Emma Poniatkowski

 

1.

In those days, museum visitors ascended a great rise of stone steps to enter the exhibition halls.  Visitors were winded at the top and short of breath when they pushed through the heavy doors into the great echoing atrium full of towering dinosaurs and melancholy stuffed elephants.  It’s different nowadays: you access the building through a grimy steam-tunnel bored into its basement and the doors above the pale granite steps are permanently locked – the steps were problematic for half the year even in those days when the doors were open: it was hard to keep the steps free of snow and ice.    

Emma Poniatkowski worked as a typist and filing clerk on the eighth floor of an old skyscraper in the south Loop.  The museum was eight blocks away and it was free to city residents with ID on Thursdays.  The men, and some of the girls from the insurance agency where she was employed, took the afternoon off to ride the Cubbie express up to Wrigley Field for the first game of a double-header.  Someone hung a jocular sign on the door to the agency.  It was a fine sunny day, not too warm and perfect for baseball, but Emma wasn’t much of a sports fan.  After lunch, she walked to the museum and climbed the steps.  The lake glittered in the bright light and the glass towers on the Navy Pier shone like diamonds.

She climbed above the atrium to the second floor and hurried through the corridor, passing bronze statues of tribal people, noses and nipples shiny where museum-goers had touched them for good luck.  In a corner of the building, a small gallery displayed ancient Chinese jades.  The polished stones gleamed against dark velvet lining small alcoves in the dim room.  The only light in the gallery came from the jades, most of which were moss-green, although some were pale as alabaster and others reddish, veined with milk-colored stone that glistened like bacon-fat.  Each display case was like an aquarium in which an exotic gleaming fish carved from stone hovered in darkness.  Some of the jades were shaped like dragons with flat noses or dog-shaped muzzles; others were irregular, eccentrically shaped like bright roots torn from the ground, washed, and, then, polished into faceted surfaces.  Emma admired the color in the artifacts, the subtle morning-fresh green haze illumining some of the objects and the moss-color that reminded her of the very bottom of a shadowy and dense forest.    

Gliding from display case to case, Emma saw that something strange was happening.  Apparently, a walkway provided access to the rear of the display cases.  (Emma hadn’t noticed any door leading behind the wall, but, of course, the museum’s curators would have taken care to conceal that entrance, no doubt locked from inside.)  As she peered into one of the glass cases, she saw a pair of hands reach through the velvet against which the jade was displayed.  The hands looked yellowish and withered in the track-lighting aimed at the jade gemstones.  It wasn’t clear to Emma how the hands had penetrated the dark blue velvet lining of the case, but the fingers were visible, moving with deliberate intent.  For a moment, the hands hovered over the jade, crouched like spiders, and, then, reached down to seize the polished stone and lift it carefully away from its mount, a couple of brackets like staples piercing the velvet under the object.  The hands held the jade for a moment so that light coruscated on the amulet.  Then, the fingers holding the jade artifact vanished behind the velvet in the display case.

The curator invisible behind the wall moved parallel to Emma, passing from case to case, and, in each display, reaching through the velvet to remove the jade.  Perhaps, the objects were being conserved in some way or dusted or polished, even though all of them seemed mirror-bright and scintillant.  It was a strange thing to see and Emma wondered whether she shouldn’t inform the guard, a fat Black woman who was slumbering upright on a wooden stool in the corner of the gallery.  The guard was sleeping contentedly and Emma understood that whomever was removing the jades from their display cases undoubtedly had authorized access to them, working from the hidden corridor that ran along the perimeter of the gallery and so she didn’t trouble the fat lady.  It was a curious sight, however, to see the yellowish withered fingers with long hooked nails the color of ancient papyrus systematically removing the precious jades from their display cases.

After leaving the jade gallery, Emma walked over to see the Tibetan deities fiercely gesticulating within their glass boxes.  The gods and goddesses had enraged eyes and many arms and their garments were the color of freshly spilled blood.  Someone had made a cup from a skull and carved a flute from a skeleton’s femur.  She looked at the towering grass and wooden masks worn by New Guinea and Solomon Island witch-doctors – the pointed heads dangled tresses of raffia vine down over the carved mounts used to hoist the masks onto the shoulders of the dancers.  Emma walked through dark galleries full of bright stuffed birds and ended in a long hallway with soaring totem poles at both of its ends.  Her purse felt very heavy and the strap gouged into her shoulder.  She didn’t recall placing a couple of cans of Coca-Cola in her purse to drink later in the afternoon, but supposed that this was the explanation for the burden that she was now carrying.  The museum exhausted her and, so, she went outside and sat on the steps overlooking the lake.  A sailboat explored the horizon.  One of the Caryatids supporting a marble pier next to the great apron of stone steps seemed to wink at her.  

Emma opened her purse to remove one of the cans of soda pop.  There was no Coca-Cola.  Her purse was heavy because it was crammed full of jade artifacts.  She looked away, gazing out over the blue water to the towers across the bay.  When she looked back into her purse, she saw the moss-green jade glinting at her.  Emma quickly zipped her bag shut.  She stood up and hurried down the steps, almost tripping in her haste.  Then, she walked to the El and took the train to the apartment where she lived.  By the time, she reached her room, Emma was very thirsty.  She took the jade from her purse, wrapped the cool, smooth artifacts in several towels, and, then, hid the gemstones under her bed.  She found a beer in her refrigerator and sat on the fire-escape drinking it.     

2. 

Emma’s great-aunt had grown up before the war in the old country.  Once, she had been very wealthy, the heiress to a number of factories expropriated by the Germans during the war and, then, nationalized by the Communists afterward.  The old woman lived alone with her cat above the steam baths on Kedzie and drank vodka every day.  The nuns at Queen of Heaven paid her to work as a char-woman in their school.   

Children at the parochial school were encouraged to contribute pennies and dimes to fund the construction of a monument to Copernicus planned for a traffic circle at the Adler Planetarium.  Wealthy members of the community were invited to a grand ball from which the bulk of the money required for the monument was to be raised.  In recognition of her importance in the old country, Emma’s great-aunt had been given a ticket to the Copernican Ball.  

Of course, the old woman was in no condition to attend such a grand affair.  But she urged Emma to use her ticket.  From the ruins of her life in Poznan, she had salvaged several dresses sufficiently fine for the occasion.  Emma had green eyes and so her great aunt urged her to wear a silk gown of that color.  The dress fit the girl perfectly and, with her hair piled up on her head in a French braid, Emma was very beautiful.  The dress smelled slightly of moth-balls but Emma’s perfume concealed that scent.  The old woman had kept the gown in a cardboard box in her closet, bedded in vanilla-colored tissue paper.

One of Emma’s girlfriends, Elzbieta, went with her to the ball.  They parked near the hotel and, as they hurried over the sidewalk, men hooted and whistled at her.  In her purse, Emma carried a jade brooch from the museum.  The jade was bright green and polished to a fine sheen, carved into a pierced amulet depicting humming birds and small pears.  Emma knew that the jade necklace would either bring her great good luck or terrible calamity.  At the Palmer House, she went into the ladies’ room and put the brooch around her throat.  The jade was cold as ice between her breasts.

The night was memorable.  After the buffet, musicians picked from the symphony orchestra played waltzes and mazurkas.  Elzbieta said that the butcher-boy from Queen of Heaven had been staring all evening at her.  The butcher-boy was a dozen years older than Emma but had gone to the same school.  He had worked with his father cutting meat for a few years, but, then, gone into business on his own and was reputed to be very successful. The butcher-boy wore a tuxedo with a red sash.  

Elzbieta whispered to Emma that the butcher-boy was coming toward her, apparently with the intent of asking her to dance.  Emma modestly lowered her eyes, gazing down at the brilliant green stone glistening on her breast.

3.

Emma took her coffee on the terrace overlooking the lake.  Breeze stirred in the shaggy gingko tree beside the patio and the jade wind-chime under the eaves sounded.  Across the blue bay, Emma saw the green copper dome of the observatory rising over the trees on the hillside.  A speedboat cut a white trench in the water.  Farther out, sail boats dallied, waiting for the wind.  

After the death of her husband, Emma didn’t spend much time at the townhouse in the city.  She preferred the manor on Williams Bay.  The Haitian girl came and took her away Emma’s empty coffee cup and plate.  The sun was high over the lake and warmed her face and throat and hands.

She went inside and read a book until her eyes tired.  Then, Emma walked in the garden among the rose bushes.  After eating some toast with jam for lunch, Emma answered emails and looked at photographs of her great grand-children.  The flag in the garden seemed crooked to her and so she asked the gardener to adjust it.

When it was evening, Emma ate and, then, went into the closet in the bedroom where a small safe contained her jades.  She took out the tray where the green-stones were resting and set the carved medallions on her desk.  Emma could no longer recall which brooch she had worn on the night that she met her husband at the Copernican Ball.  The stones were cool and smooth under her fingers.  Jade didn’t age; the finely carved stones hadn’t altered in a thousand years.  But the skin on Emma’s fingers was now like crepe, yellow as parchment.  She held each stone, her long hooked fingernails clicking on the gems.  Someone had told her that jade desires to be touched daily.  If it is locked away, the stone becomes sad and whitens to the color of bone.  

Jade repelled death and decay.  Emma thought it would be a fine thing to be buried with the jade covering her chest and face, but, of course, this would be impractical and the bliss-bestowing gemstones should be passed on to others to work their magic for them.  

As the sun was setting, Emma went onto the terrace overlooking the bay.  In the green shadows, someone was singing a song in a foreign language.  The blue of the sky deepened and, then, the observatory dome across the water slid open.  Against the darkening sky, the copper observatory dome was moss-green, but the light inside the observatory spilled out into the darkness, gold, the color of honey.