“But they will matter on my return, if I am to keep my job.”
“Our payment,” he continued, “that has been followed with close attention. But all the rest changes like the weather.” Dropping to a barely audible whisper, he added, “In fact, the weather has grown gloomy in the last twelve hours. You will ask Enzo and Cosimo, when you are in the truck together, and they will explain.”
“Enzo and Cosimo?”
Now the two men in worn black suits appeared at my elbow, reciting their names as they offered to shake hands in that peculiarly Italian way, with slouched backs and hands held at groin level, infusing the gesture with an excess of discretion and masculine drive. Enzo Digiloramo, as he introduced himself, was about my age and the stockier of the two, with a loose mane of curly blond hair. He was the first to shake my hand, and he held it twice as long as did his brother Cosimo, who was quieter and less flamboyant. His hair was also fair, but cut much shorter than Enzo’s, the golden, nubby curls tight against his skull, almost like an albino African’s. I caught this Cosimo sneering at me until our eyes met and he attempted a crooked half-grin. Then I realized his sneer was only a permanent, pugilistic asymmetry—his beakish nose pressed firmly to one side, his left cheekbone a little flatter than his right.
A clap of Keller’s hands sent things into motion again, reminding everyone of how much time had already gone to waste. Enzo was dispatched to my hotel to get my things. I called after him, “Explain to the signora—explain that everything was suitable, more or less.” Though it hadn’t been, not really. “And there will be a shaving kit on top of a dresser, and a dictionary on the bed—”
I stopped, realizing I was speaking in German and there was no reason to assume he would understand. But he did. And only now was I beginning to intuit what would be verified later—that Enzo and Cosimo were not part of the pack of blue-suited Roman policemen, though they were also policemen, plainclothes from the northwestern Piedmont, and on friendly terms with the Italian minister, and perhaps on even friendlier terms with Herr Keller.
Cosimo was on his knees, propping open both double doors with small wooden wedges. The minister had accepted a cigarette from one of the four Roman policemen, all out on the balcony. Keller and I were as alone as we ever expected to be, and he used the moment to indulge second thoughts, quizzing me again.
“You were occupied this morning, perhaps meeting with someone?”
“No. I just went for breakfast—not much of a breakfast. I couldn’t get a table.”
“And this took you over an hour?”
“I walked. I sketched.”
“Making a little something on the side, maybe? I know many are ready to sell, dealers who will make all kinds of introductions. Have you met—?”
“I arrived only last night, Herr Keller. I am here in Rome for one reason only.”
The truth should have been the easiest thing to tell, but I’d never held up well under scrutiny. Or maybe it was just the day’s heat. I could feel the moisture beading above my lip. Herr Keller’s eyes were fixed there, too, on the perspiration, or perhaps on the tense set of my mouth.
He smiled. “You’ll forgive the questions. But you’re aware that the best items in Rome have been spoken for.”
“Of course. That has been my job, for the last two years—cataloging items for potential acquisition.”
“So you’ve had a head start, haven’t you?” He lifted his chin in the direction of Minister Ciano, who was peering into the room, the sun bright behind him, the sounds of the street below louder now: the squeal of brakes, trucks rattling by with poorly secured loads, the shrill goose-like honk of some miniature vehicle pretending to be an automobile. “All right. Here we are, then. No time to waste, is there, fellows?”
The four Roman policemen stubbed out their cigarettes and reentered the room, rubbing their hands, preparing to hoist the crate and carry it down one wide flight of stairs out to a large truck that would be driven by Cosimo.
One of the blue-uniformed men kept saying something that sounded like “seguire,” and somewhere in my addled, disappointed mind, that verb—“to follow”—fought its way out of a conjugational haze and I understood that the Romans were going to be following us to the nearby train station in their own truck, an even larger model, military style, with olive-drab canvas flaps. We trailed after them outside the museum and loitered near the truck, watching them muster their energies for the required heavy lifting.
Herr Keller, preparing to depart before the crate was fully loaded—eager to return to his meals, romances, and profitable deals, no doubt—clutched my hand, speaking softly. “The border—three days. That is what I have guaranteed Herr Mueller. That is what he has guaranteed the statue’s new owner.”
The Collector. Our leader. We all avoided the name, and Keller did, too—a sign of his own nerves, or the fact that while he salivated at opportunities appearing on the horizon, he bristled at the limits that were equally drawing near. In today’s Germany, there was no such thing as an independent art agent. A man like Keller could call himself a “freelancer” or an “expat,” but in truth, he had one person to answer to, and one valid passport.
“Three days?” I asked Keller.
“Not a single day more.”
“But the train to Munich takes only one.”
His eyelids grew heavy with condescension. “Enzo will explain about that. But the rest—the importance of maintaining the timetable and avoiding any problems en route—do you understand?”
“Yes, of course—”
“If problems arise, some improvisation may be called for. Do you know what I mean by improvisation?”
“Not exactly,” I said warily.
“Because it is not only the on-time delivery that is important, but the appearance of competence and order. There are people in Munich who don’t understand that Italy is not Germany. Things operate differently here.”
I was worn out by his opaque references. But at least he had made no mention of Gerhard; he had not pushed the point about why I was sent in the place of an older, more seasoned curator. Did he know about my former mentor? Here in Italy, the shufflings of rank in distant Bavaria may have seemed inconsequential—or not. Perhaps he was content to deal with a younger man who would be more easily intimidated. But why intimidate me? Were we not on the same side?
“The last thing we need,” Keller continued, smiling, “is someone arriving to impose more order where that kind of order simply isn’t a possibility. It would interrupt the order that already exists.”
The order that exists: he and his own art-dealing associates. His network of art buyers and sellers, government insiders and disgruntled outsiders. This entire country was a treasure house with doors left unlocked, windows cracked, a man at the back gate allowing passage to the select few.
And now I remembered this also about Keller: museums had never interested him as much as private collections, and he thought official purchases of the best-known items came with too high a price tag. There were other, cheaper, and more discreet ways to buy artwork. In coming years, there would be ways to procure masterpieces by force of political pressure without paying anything at all. In the meanwhile, simple theft was equally commonplace. Der Kunstsammler, at this point, had no need to debase himself by stealing, but Keller was not Der Kunstsammler. I was still missing the essential fact: that Keller needed only to appear loyal in order to thrive. Like me, he was under the false impression that Italy was a world apart, a place beyond memory and consequence.
“Then, at the border,” he was saying, with a born liar’s bravado, “we take a breath.”
“I will take a breath with the unpacking in Munich,” I said, trying my best to exchange a brotherly, dutiful smile. “The final report—that is road’s end for a delicate and ancient object like this.”
“Yes. Well. The border, anyway,” he repeated, rocking back on his heels, and I knew, in less time than it took for my effortful smile to fall, that I was a foo
l—though I still did not understand to what extent.
“But I will be following the statue from the border to Munich …”
“Will it go to Munich?” he asked, as if quizzing his own memory. “Not our concern. We will let them handle it at the far end.”
“Let whom—?”
In response to his silence, I pressed harder: “Is it going directly to Linz?” In the wake of our annexation of Austria, the city of Linz had become synonymous with some plan, not yet fully outlined, for another new museum of art, perhaps an entire city of art, designed by the man who once dreamed of being an artist. “Am I being transferred to Linz?”
“Transferred?” The word seemed unfamiliar to him.
I lowered my voice. “Will I be going somewhere new, Herr Keller?”
“Going somewhere? You barely made it here, this morning. How am I to know where you will be going?” His throat filled with laughter once again. “But you have youth on your side, and strength. Those qualities are welcome everywhere.”
Yes, welcome especially where ditches must be dug and where fields await their adornment of barbed wire. My stomach turned, but it must have been from the train trip and the unsatisfactory breakfast. Travel wasn’t good for the digestion. Disturbed sleep, foreign water; even the air smelled different and more complicated. What was Rome’s elevation? How did men manage to live in foreign cities, or in fields of war, for that matter? In barracks where—I recalled my own interrupted basic training all too well—men whispered and groaned, living out all their small pleasures and larger miseries in soul-wearying proximity. In diseased trenches of the kind that had swallowed my father’s generation, twenty years earlier. Youth and strength, Keller had said, laughing just enough to make his soft jowls quake, just enough to make my esophagus tighten, to keep the acidic, undigested truths my stomach already feared from finding their way up to my brain.
In response to my silence, Keller cocked his head, half frowning, half smiling. “You looked a little lost when we first met.” That had been two years earlier, just after the Berlin Olympics, when he had been lean and stern—in contrast with now, ten kilos and many deals later. I had been different, too, of course—only four years out of secondary school, still recovering from the annulment of my athletic ambitions, and not yet employed in my current field. And yet look how far I’d come. But that was one aspect of working in today’s Germany. Those who fell vanished without a trace. Those who rose, rose quickly.
“Others were impressed with you,” he chuckled. “I didn’t share their enthusiasms, necessarily …”
When I didn’t take the bait, he cleared his throat. “But there can be no chance here. The border in three days, or they’ll come looking, and no one, north of the border or south of it, will be pleased. And don’t look so miserable to be here.”
He winced, like a father embarrassed to be seen alongside his unimpressive son—a gesture that was familiar enough to fill me with unease and the beginnings of a quiet rage. Struggling later to think why I did not see through Keller and his plot from the start, I would remember that condescending wince and my own withheld anger, filling my senses with steam, blocking the view of what should have been painfully clear.
I said, “I’m not miserable.”
“You have no reason to feel inadequate or uncouth, if that is the problem. That whole notion of the sophisticated world traveler is a myth. You know why young men of more prosperous times went on the Grand Tour? Not to experience eye-opening epiphanies, but only to have their prejudices confirmed. And you? I’m guessing you’ve confirmed your prejudices already, in less than twenty-four hours. But see? We Germans are efficiency experts.”
He touched my shirtfront with the tips of his manicured fingers. “That’s a joke, Herr Vogler.” A disappointed sigh. “Anyway, three days. And trust Enzo. Here he is.”
Already the blond Italian had reappeared, right hand steering a small, buzzing vehicle with little more heft than a motorized bicycle, left hand clutching the handle of my small suitcase. Though he was a short man by northern European standards, this tiny scooter was too small for even his frame, and he was forced to buckle inward, like an adult folded into a baby chair. Dropping the suitcase at my feet, he revved his engine, drove the wobbling vehicle up a ramp with exhibitionist speed, and disappeared into the back of the truck.
My eye followed him, and I saw there was already one crate in the truck, identical to the crate that had been carried out of the museum, now resting at the bottom of a short flight of stairs. I watched Cosimo and Enzo and the four Roman policemen load the second crate, inside of which I had not been granted a single, ennobling glimpse.
It is difficult to photograph marble well. Nearly always, too much flash is used, and one is left with only a clear outline of the statue’s shape, a lifeless representation suitable for non-expert cataloging, and nothing more. But of course, even the best photograph can’t rival seeing a masterpiece in its original form. With marble, there are the unique striations in the stone itself. Plus—while not intended by the artist—the subtle pittings of age. Breaks may reveal the drama of history, as in statues flung from rooftops onto the heads of invading barbarians. Lines carved into the buried surface of a marble back may recall the blade of an oblivious medieval farmer’s plow. Other lines may signal further weakness, threatening new breaks to come.
All this, despite the fact that only the best white marble is used in quality sculpture. It is marble’s purity, as well as its relative softness for carving, and the subtly translucent quality of the topmost layers—a waxy quality that can fool the eye into believing it is seeing a living body, real human skin—that have made it so timeless and valuable to artists.
Beyond the stone, there is the carving, and one will never see truly identical copies of an ancient original. The smallest difference in each sculptor’s ability determines everything, is everything; it is the difference between life and death, masterpiece and mere object, soul-filled body and dull corpse.
The British Museum owns a copy of the Discus Thrower, or Discobolus, as it is sometimes called—one of several Roman copies made of Myron’s original Greek bronze, now lost. The British copy, bought in 1793, was restored incorrectly, with the head facing forward, rather than turned to the side. (Forward or turned, the face is still the same—it is a simple, blank-eyed, classical face, without the brilliant, brooding intelligence of Michelangelo’s David, for example. But the face is not the essential element here.)
The inappropriately positioned head is a major gaffe, often discussed, but more interesting to me, from the first time I studied photographs of the Discus Thrower, were the small differences: the lesser tension in the torso; a lighter quality to the tensed thigh and left calf; a disappointing smoothness in the arms and a less realistic grip on the discus itself, held high and far back, in the right hand, in that frozen moment just before release. Even the fingernails appeared different, especially the right thumb; even the tension in the toes, gripping the statue pedestal.
What was most remarkable about the Rome museum copy was all that was missing from the British one: the arms so finely formed that arteries were visible and perfectly articulated; the shadows that fell across the muscles of the right leg all the way up the buttock, over the hip, and across each delicately curved rib of the torso. The skin’s mottling spoke not of marble, but of real skin: the faint capillary flush of an athlete in motion. The balled left calf shined slightly, catching the sun.
But perhaps I was wrong about such subtle and essential details. I had not seen the British copy in person. And now, as of this July day, I had not managed to see the more famous Roman—rather, German—copy in person. How could I say anything with authority? I could tell you what the German copy cost our government—five million lire. But could I tell you what the German copy was worth? Could I tell you whether it summed up everything that was best in the human form? Could I tell you whether it justified Der Kunstsammler’s fanatical interest? Could I tell you whether a
nation should have been escalating its acquisitions of fine art, rather than feeding its people, or finding some future for its youth beyond the trench, the munitions factory, or the museum?
I could not tell you, just as I could not tell you with authority how the heart might respond to the Discobolus’s representation of a moment—not a moment in action, but a moment just before action, the moment just before the discus flies, when nothing has happened yet, when no one has been judged, and no one has succeeded or failed, won or lost. When everything remains possible.
CHAPTER 3
“Why you are not speaking?” Enzo asked, catching me brooding. We were just outside Rome, heading north.
When I didn’t answer, he waved a hand in front of my face. “Ciao? Guten tag?”
I nodded briskly.
“You are hungry?”
“Not very much,” I said, clasping a hand over my stomach to silence the grumbling. To my left, Cosimo drove with the silent, focused attention of a barely literate man struggling to complete an essential government form, unhooking his fingers from the steering wheel only to scratch once at a spot under his tight, close-trimmed curls. To my right, his more handsome and apparently carefree brother drummed on the dashboard, shifted in his seat, stared out the window, flipped open a square brass lighter.
And snapped it shut.
Open. And shut.
“I am hungry,” Enzo announced after the twentieth flip of the lighter. “We do not buy sandwiches when we have a chance at the train station.”
This would be a problem with Enzo—the relentless present tense, which allowed for no reflection or prediction, only statement and complaint.
There was an exchange in Italian between the brothers about who was responsible for the food, I was fairly certain. Enzo had three times as much to say, the mark of a guilty conscience. Cosimo exhaled slowly, extinguishing his frustration in a series of softening taps against the steering wheel.
The Detour Page 4