Mad Collectors #4
by Jilliana
Ranicar-Breese
You don't know
a person really until you have lived in their
house as a guest. My biggest mistake was mixing
business with pleasure. Believe me the Christmas
in New Orleans with my pre-cinema client was no
pleasure!
I had met Bob Fleischman, an elderly American, in
Portobello Road hunting for top end pre-cinema
items for his small collection. I was the number
one specialist in optical toys buying in Paris to
sell in London or elsewhere like Vienna, Los
Angeles, Barcelona and London where I had clients.
I was also a member of the Magic Lantern Society
in London and sold slides, French tin magic
lanterns or paper optical persistence of vision
items to many of the members at home and abroad.
Bob appeared as to be friendly and knowledgeable
lecturing in pre-cinema and early cinema at New
Orleans university. He was also an antiques
dealer helping a dear friend in his shop in Key
West plus he taught mime and had studied
psychodrama with the master and creator, Jacob
Levy Moreno. Thus he should have been an
interesting man to converse with.
Over the years we became E-pals, rather than
outdated pen pals, so when my marriage to magical
Martin fell apart in 2006, sympathetic Bob
invited me to spend Christmas with him. Thank God
it was not for my birthday on the 30th. He
explained that he owned a house around a palm
tree courtyard with a guest house where I could
relax and be peaceful in the company of his cats.
He was so insistent and it sounded tempting so,
without seeing any photos, I finally accepted
booking the expensive high holiday season trip to
New Orleans on 22nd December for a week. Too long
it turned out chez Bob who turned out to be a
mean recluse whose only friends were cats. His
only other outside contact was with a small group
of friends who met weekly for breakfast in a cafe
not wrecked by Hurricane Katrina in August 2015.
Katrina had devastated New Orleans and changed
people's lives forever. There had been criticism
over how the poor black people had been abandoned
in the floods when the National Guard took too
long to arrive to help. Later looting, especially
Walmart, and violence took place through hunger.
Along with 1 million people Bob fled the
evacuated city and went to the Smokey Mountains
in Tennessee in the National Park renting a cabin
where he had a contact after his Key West friend,
perhaps his partner, had died. 100,000 people
remained in the abandoned city. His chosen
hovel had not been touched by Katrina but New
Orleans had become a ghost city and with his
friends scattered all over America staying with
relatives, Bob had become a lost, withdrawn and
depressed man. In fact he wondered if he should
abandon his native city but then he thought of
the financial side because he owned several
properties.
In fact Bob could only talk about his portfolio
of properties or the stock of valuable antiques
which he had brought back from the Key West shop
and left abandoned on the floor of one of
his beautifully decorated empty houses. It made
no sense why he was not living in that
beautifully decorated clapboard decorated house.
He asked my advice about putting these
antiques into auction but I had no knowledge of
the market in America for decorative European
antiques. It seemed Bob had also been his partner's
carer as well as his 'special' friend. I did not
dare ask if they had been lovers especially as
their friendship had been for at least forty
years.
Bob had a car that he only used for shopping and
meeting his once a week friends, so he did not
offer to drive me anywhere except to show off his
numerous properties and a tour around the
downtown black area that had been ravaged and
flattened. I was thus forced to take
public transport to get to the historic French
Quarter to eat, hear Jazz and hunt for vintage
apparel which was abundant in New Orleans.
My host had given me the guest house which was a
rail road house consisting of three rooms. You
entered a large old fashioned kitchen/diner which
was the only place to eat. This led to a sitting
room decked out with traditional antiques and
patchwork textiles which in turn led to the small
bedroom also in Colonial New England style to
match the lounge. It was cold as Bob was too mean
to put the heating on. Yes, there were dry
neglected palm trees and architectural tropical
foliage in the overgrown L shaped yard which I
would not have described as a courtyard but there
was an abandoned fountain which the cats used to
drink water.
On Christmas Eve Bob invited me to a traditional
restaurant for a special roast turkey with all
the trimmings. That evening he was merry with a
few glasses of dry white wine and happy to see me.
I had just arrived and I was probably his only
guest ever although I didn't know it at the time.
I had brought some Victorian strips for his
British zoetrope and two odd anamorphoses
Napoleon 111 cards from a broken set as a gift
and was surprised when he plonked them on the
dusty shelf in his 'living room' mumbling 'Thanks'.
His valuable collection was on the first floor
abandoned in dirty showcases. No display and just
haphazardly left to rot. I was mortified. How
could this educator treat these priceless
collectables in such a way? I only ventured up to
the first floor once. That was enough! It was
like a dusty store room.
Downstairs on the ground floor I can only
describe the place as a hovel. The neighbourhood
cats wandered in and out through his open door so
it was always chilly. Bob did not believe in
warmth even for his catty friends. He slept fully
clothed wearing a camel haired overcoat on the
large sofa with his special tabby friend called
Moro, presumably after his Jewish mentor.
His cats were better fed than he was.
After two meals out he announced that he no
longer wished to go out to eat and showed me his
tinned food storage cupboard. This scenario
reminded me of my Welsh mother stocking up in
Liverpool for World War 111. No fresh vegetables
or fruit for us. Just cans of stuff. I was
trapped. Fortunately he had introduced me to his
hospitable neighbour, Jennifer Jenkins and so I
ate at her place, watched American TV and went
around with her locally in her car. She had
retired from public relations living alone after
a bad divorce. She wasn't even friends with Bob
and had never been invited once into his
sanctuary. I didn't inform her of the state of
the abode. Somehow I sensed she instinctively
knew!
The only interesting place I found was a vintage
shop with the charming owner dressed in a full
length red satin 1940s décolleté evening dress
wearing bright vampire red lipstick. Her auburn
locks were swept up 40s style with various combs.
It was an enormous shop full to the brim with
vintage dresses from the 40s to the 80s and there
was a piano for anyone to sit down and play. I
was lucky to hear 'Rhapsody in blue'
being played with gusto. The prices were so cheap
because the old stock seemed to be permanently on
sale with large vulgar show cards stating the
giveaway prices. I succumbed of course and bought
a red dressing gown which today hangs on my
bathroom door in Brighton.
Bob demonstrated a movement technique he had
created linked with mime. That day he confessed
he had studied with Jewish Marcel Marceau in
Paris as a young man. He was dressed all in
black and got me to lie on the floor in my lounge
as there was no room to swing a cat in his.
Jennifer finally drove me to the airport with Bob
waving adieu. Strains of Bing Crosby singing 'I'm
dreaming of an awful Christmas....' was imprinted
on the screen of my mind.
Never again!
Written
at the Villa Perla, Kaleici, Antalya, Turkey on
21/3/17.
References
Wikipedia - Hurricane Katrina and its effects
Google - The French Quarter New Orleans
Wikipedia - Marcel Marceau
Wikipedia - Jacob Levy Moreno
Google - Magic Lantern Society - magiclantern.org.uk
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