Free The Gold of Thrace by Aileen G. Baron Page B

strolled through a cacophony of stalls that sold flowers, fruits, vegetables, bread, cheese, apples the color of the Rathaus, all under a sea of market umbrellas—white, yellow, fringed, scalloped. Pigeons cooed and bustled on the cobblestones below, pecking at bits of debris that had fluttered to the ground and lodged in little wet gutters between the stones.
    She stopped at a fruit stand, drawn by the luscious scent of tiny wild strawberries, red and bright as the Rathaus.
    “Picked fresh from the mountains,” a woman in an apron who stood behind the table told Tamar in English.
    In front was an array of yellow peaches with blushing cheeks, the tantalizing aroma of their sweet-acid tang wafting on the air.
    “You want to buy?” asked the woman.
    Tamar nodded and reached for a peach with a luscious crimson glow. Before she could, the woman placed it on the balance pan with two others, fiddled with brass weights on the platform of the scale until it was level, and shoveled the peaches into a paper sack.
    Tamar made her way back to the shop where she had seen the dress. A bell attached to the top of the entrance tinkled when she opened it. The faint odor of a meal, of cooking meat, drifted from somewhere in the rear of the shop.
    A woman in a dark blue smock came through the heavy drape that hung over the entrance to the back of the shop. She was still chewing. She swallowed, wiped her mouth with a napkin and put it in the pocket of her smock.
    “I can help you?”
    “I would like to see a dress.”
    The woman peered at Tamar and nodded her head. She took the napkin from her pocket and wiped at her mouth again. “You would like to see a dress?”
    By the time Tamar left, she had bought three dresses. The last was a delicate aquamarine silk. “Just the color of your eyes,” the saleswoman had said. “You have very good taste.”
    And now for shoes, Tamar decided. Shoe stores lined Freiestrasse, one after the other, all with Bally shoes. She found three pair to match the dresses, bought stockings, and a white straw purse with embroidered flowers.
    Back at the Euler, Tamar assessed the spoils of her morning foray, hung the clothes in the closet, and lined up the shoes on the closet floor.
    Shopping always tired her. She sat at the desk, stared at the drapes marching across the window in measured folds, wondering what she was doing here, how she could find the mosaic in the strangeness of Basel, and then roused herself to dress in her new finery and assail the lobby.
    The manager stood near the revolving door talking to a stout matron when Tamar came around the corner from the elevator.
    He raised his eyebrow in greeting, bowed to the stout lady and approached Tamar with a welcoming smile.
    “Everything is to your satisfaction?” He reached out to shake her hand. “Charles Keller. Welcome to the Euler,” he said with a vigorous shake of her hand.
    He glanced toward the clock above the registration desk. “Cocktail time. Will you be my guest?” he asked and gestured in the direction of the bar.
    They sat in low chairs at a black glass table in the dim light of the bar. Snatches of German words escaped from the murmur of voices of a man and woman at the far end of the room, soft piano music washed over the room from hidden speakers in the background. Tamar ordered a sherry.
    A lighted glass showcase, a vitrine, behind the bar held some remarkable pieces of Greek pottery.
    “The owner of the Euler is a collector?” Tamar asked.
    “I am the owner.” He gave Tamar a slight nod of the head. “And the manager. And a collector.”
    “The pieces in the vitrine are real?”
    “Real pottery, not real antiquities. Just very good copies. I once displayed real pieces here, but now in a public place, even here at the Euler….” He held out his hands, palms up and shrugged, “It is not a very good idea.”
    “But you collect?”
    “Everyone in Basel is a bit of a collector. Here in Basel, we have a fine Antikenmuseum .