better believe people get a little strange. Including you, if you don't mind my saying so. Look, Chris, don't you think we can afford another two hundred bucks and be done with it?'
Yes, I said, I supposed I-we-could afford another two hundred dollars, but I doubted if we were done with it. Rita said I was getting awfully mopey and pessimistic, and why didn't I shape up? And, oh yes, there was one other little glitch.
'Ah,' I said.
'She knows you love Murphy, and she wants you to have him.'
'Mm,' I said. Murphy was the dog.
'She says if you let her keep the car, she'll be happy to let you keep Murphy.'
'She… she… a new, eight-thousand-dollar car… and I get the dog?'
'I thought you were fond of him.'
'I am, I am, but how could she… I mean, does she think I'm a, a-'
'I figured you might not go for it.'
'Rita, I thought all that was finished, settled. We worked out the car months ago.'
'It's not settled until you both sign that piece of paper, my friend.'
'Well, I'm not agreeing to it,' I said truculently. 'Anyway, where does she come off having anything to say about poor Murph? She abandoned him too, you know. No warnings, no good-byes-' I clamped my mouth shut. Rita was right; I was getting pretty strange.
'Well, look, Chris, here's what I think we should do. I think we ought to get us all together again, sit down, and talk through these things like rational adults. I think you need to try to see Bev's side a little. From her point of view, this is all a way of affirming her adulthood, her independence as an integrated human being, not just a-'
'Rita, I've got to go now. I'll be in touch.'
I caught Tony as he was slipping into his coat to leave for lunch.
'I'd love to go to Europe for a couple of months,' I said. And meant it.
I had known from the start what he'd been referring to. A year earlier, the museum had bid for and won a contract from the Department of Defense to organize and administer Treasures of Four Centuries: The Plundered Past Recovered. This was to be an extraordinary exhibition of twenty paintings lent by Claudio Bolzano, an eminent Italian collector. Bolzano often lent and sometimes gave his paintings to public galleries, but this, as far as I knew, was the first show totally devoted to his pieces. All twenty had been seized by the Nazis in World War II and then, after the war, recovered and returned to him by the U.S. military, in some cases after decades of diligent investigation. The Plundered Past would be shown at six American bases in Europe, and each showing would coincide with a 'good neighbor' open house at the base.
The idea of this show was the brainchild of an army colonel named Mark Robey, and the object was to provide some favorable exposure for U.S. forces in the face of an increasingly hostile European press. The San Francisco Museum had contracted to supply an exhibition director who would be responsible for compiling the catalog, providing expert consultation, and 'performing other duties as required during the course of the project.'
The impetus for this unusual undertaking had been the amazing discovery of a cache of three Nazi- appropriated Old Masters that had disappeared forty years before without a trace. The treasure had been uncovered by the American military, true enough, but not by the celebrated MFA and A-the army's Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Unit. It had, in fact, been found completely by accident.
A twenty-year-old soldier named Norman Porritch, stationed at McGraw Kaserne in Munich, had spent the weekend in Salzburg, and on Saturday he had taken a guided tour of the famous old salt mine in nearby Hallstatt. Porritch, a gangling spelunker from Kentucky, had had a flashlight with him, ready for whatever opportunity might arise, and, ignoring the guide's instructions to stay with the group, he had wandered off into a beckoning side tunnel. There, he had been drawn by a black hole in the wall seven feet above the mine floor. He had clambered up, and with his first step knocked over an old, lichen-encrusted wooden crate, which tipped over the two crates behind it like so many dominoes.
The resulting clatter had brought the guide scurrying and shouting, and by the time the fuss died down a few days later, Porritch's homely grin was familiar around the world. Signor Bolzano had come forward with tears and gratitude (a new Alfa-Romeo for Porritch) to claim the Vermeer, the Titian, and the Rubens that had been 'liberated' by the fleeing Nazis from his palazzo in Florence in August 1944.
Colonel Robey, a high-ranking member of the army's European Community Relations staff, had recommended that the three great paintings be the nucleus for an exhibition of art tracked down since the war by the American military, and that Bolzano, a beneficiary many times over of the MFA and A's work, be asked to lend several other paintings to complete the show.
When the contract had been awarded to the San Francisco Museum six months before, Tony had asked Peter van Cortlandt to take the job. This was as it should have been. Peter was the chief curator of art, my immediate boss. An internationally respected authority on nineteenth-century painting, with thirty years' experience overseeing major exhibitions, he was the man the Defense Department had had in mind from the beginning, and he had gone to Europe on eight months' leave.
And now, Tony explained to me, the Defense Department had funded a deputy-director position to take some of the work load off Peter's shoulders, and I was just the man for it. From Tony's perspective-not that he said so-it meant he would be saving my salary for a couple of months, which would help in the new budget, and he would be getting my temporarily gloomy and unproductive self out from underfoot.
From mine it meant a deeply needed respite. I was suddenly tired to death of budget reallocations, tired of San Francisco, tired of my lonely Victorian off Divisadero, tired of the endless, petty squabbling with Bev. This last was done almost entirely through Rita. Bev and I had spoken only twice since she'd left, and both times I'd wound up shouting at her, practically foaming at the mouth. That had shaken me, if not her. I couldn't recall ever having been truly, quiveringly furious with anyone else in my life, and certainly I'd never been reduced to incoherent raving. The divorce was teaching me a few unwelcome things about myself too.
All in all, a few months in Europe sounded like just what I needed. Moreover, as Tony was quick to point out, Peter had already done the hard work.
'Everything's going smoothly, as far as I know,' he told me. 'Oh, they've got a few minor problems, of course, but nothing special.'
'What will I be doing, exactly?'
'You'll be the deputy director.'
'I know, but what am I supposed to do?'
'Well, you know, assist Peter, provide technical advice to Robey, that kind of thing.'
'Thanks. That's very instructive.'
Tony shrugged a little further into his coat and began to button it 'Look, to be perfectly candid, I don't really know what you'll be doing. As far as I can see, there's barely enough to keep one man busy, let alone two. I think you're going to wind up with an all-expenses-paid vacation, but what the hell.'
'What the hell,' I agreed. 'So what do I do first?'
'Just show up in Berlin Wednesday. That's where it opens next.'
'You mean next Wednesday?'
'Sure, why not? What else have you got going?'
'Are you kidding? All kinds of things.'
'For example.'
'Those budget scenarios, for one thing.'
'Forget them. I'll take care of them. You know I'm not going to cut your department. And you know Sawacki can run Renaissance and Baroque for you for a couple of months. What else do you have to do?'
'What else? Well…' But what else was there, aside from getting someone to take care of Murphy and having the mail held? My life at the time was not exactly overfull. 'Maybe I can make it. Where in Berlin do I go?'
'Tempelhof. You know where it is?'
'No, but isn't that where-'
'The planes came in for the Berlin airlift, right. It's an American air base now, and the show's going to be in the officers-club building-Columbia House, I think it's called.' Tony looked importantly at his watch, as if a hundred more urgent things pressed him. No doubt they did. He put a few papers into his attache case and zipped it up.
