The Philatelist by Tito Perdue

Author:Tito Perdue [Perdue, Tito]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: stamp collecting, New York City, middle age, Southern literature, Satire, Science fiction, conservatism
ISBN: 9781940933979
Publisher: Counter-Currents Publishing
Published: 2018-06-06T04:00:00+00:00

We hesitated for a minute as the dog reviewed the man’s socks and crotch. I had hoped the dishes would have been washed by now, but the dog was a good deal older than he used to be. One single saucer lay upside down on the counter, the contents gone.

“Tea?” I asked my visitor. “Or coffee?”

“Daiquiri. And don’t be parsimonious with the vodka.”

“I use rum.”

“Coffee, then.”

His legs were as long as stilts but tended to vanish when he was in the seated position. He had an intellectual forehead, somewhat intellectual, and had tried to make himself presentable. We now commenced to make ready to begin looking at the man’s stamps. His album, too, had been covered in the same sort of skin (taken perhaps from the same armadillo), as covered his valise. He moved deftly, suggesting he was as familiar with the album and its contents as with all the other things he was likely to be familiar with. He opened to “Iran,” so-called, a name with far fewer historical associations than “Persia,” a more poetic nomenclature by far. My mind flew back to Achemenian times, the tomb of Cyrus, the expedition of the Ten Thousand, and so on. And yet the stamps he showed were simple counterfeits, as I could easily discern even without resorting to my magnifying glass.

“Yes,” I said. “Some people specialize in those, forgeries.”

He blushed. “Forgeries! I hadn’t realized! Okay, I can let you have them at a discount.”

“That’s real white of you. Actually, I don’t even want them in my house.”

“No. Nor do I. Should I take them outside?”

I waved it away. He might have some good stuff in that album, peculiarities with landscape scenes, BOBs, airmails, and above all hand-cancelled beauties from some of the poorest countries on Earth. This is what I mostly wanted. I have invested in stamps that, some of them, must have carried love letters to pre-post-modern girls waiting eagerly in the Barbados. I am especially proud of my 1930 2 c. Uruguayan Pegasus that bears a five-word handwritten message in minuscule print. Were only it not illegible, the history of Uruguay might have turned out better. Impatient to set eyes on further examples, I took the man’s album over into my two best hands and turned quickly to the Barbados themselves. Not forgeries. Well pleased, I bent nearer and then ran for the nine-inch magnification glass that had come down to me from my fathers. Not that my immediate father had done much to enhance the collection.

“You have some pretty good material here,” I admitted.

“Pretty good? No, sir.”

“OK, very good.”

“That’s better. Actually, I would have preferred real coffee, percolated, as opposed to this . . . what? Anhydrous stuff?”

“I have always loved the Newfoundland postage. Hell, I’d be willing to pay up to, say, a couple hundred for these 1932 issues.”

He laughed and soon I had to join him. That lot was worth well more than a thousand dollars to any fair-minded buyer. “Alright, how about five hundred? Five hundred golden-green American dollars hot off the press?”

He laughed.

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