The Labyrinth Key

by Howard V. Hendrix

  Cherise strode away, and Ben followed her a few paces back. Down from the lofty heights of the redwood they trudged in silence.

  They said nothing to each other all the way back to the parking lot, where Cherise turned abruptly to him.

  “I’m sorry about what happened,” she said as they stood awkwardly beside her car. “Seems I’m always blowing up at you, then apologizing. It doesn’t make any sense, but whenever I talk to you, I keep feeling as if I could have done something to prevent Jaron’s death.”

  “I felt survivor guilt after my wife died, too,” Ben said carefully. “Blamed myself, when there was really nothing I could have done. There was really nothing you could have done, either, about whatever it was that happened. Jaron was an adult. He made his own choices.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But you know where I was when it happened? Sitting at my computer, in a screen trance or asleep, as near as I can tell. When I came to, I thought I remembered seeing his body, turned to ashes on a bed in a hotel room—something I wouldn’t actually find out about for days. I put it out of my mind, and only remembered it much later.”

  Ben thought of his own dreams, about Reyna’s last days, but he couldn’t bring himself to mention them.

  “Precognition?” he suggested.

  “I don’t believe in that,” she said, shaking her head. “I thought maybe I had just retroactively imagined the dream, after I learned the circumstances of his death. But I don’t believe that either. As a good materialist, how am I supposed to explain it?”

  Then she kissed him quickly and lightly on the cheek, and he was more confused than ever.

  “Conundrums, Ben,” she said, smiling at his confusion. “They give us both something to pick at with our minds. The big puzzle to solve. Better to get lost in work, than lost in grief.”

  She pulled his face closer to him and kissed him full on the mouth. Tenderly at first, then—as he responded—more passionately. They embraced, their hands moving through each other’s hair, along each other’s faces, over each other’s bodies. They moved apart just long enough to check whether or not anyone was watching them. When they saw no one about, Cherise opened her car’s driver-side back door and they clambered inside together, shutting the door hastily behind them.

  In the semidarkness brought on by the approaching storm, they caressed and undressed each other. A slow-motion frenzy of unbuttoning and unzipping and unsnapping, of pulling over and pulling down and kicking off, and then they were making love in the cramped space of the back seat, with the fierce and sly abandon of a couple of teenagers doing—with more enthusiasm than finesse—the date-concluding deed in the parental driveway.

  At the height of passion he didn’t call out Reyna’s name, and Cherise didn’t call out Jaron’s name, but as they cuddled together afterward, it was clear that both of them were thinking about those they had loved, and lost. The mood hung over them as they quietly searched for and put themselves back into the varied articles of clothing they had shed in their haste to be naked with each other.

  “We can be embarrassed,” Cherise said, her right hand on his left cheek, staring deeply into his eyes, “but please, no guilt? We couldn’t stop what happened with them, any more than they could stop what just happened with us.”

  “Right,” he said, though he knew as he said it that it was easier to say than it was to believe.

  When they were both dressed and looking halfway presentable again, they got out of the car. Cherise walked with Ben to his own vehicle and they worked their way toward farewell.

  “Have a safe trip to Hong Kong,” she said at last, moving away from him and back to her car, gesturing as she went. “Don’t spend too much time alone with that lady detective. And if you see Bob Beckwith again, say hello to him for me. He’s an old friend of the family.”

  “I will, as soon as I see him.”

  “Look me up when you get back, too, Ben—if I don’t see you first.”

  As they waved their good-byes, Ben didn’t know what to make of that.

  LABYRINTH AND LOOKING GLASS

  PHILADELPHIA

  Don’s morning walk took him from his hotel on Filbert near the Convention Center, up Benjamin Franklin Parkway past Logan Circle and its fantastical fountain. After making a brief detour around the grounds of the Rodin Museum he proceeded to Eakins Oval. Ascending broad tiers of tan stone steps he came at last to the courtyardlike plaza in front of the east entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

  Turning and looking back, he realized that the vista from the plaza looked somehow familiar. It took him a moment before it dawned on him that he was experiencing movie déjà vu: this was the route of Sylvester Stallone’s daybreak training run in Rocky.

  His morning jaunt didn’t have that kind of drama, but the walk hadn’t been at all unpleasant—sunny and cool, with armadas of tall clouds off to the west. The museum’s classically columned facade made it look like the Pennsylvania Parthenon, except for the flourishes on the rooftops—griffins and other beasts, mythical and real. Entering the museum, he saw the queue and decided to pass up a chance to rent a pair of museum tour glasses.

  As he made his way to a balcony overlooking the great hall, his eyes came to rest on a monumental mobile suspended from the high ceiling. The sculpture’s languid motion as it floated over the large interior space seemed at once aerial and aquatic, as if a whale’s skeleton were in the process of transforming itself into a flock of strange birds.

  “That’s Ghost,” said a young man in suit and tie, with subtly spiked blond hair. His cigarette-scented clothes revealed him to be not only a smoker but also a museum docent. “Alexander Calder, 1964.”

  “Yes, I thought it was a Calder,” Don said. “I’m a big fan of his mobiles and stabiles.”

  “Ah. Come with me, then, and I’ll show you something special about this one.”

  The slender, immaculately groomed young man, whose plastic name badge read Palmer, parted the heavy curtains hanging above the east entrance and gestured to Don that he should follow. The windows on the other side gave a fine view facing east toward the center of the city.

  “Follow the line of Franklin Parkway toward downtown,” said the docent. “See the tall old-style tower off in the distance there? That’s the clock tower of City Hall. If you look closely you can make out the figure of a man at its top—”

  “Yes, I see it.”

  “That’s a bronze statue of William Penn. The sculptor was this Calder’s grandfather, Alexander Milne Calder. Now look closer to the museum. See the fountain down there at Logan Circle?”

  “Yes,” Don said, remembering the cluster of fish, birds, and human figures. “I noticed it on my walk here.”

  “That’s the Swann Memorial Fountain, created by Alexander Stirling Calder, our Calder’s father. Tracing a straight line from City Hall to the museum, you also trace the artistic line of the Calders, three generations of them, all of whom lived in Philadelphia. By doing so, you can almost trace a thumbnail history of the way sculpture changed from the 1880s to the 1960s.”

  “I see what you mean,” Don said. “From realism to romance to abstraction. Thanks for showing it to me.”

  The docent smiled and nodded approvingly.

  “If you have any questions, feel free to ask. That’s what we’re here for.”

  They parted, and Don began his wanderings through the maze of galleries and collections. Karuna would probably think him paranoid, but he decided against heading immediately to the painting he was most interested in seeing. He figured he’d nonchalantly amble up in front of the Dossi piece about halfway through his tour of the museum, just in case anyone might be tailing him.

  Inside, the museum’s Athenian exterior gave way to a Spartan stone fortress of functional square footage—and lots of it. Wings and floors marched off to the south, west, and north, most done in the unadorned architecture of a great box designed to hold other times, other places. The smallish weekday crowds Don had seen near the
entrance quickly dispersed into the enormous complex of interior spaces, and Don encountered few other patrons in his perambulations—most of them retirees, he guessed.

  He started with the American collections, which focused particularly on art with local connections: Thomas Eakins, Philadelphia furniture and silver, Pennsylvania German art, Shaker art, crafts, and glassware. From there he made his way to the second floor, through the galleries of European art, 1100–1500: stained-glass windows, medieval architecture and sculpture, and early paintings, the vast majority of them on Christian themes. Always he paused to read the placards identifying each piece and its history.

  Don then strolled through rooms of wall-hung carpets and tapestries. Many of the carpets were Turkish or Persian, while most of the tapestries had been woven in the Low Countries.

  Trying to maintain some sense of geographical and historical logic, he moved on to the Asian art galleries, the Chinese Palace Hall, Indian Temple, and Japanese Teahouse. From there he made his way back to the arms and armor galleries, with their collections of body armor, swords, polearms, and firearms.

  Head aching from high information intake and low blood sugar, Don made his way to the cafeteria on the ground floor for a quick plastic lunch. Only there did he begin to notice the crowds of students—school groups, many of the kids in uniform. Very few people like himself, too old for mandatory schooling yet too young for mandatory retirement.

  Feeling better for having eaten, and glad to be away from the noise of the crowds, he made his way back toward the second floor, into the galleries covering European Art from 1500 to 1700. After negotiating the French, English, and Dutch period rooms, then room after room of European painting, sculpture, and decorative arts, he felt sure he’d seen everything. Yet, somehow, he had managed to miss Item Number 251 in the John G. Johnson Collection.

  After he saw its image in Kwok’s holo-cast, he’d located the catalog number, and had even found a poorly reproduced photo of the painting itself in a book on labyrinths. Further research, however, proved fruitless. The painting was nowhere to be found in any scholarly discussions of Dossi’s work. There was nothing on the Web about it, either.

  And so he had come here, to the museum where the book had said it would be found. To no avail. Was it in storage? Had it been sold to another museum?

  Did it even exist?

  He had almost despaired of finding it, and was about to ask one of the docents for help—thereby attracting attention to his interest—when suddenly, there before him, hung the painting.

  It looked to be about three feet high by four feet long. It depicted an unidentified man whose mien and attire suggested noble rank and scholarly occupation. About thirty years old, but perhaps older, given his high forehead, which was clearly visible beneath an interestingly shaped hat. He was standing in front of a curtain and behind a low parapet. His right arm rested on the parapet. Not far from his right elbow stood a single pear, like a leftover from a still life.

  The man’s eyes seemed painfully averted from the object of his attention, though the index finger of his left hand was clearly pointing to a small ten-circuit labyrinth with an unusually long, keylike entrance. The labyrinth appeared to have been incised on the ledge of the parapet, as if it were some sort of petroglyphic graffito. The man, pointing at the center of the labyrinth but looking away, did not appear happy.

  Up close now, Don could clearly make out the background of the painting. Beyond the parapet, a landscape stood revealed past the half-drawn curtain. In the foreground of that landscape stood an ass or donkey laden with dead game. Beyond the burdened beast, under the clouds of a thunderstorm, stood a village beside a lake, the steeple of its church threatened by lightning stroke.

  What did it mean? The wallside placard offered a number of interpretations. Most of them agreed that the labyrinth recalled an unpleasant experience for the young man who had sat for the portrait. From the fruit at his right elbow, one interpreter had concluded that the sitter was Angelo Perondoli of Ferrara, whose family coat of arms included six pears. Another claimed that the subject was a member of the Gonzaga family of Mantua, and that the graffito derived from a water labyrinth painted on a wall in that city’s Palazzo Ducale.

  Each interpreter tried to somehow connect the sitter with the city of Ferrara, where Dosso Dossi had worked. There, in 1526, Dosso had also been commissioned to paint a portrait of famed legal scholar and father of emblem art, Andrea Alciati. And it had been at the behest of Alciati’s patron Isabella d’Este, daughter of Duke Ercole I of Ferrara and mother of Federigo II Gonzaga, duke of Mantua, that Dosso had decorated a loggia in Mantua with a picture of Isabella’s Ferraran home.

  Unlike those works, however, this painting was only attributed to Dossi, which perhaps explained its absence from all the scholarly texts.

  And what of the donkey burdened with its load of recently killed game, or the lakeside village threatened by thunderstorm and lightning? The interpreters didn’t even venture a guess.

  Most important of all, why had Jaron Kwok chosen this painting for inclusion in his holo-cast? What had he meant by “Hide insane plight in plain sight?” Staring at the painting of the melancholy man, Don thought he heard the sound of distant thunder.

  He smiled. No matter how he stared, no rift opened in the fabric of space-time. No singularity broke through. Yet Don felt as if an important piece in the puzzle was at last coming into view.

  When he glanced away, he found Palmer, the docent, watching him intently. The slim young man gave a slight nod of his subtly spiked blond head.

  “That little labyrinth is interesting in a way that’s only recently been discovered,” said the docent, clearly eager to be helpful. “Most classical paintings, like this one, feature a white-paint undercoat. Scientists have learned that some substances, including the pigment particles in white paint, cause ‘localization’ of light. They act like an array of tiny mirrors, continually changing the direction of light—a labyrinth of mirrors so complex that the light ultimately cannot find any exit and becomes lost, or ‘frozen.’

  “You could say that, given such a white-paint undercoat, the foundation of most great works of art is a labyrinth of frozen light. Kind of ironic in this instance, don’t you think?”

  Don nodded vaguely, thanked the overly enthusiastic fellow as politely as he could, then moved on. He had spent far too much time in front of the painting. He tried to look casual as he strolled through the European art 1700–1850 galleries, but he felt distracted, had difficulty concentrating. Nonetheless he dutifully paused at each painting, each piece of sculpture.

  He didn’t really return to himself until he dropped down to the first floor again, and began walking through the European art 1850–1900 galleries. He made his way through galleries walled with Impressionist works. From collections of Cezanne, Degas, Van Gogh, Manet, and Renoir he moved on to the twentieth-century art galleries, with their Picassos and Duchamps, their Brancusis and Matisses.

  He thought he heard the sound of thunder again, closer this time. Ignoring it, he made his way into the contemporary art galleries, which he found increasingly filled with anti-art, philosophical conundrum pieces, and kitschkampf commentaries on popular culture.

  He finally realized that the sound of thunder was real while looking at an art exhibit called SubStrate, sponsored by a group called the Kitchener Foundation. The long-term exhibit, put together by a pair of Maryland artists who also happened to be wildlife biologists, featured numerous small aquariums whose bottoms were lined with a wide variety of substrates. In the aquariums lived caddisworms, the aquatic larvae of the caddis fly.

  These larvae took whatever they could manipulate in their local environment and, with a silken substance, glued it together into a protective case for their soft bodies. In the wild, their “found objects” were usually things like pine needles, leaf debris, sand, or shells.

  The biologist-artists had put the wormlike larvae in tanks lined with, among other things, pr
ecious and semiprecious jewels, computer chips, glitter, small nails, confetti-sized fabric swatches in myriad colors, household debris, bits of mirror, even tiny plasticized words and images.

  The caddisworms dutifully encased themselves in these various materials, moving jerkily about in their odd little armored houses. Locking their houses shut with silk, they changed from larval nymphs into pupae. Once that transformation was complete, they cut their way out of their cocoons and then, rowing with elongated feathery legs, swam toward the surface, leaving their works of art behind on the aquarium floor. Finally, adult flies crawled out onto the surface of the water, drying their wings.

  Above the aquarium tanks, flitting beneath mosquito-net canopies, roamed that day’s hatch of adult caddis flies. On the walls of the exhibit, ranks of the empty caddis cases had been hung on lengths of fishing line, displayed over captions like “Art is the husk of the artist’s experience.”

  By the time the announcement that the museum would be closing in ten minutes came over the public address system, Don was halfway through his last gallery—another installation which, like the caddis-fly art exhibit, was also sponsored by the Kitchener Foundation. Don quickly walked through the exhibit to its end. A loud crash of thunder sounded outside, and Don jumped. Realizing he was the last visitor left in the exhibit, he moved toward the exit. The walk back to his hotel wasn’t a short one and he had no rain gear.

  When he left the museum and walked onto the plaza, he was heartened to find that, although the sky was lowering, it hadn’t yet started to rain. By the time he reached the bottom of the broad tiers of steps and crossed on a tangent to Eakins Oval, however, the first fat drops were beginning to splatter on the pavement.

  Walking toward the Rodin Museum, he was thankful for the tree cover planted along the parkway—and the stubbornness that had kept them holding onto their leaves this far into autumn. They kept him from getting more thoroughly soaked.