Antiquities by Cynthia Ozick

Antiquities by Cynthia Ozick

Author:Cynthia Ozick [Ozick, Cynthia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2021-04-13T00:00:00+00:00


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[Note: concealed herein are the papers in question. As of this writing, August 2, 1949, they will so remain until their disposition is determined, which determination will itself depend on the trustworthiness of the contents.]

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You asked how I came here to the Academy. My uncle brought me. In every city where my parents are obliged to leave me, there is always an uncle to choose a school for me, yet not one of them is truly an uncle. How my present uncle happened on this place, it is impossible to surmise. It may be that he was impressed by what he took to be a congenial name, and believed that my parents might be pleased by it. My father and mother are transients and travelers, with no settled home, they are buyers and sellers, they are seekers and doubters, and they live mainly in hotels. Some of these hotels are pleasant, most are not, but rather than being shut up in a school, I always prefer those indifferent rooms where we never stay long and I am never expected to explain who I am, or pressed to find a friend my own age. When I was much younger, I pleaded to be taken wherever they might go, and promised that I would never complain of the heat or cry if I hated the food, and would never be sick, and would always be good. But they told me there were too many dangers for a child in those Levantine regions of constant upheaval where their particular business led them. To calm me, they explained as simply as they could that though they held themselves out to be ordinary traders, they were in truth pilgrims in search of a certain relic of our heritage, and that this was the primary hope of their work. Somewhere, I came to understand, lying unrecognized in one of the thousand alleyways and souks in the village markets of Egypt, or Palestine, or Syria, or Iraq, this significant thing, whatever it was, could be uncovered.

And when I asked why it was significant, they assured me that one day, when I was older, I would see for myself, and meanwhile, until it was found, they must earn our bread. This, they said, was the reason for their peregrinations: it was for the sake of foreign objects, exceedingly ancient, that persons in the West coveted and might wish to buy. And when I asked why these objects were coveted, my father replied It is for the vanity of the coveters, and my mother said It is because they are hollow and have no histories of their own. This was the cause of our having come to New York, where there are many such buyers. Our hotel in this city was too small and too cramped and too noisy, near streets made too bright in the middle of the night and crowds swimming like fishes all around, but still I would be more content



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