Antiquities

ALSO BY CYNTHIA OZICK
Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Literary Essays
Foreign Bodies
Dictation
The Din in the Head
Heir to the Glimmering World
Trust
Quarrel & Quandary
The Puttermesser Papers
Fame & Folly
What Henry James Knew and Other Essays on Writers
The Shawl
Metaphor & Memory
The Messiah of Stockholm
Art & Ardor
The Cannibal Galaxy
Levitation
Bloodshed and Three Novellas


Cousin William


THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2021 by Cynthia Ozick
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ozick, Cynthia, author.
Title: Antiquities / Cynthia Ozick.
Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2021] |
Identifiers: lccn 2020025778 (print) | lccn 2020025779 (ebook) | isbn 9780593318829 (hardcover) | isbn 9780593318836 (ebook)
Classification: lcc ps3565.z5 a85 2021 (print) | lcc ps3565.z5 (ebook) | ddc 813/.54—dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020025778
lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020025779
Ebook ISBN 9780593318836
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Frontispiece © UCL, The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology
Cover images: (details, clockwise) (beetle) Rashad Aliyev / Getty Images; (lotus) Elena Kazanskaya / Shutterstock; (stork) A-Digit / Getty Images; (center, palm) Aratehortua / Shutterstock; (frame) ZU_09 /Getty Images; (ornaments) rawpixel
Cover design by Abby Weintraub
ep_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0


Contents
Cover
Also by Cynthia Ozick
Frontispiece
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Antiquities
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author


to
Melanie Jackson
who makes things happen


My name is Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie, and I write on the 30th of April, 1949, at the behest of the Trustees of the Temple Academy for Boys, an institution that saw its last pupil thirty-four years ago. I must unfortunately report that of the remaining Trustees, only seven (of twenty-five) survive. Though well advanced in age myself, I am the youngest, and the least infirm but for a tremor of the left hand, yet capable enough at my Remington despite long years of dependence on my secretary, Miss Margaret Stimmer (now deceased). In our continuing capacity as Trustees, we meet irregularly, contingent on health, here in my study, with its mullioned windows looking out on our old maples newly in leaf.
I call it my study, and why not? My father too kept a sequestered space by this name; his tone in speaking of it signaled a preference for solitude, much like my own. The others, who also have tenure here in Temple House, are pleased to designate their present apartments by those old classroom plaques: Fourth Form Alpha, Fifth Form Beta, and so forth. In this way the nomenclature of the Academy lives on, its various buildings having been converted for use in perpetuity as living quarters for the Trustees. It is notable that certain enhancing decorative efforts have been introduced to the interior of the structure, such as ornamental crown moldings, as well as the installation of an imposing crystal chandelier in each apartment. I believe my late wife would have approved of elaborate appointments of this kind, but the constant swaying and tinkling of these dangling beads and teardrops, at the lightest footstep or wafting of air, is in truth more annoyance than comfort.
The former staff are of course long gone, but we are well attended by a pair of robust young men and (lately) merely two matrons, one of foreign origin, and the refectory has been updated (as they term it) with a modern kitchen, including a sizable pantry. In addition, it is especially needful to recall that the common toilets and showers exclusively for the pupils’ use, a disagreeable relic of the Academy’s early years, were torn down some time ago. Only the chapel has been left as it was, unheated.
It was determined by consensus at our penultimate meeting that what we are about to undertake shall not be a history of the Academy. It is true that the existing History, composed in 1915 at the moment of the Academy’s demise, contains certain expressions that would not be considered acceptable today. The local public library, which gladly received this heartfelt work at the time, will no longer permit it to stand on open shelves. Each Trustee, however, owns a leather-bound copy, and may for our immediate purpose consult it if needed, most likely to retrieve a forgotten name.
Our agreed intent, then, is to produce an album of remembrance, a collection of small memoirs meant to stand out from the welter of the past—seven chapters of, if I may borrow an old catchphrase, emotion recollected in tranquility. When completed, it is to be placed in the Academy vault at J. P. Morgan & Co., together with the History and other mementos already deposited therein, including the invaluable portrait of Henry James that once adorned the chapel. It has always been a matter of pride for us that the Academy’s physical plant was constructed on what had been the property (a goodly acreage) of the Temple family, cousins to Henry James; it was from these reputable Temples that the Academy gleaned its name. Unhappily, as recorded in the History, this circumstance has led to misunderstanding. That we were on occasion taken for a Mormon edifice, though risible, was difficulty enough. Most unfortunate was the too common suspicion that “Temple” signified something unpleasantly synagogical, so that on many a Sunday morning the chapel’s windows (those precious panels of stained glass depicting the Jerusalem of Jesus’s time) were discovered to have been smashed overnight. The youngest forms were regularly enlisted to sweep up the shards and stones.
How ironic were these ugly events, given that the Academy’s spirit was premised on English religious and scholarly principles. Our teachers, vetted for probity and suitable church affiliation,