...He shuffled along the ?cale for the right note...
...He was a man in good health, his mind was ordinarily clear and his memory retentive...
...I'll take this," Klapisch said...
...had you kneeled down and begged, I wouldn't have sold it to you...
...By all these Red Cross boxes scattered in the corners, this empty cylinder of gas...
...Here, I'll help you," the owner said, and before Klapisch could protest, the shoe was on and tied in a double knot, tightly...
...He hadn't come here to insult anyone's memory, he just wanted to buy a wedding gift...
...she needs a past, she'll find it her own way...
...Another door, another bolt slid free...
...I want to see no more rooms," he said with a severe formality...
...No," Klapisch said...
...he shouted...
...Klapisch picked up a small figurine of a pink countess with a family of ducks in her lap...
...I will leave now...
...He had been duped...
...Put on your shoe," the owner said...
...A piece of scroll on which someone had urinated...
...Of course, of course...
...it was not real...
...the hand that formed it had been forced...
...A joke...
...I'll show you the upstairs...
...Perhaps antiques had once been heirlooms, or perhaps third-class heirlooms became commercial stock, but everything here as elsewhere today was too cold, too polished...
...he began...
...Such games to play...
...Yes, of course," the owner said...
...I'll tell you, it's a slow day, I'll admit it, a slow day...
...It's what I expected...
...There's another room...
...How many years since he'd argued his way out...
...Klapisch the fool...
...He had better things to do...
...Yeah...
...He heard the owner settle in a pew and open a large book...
...Klapisch came up and stood quietly on the landing...
...I was worried for a moment," the owner called out, making his way to the front to intercept his customer...
...Nothing...
...Some of the chandeliers fell from the ceiling and shattered around him...
...Here was nonsense...
...I'm not so crazy...
...He never said it wasn't...
...At 74 he needed these theatrics...
...I'm not buying...
...The bookcase slid open silently and the owner stared up at Klapisch, lit now by the remaining points of the tiny chandeliers...
...he shouted...
...Klapisch looked at the owner...
...That's why—" he paused to emphasize the intimate conspiracy of the phrase, "we need to go upstairs...
...But he was the fool...
...He untied his right shoe, took it off and began banging it against the stairwell wall...
...Klapisch walked around the room, too angry to care whether he knocked something off a table or stepped on some shred of a Nazi proclamation...
...He was looking for an heirloom, not for God, and certainly not for the company of a pious but lonely antique dealer...
...For what...
...Klapisch sat down...
...No offense," the owner said...
...OK, so it was horrible...
...Klapisch was still banging, his hair white with fallen plaster...
...This," he started to say, "this is all—" "Don't talk...
...He turned to make a quick excuse, but the owner was hurrying him down the corridor to another room...
...he said...
...OK," the owner said, "heirlooms...
...Go up...
...Heretic...
...And some years ago he might have been mildy interested...
...Behind lay another staircase...
...I'm fine," Klapisch said, "and I'm leaving...
...the owner asked...
...Go upstairs...
...Help me...
...He'd been right...
...You will unlock the appropriate doors and show me the way out...
...Evidently the opening of the door demanded some ceremonial silence...
...Maybe he should be up in attics...
...Come," the owner was saying, "you'll forgive that room, it's a storehouse, it has its own treasures, its own secrets, but that's not what I brought you up here for...
...You know something...
...He had never been good at making speeches...
...Klapisch said "thank you" automatically, then felt bad about that too...
...This would not do, and he did not want it, but he cradled the figurine in his hands as he walked around the store examining the other counters, the matched endpieces, the uncomfortably elegant small chairs, the poorly-copied statuettes...
...Klapisch put down the countess and began to leave...
...Plenty of times people ask...
...Klapisch had his hand on the doorknob and could already hear the city traffic outside...
...It was junk, wasn't it, after all...
...So his granddaughter who was marrying an Indian, a New Delhi Indian, wouldn't have anything to remember the Old World by...
...Let her be...
...He'd left his hat up in the room and he felt at the same time a little overheated and a little chilled...
...He felt like making a speech, he was so angry...
...So you found something...
...The keys were a kind of antique musical pocket dictionary, old, dark, solid...
...Not a Venetian hairpin...
...But now...
...Idiot...
...You ever want to know, come back and I'll tell you...
...Nothing happened...
...Enough was enough...
...Well, he should have expected it...
...He should be impressed now by the spirit of Anne Frank...
...The owner led him up a twisting staircase strung above with a complex net of chandeliers from, it must have been, dollhouses...
...Klapisch hesitated...
...The owner pulled the bookcase closed and went to the synagogue door, then out...
...Klapisch shouted down the stairwell: "Idiot...
...Fool...
...But it too was cold in its beauty...
...Bastard...
...Klapisch looked around at the stained photographs on the walls, at the large Latin folios, the few gaudy mannequins, the lithographs...
...Do you have, perhaps, an attic...
...Maybe what Klapisch needed was a lock...
...A small piece of wired glass hung from the toe of his right sock...
...It too was lit faintly by dollhouse chandeliers...
...Smooth," the owner said...
...You wish a museum...
...I wouldn't have sold you such a thing...
...What...
...The owner had shut off the chandeliers and slid the false bookcase back into place...
...This time the owner waved Klapisch in with something of a short bow, and Klapisch felt almost foolish...
...An old man, even an old man in a well-tailored suit with a carefully brushed hat and the long clean fingers of a pianist, an old man did not go around door-to-door asking to see attics...
...Outrage...
...It would have been better, of course, if he already had one, but there had been too many migrations, too many divorces in the family, some absentmindedness, a few robberies, an occasional proud but thoughtless gift, and—he must admit—an antipathy to nostalgia...
...The owner, Klapisch knew, was watching him with the careful negligence of those who profit from amnesia...
...Thank you," Klapisch said...
...Why then was he feeling suddenly ashamed of this anger...
...You take intellect, you take Maimonides and you show his medicines, you take Spinoza and his lenses, you take Einstein and—and...
...Her wedding," he said...
...Klapisch sat down on a step...
...He had left his hat up in the attic, but he was not going to pursue the matter...
...Take your time...
...Klapisch was uneasy, both with this instant assumption of confidences and with the allusion to the holy...
...Don't even try...
...Pointing to the countess: "I didn't Hillel Schwartz, teacher, author, poet and playwright, has just completed his fourth play, "Home Movies...
...What next...
...Better that than this adolescent melodrama, this tug at the heart...
...it had that baroque twist to it, the small gold line running in and along the silver...
...For my granddaughter...
Vol. 7 • October 1982 • No. 9
