Читать книгу A Head in Cambodia - Nancy Tingley - Страница 15

6

When I stepped out of my little backyard cottage, the sun wasn’t yet visible, but pale pink clouds supported the gray dawn. If I hurried, I could take the rise of White’s Hill as the sun burst over the East Bay hills. If I really hurried.

I hadn’t planned on riding this morning, but I’d woken early with monkey mind. Choose wall colors for the exhibition gallery; speak with the designer about the didactic panels, which seemed to me to be too small and overdesigned; go with the head preparator to look at fabric for the cases and finish writing labels.

Thank goodness the galleys were off and I didn’t have the worry of the catalogue hanging over me. I needed to treat myself, and what better way than an early morning ride out to West Marin. Not too far, just a short ways through Samuel P. Taylor Park, back to my favorite San Anselmo café for a latte, then a shower and work.

The kitchen light was on in my landlady’s house, but Rita wasn’t in her usual spot by the window. I stopped and double-checked the money in my pocket—I had enough to buy my latte and her mocha, a ritual usually followed on Saturday morning, but I thought she’d be agreeable to sitting and chatting on a Tuesday. That is, if she didn’t mind my sweaty self.

I thought of Philen, then pushed the thought of him out of my mind. Best to concentrate on the exhibition tasks rather than the trip to Cambodia, the confusing stone head. And I did until I got to the top of White’s Hill.

What is it about sunrise that sets the heart beating faster? The canvas of the horizon—in this case a horizon that included Marin, the San Francisco Bay, and the hills to the east—painted in huge, saturated strokes. Today in pink and an ever-so-subtle orange. Clinically speaking, maybe it was my fast ride through the barely trafficked streets and my acceleration up the hill that had my heart beating so fast. But you’d have a difficult time convincing me of that.

As I stopped for a drink of water, I thought of Radha. I’d printed a photo I’d taken of the sculpture of Radha and Krishna—her head still in place—and hung it across from my desk. If the head in the lab was a copy, it was a darn good one. The photo reminded me of my thoughts when I first saw the sculpture. I’d wondered why it had been identified as Radha and Krishna rather than some other Hindu couple—Parvati and Shiva, to whom the Baphuon temple is dedicated, or Vishnu and Lakshmi.

I realized, after I’d thought about it, that this was as good an identification as any, given the Krishna vignettes carved in the narrative reliefs of the temple. Since the majority of the relief carvings at the Baphuon are scenes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, other identifications are equally possible. But people are enchanted by the stories of Krishna, and there was a precedent for his popularity in the Khmer region, where sculptors had carved larger-than-life-size images of the youthful figure as early as the seventh century.

The story of Krishna, one of the avatars of Vishnu, exalted his boyhood and the amorous adventures of his youth. Women, particularly the gopis or young cowherders, swooned before him and took every opportunity to watch him, coyly trying to entrap him, a task finally achieved by Radha. I had to admit that the sculpted Radha looked pleased with herself.

Four men pulled up beside me, two of them saying hello. One drank from the straw attached to his camelback, while the others pulled out their water bottles. A fifth man was still toiling up the hill, his head down. He could have been my brother Eric. He was his size, his build. Except I’d only succeeded in getting adult Eric on a bike once. And getting him on the bike turned out to be different than getting him to ride farther than the coffee shop at the corner of my street. He waited for me there while I rode. When I came back he was chatting up an attractive blonde, with whom he then had a six-month relationship. A long time for him.

“Hi,” I said to the men. They were all buff, all about my age, late twenties, early thirties.

“Perfect spot for the sunrise,” one said as he nonchalantly repositioned his bike a little closer to mine.

“Yes,” I said, turning again toward the east. But the sunrise was giving way to morning, and the pink that had permeated the clouds had faded to a color so subtle that it no longer held interest for me. And though the man pulled me a little, my year without men was not yet up. Soon, but not yet.

I mounted my bike to continue my journey. I’d dawdled long enough, and once again I’d let my mind wander to the stone head rather than concentrating on the exhibition or the lecture that I was scheduled to give the docents at the end of the week.

“Have a good ride.” I wasn’t leaving because they’d arrived, though I did want to get down the west side of the hill before them. I didn’t need the race this morning that the curving west hillside invited. I huffed up the remainder of the incline as I thought of the Baphuon, the Angkorian temple where the sculpture had been found. Now largely collapsed, the gargantuan temple was built by King Udayadityavarman II in the mid-eleventh century.

Why is it that the brain so often doesn’t follow one’s commands? I succumbed to the mystery of the head, mulling it over all the way out to Samuel P. Taylor Park. On the way back, I thought about Tom Sharpen’s head. I’d found a photo of him online. I pieced together the little I knew. His identification of a head as fake, his anger, his threats to a Bangkok dealer, Grey saying he’d flown to San Francisco to talk with him.

I thought about that murder that I wasn’t going to try to solve right up until the moment that I ordered my latte and Rita’s mocha. I was running late now and wouldn’t be able to sit and natter with her, but she would be appreciative when I dropped it off.

THE morning thus far had been peaceful. After my ride, I felt much more centered. But then Breeze hurried into my office, shaking her head as she came, disaster in her mouth. A minor disaster, I imagined, but a disaster nonetheless. It wasn’t a big leap to assume it had something to do with Arthur Philen. How he got to be deputy director I would never know.

“Now what has he done?”

“The man is unbelievable. He’s announced that P.P. has the head of the famous Radha and Krishna sculpture.”

I searched among the papers on my desk for the list I’d written yesterday. “In the trustees meeting this morning?”

“No. I shouldn’t say he announced it. He sent out a press release.”

“No.” I stopped rustling.

“Yes. P.P. is in Caleb’s office right now trying to get Philen fired.” She leaned against the doorframe, then walked further into my tiny office.

“I don’t blame him. We don’t even know if the head is authentic. And even if it is, it certainly isn’t Philen’s place to spread the word about it. If anyone should, it’s P.P., the owner.”

“I hope he’s successful,” Breeze said, and sat down. Oh, no, I thought. This is going to take a while.

“Successful?” I said.

She looked at me as if I was mentally deficient.

“You mean getting him fired?”

“Yes. Philen is impossible. He was in my office this morning, ranting about a typo in the collections database. A typo, one typo. There are probably thousands of typos.” She raised both hands.

“What did he want you to do about it?”

“Change it.”

I shook my head. Philen could change it as easily as Breeze. Any of the curators or registrars could get into the database.

“Uh-oh.” Breeze stood and moved to the door, listening. “P.P. has found his way to Philen’s office.”

I heard Philen say self-righteously, “I thought it my duty—”

“Shut up,” P.P. said.

“Later,” said Breeze. Like me, she heard P.P. headed my way.

“Fired,” he shot as he squeezed past her in the doorway and sat down.

Oh, no, I thought. He had landed in that seat as though it was his safety net. “Unbelievable, that man,” I said. More fuel to his fire, but something had to be said, and I agreed with him. Arthur Philen should be fired.

He switched gears. “Tyler.”

I waited for more, but it didn’t come. “What about Tyler?”

“Come.” He jumped up again.

Looking back at my overloaded desk, I trailed him to the conservation lab.

“Trust,” he said as he held the door for me. I wasn’t certain if he was talking about me, Tyler, or Philen.

Tyler had glued about a quarter of Mrs. Searles’s bowl back together. I needed to check the mail; the bowl I’d bought from eBay should have arrived today.

“Seems as if there’s one piece missing here.” He pointed to the spot, guessing I’d be a willing assistant to his reconstruction. Better to bury my head in that project than in P.P.’s anger.

I took my place at his side, picking through the pieces while P.P. collected himself. He wasn’t generally a volatile man, and the degree of his anger now attested how much the situation disturbed him.

“Right or wrong?” he finally asked.

“The head?” Tyler said.

“Of course,” I volunteered.

P.P. gave the Indian shake of his head that means yes, but to the uninitiated seems to mean no. Tyler understood it correctly.

“Well.”

“Yes,” P.P. said. “And?”

Avoiding the line of fire, I kept my focus on the broken bowl that wouldn’t be needed once my package arrived.

Tyler stood up. “P.P., I really can’t tell you. It’s sandstone of a type that comes from Cambodia, or so it seems. I sent off some photos to a friend at the Met who has done a little work on the stone, and he thought it looked correct, but you know that means little. And even if it comes from Cambodia, when was it made? Yesterday or nine hundred years ago?”

He shook his head. “The stone has little wear, which is suspicious. We all know how frequently the nose of a sculpture or some other protruding portion breaks. You have to remember that it sat in that temple, or lay on the ground, for centuries. Something was bound to happen to it. A break when it fell, water pouring over it as it lay.”

He was preaching to the initiated. I knew it. He knew it. He knew that we knew it, but he’d shifted into automatic and was explaining as he would to anyone. Maybe he was giving P.P. more time to collect himself. “The sample I took from the neck gives me a surface cross-section that looks awfully uniform. But if I took a sample from elsewhere on the head, it might well be less so.”

“You won’t commit?” P.P. asked. Tyler was notoriously conservative in his proclamations. He could balance two sides of any issue better than the finest scale.

“No. I think the best you can do is when you and Jenna go to Cambodia, look carefully at the old and see what they seem capable of making with the new. Are you going to Bangkok?”

“We’ve talked about it,” I volunteered, picking up the piece he’d been missing.

“Well, from what you’ve told me, that’s the place to go to look for good Cambodian fakes.” He looked at me as he spoke, evidently having had enough of P.P.

P.P. charged out of the lab without a word. I held up the shard.

“Damn,” he said. “I was hoping it was gone and I wouldn’t have to continue.”

“You could always throw these pieces out and buy that bowl you saw online. She’d be incredibly impressed that you got it back together in such pristine condition.”

“Don’t think that it didn’t cross my mind, but when I looked this morning, in a moment of frustration, it had been sold.” He focused his gaze on the glue he held in one hand and the shard of bowl in the other. “P.P. seems angry.”

“Philen sent out a press release saying P.P. owns the stolen head.”

That brought his head up. “Idiot. What was he thinking? No, don’t answer that. ‘Nothing’ is the obvious answer. Wait, isn’t Arthur going with you to Cambodia?”

“I fear he is.” I prodded another small piece toward him and pointed. “I think this goes here.”

Tyler took it. “That sounds like a really fun trip.”

“Right. Kind of like traveling with a snake and a mongoose.”

I poked half-heartedly at the ceramic shards, but the weight of dealing with Arthur Philen and P.P. in close proximity for two weeks had knocked the wind out of me.

He looked up. “They’re both a little much. Each in his own way, of course.”

“Of course. Philen, well, he’s so absorbed in his quest for power that he wears blinders.” I said.

“And P.P. is so engaged in his quest for art that he sees little else.”

“That’s not entirely true. You have to respect his passion, not to mention his eye. And it’s not just that he has an eye for fabulous art. He’s very knowledgeable about what he collects. I value his opinion.”

Tyler looked at me expectantly. “And?”

“And. He has a sense of humor.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t shine through today.”

“No, it didn’t. It’s true that art is at the center of his universe, but it seems to be at the center of ours as well.” I swiveled my head around the room. “I’ll be back,” I said, rising from my stool.

I wished P.P. had never brought that head into the museum. Or that Philen wasn’t always lurking. As I passed Caleb’s office, he called me in. Philen was standing in front of his desk.

“We’ll take the head with us to Cambodia and—”

“No, Arthur,” I said. “We are not taking the head with us. We are not going to return the head to the Cambodian government until we know what we have. I’m not certain if it’s authentic, and Tyler isn’t either.” My voice rose as I spoke. I took a seat beside Philen, who remained standing.

“I’ve already issued a press release that—”

“Prematurely, to say the least.” I couldn’t restrain myself.

Philen’s voice rose to match mine. “When I came into the conservation lab, you and P.P. were discussing a stolen head. Something needed to be done about it.”

“And if you’d continued listening to us, you would have heard me say that we needed to authenticate it before we did anything.”

“You’ve had almost a month.” He straightened his tie.

“The fact remains, we haven’t been able to agree on whether it’s fake or real. Now you’ve put P.P.’s name out there as a collector, possibly of fakes, and by sending out the press release, you’ve associated us with the head. Which is bad for us. Of course, that might turn out to be good for P.P. if it takes him out of the picture. You’d best hope it does if you want him to stay associated with the museum. He doesn’t want everyone knowing he’s a collector.”

“Well, everyone already knows that,” he said prissily.

“Only a small circle of people. Every gift he’s given to the museum says “Anonymous” on the credit line. If he wanted to advertise his interest in Asian art, he’d allow articles in art magazines, or put his name on pieces of his that are borrowed for exhibitions. He’s not a self-promoter.”

Philen ignored me. “I can’t believe he came to you, Caleb, and told you to fire me. Just because he has access to you, because he’s a trustee.”

Caleb evidently had no intention of inserting a single word. “Caleb?” I prompted him.

“Yes. He’s extremely angry. Rightly so, as you acted precipitously, Arthur.”

It was the most direct attack Caleb had ever made on a member of staff. In my hearing, at any rate. Philen took a step back, as if experiencing it physically.

Caleb softened the blow by saying, “I understand your worry, Arthur. If it belonged to us, I would be very concerned. But it really wasn’t your place to send out that press release.”

Subtle, I thought. He attacks, then appears to take Philen’s side, while simultaneously withdrawing his allegiance to him by saying, “If it belonged to us,” a phrase he knew Philen probably wouldn’t hear. I said, “How are we going to put out the fire? Someone from the New York Times called this morning. There’s a message from the Guardian as well. The news of the head has already made it to London.” I didn’t add that my unopened emails from friends at the Met and the British Museum told me the news had reached the museum world.

“Arthur, what do you plan to do?”

My jaw dropped. Caleb was going to leave it to Philen to extricate us from this fiasco?

“Well, I don’t know . . .” Philen said. I waited, looking up at him. Caleb swung his chair back down, picked up a paper clip, and bent it open into a straight piece of wire. Finally Philen said, “We’ll just have to wait for it to blow over.”

“We need to do more than that, Arthur. You’ve made the museum look bad, and P.P. as well. Add to that the fact you’ll be traveling with P.P. in just a few weeks. You’ll be together for two weeks, day in and day out. Unless you resolve the situation before you depart, that’s going to be rather uncomfortable.”

Philen puffed up. “Well, that’s what I was saying before Jenna interrupted me. If we take the head back to Cambodia, then it will be out of our hands.”

I jumped up and leaned so close to him that I could tell he’d had bacon for breakfast. “That’s not a solution,” I said, my voice rising, “that’s a slither out of the problem.” I stepped back. “If we do that, we’ll never get any information on whether the head is authentic or not. What people will remember is that we bought a Khmer sculpture that was a fake. The museum will look bad. And I will look bad because I’m the curator in charge of Asian art.” As I spoke, I realized that the problem wasn’t so much P.P.’s now as it was ours. Damn Philen.

Caleb gave me a look. “Jenna’s correct. It isn’t a solution.” He tapped the straightened paper clip on his desk. “Arthur, I want you to issue another press release saying that the head is presently being authenticated and that you were precipitous in issuing the first release.” With a final tap of the paper clip before he threw it down, he said, “I want you to put your name to it.”

Philen paled. He’d expected to be in the news, but as the hero returning a stolen object.

“I have a conference call in about five minutes,” Caleb said, “and I need to prepare for it. Arthur, let me see the text before you send it out. That will be a new policy, that all press releases cross my desk before distribution.”

Philen was out the door before I could blink. “I’m not looking forward to traveling with the two of them. Do you think you can dissuade Philen from going?”

“I doubt it.” Caleb already had his nose in a file. Clearly this much conflict was enough for one day. I suspected he’d go out of town on an unscheduled trip to recover.