the key museum

one hundred and sixty-two keys, each one mounted on the green board behind the front room of the ottmer locksmiths'. the museum is a single corner of the shop, behind the counter, behind a curtain; jonas ottmer will lift the curtain if you ask. he prefers you ask.

the donor of record is the elder ottmer, his grandfather, who began keeping the keys customers left behind when their locks were replaced. a key once made cannot, by his rule, be melted; so the keys accumulated, were threaded onto leather, and eventually pinned to the board. each carries a small paper tag with the address where it last fitted, where the address is known. forty-one say only somewhere.

jonas will tell you, if he likes you, about key seven — a brass mortice for a door that no longer exists, the threshold rebuilt, the lock taken away. he kept the key. he will not say why. the door, when it stood, opened into what is now the corner of the garden.