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By Root 879 0

and become in time our city’s next postmaster. A son-in-law as postmaster was an acceptable compromise. That was the idea, and he was so pleased with it that it had scarcely altered when he sent his daughter to work at the age of sixteen, with a smile on his face. But Grandfather didn’t notice, as the sixteen years crept slowly by, that no one was going to put a hot iron in the fire in order to brand Mother beautiful. Mother had uneven teeth, a large mole on her right cheek and freckles all over her face. The mole was roughly circular and Grandfather used often to comment that it was by some surely meaningful coincidence the exact shape of our city. In fact, its shape bore a remarkable similarity to that of the old city of Culemborg in the Netherlands, even though Culemborg is a city Mother never once visited.

MOTHER WORKED behind a post office counter, Father delivered letters, the post office was where they met and where they fell in love. I can boast no beautiful backdrop to their courtship; I will not pretend that the Central Post Office is or was in any way comparable to the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy, where the great Dante fell in love with Beatrice. Rather, our post office was a large dusty hall, which no matter how often its floor was swept and mopped always somehow remained dusty, and remains dusty to this day. There were twelve counters—today there are thirty-two—and back then they were made of wood; today they are of metal and have glass divides between the office and hall. But customers wishing to thump a post office assistant in the old times could feel free to do so without any let or hindrance. And this, in fact, did occasionally happen.

Grandfather considered the army of his employees, wondering which one his daughter would trap. Would it be Tomas, a fine boy but a little too headstrong? Or would it be Kurt, a bit fat perhaps, but undeniably a good sort? Or maybe Victor, serious and proud and never one to waste a moment of the post office’s time? ‘Dallia and Victor!,’ Grandfather shrieked to himself in his bath one night, spilling the water over the sides. That was it, it was certain to be Victor. And in these delightful contemplations he never once considered the weak and dreamy orphan Linas.

But his daughter made little impression on either Tomas or Kurt. And Victor’s mind was far too occupied ever to consider girls or courting; he was simply too busy, and if the female form did ever enter his consciousness it was only when illustrations of women appeared on stamps, and in these instances he simply distorted their image with the aid of the post office franking machine and they were immediately forgotten.

ON THE HISTORIC DAY Linas Dapps, our tall father, approached desk twelve, where our mother, our short and squat mother, worked, it was not love that was in his mind, but stamps. Some men love power, some men love women, some men love boys, some men love cars, some men love firearms, some men love matchstick buildings; well, Father was one of those men who love stamps, a small breed admittedly but a breed nevertheless. On the day he approached Mother he was concerned only to glimpse the new set of stamps that had just been issued and he knew that he would not be welcomed at any of the other counters. During his one and a half years at the post office he had slowly worked his way from counter one to counter twelve, bothering each of the workers in turn, pleading with them to show him a set of new stamps.

At first the employees behind the counters had tolerated him, even laughed at his demands—particularly Marta Stroud of number three, an unfortunate woman with a disease called psoriasis. No one else in the post office showed such enthusiasm for stamps. But after a time the yearning of this orphan boy had become tiring to them. They shunned him, they pushed him away, they complained that they were busy, that he would see the stamps in due course on his delivery rounds. This was true—soon Father would have as much time as he desired to linger over each new stamp as he went about the city, from house