The Silver Swan by Brian Doswell (universal ebook reader .txt) 📕

a full hour just gazing at one single wing feather. The workmanship was so intricately done that he just could not put it down. His wife and daughter came to the shop and pleaded with him to come home but he would not leave the swan. Day after day he just sat in the shop caressing the silver bird.

A year passed and still he remained in his shop. His health suffered and his hair fell out but he would not go home. He could not bear to leave the swan.

One year, one month and one week after the visit of Vasili Repin, the shopkeeper died. His beleaguered wife found his body sitting on the stool behind the glass topped counter his arms wrapped around the swan. For an instant it seemed to her as though the swan was resting its head on his shoulder. She sighed but she did not cry. She had known for months that this was how it would end. She lifted the heavy silver swan and placed it carefully on the top shelf in the darkest corner of the shop. Her emotions confused between her hatred for this thing that had taken her husband and her understanding of what it had meant to him. Personally she never wanted to see it again.

Two months later as the summer of 1947 came to an end and the plane trees in the main square of Toulon began to shed their broad leaves, the shopkeeper’s widow pocketed the proceeds from the sale of the shop and its contents and left Toulon with her daughter, to find a new life in Paris.

The new owner stood proudly in his shop doorway looking into the amazing variety of items that he had purchased as a job lot and promised himself that one day he would take down every piece and catalogue it with as much detail as he could. Of course he never did. In 1968 his son persuaded him to retire and took on the shop himself. He did not catalogue the contents, why should he? Silver was not at all popular in those days, especially large pieces. Coloured glass ware was the best seller. Larva lamps had the best mark-up and he sold at least twenty a week.

The shop changed hands again last month. I know this because I bought it from the old man who made me promise to catalogue the contents. It’s amazing, the things that you can find in little old shops in the back streets of Toulon.


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Publication Date: 03-16-2010

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