The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy (The Pot Thier) Page 19

  “So they went back to painting icons?” I asked.

  “No. This one just happens to have that look because it’s supposed to be Tzarevich Dmitry.”

  “Well, that certainly explains it.”

  She laughed and said, “He was the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible,” and handed me the picture for a closer look.

  He was a handsome young man, slightly effeminate with dark hair and long lashes. His right hand curled out from under a long white robe and gently touched his heart.

  “He doesn’t look like someone whose father’s last name would be The Terrible.”

  She laughed again. “Don’t you know the story, Hubie? He was supposed to have been killed by Boris Godunov. Tchaikovsky wrote an opera about it.”

  “You know I don’t like opera music.” I looked at the typing under the painting. It read: Царевич Дмитрий, 1899. The script looked old-fashioned. “Was Uapebny whatever the name of the painter?”

  “No, silly, that’s the name of the painting – Tzarevich Dmitry. I typed it in the Russian alphabet because Casgrail is such a stickler. We have to put every title in its original language and God help you if you leave out the year.”

  “So I guess the artist’s name is not pronounced Hectepob,” I ventured. It was on the title page as Нестеровв.

  “It’s Nesterov. You don’t know Cyrillic, do you?”

  “The only thing I know about the Russian alphabet is the ‘P’ makes an ‘R’ sound. And since Царевич is ‘tsarevich’, I assume the ‘U’ makes the ‘Ts’ sound in ‘Tsar’.”

  “Or the ‘Cz’ sound in ‘Czar’,” she added.

  Which gave me the opening to say, “Did you know the real cause of the Communist revolution was the peasants found out the Tsar and the Czar were the same person, and they thought no one should be allowed to hold that much power?”

  She rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  I glanced back down at the word Царевич and at the name of the painter – Nesterov in our alphabet, Нестеров in theirs.

  49

  I drove to the campus at ten o’clock on a Wednesday with classes in full swing. Students hustled between classes and of course no parking space was open. I pulled in to a loading zone in front of Anthropology Hall.

  I visit the campus several times a month to use the library or attend lectures or recitals. I’ve even visited a few of my favorite professors in the business college. But as you might suspect, I hadn’t been in Anthropology Hall since the day I was booted.

  I remembered Susannah chastising me for walking to Rio Grande Lofts the first time I got in and asking me what I was planning to do with the pots if I’d found them. I was taking no chances this time. If any pots were in 204, I was going to haul them away.

  I was wearing a pair of torn and stained Levis I use in my workshop and a tan shirt I’d purchased for fifty cents at Goodwill especially for the occasion. It had a patch over the left pocket that said ‘Pete’.

  It felt a little odd walking in, but I didn’t dwell on it and the feeling passed. I nodded at a student sitting at the reception desk. He returned my nod half-heartedly and returned to the book he was reading. I walked up the stairs, found 204, and loided the lock.

  It was a typical faculty office, ten by twelve with a desk, desk chair, visitor chair, bookcases, and file cabinet. I went through the desk and took a few papers that looked like they might be significant.

  The bookshelves contained mostly outdated textbooks and back copies of journals. There were some reference works and a few trade books. I suppose a map to the hiding place of the pots might have been tucked between the pages of one of the books, but the odds were slim enough that I didn’t bother looking.

  The filing cabinet had the typical lock you see on filing cabinets, a keyhole in one of those oval steel buttons that locks all the drawers when pushed in, which it had been. I had no way of opening it given that my only lock trick is loiding, but I had prepared for this possibility.

  I returned to the Bronco and got a hand truck. I drug it up the stairs in to Gerstner’s office where I strapped his file cabinet to it. Then I eased it very carefully down the stairs. The kid at the desk looked up and then went back to reading. I loaded the file cabinet in the back of the Bronco, thinking as I did that it was lucky Gerstner didn’t have a big heavy safe. Then I drove home.

  You might be thinking my actions were highly out of character, that I was taking quite a risk breaking in to Gerstner’s office in broad daylight. You might also think that hauling his filing cabinet away was rather brazen, but I can tell you I was not the least bit nervous. Most universities are low security institutions. Anyone can walk on to a campus and more or less have the run of the place. Of course if someone saw you loiding a door, they might call security. They might even ask you what you were doing if they saw you loading a filing cabinet in to a beat up old Bronco, although I doubt it. But I wasn’t concerned about any of that because other than the one student, I knew there was no one in the building. All classes in anthropology and archaeology had been cancelled for that morning, and all the faculty and staff who worked in that building were attending a memorial service across campus for Ognan Gerstner.

  50

  I drove home and hauled the filing cabinet to my patio.

  The lock was sturdy but the cabinet was just a boxy tin can. I used a long-handle screwdriver to pry open the top drawer, then I reached inside and bent the vertical rod that allows the single lock to control all four drawers.

  I spent a couple of hours going through the papers in the top three drawers. Most of them were of no value to anyone now that Gerstner was dead – old class lecture notes, correspondence with booksellers, programs from professional meetings, and offprints of some of his articles. I put all of those in my kiva oven along with some piñon logs. It was cold in the shade of the patio.

  There were some papers that might be useful back at the University, things like recent letters of recommendations that students might need and minutes of curriculum committee meetings. I stuffed those in to a couple of padded envelopes and addressed them to the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University. I omitted the return address.

  I kept a few more papers I thought might be helpful to me.

  I put the blade of the screwdriver against the metal inventory tag on the filing cabinet and struck it with the heel of my hand. It flew off. I picked it up off the flagstone. It was very light, some sort of aluminum alloy probably. I tossed it in the fire and watched it melt in to a little ball that shimmered and shimmied like mercury.

  Then I removed the tape, brown paper, and bubble wrap from the three pots I’d found in the bottom drawer. I got almost the same feeling I get when I dig up old pots, a mixture of excitement, awe, and reverence. I held them in my hands and felt their heft and their curve. I wished I could have watched while the potter made them.

  They were obviously part of a set – same size, shape and colors, but different designs. The pot I’d seen in Gerstner’s hutch wasn’t one of the three I found in the filing cabinet, but it belonged to the set. The varied designs had one thing in common, a stylized rendering of their pueblo with mountains in the background. The feeling I’d had when I saw the one in the hutch déjà vued me. You’d think after looking at thousands of pots over the course of twenty-five years, I’d be able to spot what was off kilter, but I couldn’t.

  I re-wrapped the pots and put them in a box in the Bronco. Then I drove to the post office where I mailed the two envelopes to the university and to the dump where I deposited the filing cabinet sans inventory tag.

  My final stop was at my dentist’s office. It was closed, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t need any dental work. I had called ahead and asked my dental hygienist to do me a favor, and she was waiting for me.

  Sharice and I have more than a hygienist/patient relationship. We flirt with each other. Actually, she does most of the flirting. It’s hard to reciprocate with
her fingers in my mouth. I took her to lunch once and we had a good time, so I asked her out. But she said her boyfriend wouldn’t approve, and then after my next appointment she said she didn’t have her boyfriend anymore, but I was seeing someone else by that time, so we’ve never actually had a date. I don’t know if she’d like me to ask her out again, or if she’s content to leave it at the flirting stage. I don’t know how I feel about it either. She’s attractive enough, but do I really want to date someone who scrapes my teeth?

  We chatted amicably for a while after she did the favor for me. Then I stopped by the police station on the way home and asked Whit to give me a copy of the paper with the first three letters of my name on it, the one they’d found in Gerstner’s wallet.

  I took it outside and looked at it as I sat behind the wheel of my Bronco. Despite the cool air, the inside of the Bronco was toasty thanks to its expansive glass and the robust New Mexican sun. It felt a little strange being parked in front of the police station with three stolen pots in my vehicle, but the only people who knew they were stolen were the Ma, and I doubted they’d reported it to the Albuquerque Police Department.

  The letters looked like this: нцв.

  Definitely the first three letters of my name. They were typed, so I didn’t think anyone was going to claim that Gerstner started to type my name but didn’t have time to finish. Unless he was sitting at the typewriter when he was shot. Then I remembered people don’t use typewriters anymore.

  I noticed the little squiggle on the lower right of the ‘ц’. They call that a serif. I had read a book that summer by Father Edward Catich called The Origin of the Serif in which he claims serifs originated in ancient Rome when they carved words in stone. The letter outlines were first brushed onto the stone to show the carvers where they went, and when the brush first hit the stone it would leave a narrow mark and then widen out as it was pressed down. The stone carvers were illiterate, so they blindly followed the brush marks and that’s how we got serifs. I hadn’t dared mention the book to Susannah for fear of the scolding I knew she’d give me.

  51

  I put the Ma pot on the shelf, the wheel on slow, and my hands in the clay. The pot conquered my potter’s block. The clay rose under my gentle urging to the exact shape of its inspiration on the shelf.

  I spent all afternoon experimenting with different slip mixes and couldn’t find one I thought was right, so I limited myself to one margarita with Susannah and then drove west that night to the Rio Puerco and dug up some clay. Digging clay is not illegal, and it’s ridiculous that I have to do it under cover of night, but if I’m caught digging anywhere, you know what the authorities will think.

  I spent the next three days on the project and never opened the shop.

  When the copy was finished, I lined a box with bubble wrap and hauled the thing to Dos Hermanas. On the way, I happened to spot one of those pseudo-trolleys at the Old Town stop, and I saw the gorgeous Stella on it. I stood there gawking, and then I started laughing. Then I started looking forward to telling Susannah.

  But when she saw me with the box, Susannah wanted to know what was in it, so I showed her the Ma copy. She said it was beautiful. I agreed, but it wasn’t conceit. The design was someone else’s. All I did was copy it.

  “I did pretty well with my project, too,” she said and handed me the paper on Tsarevich Dmitri (or Czarevich Dmitri). The professor had scrawled some nice comments and a big red A on the cover page right above the title.

  I played with some of the Cyrillic letters in my head for a minute and it came to me, but I decided I had to find out what it meant before saying anything about it to Susannah.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Now I take the real pots to Martin’s uncle to see what he can tell me about them.”

  I took a sip of my margarita, and it was delicious. Being abstemious for a few days had whetted my thirst. Then I told Susannah I knew what sort of work the gorgeous Stella did, but I didn’t say what it was. I took another sip of my drink.

  “Well, are you going to tell me?”

  “Ask me how I found out.”

  “Oh brother. O.K., how did you find out?”

  “I saw her on a trolley.”

  “She drives a trolley?”

  I started laughing and couldn’t stop.

  “It’s not that funny, Hubert.”

  “It is funny. The image of Stella wrestling the wheel of a fake trolley is hilarious. But no, she doesn’t drive a trolley.”

  “She goes to work by trolley? That’s not much of a clue, Hubie. Anyone can ride to work in that thing, even a surgeon.”

  “She wasn’t in the thing, Suze. She was on it.”

  “I don’t get it. What’s the difference?”

  “When you’re in the trolley, you’re inside in a seat or hanging on to a strap. When you’re on the trolley, you’re outside. Well, you aren’t outside, but your picture is. A real big picture right there on the side of the trolley.”

  “Oh, my God, she’s Stella Ramsey, Channel 17’s Roving Reporter?”

  “One and the same.”

  “Unbelievable! You know what, Hubie, she’s right. Everyone does know who she is.”

  “Except us.”

  “Well you don’t own a TV, so that’s no surprise, and I’m in class most nights or in the library, but at least I know the name. Hubie! Every man in Albuquerque sees her on TV and wishes…well, you know, and here you’ve been rolling in the hay with her. That’s fantastic.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t think I can keep pretending I live in Rio Grande Lofts and have a wife that ran off with a younger man.”

  “You’ll have to level with her, Hubert. Tell her—”

  But I didn’t get to hear how I should do the leveling because Freddie arrived and Susannah left, and I stayed and had another margarita.

  When I got home, I called Tristan and asked him to make a videotape of Stella doing her reporting.

  52

  Jack Wiezga’s studio in the Fine Arts Building was fifteen feet square with shelves on one wall and canvases leaning against the other three. The shelves were full of paint cans and brushes and the floor was layered with paint splatters. It looked like one of his canvases except the composition was better.

  “I see you’re still using your clothes as a protest,” he greeted me.

  I felt my neck to see if I had inadvertently worn my ascot, but of course it wasn’t there. I gave him a blank look.

  “The Rusyn flag,” he said.

  I removed my hat and eyed the headband. “So that’s what that is.”

  “Playing dumb? Or is a flag sometimes just a flag?”

  “Huh?”

  “Glastoc called me after you left his store.”

  “Oh? What did he say?”

  “He said that crazy pottery thief came by and tried to get information about the Rusyns, but all he would tell you about was the flag.”

  I decided to ignore the thief business. “How did he know me?”

  “Your fifteen minutes of fame, Schuze. You were in the news in connection with Ognan Gerstner’s death.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  He shrugged. “Thank God someone did.”

  “Well, I’m not that someone. But I’m still a suspect, so I’m trying to find out who did.”

  “And you think a Rusyn might have done it?”

  “You didn’t think too highly of him.”

  His sloping brow slid down as his eyes narrowed. He tossed his brush in a can of turpentine and wiped his hands on his coveralls. Then he dug a pipe out of his pocket, filled it with tobacco, and lit it. The smoke smelled like burning tires.

  “Balkan Sobranie,” I guessed.

  “You know tobacco?”

  “Not really. I had a roommate who smoked that my freshman year. That’s probably why I abandoned dorm life at the first opportunity.”

  He laughed. “Balkan Sobranie was a well-known female repellent. They don’t make it anymore, b
ut not for that reason.” He held up the pipe and looked at it fondly. “This is straight latakia. It comes from Ukraine.”

  “Grown by Rusyns?”

  “Rusyns live in the mountains to the north. The tobacco is grown in the lowlands of the south.”

  “You ever been there?”

  “I was born in Michigan. Went to school there. Came here to teach. I don’t even have a passport.”

  I took a piece of paper out of my pocket and handed it to him. On it were written three Cyrillic letters – НЦВВ.

  “Recognize this?”

  He stared down at it for a long time. I didn’t think he was studying it. He was trying to figure out how to respond.

  When he finally looked up, his eyes were still narrow and his prominent jaw set. “Looks like the first three letters of your name.”

  “Is that the party line?”

  He just stared at me, so I said, “The letters are Cyrillic.”

  “I don’t know Cyrillic. Like I said, I don’t even have a passport. Just a typical American.”

  “Have any theory about who killed Gerstner?”

  “Maybe it was you after all.”