The Golden Flea by Michael Rips

Author:Michael Rips
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

The Dane then turned to the flea and our mutual friend the Prophet.

“I buy on my gut, listening to signals from my unconscious; the Prophet relies on auction records to tell him if something is valuable. So instead of relying on his unconscious, he’s surrounded in his little apartment with objects, paintings, and sculpture that are only meaningful to other people. He has suppressed the idea that the objects in the flea speak directly to his unconscious, and to ignore that inner conversation is damaging. And that is why the Prophet is disturbed.”

The Dane was not like the Diops: he did not believe that objects were instilled with a spirit that communicated with members of the tribe. What he was suggesting was that objects were wholly and undeniably material and because of that quality they had a distinct and significant psychological impact on humans. That impact should not be ignored, and when favorable should be acted upon immediately by entering into a relationship with the object.

There was something else he wanted to tell me.

“I understand,” he said, “that you are spending a lot of time and money at the flea. My guess is that you may believe that you are diseased and will end up as a headline in the newspapers—‘Promising Chap Found Suffocated by His Own Rubbish,’ or something like that.”

He was not wrong.

“So I thought I would tell you something that I saw many years ago, something that might help.”

I relaxed into my chair.

“I was in the open lot early one morning,” he began. “It was before the sun came up, so it was very dark in the lot and guys are sweeping up the bottles and condoms from the night before. A dealer I know, who usually sells rugs, pulls up in his van. When he opens his trunk, we see that it’s full of boxes. I was about twenty feet away and toward the back of the crowd waiting for this guy.

“The guy starts throwing the boxes into the lot from his trunk. A blade of light from the rising sun strikes the lot, igniting the gilded spine of a book in one of the boxes. This causes a golden funnel to rise from the box. I don’t know what the book is but I know I want it.

“I push my way through the other pickers, reach inside the box, pull out the book, and drop it in my bag. I don’t even look to see what the book is or what condition it’s in. From the time I saw the book to the time it went into my bag was maybe twenty seconds. I ask the dealer the price, he tells me, and I pay him. No bargaining.”

The Dane leaned forward in his chair.

“That same day I took the book to a dealer on Madison Avenue, the one next to the cigar store, and he gives me a thousand for it. No questions asked.”

The Dane laughed.

“Imagine pulling something like that out of a parking lot at five-thirty in the morning and selling it for a thousand dollars a couple hours later.

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