Antiquities by Cynthia Ozick (new ebook reader txt) 📕

in the shape of a scarab, which the merchant assured him, with a wink of his eye, had once belonged not to Queen Nefertiti, but to one of her handmaidens, and even if not, it was anyhow genuine gold. (I must note it again: though this very ring was kept with other such ornaments in a china bowl on her dresser, I never once saw it on my mother’s finger.)

And then it was mid-September, and my father came home to my mother, and to his destiny in the family firm.

*

June 17, 1949. The truth is that I am discouraged. I have had to stop and reread and relentlessly subject to sober judgment the narrative above, which because of my father’s factual flatness (that meticulous list of tools and devices!) was, to my surprise, less harrowing than I had supposed. My father, as I have already observed, was not given to introspection or disclosure. The motive for his precipitous decamping has never been uncovered, and I believe never will be. My son in Los Angeles, recently learning of this long-hidden chronicle, has asked to inspect it, with the end in mind of transforming its scenes (the Great Pyramid, the Nile, the souks of Cairo, et al.) into some noisome motion picture adventure. He expresses particular interest in my mother’s travail, and has gone so far as to suggest a notable actress to embody it. As one would expect, I have categorically refused.

All this contention, thrashed out on the telephone, has left me demoralized. But I am far more apprehensive of what lies ahead: the memoir itself, which I recognize I have not yet adequately adumbrated. Since I have no informing scrawl to rely on, as heretofore, it is as if I must excavate, as in a desert, what lies far below and has no wish to emerge—to wit, my boyhood emotions. And by now I cannot escape telling of my racking affections for Ben-Zion Elefantin. That my friendship with him, unlikely as it was, would taint me, I knew. Willy-nilly, I must in earnest soon begin.

The reader will permit me a word, however, about my colleagues in this venture. If I have been delinquent in my progress herein (out of embarrassment, perhaps, or dread), I am not alone. You will recall that among the preparations for these memoirs, a specific finishing date was strictly agreed on. This somewhat threatening clause was proposed by the pair of fellow Trustees I have characterized as unmarried and childless, hence somewhat childlike themselves. They warned, you will remember, of indolence, intending a charge of procrastination leading to evasion, and of course it came as an accusation crudely directed against my own such tendencies. Yet there is no sign that either one of these gentlemen has written so much as a line. They wake late, apparently giving much attention to their dress. The noticeably younger one is a bit of a dandy, with his colorful vests and his showy silk ties. The two of them dawdle over breakfast in one or the other’s apartment (they are wanting in any sense of privacy), and in these long and pleasant summer afternoons sit out under the maples, reading incomprehensible poetry in breathless half-whispers (Gerard Manley Hopkins, I believe, of whom I am satisfied to know nothing). Observing this duo of scrawny elders with their walkers beside them, one our sole nonagenarian, how can I not suppose their theatrics to be but a hollow affectation of youth? And it is certainly indolence. How can I proceed with my own memoir if others take theirs so lightly? Our project, after all, is intended solely to honor the Academy, and merits sincere diligence, humbling though this may be.

As it happens, my own diligence, or my occasional lack of it these warm June days when I am overcome by an unconquerable need to nap, can always be detected. I refer to the tapping of my Remington. Even with my door shut, its clatter can be heard throughout the corridors of Temple House. The others, confined to their silent fountain pens, are not subject to such audible surveillance. I am, as I say, a practical man, and early on took advantage of an opportunity that allowed me to acquire this useful skill. Yet luckily, until her unhappy demise seven years ago, I have never had to do without the competence (and may I add the sweetness?) of Miss Margaret Stimmer. She came to us at the age of eighteen, in response to a notice in the Tribune, and already formidably equipped with a sure command of shorthand. She confessed that she had not yet mastered the typewriter but was ready to learn, and rather winningly flourished before me a manual of instructions purchased that very day. I agreed to take her on provisionally, on the condition that she within three weeks reach a designated speed of performance. Her eagerness was persuasive, and she was winning in other ways: spirited brown eyes, and dangling brown curls, and cheeks charmingly pink—wholly in the absence, I was certain, of any aid of artifice. I observed her slender white fingers, hour after hour, dancing more and more agilely over the keys. Miss Margaret Stimmer served as my secretary for many years, until the death of my dear wife, when she became, and remained, my very good friend.

And it is to her that I owe my own facility at the typewriter. Long after she had grown proficient, she kept in one of the lower drawers of her desk, perhaps as a kind of talisman of her felicitous arrival, the manual of instruction that brought her to us. There were times, when she and all others were gone for the day, and our offices were unpeopled and hushed, in my capacity as partner (my father had seen to my promotion soon after the birth of my son) I would stay behind to review the work of some newly hired young attorney. And often enough what I saw in