crystal paperweights—indeed, many of these precious objects were displayed on tables and on a fireplace mantel. I had never seen one before; noticing my interest, Colette selected a specimen and held its glitter against a lamp’s yellow light: “This one is called The White Rose. As you see, a single white rose centered in the purest crystal. It was made by the Clichy factory in 1850. All the great weights were produced between 1840 and 1900 by just three firms—Clichy, Baccarat, and St. Louis. When I first started buying them, at the flea market and other such casual places, they were not overly costly, but in the last decades, collecting them has become fashionable, a mania really, and prices are colossal. To me”—she flashed a globe containing a green lizard and another with a basket of red cherries inside it—“they are more satisfying than jewelry. Or sculpture. A silent music, these crystal universes. Now,” she said, startlingly down to business, “tell me what you expect from life. Fame and fortune aside—those we take for granted.” I said, “I don’t know what I expect. I know what I’d like. And that is to be a grown-up person.”
Colette’s painted eyelids lifted and lowered like the slowly beating wings of a great blue eagle. “But that,” she said, “is the one thing none of us can ever be: a grown-up person. If you mean a spirit clothed in the sack and ash of wisdom alone? Free of all
mischief
—envy and malice and greed and guilt? Impossible. Voltaire,
even
Voltaire, lived with a child inside him, jealous and angry, a smutty little boy always smelling his fingers. Voltaire carried that child to his grave, as we all will to our own. The pope on his balcony … dreaming of a pretty face among the Swiss Guard. And the exquisitely wigged British judge, what is he thinking as he sends a man to the gallows? Of justice and eternity and
mature
matters? Or is he possibly wondering how he can manage election to the Jockey Club? Of course, men have grown-up
moments
, a noble few scattered here and there, and of these, obviously death is the most important. Death certainly sends that smutty little boy scuttling and leaves what’s left of us simply an object, lifeless but pure, like The White Rose. Here”—she nudged the flowered crystal toward me—“drop that in your pocket. Keep it as a reminder that to be durable and perfect, to be in fact grown-up, is to be an object, an altar, the figure in a stained-glass window: cherishable stuff. But really, it is so much better to sneeze and feel human.”
Once I showed this gift to Kate McCloud, and Kate, who could have worked as an appraiser at Sotheby’s, said: “She must have been barking. I mean, whyever did she give it to you? A Clichy weight of that quality is worth … oh, quite easily five thousand dollars.”
I would as soon not have known its value, not wanting to regard it as a rainy-day reserve. Though I would never sell it, especially now, when I am ass-over-backward down-and-out—because, well, I treasure it as a talisman blessed by a saint of sorts, and the occasions when one does not sacrifice a talisman are at least two: when you have nothing and when you haveeverything—each is an abyss. Throughout my travels, through hungers and suicidal despairs, a year of hepatitis in a heat-warped, fly-buzzed Calcutta hospital, I have held on to The White Rose. Here at the Y.M.C.A., I have it hidden under my cot; it is tucked inside one of Kate McCloud’s old yellow woolen ski socks, which in turn is concealed inside my only luggage, an Air France travel bag (when escaping Southampton, I left pronto, and I doubt that I’ll ever again see those Vuitton cases, Battistoni shirts, Lanvin suits, Peal shoes; not that I care to, for the sight would make me strangle on my own vomit).
Just now I fetched it out, The White Rose, and in its winking facets I saw the blue-skied snowfields above St. Moritz and saw Kate McCloud, a russet wraith
Colette’s painted eyelids lifted and lowered like the slowly beating wings of a great blue eagle. “But that,” she said, “is the one thing none of us can ever be: a grown-up person. If you mean a spirit clothed in the sack and ash of wisdom alone? Free of all
mischief
—envy and malice and greed and guilt? Impossible. Voltaire,
even
Voltaire, lived with a child inside him, jealous and angry, a smutty little boy always smelling his fingers. Voltaire carried that child to his grave, as we all will to our own. The pope on his balcony … dreaming of a pretty face among the Swiss Guard. And the exquisitely wigged British judge, what is he thinking as he sends a man to the gallows? Of justice and eternity and
mature
matters? Or is he possibly wondering how he can manage election to the Jockey Club? Of course, men have grown-up
moments
, a noble few scattered here and there, and of these, obviously death is the most important. Death certainly sends that smutty little boy scuttling and leaves what’s left of us simply an object, lifeless but pure, like The White Rose. Here”—she nudged the flowered crystal toward me—“drop that in your pocket. Keep it as a reminder that to be durable and perfect, to be in fact grown-up, is to be an object, an altar, the figure in a stained-glass window: cherishable stuff. But really, it is so much better to sneeze and feel human.”
Once I showed this gift to Kate McCloud, and Kate, who could have worked as an appraiser at Sotheby’s, said: “She must have been barking. I mean, whyever did she give it to you? A Clichy weight of that quality is worth … oh, quite easily five thousand dollars.”
I would as soon not have known its value, not wanting to regard it as a rainy-day reserve. Though I would never sell it, especially now, when I am ass-over-backward down-and-out—because, well, I treasure it as a talisman blessed by a saint of sorts, and the occasions when one does not sacrifice a talisman are at least two: when you have nothing and when you haveeverything—each is an abyss. Throughout my travels, through hungers and suicidal despairs, a year of hepatitis in a heat-warped, fly-buzzed Calcutta hospital, I have held on to The White Rose. Here at the Y.M.C.A., I have it hidden under my cot; it is tucked inside one of Kate McCloud’s old yellow woolen ski socks, which in turn is concealed inside my only luggage, an Air France travel bag (when escaping Southampton, I left pronto, and I doubt that I’ll ever again see those Vuitton cases, Battistoni shirts, Lanvin suits, Peal shoes; not that I care to, for the sight would make me strangle on my own vomit).
Just now I fetched it out, The White Rose, and in its winking facets I saw the blue-skied snowfields above St. Moritz and saw Kate McCloud, a russet wraith
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