Mr. B had done well for himself. His life was good. He’d lived in R— since he married twenty-four years earlier. By all accounts, he was fortunate: he and his family were healthy, and his children had become individuals, making marks with varying degrees of success.

The man loved many things. Most of all, he loved fine Korean vases, of which he had an extensive collection.

One day, while walking from his office in a handsome downtown building to the old-fashioned parking garage where he kept his car, he saw a Korean vase of unbelievable beauty displayed in the window of an antique store he frequented. Despite his eagerness to arrive home earlier than usual, he immediately turned into the store through the expertly crafted wooden door. The proprietor was glad to greet one of his valued customers.

“I had a feeling you might come by,” he said with a wink. “Would you like to see our new vase?” Mr. B nodded, struggling to contain his enthusiasm.

Gently lifting the vase from its pedestal where it was tastefully displayed, the proprietor handed it carefully to the man, who was overcome by its beauty. The vase was the green of the finest Korean celadon, a glaze reminiscent of early springtime leaves. It was the green of life both ancient and new, the green of rebirth and of mystery. It glowed with a light of its own. Mr. B knew Korean vases. He also knew antique Chinese craft. To his eye, this piece stood out—it was different than anything he had seen before, finer than any vase in his collection. It was a peculiar vase, and somehow, he had the feeling that while in his hands, it resurrected all vases, of the past and future, and he felt their lives and their permanence fusing within him. The vase seemed to represent everything and nothing all at once.

Of course I must own this vase, he thought. Mr. B asked the price, only to be told by the proprietor, rather regretfully, that the vase was not for sale. His finest purchase ever, he simply could not part with it. He had acquired it from the estate of a Russian emigrant who had obtained it during the Manchurian Invasion many years before.

Mr. B pressed the proprietor, offering a large sum of money, but he would not budge.

The man drove home pondering the vase and its extraordinary beauty, aliveness and ephemerality.

Over the next year, as the seasons changed, Mr. B would admire the vase on his way to and from work. It was displayed in the fashion of fine Japanese stores: alone in the show window, slightly off-center on a substantial, but not heavy, rosewood base. Just to its left, curving slightly above it sat a branch of flowering plum or forsythia for the spring months; later in summer, it would be graced by tall grasses or a pale peach amaryllis; in fall, a spray of oak leaves; and in winter, evocative, mildly contorted naked branches. Every two or three months, the man went into the store to visit. He would hold the vase as one cradles a sleeping infant, loving the feeling of merging with it, becoming connected with a different era, with something new but immeasurably ancient.

One Friday evening, Mr. B left his office after most of the other staff had gone home. It was April, and it was still light out. The rain, barely more than a mist, brought down with it the promising warmth of early summer. The angular ginkgo leaves were filling out the trees along the street. Mr. B was eager to see the vase through the rain-streaked show window.

Rounding the corner, he stopped short. The vase was gone.

Quickly turning into the shop, he asked the proprietor what had happened. Had it been stolen? Avoiding his gaze, the proprietor told him that someone had stopped in, hoping to purchase the vase for the White House, and had offered an unthinkable price. After all, how could he refuse such a request?

Mr. B mumbled, “Why yes, of course. You had no choice. Goodbye.”

As he drove home that evening, Mr. B cycled through anger toward the proprietor, then toward himself, then projected it onto the world.

He did not tell his wife what had happened but rather went for a walk, a long walk. The rain had stopped. Thousands of violets bejeweled the moistened grass. The white blossoms of the bellflower trees were so fragrant as to be almost unpleasant. Beside the man’s home, deep purple lilacs perfumed the wet air. Eliot echoed in the breeze, “April is the cruelest month . . .”

After a while, looking up, he noted in the darkening twilight that the clouds had totally cleared. Arcturus was rising, once a sign to ancient farmers to start their planting.

Mr. B wondered disapprovingly at himself. How could he be so ungrateful? He knew that he was blessed. How many people ever have the chance to know something so exquisite as that Korean vase, much less to hold its luminous curves and life-giving greenness? What a gift he had been given. He mused on and recalled a line from Blake: “He who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in eternity’s sunrise.” Ah, yes. He had been blessed. 

He finished his walk. As he turned the loose knob of the back door, his dog greeted him with a wiggle and a welcoming bark. The man was glad to be home. His wife made him a fragrant cup of tea to cradle, to warm his hands against the cooling night. As they sat on the terrace, she tenderly held his hand.

Now, in the quieting night, the wet maple leaves lost their greenness to the dark. As if a large bird had just flown by, a sudden breeze startled him, leaving after it the muted sounds of raindrops splashing onto the wooden deck.

A moment so perfect, yet so empty.