The Apartment Store #4

Chapter 2, Part 2; in which Lydia discovers, much to her astonishment, just who their new neighbour is

The Apartment Store is the story of Lydia, a little girl who lives in a ramshackle attic apartment, in a ramshackle apartment building, down the ramshackle end of town. All Lydia wants is a proper Christmas, but it doesn't seem likely until a new tenant arrives in their building and changes Christmas for everyone in it.

The Apartment Store is a book length Christmas story of twelve chapters, split into twenty four episodes for Advent.

The little man stuck out even more distinctly crammed in at their small table under the low roof. Lydia had squirmed at him being ushered in past her father’s rickety pile of a bed but the little man had insisted on stopping to look at it, admiring the construction and had then picked several books off the crowded shelves and leafed through them, commenting out loud on their quality while Door started preparing breakfast. Lydia just wanted him to sit down and stop noticing things, but he just wouldn’t, pointing out pictures on the wall and peering out at the rooftop view from their window.

What he didn’t notice, or at least didn’t remark upon, was the thinness and smallness of the pancakes that Door was making, or the tiny amount of syrup he had drizzled on them. He just kept grabbing them as they were put on the table, barely even waiting for Lydia to get some too. But she had other things on her mind. She was thinking about that model.

“But what’s it for?” She asked, at last.

“The model?” said the little man, “Is it not enough that it’s a beautiful thing?”

“But the whole store is right there,” she went on, “I mean, you could go and see that.”

“But what if it wasn’t there?” asked the man with a twinkle in his eye, “At least not yet?”

“It’s an architect’s model, isn't it?” said her father, “Like a plan.”

“But I thought they had drawings,” said Lydia.

“Oh, you have drawings and plans, you need those for the planners and the builders and the decorators” said the man, “But a model, a model is for the money.”

“The money?”

“A building like the Krampus department store is not an easy thing to build," said the man, "This is a store unlike any made before, bigger than a single city block, luxurious, complicated, expensive. No one person can afford to build something like that, not on their own, they need investors, other people who are going to lend them money to build the building, in the expectation that they will get paid back and more when the building is a successful business. So this means you’re not just asking for a loan, you’re having to persuade those investors that what you’re going to build is going to work, is going to be a success, is going to be a wonder. So that’s why you need a model,” he put down his knife and fork and leaned back in his chair.

“See, you’re going to have to build that store for them, in their minds, in their imaginations. You’re going to have to build your dream - because that’s all it is then: just a dream, that you’re going to have to persuade them to share. You can show them the architect’s drawing of the elevation, you can show them the listings of materials, or you can show them that model, how floor after floor rises majestically from the street, how the edifice builds until it is all you can see, from the pavement, how your whole world becomes the store. How you set your watch by the clock above the door and grab your breakfast in the bustling arcade that runs through the length of the building. How you can stop for tea in the fourth floor conservatory cafe, where floor to ceiling windows give unparalleled views of the city and how the evening begins in the sixth floor dining salon and ballroom and the night ends in the rooftop cocktail bar, where lights twinkle in the private pergolas and real flamingoes - no expense spared - roost in the silent carp pool. See, they’re not just looking at a drawing, they’re looking at a real thing and they’re beginning to think of it as a real thing, as a real place.

“And then you open it, you open up that front, as you saw, and you start to pull out those floors and populate them with shoppers and shop assistants, with floor walkers and dressers and porters, fill up shelves with ranks of pink perfumes, with glittering vitrines of jewels and gems, because you’re trying to get them to see the dream, because that’s what this place will truly be: a dream.”

“I can't help feeling that it's not much of a dream,” said Lydia’s father, "A big shop."

She shot him a scowl - she had been enjoying the man’s description of the department store.

“A big shop. It is, that’s true,” said the man, “But think what that is: a big shop, think what that means. Thousands of years ago, way back in ancient times, people were just hunters and gatherers, they travelled in small bands across the world, never stopping, never resting, eternally questing for food, for shelter, for small moments of ease, of life. And then they figured out how to plant food instead of hunt for it and that meant settlements and cities: civilisation dawned. And you know what civilisation means? Shops. Because now people were settled down they could specialise - this fellow, instead of slogging through the thorns hunting mammoth just to stay alive, could leave that up to the hunters and concentrate on making pots, which what he was good at. And this woman instead of breaking her back in the sun picking berries could leave that to the framers and sit in the shade sewing clothes, which she was good at. And then they could sell those pots and those clothes to those hunters and farmers and buy their own mammoth meat and berries: in shops. And then there were the men who were good at the selling, who realised that the pots in this town were better than the pots in this other town, where the berries were better and who saw that they could make a trade, and their shops became bazaars, where objects came together from all over the world, where people and cultures and science met and where history was made. This is what a big shop is: where history happens - the epitome of civilisation.”

“Where small bands of people hunt and gather for tins of mammoth meat and candied berries,” said her father.

“Luxuries that only kings could have dreamt of, that they can pick up for pennies in just moments. And this is the dream you’re selling to to these people, these investors, a dream of culture and civilisation and luxury. And that’s what the store represents, like the model represents the store. That’s what you’re showing them. How the most basic of human needs have become things of wonder. Like you say, Door, we’re still hunters and gatherers, but now we’re in the food hall, bustling with butchers and bakers and confectioners and fishmongers. Where the produce of the whole world is brought together, things you never knew existed, have never seen before. Where game from the hills of the far north hangs from the ceiling, where fresh fish, who were only in the sea this morning, still flap on boxes of sparkling ice. Where real live costermongers, recruited from street markets all over the country, trade ribald insults across the aisles as they sell you bright oranges from the warm south and dark berries from the hedgerows.

“And instead of sewing together animal skins with leather thongs there’s a whole floor of silk and linen, or some miraculous drip dry and water repellent new fabric, in every cut for every occasion - a diaphanous pyjama for lounging about or hard wearing leather riding breeches, practical Capri pants for chores about the house or sequinned and folded evening dresses cut just right for dancing in. Every wild thought of the designers, every wild whim of the clientele, all dreams are catered for.

“Need the exercise now you’re not chasing woolly rhinoceroses about the tundra? Visit the sports department, who will know how to find a racket that perfectly fits your swing, a ball that perfectly fits your hand. Need a pot to cook your mammoth in? Visit the kitchen department, who will know what best to flash fry it in and serve it on. This is the dream; that the every day, the perfectly ordinary: eating, sleeping, sitting, running, can become extraordinary, can be wondrous and wonderful. This is the teeming world that you have to build for those investors, because you want them to understand what a miraculous place this store will be, what a wonder they are investing in, you need to make that dream, their dream, make them want to make it happen too.

“But beware. Because once you have shared it out, it’s not your dream any more - it’s other people’s. And they can take it away from you if they want. And they will.”

With that the man, who had gotten up from the table and had been pacing back and forth, stopped waving his hands about and turned to stare out of the window, his face suddenly despondent.

“How do you know all this?” asked Lydia, who thought she could guess.

“This has happened to you, hasn’t it?” asked her father, somewhat rudely she thought.

The little man still stood, staring out at the roofs of the old town.

“You can see it from here, you know,” he nodded glumly at the view, “Just the top, the cocktail garden. You can see it from my place too, that’s why I chose this building. Probably shouldn’t have.”

“You can see… your store?” asked Door.

“You can see Krampus,” said Lydia, who knew full well that you could.

“You can see Krampus,” said the man, sadly, “You can see my store. But not mine any more. Nor my name, probably, once the lawyers have finished.”

“Your name?”

“Krampus,” said the little man, “Otto Krampus, founder of the Krampus Department Store and former owner, now fired by my own investors, thrown out of my own store, without a penny to my name nor a dream to call my own. But you can call me Artie. All my friends do, and I think we’re going to be the very best of friends, don’t you?”