At the front door he runs into Hug with his finger on the buzzer. His only greeting is what’s up with the paintings and doesn’t he realize that they’ve already sold them all, the day before yesterday already, even before they were done. He calls him to task, if nothing more than because half the planet is already involved. The buyers have already been selected, as well as the museums that will aquire some of the works. He complains, in passing, about how Helena does things and reminds him of the good old days when Hug was calling the shots. He announces that the titles of the paintings (for which they have commissioned an advertising copywriter) have already been chosen. They are vague enough to adapt to whatever he paints, no matter what it is. He supposed that Heribert won’t mind, since putting names to his paintings is a job he’s not fond of, and reminds him that when they met all his paintings bore the same title: Untitled. He informs him that they have managed to place a painting with Peter Ludwig, who has called from Germany to learn when the exhibition will be closing and, hence, the exact date on which they will be sending the painting. Morton Neumann is in from Chicago to talk with Helena. He reminds him that the opening is the twenty-second, so he should do it however he can. He reminds him how hard it has been to get this far. He asks him if what he wants is for Hug to paint them himself, or if he’s trying to be cool or play the enfant terrible. Lowering his voice, he observes that at this stage of the century, playing the enfant terrible is not the recipe for success it once was. Or is it?
Heribert feels revulsion for a person so full of doubts. He leaps to one side, stops a cab, swings the door open, and, to keep Hug out, gives him a good kick in the shins.
He gets out in front of a stamp shop. He looks one by one at the hundreds of orderly stamps in the window. They seem boring, and if it weren’t for their considerable price, he would have categorized them along with trading cards in terms of the interest they awakened in him. Some of them show drawings of old airplanes, some extremely strange birds, some very serious faces, generals with wigs, horrible flowers. Some, just a few, have been cancelled. What real purpose do they serve, then, if they are no longer good for mailing letters? Maybe what he needs to do is to begin collecting them even though he’s not into it — with time and habit, he’ll get into it eventually. He opens the door to the store. They greet him with excessive cordiality. The counter is made of glass, and underneath there are row and rows of stamps. He looks at a very strange series (it seems very strange to him) with drawings of very strange fish, from a country with a very strange name, which he doesn’t even recognize from having studied it at school. He asks the price.
“Seven hundred dollars.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Seven hundred dollars each, sir, not the series.”
“How many are there in the series?”
“Twenty.”
“Do you accept checks, or credit cards?”
“Visa and MasterCard, sir. Checks only if. .”
“I’ll take them, then. Show me a few more series; interesting, hard-to-find ones. .”
He leaves with thirty-eight complete series and hundreds of loose stamps. There is a Cuban stamp, with a military officer sporting a bushy mustache and long white sideburns, which he finds particularly appealing, despite the fact that, according to the information they have provided at the store, it is of slight value. He has taken all the stamps from Gabon, Lesotho, Cameroon, Mongolia, Hungary, Rwanda, Zaire, Bhutan, France, Andorra, Brazil, Mexico, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Romania, Malta, New Caledonia, Libya, Czechoslovakia, Mozambique, Tonga, Benin, Mali, the Dominican Republic, and Wallis and Futuna. And Turks and Caicos, with images of football players facing off over a ball. He takes stamps with images of birds: from Christmas Island and the Seychelles, from Bhutan, from Aitutaki, from the Solomon Islands, from Vanuatu Vatu, from Botswana, from Tanzania, from Swaziland, from Portugal, from Norway, from East Germany, from Monaco, from the Netherlands, from Yugoslavia, from the Bahamas, from Barbados, and from the British Virgin Islands. He takes some with images of flowers: from Vanuatu Vatu, from Hungary, from Sri Lanka, from Wallis and Futuna, from India, from Afghanistan, from Laos, from Italy, from Bulgaria, from the Solomon Islands, from China, from Montserrat, from Argentina, from Rwanda, from Ghana, from Mali, from Niue, from Oman, from Ireland. He takes some from Pakistan (with images of the blind dolphin of the Indus River), from Jamaica (with sea cows). He takes some with whale figures: from Australia and Norfolk Island. From the Unites States he takes images of Jackie Robinson, of Harriet Tubman, of Martin Luther King, of Benjamin Banneker, of Whitney Moore Young: the complete Black Heritage series. He also takes some commemorative stamps from the twenty-first birthday celebration of the Princess of Wales: from the Ascension Islands, from the Bahamas, from Barbados, from the British Antarctic Territory, from the Cayman Islands, from the Falkland Islands, from the Fiji Islands, from Gambia, from Mauritius, from Pitcairn Island, from Santa Helena Island, from the Solomon Islands, from Swaziland, from Tristan da Cunha, from Antigua and Barbuda, from Cameroon, from Ghana, from Togo, from Bhutan, from Dominica, from Grenada, from the Maldive Islands, from Sierra Leone, from the Turks and Caicos Islands, from Uganda, from Anguilla. He also bought stamps of Princess Catherine of Aragon, of Anne Neville, of Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, of Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, of Caroline of Brunswick, Alexandra of Denmark, and of Queen Mary (the wife of George V of England), emitted by Tuvalu, Montserrat, Saint Vincent, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Kiribati. On a shelf there is an engraving of a philatelist contemplating his collection, with a magnifying glass in the left hand and tongs in the right. So he also requests a magnifying glass and tongs. He pays, they put it all in a couple of bags, and he goes out into the street. He stops a cab. He gets in. He unfolds the yellow pages he tore out of the telephone book. He reads out another address. The taxi takes off. He folds the sheets and puts them back in his pocket. The taxi drops him at a numismatist’s.
No sooner has he entered then he asks, in a loud voice, if they have Roman coins. He feels like a tourist in a strange land, proudly ordering paella with chocolate milk. He asks to see Roman coins because they seem like the biggest cliché in coin collecting.
They advise against Roman coins, because at present they are not a good investment. He could have asked for Greek coins, though. Or Egyptian ones. Was there any such thing as Egyptian coins?
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll take Roman coins, if you have any. Do they come in series, like stamps?”
The woman is dumbfounded.
“Bring them out, bring them out. Did the Egyptians have coins?”
He leaves under the weight of two more bags, full of coins: Roman, Greek, medieval, modern. . He had a continental dollar coin from 1776, made of pewter; an Augustus Humbert from 1851, a silver dollar from 1779, which had never been in circulation; two quarters from 1829, also never placed in circulation; a double eagle from 1886, which had hardly circulated; an eagle quarter from 1834, never circulated; two half eagles from 1829, never circulated; a double eagle from 1886, hardly circulated; a quarter eagle from 1834, never circulated; two half eagles from 1829, never circulated; a set of five gold pieces from 1866; a 1913-S Barber quarter, never circulated; a fifty-dollar Panama-Pacific commemorative gold coin, never circulated; a Peace dollar proof from 1921; many 1949-S Franklin half dollars with full bell lines; Standing Liberty quarters with full head; German medallions from the Hindenburg and Hitler period; medals from Panama and the Panama Canal; medals from William Penn and Pennsylvania; a complete set of Stellas; 1860-D and 1875 gold dollars; 1797, 1854-S, and 1875 eagle quarters; half eagles from 1827 and 1887; 100 ducat gold pieces from Ferdinand III, Archduke of Austria, dated 1629; several 1870-CC double eagles; 1794 large cents; an 1819 half eagle; an 1849 ten-dollar piece from the Cincinnati Mining & Trading Co.; Kennedy half-dollars; Susan B. Anthony dollars; and one five-shilling proof piece from Charles II of England, 1662. . But he’s not satisfied. He wants Egyptian coins, Asian ones. . He takes a cab. When the driver asks where he wants to go, Heribert asks himself why he got into a cab, and so as not to tell the driver that he doesn’t want to anywhere, he says to the corner. He pays the minuscule fare and tips him with a five-shilling piece from 1662 with the face of Charles III of England. He walks through the theater district; it’s full of couples dressed to the nines, in tuxedos and long gowns, with shining eyes. The corners are full of musicians, magicians doing tricks, and jugglers. In each of their hats he deposits coins of the Caesars, maravedis, Brazilian coins from the time of the Pedro the Emperor, rubles with the faces of the czars. He doesn’t see the point, though, in numismatism. What was it that moved people to collect things? On the corner, close to a police car with spinning lights, he sees a man stretched out on the ground. His eyeglasses lie a yard away, in pieces. There is a slit in his head from which a great deal of blood has flowed, leaving a stain on the ground. The bicycle, not far away, is as twisted as one an acrobat was using not long before. If only he felt something. . He vows to leave the door unlocked when he gets home. If someone assaulted him, if someone robbed his apartment, if someone wounded him, if he had an accident, if he were murdered. . Why was it always someone else who was robbed, wounded, or murdered? This question seems too tragic, though, and he keeps walking as he imagines that if the cyclist had fallen in the snow instead of on the asphalt, the red stain would have gained by contrast.