Miniatures

by Karl Staven

It was around that time in my life that I began to collect miniatures. This new hobby started out as an effort to recreate my entire house at 1/100th its actual size. At that time I felt that if I could accurately reproduce my environment on a much smaller scale, my control over the larger environment I struggled in would increase accordingly.

After several months of painstaking cutting, sanding, gluing, and painting, I managed to construct the outer shell of my tiny house out of balsa and tiny scraps of wood that I picked up around the back entrance of a local lumberyard. One side of the replica was left unattached so that work could continue on the inside. Not being well versed in electrical work or the nuances of modern plumbing, I hired a local handyman to ready my little house for interior furnishing. At first he was hesitant
and somewhat suspicious of my request, but I explained that the house was merely an elaborate gift for a sickly niece and showed him a picture of a small girl I had cut out of a magazine.

When he completed his work the tiny house was completely functional. If I turned the handle over the tiny porcelain tub a small stream of water splashed out. By flicking a little switch on a wall, the small bulb hanging in the center of the room glowed and sent rectangles of light through the open doorways. The doorbell tinkled when I pressed the dot next to the front door with the point of a pencil. I turned my attention to the decoration of the interior.

It was fairly easy, at first, to locate smaller versions of many of my household items in various hobby stores and model shops around the city. Overstuffed chairs, couches, plates, and teakettles were common items and I was able to find patterns to match most of my own. Once I began to search for less popular items, however, the supplies became rather limited. A large lamp constructed out of alligator bones and skin which had been given to me by my great aunt had no equal in the miniature world. Tiny tupperware was unavailable. A handsome Victorian gilded mirror was permanently out of stock. After many fruitless hours of searching farther and farther afield I decided that it would be
much easier to find small furnishings that I liked and then buy larger items to match them for my full sized home. I held a large yard sale and sold all of the household goods for which I didn't already have a smaller counterpart.

I lived a rather Spartan existence for a while but eventually succeeded in furnishing and otherwise duplicating my surroundings in the small house so that every item had its match in both worlds. I moved the tiny home from my basement workbench onto the middle of the living room table and sat back to admire it when two problems suddenly occurred to me. The first, as to whether or not there should be a second reproduction at 1/1000 scale on the small living room table in the little house, I dismissed as unnecessary. Each environment should exist complete and separate; one should not acknowledge or include the other as a part of itself. Besides, attempting to construct a 1/1000th replica would necessitate a 1/10000th version on its living room table and so forth. The second problem was not as easily disposed of.

While I was sitting at the table, I had noticed a stain on the wall behind the small house. Taking a closer look around, more and more faults became visible in my larger home that weren't represented in the miniature. Pictures immediately crowded into my mind of dozens of minor flaws; small cracks in the kitchen ceiling, splits in several of the wooden stairs leading down into the basement, and tiles missing in the corner of the bathroom. I jumped up and proceeded to inspect my house from the damp corners of the basement to the joints at the top of the attic and to take inventory of everything that needed to be fixed. With each notation I also wrote down the original circumstances under which the problem had first appeared.

Over the next several weeks I was able to repair all of the faults I had discovered in the house. Still, a wall with a repaired crack is slightly different than one that has never been cracked at all. With this in mind I used my list of original mishaps and began to recreate, in miniature, the accidents that had caused the various problems in the larger house. I broke a small bottle of ketchup in the tiny kitchen and splattered the cabinet. After letting it soak in for a day I washed and repainted it. I forced a cat to urinate in the corner of the miniature bedroom and then cleaned and resanded the floor. Several of the accidents had been caused by falls I had taken when I was sleepwalking. In order to recreate the force of my body banging into the closet shelf or tumbling down the basement stairs, I contacted a dollmaker I had come to know in my searches for small items and contracted with her to make a replica of myself in 1/100th scale. After discussing and agreeing upon terms over the phone, I met her at her place of business and allowed her to take my measurements and several locks of my hair.

When I received the doll two weeks later I placed him in the tiny living room in a chair and examined him in his house. We looked at each other for over an hour then I tucked him into his bed and went to sleep myself.

The next morning I awoke smiling, something I hadn't done in several months. The morning seemed painfully bright, but the brightness was refreshing. The sunlight poured in between the curtains with a crisp, sharp edge. I felt rejuvenated and alive; whole and acutely aware of every object around me. One more day of minor destruction and repair and my small house would be complete. I only had to recreate my fall down the basement stairs.

With a cup of coffee steaming in my hand I walked into the living room and stared at the doll lying in the bed. He, too, seemed at home with himself, comfortable in his little world.

"Good morning, Eric," I greeted him.

Putting the coffee down, I reached in and gently pulled his covers down. I stroked his hair then picked him up and prepared to throw him down his tiny basement stairs.

I couldn't.

I couldn't throw myself down the stairs again, even if it was only a small reproduction of myself. I remembered when I had crashed into the steps, waking in a haze of pain and blackness and slowly realizing that I was lying halfway down the basement staircase. What good would it do to reexperience that pain in my smaller world? It wouldn't. Instead I slid the doll back under his covers and put an extra pillow under his head.

"There, there, Eric, sleep late. You almost had a bad fall."

It occurred to me then that recreating my world on a smaller scale wasn't necessarily a path toward achieving greater or better control over my life. Instead I should improve upon my environment, surpassing my actual conditions in their smaller counterpart. If I were able to create a better world in my miniature house, it could only have a positive effect on my larger world. I immediately set out to acquire some of the nicer items I had seen and passed over in my furnishing journeys.

One of the first places I remembered was a small pawn shop, located in a basement below a locksmith. It had, for some reason, an entire glass case filled with tiny furniture and toiletry items. I returned there and found the shop owner, a short greasy man with red blotches dotting his face, sitting next to a display case of overlarge handguns.

"Could I have a look at these, please?"

He grunted and slid off his stool.

"So, where did you come across these miniatures?"

He put a small key in the lock and twisted it, leaving smudges of oil from his hands on the glass.

"Man with a moustache," he mumbled, and retreated to his stool.

I immediately picked up a delicate tortoise shell comb and a small footstool made from the leg of a persian cat. Other pieces I handled but then discarded, deeming them unworthy of raising the overall quality of the furnishings in my small house. The owner's eyes narrowed as I examined each object, registering and totalling my movements. I removed everything in the case and peered at it closely, but nothing else begged to return home with me. Finally, inside a shoddy little bureau, I discovered a set of three books written in a language I was unfamiliar with. There were illustrations in the third volume, but I was unable to make them out without a magnifying glass. They were bound in leather and had sections of a butterfly's wing, still shiny and protected with a shield of mica, imbedded in the cover. The owner and I agreed on a price and I rushed back to my house.

"Eric." He was still lying in bed where I had left him. "Time to get up and see what I've got for you."

Pulling down his covers, I pushed him into a sitting position and ran the comb through his hair, my hair. "Look, a new footstool and your first set of books. I'm sorry it's not in a language you understand but it's a start." He seemed pleased with his new acquisitions. I know I was. We sat together for the rest of the evening and looked through our new books, making up stories and peering at the pictures through a magnifying glass. All of the pictures were actually photographs, and all seemed to be photographs of one person, a man with an enormous bushy moustache. In some photos he was smiling, in others he held up small dark dots, later in the book his moustache suddenly changed from black to grey. Finally I tucked my smaller self back into bed and then did the same.

For the next two weeks I reexplored the city searching for tiny treasures. Quickly abandoning hobby store selections as mundane and common, I spent my time rooting underneath dusty counters and sifting through overfilled musty boxes in the backrooms of forgotten shops with wrinkled men and women more concerned with preventing theft than making sales. Often the most unlikely places had the most unusual and wonderful items buried somewhere deep amongst the trash. The Women's Moose Auxiliary Store had a doll's couch made from a stuffed Gila monster. The mouth was open in a death grimace and a miniature magazine rack had been built inside. The Jesus Shoe Shop, "Forging New Souls From Old Soles," agreed to part with a set of miniscule bedroom slippers inscribed with the ten commandments. In the "Book Barn" a man buried behind towers of stacked books with overflowing ashtrays balanced on top pointed me towards a glass case in the rear.

Inside the case were two rows of miniature books. While I was squinting at the titles through the glass, a man leaned over my shoulder and cleared his throat.

"So, you like miniatures, do you?" His words came out with a rancid musty smell, as if parts of his body had died and the decay had just begun to penetrate his lungs.

"Certain kinds," I mumbled in reply, and turned to walk away when I saw his face. Actually I didn't see his face so much as I was taken aback by his moustache, a huge white bristly forest shooting out and over his lip. It reminded of the face in the third volume of my set. Then I noticed a beautiful tiny walking stick pinned on his lapel. Its knob was in the shape of an infant's head. It appeared to be carved out of ivory with small opals inset as eyes. I decided not to leave. "Why do you ask?"

He smiled again and I looked closer at his face. His skin was incredibly pale and his teeth had a greenish fuzz covering them. It seemed to be some type of night vegetation that had begun to take root and was spreading through his mouth.

"I have some items you might be interested in," he exhaled.

"Okay, I'm willing to have a look." I pictured little Eric dressed in a tightfitting tuxedo with a tophat and this tiny ivory walking stick. "Where are they."

Although I was expecting him to pull open his coat, a knee length tweed affair, and show me rows of tiny watches, instead he held out his hand and said, "Emmanuel, my name. Follow me please."

He led me outside to his car, an immaculate 1949 Hudson. I looked in the back to see if he had anything interesting there but the seat was empty. We climbed in and drove away from the book store; I was too excited to be apprehensive. We drove in silence for several minutes.

"That's a nice pin you have on your coat, do you have many more like it?" I asked. The air in the car seemed stuffy so I reached to roll down my window.

"Do not!" he hissed loudly, jerking upright. When I sat back in the seat he relaxed also. "Excuse me, but I do not like the circulation of air. It is not healthy. It is dangerous."

While any definition of healthy from a man of his complexion was suspect, I was too curious to see what he had to offer to disagree. "So, your pin?" I asked again.

"Yes. I have over fifty walking sticks. One is carved from a narwhale's horn in the shape of a cobra and spits poison from its tip when it is squeezed. One is made of coal black ebony and can not be broken. One is... but I thought you would be more interested in the written word." He slowly swung his head around to look at me.

I smiled in response. "Sure, I'm interested in a lot of things. Why? Do you have a lot of books."

"Well, that depends on how exactly you would define a book. I am in possession of a 1935 penny with the Constitution etched on Lincoln's forehead. I have also obtained a set of two oak toothpicks; one with the old testament inscribed on it, one with the new. King James' version. If you line up a series of quarter inch wine glasses I have on a shelf in a particular alignment known only to me, the first twelve chapters of Don Quixote can be read." He stopped talking for a second and sighed deeply. The air in the car grew appreciably staler. "If only I had recovered the remainder of the set."

We pulled directly into a garage attached to a two story gray frame house. I didn't have a chance to see much of his house before we were in the darkness of the garage. From inside the car, he pressed a button which caused two doors to close behind us.

"If you are serious, my friend," he began, climbing out of the car.

"Oh, I am, I am. You should see some of the stuff I have at my house."

He raised his hand. "If you are serious, my friend, I can assist you in locating many fine articles for your collection. If you are serious."

Pulling an enormous ring of keys from his coat pocket, he proceeded to unlock a series of six bolts on the door leading into his house. It opened into a large room with dull lights spreading a minimum of illumination over several sets of wooden shelves. I moved forward to get a closer look and immediately started gasping for fresh air. The air in the room was dead; breathed and rebreathed until most of the oxygen was gone.

"Air," I wheezed, "Open a window or something."

"No, my friend. I once lost a series of prize vases to a summer breeze that snuck into a room upstairs. Just relax for a moment and you will be fine."

He walked away from me while I bent over and inhaled as deeply as I could. The first thing I made out in front of me was a long row of musical instruments on one of the shelves, several of which could fit on my open hand. I moved closer through the gloom of the room and made out a xylophone made of salamander bones with two sets of mallets. Next to it was a row of toothpicks. As I looked closer I saw that each toothpick had a series of holes in its side.

"Flutes." Emmanuel was standing beside me again. "Each one in a different key." I moved away from his breath, finding the air injurious enough without adding insult.

"They were crafted by a small order of monks who set up a monastery in the Bolivian interior. They saw themselves as unworthy specks in the eyes of God so they began to live as if they were specks - making tiny objects and praying daily to grow smaller and nearer to God. They made many fine items worth collecting."

We went into a smaller room with thousands of small cubicles
built into the walls.

"Here are several plates they used for their meals." He reached into one of the cubicles and dropped several nickels into my hand. I picked one up and saw that it was a little pewter plate. There were scenes around the edges but it was too dark in the room to see any details. Taking them from me, he placed them back in the darkened hole.

"I understand that the entire order eventually starved to death. This is a fair example of an oriental miniature." He removed a pair of tweezers from his pocket, dipped it into another cubicle, and held the tip in front of my face. I reached up to examine it.

"No, I am afraid I must ask you not to touch this item. It is a solid piece of work but difficult to locate if misplaced."

I squinted at the end of the tweezers but couldn't see anything. "I don't ..."

"Forgive me."

Emmanual pulled a magnifying flashlight from his pocket and focused its beam at the end of the tweezers. Between the two sharp points was a five tiered birdcage with six, no, seven brightly colored birds swinging gently with the motion of his hand. The light suddenly flicked off.

"If you will allow me," he said, motioning me toward a large steel door, "I would be pleased to show you my prize acquisitions."

"Yes, of course." I followed him to the door and waited while he inserted keys in a series of locks. "I can't believe the things you have here, so tiny and such amazing detail."

"That is the way I used to feel also." The door swung open into what I first thought was an empty room. As my eyes grew accustomed to this even greater darkness within the dark of his house, an unlit glass box on the opposite side of the room emerged in my vision. We walked over to the box.

"The items out there," he gestured back to the pieces he had shown me, "are crude. They are huge sculptures carved with chainsaws. They are brutish and clumsy. In this case are the real treasures."

An intense white light shot down from the ceiling and filled the glass box. My eyes closed involuntarily because of the brightness but I opened them and leaned forward to stare down
onto the velvet covered shelf. I pressed my face against the glass and looked from one end all the way across to the other. There was nothing there.

"Excuse me," I asked, "May I borrow your magnifying glass?"

"Of course." He proudly handed it over. "You will need it to fully appreciate the artistry involved."

Moving the lens back and forth, I examined every inch of the cloth on the other side of the protective glass. There was still nothing to be seen. The case was empty. I stood up, nodded respectively, and I returned his magnifying glass. "Very nice."

"Someday you may have a collection like this." Emmanual smiled, his teeth green and furry in the light.



Later that week I sold my tiny house and all of its furnishings to a local hobby store. The only item I kept was the doll, propped up on an overstuffed chair in the living room, dwarfed by his surroundings.