A Lost Museum

Abstract

A Lost Museum FRED LICHT Had i been any older, I might have felt guilty for falling into a dream job at a time when hundreds of thousands were going hungry and unemployed. What made it even worse is that I got the job not because of any merit, not because I was better suited for the work than any other candidate, but simply because I happened to be in the right place at the right time. Yet even now, the shame I feel at having been happy at a time of widespread misery is dictated by my brain and not by my heart. It was late summer 1945 and I was visiting cousins in Lausanne from whom I had been separated since the beginning of the war. Ostensibly, I had come to Europe to study, although what it was I could study better in Lausanne than in New York was not clear to anyone. One of my cousins owned and ran a prosperous industry that had blossomed throughout the war. Money was no problem and he was a generous man who liked to enjoy his fortune in good company . Hardly a week went by without his inviting his friends and relatives on splendid outings to rarefied restaurants hidden in the Alps, and it was on one of these outings that I happened to be in the right place at the right time. We had been up beyond Rochers de Naye to feast on all sorts of delicacies and were on our way back, just about half way to Lausanne when my cousin’s ancient Packard, a prewar model as were all cars in those days, broke down. In itself it would have been no tragedy. The local automobile club rescued us in no time at all and the Packard was dragged off to the nearest garage, where the blackest diagarion 25.3 winter 2018 nosis was made by two very trustworthy mechanics: the car would never roll again. Under normal circumstances, that, too, would have been no disaster because my cousin could easily afford a new car. The trouble was that the Swiss government , in order to head off a threatening inflation, had promulgated a law that forbade the importation of all imported luxury goods. It was lawful to buy fifty gold and diamond watches which nobody in Switzerland wanted or needed, but in a country gorged with ready cash it was impossible to purchase a new American refrigerator, an air conditioner or a new car. The Packard, cosseted and tended with all the tricks of the best garage mechanics, had lasted through the war and through the first year after the armistice, but now that it had given up the ghost it could not be replaced. Fortunately, my cousin had a wide and well-connected circle of friends, acquaintances and grateful clients. One of them put him in touch with a rather shady gentleman who ran an import-export firm that dealt in unspecified merchandise and this shady gentleman, when consulted by my cousin, came up with an idea that might make it possible to get a new car after all. Ever since the outbreak of the war, the Swiss government had negotiated an extraterritorial dock in the harbor at Genoa. Cargo ships landed regularly at the Swiss pier and there was no reason why they could not unload a car to be signed over to someone willing to drive the car for two thousand kilometers at which point the car was legally “used merchandise” and could be sold in Switzerland without further ado. My cousin still looked disconsolate. “Where am I going to find someone willing to drive the car for two thousand kilometers?” As I said, for once I was in the right place at the right time. Within three weeks a huge black Cadillac with crimson leather upholstery was hoisted out of the hold of the Arosa III onto a dock in Genoa, I was given the keys together with some papers to sign and was off on the happiest adventure 150 a lost museum of my life. Not only did I have a car and the liberty to go wherever I wished for two...