Sacred and Stolen
Page 6
We converged at a high-rise just behind the Basel train station. George Zacos and his wife, Janet, lived on an upper floor. I was told that this was because he had once been stabbed in the back by one of his runners and sought the safety of Switzerland and living in a high-rise. The Zacos art inventory projected beyond their apartment in the form of a huge bronze curtain rod above the entrance. It appeared to be early Byzantine in date, and I imagined it could once have been placed above one of the atrium doors of Hagia Sophia. The curtain hooks were enormous index fingers with fingernails, bent at a 90-degree angle and pointing up. Classy, I thought.
Dominique de Menil had arrived before me. I can still see her on the Zacos living room sofa, wispier than ever, dressed in an austere outfit of grays and blues. Dominique lived with paintings by Picasso, Ernst, and de Chirico, but George and Janet Zacos lived with the glory of Byzantium, which I found even more exciting. We sat for a while before lunch and talked—and the Zacos classiness continued. Janet showed off the Byzantine gold ring she wore as everyday jewelry, a spectacular piece, and complained that at 24 karats it was so soft that it would bend as she flexed her hand.
Lunch conversation was dominated by two topics linked solely by the theme of criminality. First Janet, an attractive and articulate Turkish Jew from the Prince Islands in the Sea of Marmara, gave us an extended lecture on the sweeping power of the American Mafia. How did she know these apparent facts about the American criminal underground? I have no idea. Nor was it clear to me why she cared so much, or thought we would care. George, ever admiring of his refined and beautiful wife, happily presented himself as the peasant of the Zacos family. He was big and boney and totally unguarded in his speech.
Without any coaxing, George launched into the story of the Sion Treasure—that notorious hoard of spectacular early Byzantine liturgical silver discovered by villagers in the area of Lycia in southwestern Turkey, smuggled out of the country by George, and sold to Dumbarton Oaks in 1963 for $1 million. George said that as a Greek, he felt increasingly uncomfortable in Istanbul after the anti-Greek riots of September, 1955. He was looking to get out via the “sale of a lifetime.” Then, as if by magic, Janet walked into his shop in the Grand Bazaar one day in 1962 with some startling news she had picked up from a foreign-language newspaper. (Her language skills, George said, were much superior to his.)
She told him a young girl in a small town some distance from Istanbul (did he say Kumluça?) had dug up a silver chain, and that chain was attached to some big pieces of silver. The child ran to the local coffee shop to tell her father. The idea was to keep this wonderful news quiet, but word spread quickly. The villagers dug and dug, and pretty soon many big, heavy pieces of Byzantine silver had made their way into the homes of various local families. That is when George Zacos swooped in and bought up, very cheaply, most of the treasure from the villagers. (I recall that there were tales recounted by others of hot pursuit by the authorities, and maybe gunfire, which I didn’t believe.) The treasure was brought to Istanbul and the problem was how to get it out of the country. According to their story, George flew to Geneva and Janet stayed behind, shipping the booty out in parcels in some country’s diplomatic pouch. And every shipment was signaled to George by a telegram to the effect that “another Russian silver service is on the way,” with its weight recorded.
Once the treasure was reassembled in Geneva, George’s loyal clients from Dumbarton Oaks showed up, Director John Thatcher and Director of Byzantine Studies Ernst Kitzinger. The players were familiar to one another and had been doing deals for Byzantine artifacts in precious metal for years, but never on this scale and with this amount of risk. And there was some last-minute drama that George recalled with such intensity that it was clear that at the time he was really shaken. After the $1 million had changed hands, Thatcher and Kitzinger boarded the plane—but then they came back down the stairs to the tarmac. George watched, terrified, assuming the two had gotten cold feet, though apparently it was just a matter of a forgotten briefcase.
The Mafia and a pair of Turkish antiquities smugglers: I suppose that was the connection. Did widespread criminality make Janet Zacos feel better about what they had done? Interspersed in these two narratives was some conversation about the luscious Peruvian silver from which Janet served lunch, and about those wonderful little round loafs of bread that we were enjoying. This, George proudly told us, was Schlumberger Brot, and it is so good and so special that he had driven across the border into Alsace that morning to buy some because that’s the only place where true Schlumberger Brot is baked—sort of, I thought, like pursuing New York bagels. He said that these precious little loafs had been introduced decades ago by a wealthy Alsatian family of that name. I glanced at Dominique who, I assumed, had made the connection to her family history, as I certainly had. But neither of us mentioned it.
After lunch and before we got down to work, George had something to show us in the residents’ storage space in the basement of the high-rise. It was a locked, wire mesh cage where most tenants stored bicycles and camping gear. But George had a stack of small ancient bowls from a shipwreck somewhere off the coast of Turkey and a smattering of small ancient bronzes. I don’t know how it happened, but all of a sudden Dominique was sorting through that stack of Byzantine bowls for Christmas gifts for her children. And it was only June! They were $1,800 each, she had a large family, and she was eager to get the bowls with human figures on them, or at least animals. Which she did, and it didn’t take long.
As I recall, she wasn’t much interested in the ancient metalwork except for a small bronze “circle with bumps.” I say circle with bumps, because that’s what I saw, but Dominique in a very Dominique-de-Menil way saw something much more, an ancient ceremonial circle dance, the hora, she said. And bought it. So that, I realize in retrospect, broke the ice.
Upstairs, for the next two hours, we looked at the two hundred or so Byzantine small bronzes that were laid out on the plush living room carpet. They were clearly of a family with the more than eight hundred bronzes that I was then working on, and I knew I needed somehow to include them in my research. I was tiring quickly and went back to the dining room table to have a chat with Dominique. My aim was to figure out how we could get George to have photographs made of these two hundred “new” bronzes, so that I could include them in my study.
I said to her: “What are we going to do about these bronzes?” Dominique did not respond to me, but got up and went back into the living room. She asked George: “How much?” He seemed surprised, but was ready, as I suppose an experienced dealer would be. The quote was in Swiss Francs, but in my head I got to a figure in excess of $200,000. Fine, Dominique said, and then she gave two conditions: first, that she would pay in two installments, for tax reasons, I gathered; and second, that George would pack the pieces in tissue. She then offered me a small Byzantine bronze sealing stamp off the carpet for the good work I had done in brokering the deal. I refused, because of the squeaky-clean Lutheran still in me. And then Dominique got up and left. It was that quick, that simple.
Then followed the most amazing moment in an amazing day. George looked at me after Dominique de Menil left his apartment and said: “Who was that”? I hadn’t guessed until that instant that he might not have known: that Dominique would not have told him before I arrived or that he wouldn’t have figured it out on his own. And then Janet remarked, as a reflection of her own bewilderment, that “she looked like a nun.” Were they worried that they might not get paid—that the quick deal for more than $200,000 was a delusion? No, they were not. But they were in the dark.
So I reminded them of the Schlumberger Brot of Alsace. And I asked George if he knew the name Gustave Schlumberger, a French Alsatian who nearly a century earlier was among the founders of Byzantine studies. George said of course, as I knew he would. And did you know, I asked him, that his relative Conrad Schlumberger was the father of the woman who just bought all those Byzantine pieces from you? Schlumberger, I said—as in
the huge French oilfield services company. George and Janet got it right away. And I felt great. I was in the circle.
THE GOLD KEY REENTERED MY LIFE a few months later, in the early fall of 1979. I received a call from Mary Jane Victor, Dominique’s Collections Curator, with some very interesting information. It seems that it was generally understood in Houston that one of Marvin’s sisters was the “good sister” and the other one was the “bad sister.” The good sister, with a little prompting by Mary Jane on my behalf, let it be known that the bad sister had “taken something gold” off Marvin’s desk after he died.
This was all I needed, besides her phone number and address. She lived in the small town of Riverhead on Long Island. So I called Marvin’s bad sister, who was by then a widow. I identified myself as his friend, and told her about that wonderful discovery he had made in the last months of his life, and how appropriate it would be to make this unique Byzantine key ring whole in Marvin’s honor. I described an exhibition I was just then putting together for Dumbarton Oaks called Security in Byzantium, featuring sealing and locking implements, and how this reunited gold key ring would be its star. By happy coincidence, the annual Byzantine Studies Conference was converging on Dumbarton Oaks at the time of the show’s opening, which was less than two weeks away.
Without ever saying she had taken the gold key, Marvin’s sister subtly acknowledged that she indeed had it, and that while it was “hers,” she was willing to discuss the idea of the exhibition and the reuniting of her key with the Dumbarton Oaks ring, in her brother’s honor. I had done my homework and knew that I could fly from Washington, DC, to the MacArthur Long Island Airport, near Islip, rent a car, and drive the thirty miles or so to Riverhead by mid-morning. So there I was just a few days later, standing in a phone booth in MacArthur Airport. The opening of the exhibition and the beginning of the conference (and Dominique’s arrival in DC) were just three days away. The rental car had been secured and I decided to call Marvin’s sister to tell her I was on my way. “Don’t come!” was what I immediately got from the other end of the line. No reason was given, but I was just not to come.
Fortunately, she had spoken before I had a chance to tell her that I was already on Long Island and only a half hour away. I seamlessly continued to retell the tale of Marvin’s great discovery, and to marvel at this rare opportunity to celebrate his brilliance before his scholarly colleagues. There followed much give and take (mostly take, on my part) and much repeating of Marvin superlatives. I ended my plea with “I’m already in Islip and have rented the car.” Finally she grudgingly agreed to see me, so I quickly hung up and took off for Riverhead.
I pulled up shortly before 11:00 a.m. at a simple white frame house. I remember exactly what bad sister said the moment I walked through the door, before I sat down. Her mood had darkened and her message was crystal clear: “If you ever come back here, if you ever call, if you ever send a letter, or if a lawyer ever sends a letter on your behalf, I’ll flush that gold key down the toilet.” My first thought was that I had made a big mistake; my second thought was that I couldn’t leave, because if I did, the key was certainly lost; and my third thought was that she was afraid—afraid that she might be in trouble with the law for having taken the key off her brother’s desk. I was afraid, too, since in one quick flush the key would be gone forever.
Though uninvited, I sat down. Strangely, I never had the sense that she was going to kick me out of her house, or call the police or anything that forceful. I think that on some level bad sister had convinced herself that the key did belong to her, since it had (in her view) belonged to her brother and, just maybe, she could sell the key to the wealthy Mrs. de Menil. In any event, I just started talking, and pretty much didn’t stop talking for more than an hour. She seemed never to tire of hearing how clever her brother was, and how thoroughly underappreciated he was by the likes of Dominique de Menil, who, in her view, had ransacked Marvin’s apartment and had stolen from him. I can’t say that bad sister ever warmed up to me, but I was pretty certain that her hostility level went down somewhat. After all, here was a naïve, 32-year-old academic from Minnesota who was in way over his head. How evil could he really be?
It was nearing lunchtime, and I thought I was home free when she offered to make me a sandwich. As we walked toward her kitchen I recalled my conversation with Dominique de Menil about the gold key and my plan to get it back. I saw a side of Dominique that meshed with the side that I sensed through her lawyer that day in Marvin’s apartment. If Dominique de Menil felt that she was in the right and had been wronged, she was filled with moral indignation. In this case, she was adamant that since that gold key was rightfully hers, she was not going to “ransom” it back with some cash payment. She would, however, consider giving bad sister a new refrigerator. How Dominique de Menil came to that compromise with her sense of justice I have no idea, but that is what was conveyed to me. So what came next was comical. The instant we stepped into bad sister’s kitchen, she proudly showed me the refrigerator she had just bought. I settled for the sandwich, which I recall was ham and cheese.
I thanked her and we returned to the living room, but with the status quo ante in place: the gold key was hers, and she wouldn’t budge. Then, a glimmer of hope came in the form of her daughter, who suddenly showed up at the house, presumably to check on her mom’s well-being. After running through the celebratory narrative yet again, I decided, by some flash of insight, to try two hypothetical scenarios on the mother-daughter team. Granted, the key is yours, I conceded: How much do you want for it? The answer “plenty!” came so fast and with such enthusiasm that I knew I was on the right track. So then I turned things around and said that “for the sake of argument,” the key might legally belong to Dominique de Menil. If so, what then? Bad sister’s response was again immediate and emphatic: “I’d give it back, of course.” At this point I was wondering why I hadn’t tried this two hours earlier.
Having established this either-or scenario, I posed the next obvious question: “How are we ever going to figure out who really does own the key, you or Dominique de Menil?” Here the daughter piped up and suggested we could ask a lawyer. And so I wondered out loud where, at 12:45 p.m. here in Riverhead, might we find a lawyer to express an opinion on this question. Then a miracle of sorts occurred, every bit as unanticipated as that new refrigerator. Bad sister’s daughter was divorced but had a boyfriend (or so I intuited), and that boyfriend happened to be a lawyer. So she scooted upstairs and called her lawyer friend, who, by the best of luck, was at his desk and answered his phone. And sure, he’d be happy to see us. With that announcement, things began to move. We were quickly on our way down the back steps of the house, having decided that I would follow mother and daughter to the lawyer’s office in my rental car.
The office was on the second floor of what was clearly one of Riverhead’s primal structures, which means four stories or so of red brick with extra-large windows looking down on the town square. The young lawyer struck me immediately as the personification of common sense, adding immensely to my growing feeling of confidence. I recounted my story, that included the color slide and the canceled check, the brilliant discovery that Marvin Ross had made shortly before he died, and the “certainly reasonable” assumption that mom had made in picking up the gold key off her brother’s desk that the key must belong to Marvin, and so now it belongs to his family.
I recall very clearly that when I finished, the lawyer laughed, though not in an insulting way. No, what was immensely funny to him was that he was being asked to render his professional opinion on the legal ownership of a thousand-year-old Byzantine gold key. Firmly and quickly, though at the same time gently, our pro bono legal counsel said what was clearly obvious to him: The gold key was without question the legal property of Dominique de Menil, notwithstanding its physical presence for thirty months or so here in bad sister’s house in Riverhead. Did I sense a sigh of relief from bad sister and her daughter?
The final question was
this: how to get the key to its rightful owner. I noted that Mrs. de Menil would be that very Friday in Washington, DC, at Dumbarton Oaks and, as her employee, I was both an appropriate and an efficient agent for making the transfer. The lawyer didn’t doubt either claim and suggested I take the key along right then. But no, I said, being gracious and noble in my victory (and not wanting to return to the house), just send it along tomorrow. Insurance? I thought $2,000 but I said $200, citing the Zacos check and not even accounting for inflation. Why? Because I didn’t want to rekindle any notion of ransom or reward in the bad-turned-good sister. In any event, insurance or not, the key was irreplaceable. And the American postal system was to be trusted. Or at least that’s what I thought at the time.
Back at DO on Wednesday, exhilarated by my success in Riverhead, I completed the installation of the Security in Byzantium exhibition, putting a small photographic print of the key on the Lucite block where, in a day or two, I would place the real gold key. No delivery came for Vikan either Thursday or Friday, though this was more irritating than worrisome, since the Byzantine Studies Conference had by then begun, Dominique de Menil was in town, and the show had officially opened. But when nothing came on Saturday, I began to worry, especially after I called my lawyer friend and learned that he had sent the key out himself, special delivery, on Wednesday. Sunday was a day of increasing embarrassment and agitation. No box, no key, and by the afternoon, no Byzantinists. The conference was over and they were all on their way home, except for Dominique de Menil, whose flight to Houston was Monday.
I had convinced myself by Sunday evening that her gold key was lost forever “in the mail”—whatever that means. On one level, I sought consolation in the fact that it really wasn’t my fault, since how could I take responsibility for the US Postal Service? And, thankfully, I had not told Dominique or anyone else at Dumbarton Oaks my secret: I could have had that gold key in my hand that very day in Riverhead.