The Life of Objects Read Online Free PDF

disappear. But as I no longer wished to disappear, I said nothing.
    On my way to the servants’ dining room at night, I sometimes passed a sour-faced, elderly woman, half squirrel, half bird, in an old-fashioned long black dress, carrying a tray with a plate of steamed fish, boiled potatoes with parsley, and beetroot. I sometimes saw her on the back stairs, a sweep of glitteringevening gown draped across her two outstretched arms or carrying a tray of opera gloves, but when I tried to catch her eye, she refused to look at me.
    When I asked Kreck about her, he grinned maliciously, the tips of his dyed black mustache nearly reaching his ears, and said that she was Frau Metzenburg’s maid, Fräulein Roeder, who did not eat with the rest of the household. He’d been quick to add that although Fräulein Roeder’s food was prepared for her especially, he and I ate the same food as the Metzenburgs. My mother, who’d worked as a young bride in a big house near Ballina, often complained of the indignities suffered by servants, particularly in regard to food, and I’d been happy to hear this from Kreck.
    We met each evening for dinner at six o’clock, sitting across from each other as we ate the delicious food. He often seemed preoccupied, even distressed. I thought that a little conversation might cheer him, but when I attempted it, he did not bother to answer me.
    I tasted for the first time that week an avocado pear and a pineapple, which I later sketched from memory to send to Mr. Knox, along with drawings of the birds I saw in the Metzenburgs’ garden. I seldom thought of my mother and father, although I wrote to them (describing the food). I missed my old schoolmaster more than I missed my parents.
    Because it was assumed that I would not break anything, given the deftness of my fingers, I was asked to wrap the Metzenburgs’ collection of porcelain and pack it in crates of bran—thatthere were no other servants, except Kreck, who had a tremor, and the equally aged cook, Frau Schmidt (Fräulein Roeder, it was made clear, only attended to Frau Metzenburg), may also have been a consideration.
    “Herr Felix beseeches your pardon,” Kreck said in his stilted English, “as this will not be your accustomed duty, but when you are finished with the Nymphenburg, there is the Augsburg silver. And the Vincennes.”
    As I wrapped the porcelain in newspaper before settling it in the bran, my fingers grew black with newsprint, and I had to wash my hands frequently. As I went back and forth to the pantry, I lingered in the rooms, looking at all of the treasure that had accumulated over the years. The objects seemed more real to me than the people. I’d never seen anything as pretty as the silver plates decorated with bees, snails, and mulberries that had been bought, Kreck said, at the Duchess of Portland’s auction. The dinner service with mythological figures in red and gold had been used by Frederick the Great at Sanssouci. A fluted white beaker and saucer, painted with plump Japanese children, had come from the palace in Dresden. Kreck, who seemed to know a great deal about the objects, had his own opinions. He thought the Duchess of Portland’s silver plates
too
beautiful, causing me to question my own taste.
    As I helped to fold a pair of velvet curtains, appliquéd with green monkeys, that had been hanging in Herr Metzenburg’s bedroom—Kreck moved stiffly, due to his age and to palsy, turning the act of folding into a curious dance—I began to understand what the countess had meant when she said thatHerr Felix had a weakness for the playful, a gift she attributed to his instinctive
cocasserie
(which at first I took to mean “coquetry”). His bed linen and towels were embroidered, she said, with a silhouette of his pet donkey, Zara. The floor of the summer dining room was covered with fragrant apple matting. Plaster owls with yellow glass eyes blinked from the red lacquer cases in the library. The peonies in the pink