Yesterday, I went shopping, it being a Mexican Holiday and I having vowed to observe as many of those as do not pass my notice. Cec and I, having lunched on some superb fish tacos, were walking along January 20th Street (Calle de 20 Enero) about eight steps from turning the corner into our own street, when a small, dapper and extremely affable young man bounced out of the doorway at number 24 and into our path on the sidewalk, like a refugee from some PlayStation screen. He was already in full voice, “I want to show you please come in I make I want to show you my shop I make jewelry I want you to see it please come in . . . .” The sign at the doorway buried on this obscure sidestreet read “Joyeria Eclipse,” which seemed somehow better to me, I recall thinking to myself, than “Joyeria Acme.” Cec was already got the better of and was headed through the door announcing her intention not to buy anything. You can already see where this is going. “No no you don’t buy anything I want only to show you my jewelry I make.”
The shop was the size of a large appliance crate and contained a tiny glass-topped counter with various cardboard fingers and bustiers for the display of rings, necklaces and the more modest lines of jewelry. He began immediately with a disembodied cardboard finger, slipping a ring from one onto Cec’s finger. You are off on the wrong foot, young fellow, I thought, never afraid to mix a metaphor in an extremity, if you see what I mean. Cec would as soon wear a ring in her nose as on her finger, not being one for adorning hands or wrists. Still, the pieces on display were disarmingly simple, pleasing to the eye, easy on the taste, and clearly handmade by this young man who had found neither surcease nor respite in his conversation. Another ring, too large this time, Cec steadily praising his work while firmly demurring to purchase any.
From merely showing and describing his handiwork, the fellow made a devastating first gambit: he glibly introduced the Tradition of the Christian Nativity, to wit: “Today is a Mexican Holiday, el Dios de Los Tres Reyes Magos – the feast of the Three Magics who came to bring gifts to the Nińo Jesus.” It was not the reminder of timeworn tradition that so enchanted me as the idea which suddenly materialized, in his apt translation, of three ‘magics’ – a perfect gloss on the always puzzling word ‘magi.’ That hard terminal ‘c’ that bathes our Anglo-Saxon tongue in glottal substantiality and emotional closure seemed to me, just then, to finish the word to perfection and bear its whole meaning. I imagined the three magics, no more just three hapless, better-late-than-never tourists arriving for the quickly cooling festivities, after dark and past Someone’s bedtime, bearing a cut-glass cheese plate and duplicate toasters (“Oy, Melchizidek, was danken zu?”). No, these were ‘magics,’ wise men learned in astronomy and astrology, in metes and bounds, in surveying and navigation, who could measure out the heavens and follow any star to the very point on the earth directly beneath it (which I freely confess I’ve never mastered, the buggers keep moving off the faster I drive.)
Then, a second gambit: the young jeweller quietly cited the Moral Exemplar Within the Gospel Tradition: “The Magics gave the gifts to the little Jesus because they loved him.” And with blinding speed the clincher, the genuine kayo punch, the Moral Drawn From Holy Writ: “And so today is a day in Mexico to give some gifts to someone you love.” Cec, left to her own devices, would have let me out of this pretty easily. I spotted the obvious equivocation, the too facile logical move from ‘Someone’ to ‘someone.’ Still, I felt outmanned, outnumbered, outgunned. There were three of them, not even counting the jewelry maker; and even if they all dressed like Bette Davis in a dressing trailer on an MGM backlot, they had more than gone out of their way to bring along stuff that sounded to me like it was going to be re-gifted as soon as they were back on the one-lane camel track to Lebanon, Missouri.
I spied a green agate stone in a plain sterling setting. It was simplicity itself, integrity of design, beauty of workmanship and modest taste in the pairing of materials. What about that one? Cec gave me the what-are-you-thinking look. My hand was by then in my pocket, thumbing the wallet, riffling the careworn edges of bills. I merely shrugged: “I love this guy.” Cec laughed, German giggled, not unbecomingly. Then he hit me again, harder this time: “This ring I charge two hundred pesos in El Jardin they ask five hundred pesos for something like it but only today it is a holiday one-hundred-fifty pesos.” He was asking all of eighteen dollars American, without a fight, for lovely materials, his own careful craft, plain good taste and honest sweat. I was undone. I handed him a two-hundred peso note.
He was delighted, then nonplussed. No, I had no fifty-peso note, he would have to go out of the shop and get some change. He rushed out, leaving Cec and me just enough time to pilfer his entire stock and get around the corner for home. We sat quietly in the corner on a low automobile seat requisitioned for customer service until he returned with the change and sent us on our way with his sincerest benedictions and best wishes for a blessed Feast Day of the Three Magics. I am nearly certain ours was his only sale of the day.
German is the rare artisan whose work reflects exactly what he is himself – ‘simple’ in the best sense, as in ‘not susceptible of further refinement.’
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