Safekeeping (58 page)
Authors: Jessamyn Hope
The phone buzzed again.
Reply with “YES” to confirm your appt. at 2:15PM on 09/27/14 (Mon). Thanks! Your friends at Midtown Optical.
He held down the power button, watched the phone shut down.
Next to the treasury's glass and brass doors a sign read,
GEMS OF THE PLAGUE. NO PHOTOS PLEASE
. He pulled open the door and stepped inside. Unlike the rest of the Cloisters, this room resembled a typical museum: low ceiling, humble drywall, the relics displayed in simple wood showcases. He walked along one wall, searching the displays for the brooch, the anticipation shortening his breath. His eyes passed over a gold wedding ring, a porcelain hair barrette, a handheld vanity mirror with a cracked glass.
When he arrived at the end of the wall display, he looked up, and there it was, just a few feet away, propped in its own freestanding case, gleaming under four small spotlights.
He walked toward it. Slowly. When he reached the case, he avoided looking at the brooch and read the placard.
Brooch
Gold, sapphire, rubies, imitation ruby, amethysts, garnets, pearls
â¢
GERMANY (MIDDLE RHINE)
1300â47
ON LOAN FROM THE ISRAEL MUSEUM, JERUSALEM, ISRAEL
â¢
This superb and well-preserved example of fourteenth-century jewelry was not found in the Terfur hoard, but it bears the same inscription to “my Anna” as two of the jewels in the treasure and displays a similar artistry to several of the relics, suggesting they were made by the same goldsmith. As with a number of the pieces, one of the recurring details is nonuniform, which may have been the goldsmith's trademark. In this case a floret in the bottom left-hand quadrant is short one petal.
Isaac reread the first sentence two more timesâ“was not found in the Terfur hoard.”
The brooch seemed to glow, a mystical glow, but, of course, Isaac thought, that was only because of his personal history with it. Knowing his father, he could see why he loved it so much. The outdated goldwork, thin gold belts across the uncut gems. The exquisite, handmade filigree. The tiny pomegranates, that allusion to the Promised Land.
If only it weren't behind glass, he could hold it in his hand, the thing his father last held, the thing Isaac might have held in a much younger hand had he gone over that Thursday night. Now it was right there, only several inches away. Imagine if he punched through the glass. His hand throbbing, bloodied. He would only get to hold the brooch for a matter of seconds before the police descended on him, carried him away. But it would be so satisfying. He would feel so alive.
He reached out and laid his fingertips on the glass.
“Sir, you can't touch the displays.” A security guard waved him back. “You have to stand behind that line, sir.”
Isaac stepped back. If he wasn't going to punch through the glass, he wasn't sure what more there was to do. He had seen it now. He could go. But he didn't want to, because as soon as he turned to leave, it would be over, this story between him and his father. He stared at the brooch, feeling as if he too were in a box, the air growing stale, every day a little less satisfying to breathe. He knew his father had wanted the brooch in a museum, but he had never seen it here, plucked out of the chaos of life.
It had been decades since Isaac believed in the power of prayers and wishes, but he made a wish anyway. He wished that one day the broochâwhether it was in a hundred years or four hundred years or a thousandâwould find itself outside a museum case again, set free by an earthquake perhaps, or a looting, or a mismanaged shipment between exhibitions. He wished it for the brooch's sake and for his and his father's, because then a part of them would be out there again in the world.