18mm Blues by Gerald A Browne Page B

need them they were sold yesterday.”
    â€œWe’ve got several hanks of nice nines, nine and a halfs. Maybe some are Kumuras. Want me to check?”
    â€œNo.” For years Grady had been trying to land a certain client in Atlanta. The man did a huge business throughout the South, knew his importance and was extremely demanding. Grady had promised him Kumura pearls of ten, ten and a half millimeters in a pinkish white, the current most popular shade. Expensive, but price was no problem. The man had asked how much, Grady had quoted top dollar and there’d been not a word of haggling, just the firm stipulation that the pearls be nothing less than Kumuras.
    Like most dealers Grady had a favorite precious gem. He appreciated the blood red impact of Burma ruby and the ethereal blue of Kashmir sapphire and, as well, the reviviscent green of Colombian emerald. However, foremost in his heart and head were pearls.
    Larkin, a New York dealer and Grady’s first employer in the trade, had been an indelible influence. Pearls were Larkin’s passion. He didn’t merely introduce Grady to pearls, he infused Grady with a high regard for them and a great amount of knowledge. Whenever an important pearl dealer from Kyoto or Bangkok or somewhere came to show his goods, Larkin would make sure Grady was present to hear and observe, to learn.
    Larkin would also take Grady along to the exhibitions of magnificent jewelry to be auctioned at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Together they’d examine the various lots, paying special attention to the pearl necklaces being offered, louping pearl after pearl of each strand. Larkin would point out what made them fine or less so. The larger, white, more translucent South Sea and Australian pearls, the now extremely rare Burmese and Persian Gulf creamy naturals, the more recently fashionable cultured blacks from Marutéa.
    Larkin imparted.
    Grady soaked up.
    They attended the auction sales, conscientiously noting next to each numbered lot in their catalogues how the bidding went, along with their opinions and comments. Most of the pearls sold at those auctions were in period jewelry, such as a necklace consisting of ninety-three Burmese cultured pearls graduating perfectly in size from ten and a half to fifteen millimeters. Once the treasure of a duchess, the bidding for the necklace spiraled swiftly to a million and was finally knocked down for a million seven. And to think that he, Grady, had had that necklace in his hands! Had run it through his fingers! Had magnified its complexion!
    Frequently, after a day, Larkin and Grady would walk down to Forty-sixth and the Algonquin Bar. They’d sip Tennessee whiskey over ice while their conversation would hop, for instance, from the latest New York City controversies to baseball or boxing to the transparent greeds of politics. Inevitably it would land on the topic of pearls, and there it would remain.
    Larkin was a veritable archive when it came to pearl lore, things he’d read or heard about or experienced. Grady listened enrapt as Larkin told of the Hindu custom of placing a pearl in the mouth of the dead. To symbolically exemplify the deceased person’s purity in this life, thus increasing the chances of a more pleasant go at it in the next. The more perfect the pearl the greater the influence. The wealthy used valuable sea pearls for this purpose. The not nearly so wealthy used cheap placuna pearls, dull and calcined. The poor had to try to fool the gods with grains of rice.
    Did Grady know that Charles VI of France was given powdered pearl with distilled water for his insanity? Did he know that Pope Adrian was never without his amulet of Oriental pearls and dried toad?
    Now he did.
    Not all of Larkin’s pearl talk was anecdotal. On one February night while the streets and sidewalks outside were being layered with fine prevailing snow, Larkin got onto the subject of the so-called Pearl Crash of 1930. Larkin