creases of her neck and elbows, her breasts, hips, and round, shining ankles; he knew too, or rather sensed, that real intimacy was essentially painful—to those locked in its embrace as much as those shut out. In his confusion, his embarrassment, he seized on the exquisitely fashioned silver key, which at least possessed familiar weight and form.
How beautifully it fit his hand. How concentrated was its purpose. He had only to insert it in the shepherdess’s glazed petticoats, that slender place at the back of her waist that has no name, and the mechanism was engaged. A twist or two released a ruffling of bells in triple meter. In the moment before the music began—and this was the part he grew to love best—there could be heard a brief sliding hum of gears shifting into place, anxious to perform, wonderfully obedient to the key’s delicate persuasion.
The second key he acquired belonged to the lost oak door, or so he imagines it, of a demolished Breton chapel. It is thirteen inches long, made of black iron, rough in texture but beautifully balanced. “Notice the beautiful balance,” he says when showing it off, always employing the same exclamatory phrase and allowing the key to seesaw across the back of his wrist. Some of his other keys—before long there were hundreds—are made of rare alloys; many are highly decorated and set with semiprecious stones, pieces of jade or turquoise. One of the most curious is fifteen hundred years old, Chinese, and another, dating from the days of the Roman Empire, is made so it can be worn on the finger like a little ring. There are keys from the Middle Ages with elaborate, ingenious warding devices and there is also a small, flat, unprepossessing key—entirely unornamented—which is said to be the prototype of the Yale (or pin tumbler) key invented in Middletown, Connecticut, in the year 1848.
The Museum of Keys is located in the southwest corner of the city, admission free, closed on Mondays, and offering school tours every Tuesday. A portrait of Anna ______ , the founder’s wife, 1903-1972, hangs on the wall behind the literature display. Ten thousand visitors come through the doors each year, and often they leave the museum jingling their own keys in their pockets or regarding them with new respect, perhaps thinking how strange it is that keys, the most private and secret parts of ourselves, are nevertheless placed under doormats or flower pots for visiting friends, or hung on a nail at the back of the garage for the gas-meter man, or mailed around the world in padded envelopes, acknowledging in this bitter, guarded century our lapses of attention.
A seven-year-old boy taken along with his class to the museum in Buffalo stares into a display case. His gaze settles on a long, oddly shaped wooden key (Babylonian), and his hand flies instantly to the key he wears around his neck, the key that will let him into his house on North Lilac Avenue after school, one hour before his mother returns from her job at the bottling plant. When first tying the key in place, she had delivered certain warnings: the key must not be lost, lent, or even shown to others, but must be kept buried under his sweater all day long, accompanying him everywhere, protecting him from danger.
He doesn’t need protection, not that he could ever explain this to his mother, he knows how to jump and hustle and keep himself watchful. The key leads him home and into a warm hallway, the light switch waiting, a note on the refrigerator, the television set sending him a wide, waxy smile of welcome. There is no danger, none at all; his mother has been misled, her notion of the world somehow damaged. Still, he loves this key (so icy against his skin when he slips it on, but warming quickly to body temperature) and has to restrain himself, whenever he feels restless, from reaching inside his clothes and fingering its edges.
He is a solemn child whose thoughts are full of perforations (how it would feel to bite
How beautifully it fit his hand. How concentrated was its purpose. He had only to insert it in the shepherdess’s glazed petticoats, that slender place at the back of her waist that has no name, and the mechanism was engaged. A twist or two released a ruffling of bells in triple meter. In the moment before the music began—and this was the part he grew to love best—there could be heard a brief sliding hum of gears shifting into place, anxious to perform, wonderfully obedient to the key’s delicate persuasion.
The second key he acquired belonged to the lost oak door, or so he imagines it, of a demolished Breton chapel. It is thirteen inches long, made of black iron, rough in texture but beautifully balanced. “Notice the beautiful balance,” he says when showing it off, always employing the same exclamatory phrase and allowing the key to seesaw across the back of his wrist. Some of his other keys—before long there were hundreds—are made of rare alloys; many are highly decorated and set with semiprecious stones, pieces of jade or turquoise. One of the most curious is fifteen hundred years old, Chinese, and another, dating from the days of the Roman Empire, is made so it can be worn on the finger like a little ring. There are keys from the Middle Ages with elaborate, ingenious warding devices and there is also a small, flat, unprepossessing key—entirely unornamented—which is said to be the prototype of the Yale (or pin tumbler) key invented in Middletown, Connecticut, in the year 1848.
The Museum of Keys is located in the southwest corner of the city, admission free, closed on Mondays, and offering school tours every Tuesday. A portrait of Anna ______ , the founder’s wife, 1903-1972, hangs on the wall behind the literature display. Ten thousand visitors come through the doors each year, and often they leave the museum jingling their own keys in their pockets or regarding them with new respect, perhaps thinking how strange it is that keys, the most private and secret parts of ourselves, are nevertheless placed under doormats or flower pots for visiting friends, or hung on a nail at the back of the garage for the gas-meter man, or mailed around the world in padded envelopes, acknowledging in this bitter, guarded century our lapses of attention.
A seven-year-old boy taken along with his class to the museum in Buffalo stares into a display case. His gaze settles on a long, oddly shaped wooden key (Babylonian), and his hand flies instantly to the key he wears around his neck, the key that will let him into his house on North Lilac Avenue after school, one hour before his mother returns from her job at the bottling plant. When first tying the key in place, she had delivered certain warnings: the key must not be lost, lent, or even shown to others, but must be kept buried under his sweater all day long, accompanying him everywhere, protecting him from danger.
He doesn’t need protection, not that he could ever explain this to his mother, he knows how to jump and hustle and keep himself watchful. The key leads him home and into a warm hallway, the light switch waiting, a note on the refrigerator, the television set sending him a wide, waxy smile of welcome. There is no danger, none at all; his mother has been misled, her notion of the world somehow damaged. Still, he loves this key (so icy against his skin when he slips it on, but warming quickly to body temperature) and has to restrain himself, whenever he feels restless, from reaching inside his clothes and fingering its edges.
He is a solemn child whose thoughts are full of perforations (how it would feel to bite
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