The Philatelist

by Tito Perdue

  I bowed to the clerks, smiled, and left the building. Keeping my attention on the shoes and socks that drifted into ken, I espied a penny that no one had troubled to collect. Me, I wanted it, and later on was deeply abashed for having failed to pick it up in the admittedly heavy traffic. Even just a penny can buy a microsecond of retirement time.

  I entered my place of work in the guise of an avuncular sort of middle-aged person with a limp.

  “Haven’t lost a penny, have you?” I asked the woman in the first row, a worried-looking quantity in a grey skirt that fell partway to the floor. “If so, I know where it is.”

  “A penny?” (No sense of humor. Nor of sense itself.)

  “Why, yes. Where’s there one, there might be others.”

  She went back to work. Of all the women, she was the one who most readily saw through my pretensions. I reached out to tickle her under the chin but changed my mind when I bethought me of recent laws bearing on that activity.

  Twelve

  Is it possible to write a whole book in which nothing ever happens? Pefley did it. But then he was one of those who cares only for what goes on in the mind, and nothing at all for what a person does with his hands. Indeed, it was said of him that he had himself at one time tickled a woman under the chin.

  I went up to 38th Street, turned eastward, refusing to look into the anguished faces of New Yorkers always asking the same question. “Is this what life is for?” And: “I’m rich, but dare I leave town while someone might steal my accounts?” And: “I’m not so old. Heck, I still have time for at least two more divorces!”

  And then turned right when I came to Lavrenti Avenue, a narrow conduit named after a historical personage. Here were all sorts of boutiques and cozy little shops specializing in quaint little objects devoid of value. I halted here for longer than I should, regaling myself with the sight of upper-class woman ecstasizing over the junk. For thirty years, no drop of rain or heat of summer had been allowed to touch any of these persons. The day was overcast, however, and it was perhaps too soon to give up hope. In dreams of total destruction, I see great balls of fire tumbling down from Yonkers.

  By 5:38 I had arrived at the hundred-and-fifty-year-old hall that once had served for cattle auctions in the Agrarian Age. Gathered here were the finest people to be found anywhere, coin and stamp collectors drawn from as far as Europe, if not even further indeed. A smiling Chinese was standing behind a glass counter in which his country’s postal history was gorgeously displayed. Trembling, I drew out a cigarette, but promptly put it back again when I recollected how this was the worst of places in which to indulge my vice. If it were absolutely necessary to live in New York City in order to attend these exhibitions, then I must goddamn it live in New York City. Or come once in a while on visits.

  To begin, I drifted toward the East European displays. I do love that region, where so many ideological experiments are forever being carried out. I mention Romania, a land that rotates from royalism to fascism to Communism and back again. In a place like that, one always has a chance to see his own utopia have its turn at last. (Me, I’ll vote for any government that promises to bring people closer to transcendence through the viaduct of beauty.) And then, too, no other country has more courageously resisted the prosperity that has so degraded the remaining parts of Europe.

  In this gallery, someone had tediously and laboriously set out five series of pre-war stamps comprising some of my favorite issues. But hadn’t seen half the display, I had not, before my better eye—it was here I took out my glasses and put them on—before that eye lit upon the noble image of Corneliu Codreanu standing somewhat apart from the mass of other Romanian heroes. Yes, I had three copies of that stamp already; even so, I wanted to build a personal monopoly of that issue and then sell them later on at great profit to the patriots of the future.

  I approached the saleslady, an insensitive-looking entity munching on a foodstuff of some nature. Her face was splotched, and I divined in her the sort of personality that could become extraordinarily angry on very short notice. Other characteristics combined in such a way as to encourage me to retreat from her presence and float further down the aisle to Hungary, where a knot of unseemly-looking and unsmiling men were debating about something or another in that “language” of theirs. Truth is, I have especially admired this race of men, based upon their elevated suicide rate. The most counter-intuitive of actions, it represents the triumph of thought over instinct. It was just then that the men stopped talking and then turned and looked at me for a long time in unbroken silence.

  I returned to Romania and the woman. She had finished with solid foods and now was drawing upon a potbellied bottle with something in it.

  “How much,” I asked, “for the Codreanu?”

  She began to get angry. I went on:

  “Maybe so, maybe so. But we must judge these matters aesthetically, what? And put politics off to one side?”

  Her reply, based visibly on the Romance languages, was as awful as anything that could be heard in that cave-like place, excluding neither Hungarian, Chinese, nor the local speech. Exasperated beyond everything, I reached out and lay my finger on the actual stamp. That did it; right away a burly man whom I had been stupid enough to ignore came up and nudged me back to Hungary once again.

  The world is full of stamps, and stamps are full of the world, provided only a person knows how to see them aright. Buildings, fish, dictators, wild roses with bees in them, why should anyone go on actual travels? I get better views of the Hagia Sophia than those who go there at great expense in order to stand in line for a chance at the restroom. On stamps I have seen into the face of Pythagoras, as good a view certainly as ever his wife procured. I have seen much, all the human nations from best to worst. But most of all I have an affinity for stamps with maps on them. I own one of these, a Syrian imprint showing a great empty space of which nothing was then known. I could imagine myself trudging forward for days, sand in my shoes, nothing whatsoever coming into view. And then there are those stamps that give pictures of other stamps, and so to infinity. I tend to shy away from these.

  I want it on record that I unloaded more than $215 in this place, most of it going for Baltic issues. I should also mention that one of the world’s very greatest collections had been brought here on loan from Lucknow and a portion of it set up in glass cases. We wandered among these wonders, the other collectors and me, all of us suffering from envy and greed and excess of beauty arranged all too sumptuously before our eyes. I admired the man at my side who had thought to bring a child’s telescope by means of which he could inspect the stamps as nearly as a jeweler. Seeing the anguish in my face, the man turned and:

  “Care to borrow this? Look at that four-penny black in the green binder.”

  I accepted the offer and looked at the suggested item, a soot-colored thing devoid of beauty that however had fetched $217,000 at the San Francisco auction. Me, I value beauty, beauty only, beauty every day.

  “May I?” the man asked. “Have my telescope back?”

  Seen at five times real size, his face looked like a sheet of rubber with burnt places for mouths and eyes. I judged him at about my own age, give or take some half-score of years. And yes, he did have that tortured look that characterizes your garden-variety stamp, coin, or beer can collector.

  “Just one minute, please,” said I, holding on to the instrument. I had acquired the view of a pretty girl in whom that strange area just behind the knee was visible. There’s a serious artery that feeds that area, although not one always visible under a cursory inspection. Another few inches, one might have seen where her hosiery, assuming she had any, comes to a stop before getting embroiled with her maiden hair.

  “Please?”

  I returned him his field glasses. He was, or rather is, a bit too tall for the distribution of his weight. Even so I wouldn’t care to tangle with him, not after having witnessed in my youth the sort of damage these types can inflict. This one had wounded himself shavin
g and bore a tad of toilet paper adhering to his chin. I liked him. Or rather didn’t detest him all at once, which for me amounts to the same.

  “You speak of that four-penny. Fact is, I have the plate block.”

  “You don’t!”

  “I do. But hardly ever allow anyone to see it.”

  We moved diplomatically through the crowd, keeping well away from a minor riot that had broken out at the Afghani booth. A gun show was in progress in a lateral wing of the building, the two different sorts of attendees also keeping away from each other. Outside (where else?) it was snowing again, an unwelcome development for people without the proper clothing. We walked hurriedly along the storefronts, putting ourselves insofar as possible in the shade of the awnings, where we had to contend with other people in debt to our example. Thus came into view the whole cornucopia of the country’s products, services, and merchandise. Women’s shops especially; I passed twenty of these as against a single bookstore, which in the event had gone out of business.

  “Notice how the snow is being driven into our eyes,” I said, receiving no reply. The fellow was carrying a portmanteau with him, a slim one made of reptile skin. I was prepared to wager half of everything I had that it held either stamps, coins, beer cans, or cash.

  “Stamps,” he said.

  “Well! Let’s have a look at ’em!”

  “Here? In all this snow? Hell no.”

  “Ah, so? Well, if not now, when?”

  “When we get to your place! That is where we’re going, isn’t it?”

  “I thought we were going with you! Cheez. However, it’s true that I have a stamp room. Temperature controlled. And a long flat table and bright lights to see with, you understand.”

  “Yes, I supposed you might have those things. Most of us do, after all.” Just then he stopped and began pointing around in all directions at the city itself, a highly eminent domain that lay like a swamp below us. Except that those were houses and homes instead of the phosphorescence seen in your typical swamps. “There must be tens of thousands of flat tables in this city. And so that part I can believe.”

  I said no more at that juncture. My dog was waiting. Meantime, a fire had broken out in the direction of Queens, an aptly-named borough famous for its hairdressers. Fire and snow, money and noise, and the silent deaths now taking place with actuarial precision in the encompassing apartment houses.

  “Gives me the creeps.”

  “Well, of course.”

  “Better to be reaping wheat under the Sun, as in that wonderful Hungarian series.”

  “Oh, Lord. You can get all those you want for about a penny apiece.”

  Again we stopped, this time so I could light his cigarette. In the flame, his face was seen to be a good deal worse than I had at first allowed.

  “Veteran, are you? The Bolivian mess?”

  “No, no. Ha. No, spent seventeen years in the futures trading pit.”

  “And so you’re rich, then.”

  “Was. Until soybeans went against me.”

  “They’ll do that.”

  “Lost three mil in five minutes.”

  “Baal! That’s . . . what? Six hundred Gs a minute?”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  My heart went out to him. And now he was reduced to peddling stamps out of a lorn briefcase with some of the original snake scales still clinging to it.

  We hesitated for a minute as the dog reviewed the man’s socks and crotch. I had hoped the dishes would have been washed by now, but the dog was a good deal older than he used to be. One single saucer lay upside down on the counter, the contents gone.

  “Tea?” I asked my visitor. “Or coffee?”

  “Daiquiri. And don’t be parsimonious with the vodka.”

  “I use rum.”

  “Coffee, then.”

  His legs were as long as stilts but tended to vanish when he was in the seated position. He had an intellectual forehead, somewhat intellectual, and had tried to make himself presentable. We now commenced to make ready to begin looking at the man’s stamps. His album, too, had been covered in the same sort of skin (taken perhaps from the same armadillo), as covered his valise. He moved deftly, suggesting he was as familiar with the album and its contents as with all the other things he was likely to be familiar with. He opened to “Iran,” so-called, a name with far fewer historical associations than “Persia,” a more poetic nomenclature by far. My mind flew back to Achemenian times, the tomb of Cyrus, the expedition of the Ten Thousand, and so on. And yet the stamps he showed were simple counterfeits, as I could easily discern even without resorting to my magnifying glass.

  “Yes,” I said. “Some people specialize in those, forgeries.”

  He blushed. “Forgeries! I hadn’t realized! Okay, I can let you have them at a discount.”

  “That’s real white of you. Actually, I don’t even want them in my house.”

  “No. Nor do I. Should I take them outside?”

  I waved it away. He might have some good stuff in that album, peculiarities with landscape scenes, BOBs, airmails, and above all hand-cancelled beauties from some of the poorest countries on Earth. This is what I mostly wanted. I have invested in stamps that, some of them, must have carried love letters to pre-post-modern girls waiting eagerly in the Barbados. I am especially proud of my 1930 2 c. Uruguayan Pegasus that bears a five-word handwritten message in minuscule print. Were only it not illegible, the history of Uruguay might have turned out better. Impatient to set eyes on further examples, I took the man’s album over into my two best hands and turned quickly to the Barbados themselves. Not forgeries. Well pleased, I bent nearer and then ran for the nine-inch magnification glass that had come down to me from my fathers. Not that my immediate father had done much to enhance the collection.

  “You have some pretty good material here,” I admitted.

  “Pretty good? No, sir.”

  “OK, very good.”

  “That’s better. Actually, I would have preferred real coffee, percolated, as opposed to this . . . what? Anhydrous stuff?”

  “I have always loved the Newfoundland postage. Hell, I’d be willing to pay up to, say, a couple hundred for these 1932 issues.”

  He laughed and soon I had to join him. That lot was worth well more than a thousand dollars to any fair-minded buyer. “Alright, how about five hundred? Five hundred golden-green American dollars hot off the press?”

  He laughed. His teeth were poor, especially the more eminent ones, while the tongue itself had a saurian aspect that incited me to look away.

  “Very well,” I continued stubbornly. “We need to be honest. Give you seven-fifty for the decade. That’s three-fourths of a thousand dollars, you understand.”

  He laughed no more. Instead, he took back the album, overcoming without much difficulty the little bit of resistance I might have tried. His next ploy was to move toward the door, which I had predicted, however.

  “Turn the knob to the right,” I called. “Turn it to the left and nothing will come of that.”

  “What about the dog?”

  “No, no, he doesn’t harm people who are leaving. Only those who . . .”

  “Are entering?”

  “You’re smart. Smart about dogs and smart about stamps. And I just realized I don’t even know your name.”

  “Not Jones and not Smith. What else you need to know?”

  He was certifiably a philatelist, this guest of mine, and like most such people had given up on barbers, haberdashers, cobblers, and dentists. It came to me that he might soon be dead, judging from the violence of his tremors when speaking of stamps.

  “Who will inherit your collection, I wonder? No, I’m just asking.”

  His voice was weak at that distance. The walls, full of insulation, tended rather to absorb sounds than to send them on their way.

  “Have no children,” he said, speaking yet more weakly. “And, of course, lost my wife along with my shares.”

  “Where is she now?”


  “In Detroit with some guy. Big collection, bigger than mine.”

  “Say, I’ve just now had an odd thought. Or slightly odd, anyway. What, for example, if I were to bequeath you my collection, and you me? One of us would end up with a lot of really good material, what?”

  He thought. His skin was not altogether unlike that of his briefcase and suggested he might be afflicted with one of the new diseases. He replied: “You’re not exactly a model of perfect health yourself, are you?”

  “Health? It’s been years since I had any of that. So we agree?”

  “I suppose not. And besides, I haven’t even seen your collection.”

  “I have six volumes in East Europe alone.”

  “Ah. You’ve never actually been there, I take it.”

  “As for Hungary, I have a good ninety-eight percent of the entire pre-war issuance!”

  “The Wakefield Collection has them all.”

  “So I’ve been made to understand. Gad. Sure would like to get my hands on some of that stuff.”

  “Yes, and they had just two single policemen on guard. Careless, careless.”

  “Just think what a person could do with one of those little digital glass cutters.”

  “Or by climbing in through the chimney. Say, why don’t you turn loose of that knob and take a seat, for Christ’s sakes? I’m tired of yelling.”

  “Once inside, a man could take the whole bloody collection!”

  “Baal!”

  “Precisely.”

  Thirteen

  In fact he spent three full days in the basement, did my guest, long enough to survey my collection and make a series of negative, neutral, and positive comments regarding it. I had never much cared for my Central American accumulation, an all-too-utilitarian output with its predictable images and inferior inks. My guest, on the other hand, adored that section and could sometimes be heard groaning in the basement, along with other sounds indicative of a medical condition. And all this time it had continued to snow in New York City, a heaven-sent anodyne to cover the hideousness of the place.