Mueller tapped the closed folder: “Herr Vogler …”
“Yes?”
“You don’t have any questions about what we do here, do you?”
Questions? Those had been the specialty of my former mentor. Hard questions as well as soft, teasing ones. Rhetorical questions; questions posed over the smudged tops of wine glasses at parties; questions asked under the stark lighting of modern museums; questions asked with a flourish of Gerhard’s blue-veined, aristocratic hands: “What are the foundations of civilized society?” And: “What purpose do these artistic images serve?” And: “Should all these European masterpieces really be gathered up by one people, in just one place?”
He had said the truth was a private matter, but in his own pointed questioning, he forced the truth where it did not fit or easily belong and so he had brought his own problems upon himself. Or so it would have been convenient to think, as one more way to avoid thinking.
Still, until I’d seen the picture of the statue, I’d been ready. Now, I discovered that the question I had prepared carefully and brought to Mueller’s office had withered in my dry mouth.
“I don’t know what you mean, sir.”
“Do you speak Italian?”
“I am … moderately capable.”
“What do you think about going to Italy?”
That would have been Gerhard’s assignment. He had not explained the particulars, but I recalled the elliptical conversations, beginning when Der Kunstsammler had met with Mussolini for the first time, in May. Presuming he’d be tapped to return there at the behest of our culturally acquisitive leadership, my mentor had begun to revive his own memories of that fabled, sunny country: The hill towns and piazzas. The ruins and vistas. The frescoes and fountains. And a certain woman he had met somewhere—I think it was a town called Perugia, or maybe Pisa. The relationship had lasted no more than a few days but had meant the world to him, and I had been bold enough in my naïve youth to ask, “But how can something like that matter if it only lasted a few days?” He had grabbed my hands in his own lilac-scented ones and told me that, in his life, some of the times that stood out the most had been only a matter of hours, not days, and if I had never experienced that, then I needed Italy far more than he did.
At best I could say to Mueller: “I’m not sure I’m the most suited to the task, intellectually and artistically speaking. And—how do I say this?—I’m not much of a traveler.”
Herr Mueller started laughing. I couldn’t understand why.
“That’s fine,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “We don’t need an expert traveler. We just need someone who won’t screw up.”
CHAPTER 2
The train stopped for an unexpectedly long time at Bolzano. It nearly lost heart altogether at Chiusi. It gathered for a final burst of effort before it delivered us, grimy and gritty from the trip, through the tight pelvis of girdling roads, and finally, with a squall of brakes and a sob of steam, into hectic Rome.
As it turned out, despite what the local Fascisti claimed, the trains didn’t run on time, after all.
It was nearly bedtime when I checked into my pensione, where the resident signora invited me to dine, despite the questionable hour, with her other European guests. When I declined, she must have decided I wouldn’t need breakfast either because the next morning, following a night of fitful sleep, none was provided.
I made my displeasure as plain as I was able, given some conjugating difficulties, and returned to my room, where I took a position in front of the rust-spotted mirror, distracted by the discovery of a small stain on my shirtfront. Another inconvenience. But given that I planned to be in Italy for such a limited time—a single day in Rome, another long day returning—I assumed my second dress shirt would suffice. Perhaps I would give the signora my first to wash, but perhaps not. I would evaluate her competence only after she delivered a suitable breakfast. Putting her in the position of the one to be tested made me feel momentarily better, as I was out of the pupil’s examination chair for a moment myself, on a day when I expected the tests to be challenging and the examiners unforgiving.
It was while I was most vulnerable, half-dressed and fighting the temptation of further ruminations, that the incident occurred. There was a quick knock—no calling out, no request for permission to enter—and the bronze knob turned. In shuffled the bowlegged signora with a small wooden tray in one hand, catching me standing in front of the mirror, unclothed above the waist. My clean shirt was just beyond my reach, laid out on the sagging bed. Our eyes met, her chin dropped, and there—on my bare rib cage—her gaze rested and stubbornly remained.
She lowered the tray onto my nightstand, refusing to look away, chattering insistently, without any comprehension of my distress. I reached for the clean shirt and struggled to push each fist through the tight sleeves in an effort to shield myself. But even through the fabric, I continued to feel the heat of her curious gaze on that jagged, pink scar.
Artists are careful with raw materials because they know no amount of technical ability can make up for faulty marble or poorly mixed paint. The raw material of the moment was my own psychic equilibrium, not to be regained.
Of course, how much easier it was to blame a flash of insecurity than anything that had preceded it; how much easier to focus on a stranger’s indiscretion, rather than any personal complicity or weakness in days prior. But it was all wrapped into that moment, somehow. And why shouldn’t it have been? The question of a body’s classic beauty—or its deep flaws—was integral to my artistic training, related to the item I had come to see and transport, and was in all other ways inseparable from why I had come to Rome. In any case, I did not appreciate her staring and reminding me—least of all on that day.
As soon as the signora backed out of the room, I finished dressing, left the breakfast roll untouched, and grabbed my essential materials, including my sketchbook and the di Luca volume two—but not the dictionary, which I left behind in regrettable haste.
My interests in Greco-Roman statuary, interests born humbly but cultivated with great sincerity, predated even the beginning of Sonderprojekt by seven years. Yet it would be made evident in just a few hours that I was to be treated here in Rome not as an art expert, not as an authority working on behalf of Der Kunstsammler, but as a courier. A mere courier.
But I didn’t know that yet, so you can imagine my pride and carefully contained excitement as I climbed the timeworn steps to the side entrance of the museum where I had been scheduled to meet with the minister of Foreign Affairs and my own German Cultural Affairs contact, Herr Rudolf Keller, at 8:30 A.M. The seller himself—perhaps dispirited by local criticism over the controversial sale—had declined to take part.
I waited in front of a security desk, where a heavy, untidy man with slicked-back hair attempted to convey a message.
“Dieci,” he told me. My watch read 8:15.
“Dieci,” the guard repeated, grinning obsequiously as he held up all ten sausage-shaped fingers. Yes, even without the dictionary, I understood that. I had been warned about Italian manners. The meeting had been delayed an hour and a half, until 10:00 a.m.
“Dieci,” I parroted back, and the man’s smile cracked wider yet. He pointed to a bench and held open a cigarette case, but I shook my head and made for the open door.
Four blocks away I found a pavement café and waited in line for a table, or attempted to wait. The two bustling waiters were following no procedure that I could understand. An elderly man arrived several minutes after me and was ushered toward an empty chair in front of a dirty table. Pigeons darted between people’s feet. The ground was strewn with crumbs and mottled with sticky patches. The warm air carried the strong smell of coffee—well, that was good, at least. It only made me wish I were somewhere more familiar, so that I could make my own needs clear.
Finally, an apron-clad waiter exhaled a string of musical syllables, barely waiting for my reply. Where had my week of language cramming gone? Prego … grazie
… per favore … Damn that forgotten dictionary, even if I would have looked like a tourist carrying an entire library in my arms. I pointed at a square-shaped pastry on a man’s plate nearby and then jabbed at my own palm and jiggled the change in my pocket, walking away a minute later with a sorry breakfast to eat on the hoof.
Except that I refused to eat on the hoof. I walked on, trying to stir up a breeze, looking for a pleasant bench or a clean step. At 9:20, according to the public clock that was ten minutes fast, I wiped the crumbs from my hands and opened the sketchbook I’d brought, intent on drawing the object in front of me, a dry fountain topped by a statue of two cherubs holding hands. It was not well made, and there are few things more forlorn in a once-great city of aqueducts than a fountain without water—proof enough, I told myself, that Italy had more art and architecture than its citizens could appreciate. But sketching was something to do, and I’d finished half the picture when three children ran loudly up to the cherubs and began climbing up their fat legs and swinging from their chubby, linked arms.
“Get off,” I called to them in German, but they only laughed and scrabbled about, pleased to have an audience for their daring. “Go away. Haut ab!” Their laughter turned maniacal, even more so when I jumped to my feet, waving my arms above my head. They were no more afraid of me than the pigeons, which startled into the air and then settled again, bobbing their gray heads as they walked.
I slapped the sketchbook shut and reached in my jacket pocket where I had stored the three postcards I bought at the pensione, all destined for my sister Greta. She had made it a practice, ever since our father had passed away, to write me regularly from her home in Bamberg, two hundred kilometers from Munich, and she expected me to do the same. Her letters always followed a strict protocol: the greeting, the description of the current weather, an inquiry into the recipient’s weather, followed by carefully filtered news, nothing upsetting. I found my pen, set a postcard on top of my journal, and looked up at the sky: blue and cloudless. I greeted her and her husband, skipped a line, and wrote:
It is …
I paused, thinking that “hot” would sound like a complaint
… pleasant.
But I didn’t feel like writing anymore, and I didn’t feel like being a tourist. Until I accomplished at least some part of what I’d been sent here to do, I’d have nothing to report. I did not even want to recite the formulaic pleasantries that would be expected.
I put the card away and pulled out the di Luca guide. I rubbed a hand across the book’s padded green cover, opening it without looking at the now-familiar gift inscription. I tried to immerse myself in the illustrations and old photos I’d studied so often, the lines and shadows I knew by heart. It was a calming exercise, so calming that I soon forgot my irritation, and jumped with surprise when a small leg rubbed against mine—the overheated appendage of a bold child, maybe five or six years old, one of the climbers, trying to see into this magical book that had commandeered my attention.
I ignored him, but he kept looking. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his round cheek and the long, black eyelashes batting every few seconds. I could hear the soft, ticking sound as he failed to suppress a swallow. He reached out one finger tentatively, toward the wine-colored ribbon trailing from the bottom of the book, marking a place several pages further on.
“You want to see that page? Well not yet. I’m not done here.” I said it in German, but he did not appear surprised by the unfamiliar sounds. I welcomed my chance to have a first genuine encounter with a Roman (the pensione lady and the waters, paid to serve me, didn’t count)—one who was willing to let art be the universal language drawing us into a brief fraternal bond. The brown finger touched the bottom of the bookmark, then pulled back, hovering near the open page.
“This is the Venus de Milo,” I said, and paused, waiting to see how long his attention would last. A minute later, I continued, “You’ve probably seen an image of this before, or perhaps a replica. But did you know that it was discovered in an underground cave, by a farmer?”
No reply in any language—yet he kept staring.
“Good. You’re not going to ask me why her arms are missing. I’m glad.”
He blinked, his long, dark lashes fluttering rapidly like butterfly wings before he froze again. I turned the page and felt him lean in closer, and more of his small, curly head came into my sidelong view, so that I could make out the tendrils—moist from the sweat of clambering all over the piazza—framing his round face. I could just see a stripe above the boy’s soft jawline, where a trickle of sweat had made a pale track across an astonishingly dirty cheek.
“That is Nike of Samothrace, from the Hellenistic period. I can tell you like that one better, and so do I. You’re impressed by her large wings. One can imagine the wind blowing against the feathers and against the draping folds of her clothes. Just the thought of it can be cooling, on a day like this.”
He was even more still now, listening, if anything, more intently. His lips closed and I could hear the little whistle of his congested nose as he breathed softly through it, trying not to make a sound.
“It isn’t easy to convey movement using the medium of stone. An artist has to be talented to do that. But which artists first thought of doing that? We take it for granted, seeing a dynamic posture in a statue …”
I cleared my throat and prepared to turn the page, to reveal the most special of all pages, the one marked by the ribbon. In a flash, the chubby hand shot out.
“I was just about to show you—wait!”
The boy was scrambling away, his legs pumping so hard that his scuffed heels nearly spanked his own rear.
“Don’t go!”
Only then did I realize what the wicked cherub’s flurry of motion had accomplished. He had stolen the bookmark. He was running with it, joined now by his two friends, waving the thin red ribbon over his head without looking back, screeching and chattering like a pleased monkey, while I sat with my book in my lap, incredulous and finally resigned.
Back at the museum a half hour later, I was shown into a conference room where half a dozen men were gathered around a large table. Minister Ciano stood with his hands resting on the back of a chair. As soon as I entered, four young Italians in dark-blue uniforms walked away and waited on a balcony, where they lit up cigarettes.
Herr Keller looked up from the table’s far side, his arms folded across his chest and rested atop the paunch that had formed over the course of his Italian residence of the last two years. The shopkeepers of Rome had sold him ridiculous soft-soled shoes; the barbers had neglected to trim the slick waves that now fell nearly to his fleshy earlobes. But they had not managed to convert him entirely to their culture of indolence. He exhaled with impatience: “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“But I was told ten by a man at the desk, and it is ten o’clock, sir—or rather, a quarter to—”
“But we have been here since eight thirty. The reception clerk said he asked you to wait ten minutes—”
Oh, Scheisse.
“—and you vanished. We’re short for time, now. There are important matters to arrange.”
I strained to recall the receptionist’s expression as he held up his ten fat fingers; I regretted my insistence on wandering away instead of waiting inside. How much Italian had I claimed to speak back in Munich when I had accepted this assignment? I had not used the word fluent. Only capable. Capable enough to translate museum labels, anyway.
The minister nodded toward the men smoking outside on the balcony. Another man, younger, in a fine suit, translated. “Do you agree?”
Distracted by my past errors, I had let my attention wander. “Do I agree?”
“That the packing materials are sufficient. In which case, we can have these men load the crate for transport. But it must be done quickly, now. The train leaves in one hour.”
I unbuttoned my suit jacket and reached for the pencil in my pocket, nodding smartly. “That’s not much time. But le
t’s begin the inspection. I will do my best to meet your schedule.”
No one spoke. Out on the balcony, one of the men turned away and blew a forceful stream of smoke and kicked with the toe of his black loafer at a loose iron rail, until he realized how quiet everything had suddenly become, and stopped kicking.
“Herr Vogler, we finished the inspection one hour ago.”
I looked around then at what I had seen without thinking and what I had missed. There, on the conference table: four hammers and a nearly empty box of nails, as well as a road map of Italy. In a far corner, near the door I had entered: two more Italian men, in rather plain black suits—looking less sharp than the translator, less sharp even than the uniformed policemen. On the floor, beyond the conference table and nearly out of view: a closed wooden crate, more than two meters long, a meter and a half wide and equally deep. Here and there, beneath my own feet, stuck to the bottom of my right heel: scattered wisps of straw.
“You sealed the crate?”
The Italian minister found amusement in my distress. He stifled a smile, gestured for his translator to follow, and walked away from Herr Keller and me, toward the smoking policemen on the balcony.
“We supervised the packing and sealed the crate,” Keller confirmed quietly in German. “An editorial against the sale ran just this morning in the main city newspaper. I’ve put off returning several telephone calls as long as I can. People change their minds, you understand? Time is short.”
I lowered my voice. “But my instructions—to make a status report before the packing and transport, for comparison with the arrival report, to ensure the most careful handling—”
“Reports …” He looked down at me almost tenderly, his soft chin tucked into his sunburnt neck as he dropped his voice. “Herr Vogler, reports are not held in the same esteem here as they are back home.”
The Detour Page 3