The Life of Objects Read Online Free PDF Page A

the little gold telephone and numbers at the top of the page, before hiding it in Mr. Knox’s book.
    Frau Metzenburg came into the pantry where Kreck and I were sliding soupspoons into little flannel bags to say that we would soon be at Löwendorf, where she had been born. I would have my own sewing room with a table and good light, and there would be people in the village to help Kreck. As she turned to leave, she asked if I would like to see the collection of lace she’d inherited from her father, who had died three years earlier. It was going to the bank at the end of the week, and she didn’t know, given the state of things, when there’d be a chance to see it again. I was relieved to have an excuse to put aside my work for a moment, and I followed her up the stairs to the second floor.
    The lace room (next to the gray-and-gold room that Kreck said was her private sitting room) had three chairs and a long table with brass apothecary lamps. A tray held several pairs of white cotton gloves and a magnifying glass. There were two long books, not unlike my father’s ledgers, although Frau Metzenburg’s were bound in red damask. Narrow drawerswere built into the walls from floor to ceiling. A library ladder leaned against one wall. She turned on the lamps and handed me a pair of gloves.
    I knew that I was staring, but I couldn’t help myself. She was about thirty years old, younger than the countess and just as lovely, although there was something boyish about her, and secretive. She wore a navy-blue suit with two gold clips in the shape of question marks, a white crepe shirt with a narrow collar, and navy spectator pumps. Her lipstick was bright red. Her hair, the color of wet straw, was parted in the middle and twisted into a flat roll at the back of her neck. She was as weightless as a ghost.
    “You didn’t go to Mass with Inéz,” she said, wiggling her fingers deeper into the gloves.
    I was too surprised to speak.
    “Even if you’re not religious, you can believe in grace.” She was so odd, so unlike anyone, even the characters in the books I’d read, that she made me uneasy. To make matters even stranger, she said, “But then I suspect that your moment of grace is yet to come.” Then she asked where I would like to begin. It took me a moment to understand what she meant.
    I pointed in front of me, and she slid a drawer from the wall and carried it to the table. Inside the drawer, on black velvet, were the yellowed hem of an alb sewn in
point de France
, a narrow panel of
point de Venise
, its delicate black dots sewn in a pattern of birds in flight, and a cravat of lace bees in what appeared to be mixed bobbin-and-needle lace. When I’d had my fill, I nodded, and she replaced the drawer with another.“These are only fragments, of course,” she said, not troubling to conceal a yawn. “The larger pieces—wedding dresses and altar cloths—have already been sent to the bank.”
    There were designs of windmills, stags, pyramids, cherubs, the Eiffel Tower, sailing ships, and double-headed eagles. There was simple Irish crochet work. She pointed with a gloved finger to a stiff linen ruff. “Sixteenth century. I think.” She opened one of the books and found the description of the ruff, reading it to herself.
    I again heard the sound of a bell, rung, I’d learned, to remind the Metzenburgs and their guests that it was time to dress for dinner. She pulled off her gloves and dropped them on the table (inside out, I noticed). “You have no interest in the women who made the lace,” she said. “The blinding headaches and the torn fingers. It’s the trousseau of the Dauphine that intrigues you. The handkerchief of the queen.”
    Had I not been so overwhelmed, I would have told her that I wasn’t interested in the history of lace or even its romance. When I first taught myself to sew, it was the discovery that I could make Ballycarra disappear that had compelled me. More than that, I could make myself