The Gold of Thrace (6 page)

At the stationer’s, Chatham bought a pad of graph paper, India ink and pens, French curves and calipers, a protractor and a compass.

He found a Telex machine in an alcove in the back of the shop. He paid for a Telex to the British Museum telling them about the Thracian gold, said he would get in touch with them later, and asked them to send a message to Prague that he would be delayed.

For the next two days, he selected pieces from the treasure, measured and drew them, sitting at the table in a ladder-back chair until his back ached and his shoulders were sore. Occasionally, when Irena was near, he would get up to go to the kitchen for a glass of water, standing close to her, patting her arm, trying to edge closer. She would behave as if he weren’t there, not moving, and give him a sideways glance and a smile.

In the evenings, he went out to the stationers and sent the day’s notes about the hoard to the
Illustrated London News
by Telex.

Each night he dreamt of Irena. Each morning, he woke with a headache and a stiff neck. The sofa was hard, with missing springs, and the lumpy pillows smelled of mildew.

After two days, Dimitar came to him and said, “We have to talk,” and told him to come to his shop.

He gave him the address on a piece of paper and told Chatham he expected him at one o’clock. Chatham took a taxi and gave the driver the address. They drove to a dingy street with empty shops, some with painted windows. Chatham found the number and opened the door.

He was surrounded by a cacophony of clocks, each ticking a different tock, each set at a different time, each banging out the hour, the half hour, the quarter to, from all four walls. Time assaulted him, with pendulums pitching in eternal arcs, with tinkling chimes and clanging tocsins, pushing one moment against the next with no chance of return.

Dimitar sat at a bench in a small room in the back of the shop, visible through an open door next to a grandfather clock that was proclaiming the hour.

“Come in, come in,” Dimitar said. “You are in the right place.”

He got up and moved slowly toward Chatham, eyeing him, nodding his head.

“Welcome to my shop.” He leaned toward Chatham, his breath as rhythmic as the clocks and pungent with undigested food. “You see. You come when I call. You can’t escape me.” He stepped back and gestured at the clocks on the wall and paused, turning to look at them. “And you are running out of time.”

Chapter Eight

Sofia, Bulgaria, August 9, 1990

“What do you want of me?” Chatham asked, raising his voice to speak over the din from the other room.

Another clock struck with a sonorous boom that quivered against the wall and shook small timepieces to attention. Dimitar seemed to be listening, counting. He pulled out a pocket watch, opened it, checked the time and nodded.

“You work at the British Museum?” Dimitar said at last in a deep rumble.

“I don’t have the authority to buy anything on my own.”

“No, no,” Dimitar said.

“Purchases go through the Keeper of Near Eastern Studies.” The discordant ticking from the next room beat at Chatham with a frantic rhythm. “It’s a complicated process, takes time. The Keeper is the chief curator. He recommends the piece to the Director, who has it authenticated before it goes to the Board of Governors, which meets once a month.” Chatham’s words came faster and faster, in rhythm with the frantic ticking of the clocks. “I can send the drawings first. That’s part of the reason I’m making them.”

“I don’t want to sell the gold to a museum.”

“What do you want?”

“We need the money or we will starve.”

“What then?”

“I read somewhere that when something is exhibited in a museum, it gains value.”

“That’s probably true.”

“I want to sell the gold to private collectors. That way I get more money.”

Chatham’s tongue ran along his upper lip. “You want to take the collection to an auction house like Sotheby’s? And you think that if you lend the Thracian Gold to the British Museum for a special exhibit, you can get more money when you sell it?”

“Exactly.” Dimitar nodded. “We sell the gold after the exhibit.”

“After the drawings are published in
The Illustrated London News
, there’s a better chance that the museum will want to exhibit it.”

“I give you a commission. The more money we get for the pieces, the more money you get.”

Chatham thought about it, licked his lips and tried to calculate how much commission would he get. The collection would be worth millions if they handled it right.

Dimitar gave him a sharp look. “I see you like the money as much as you like my sister. More, perhaps.”

“We need to know provenience.” He felt he was speaking for the museum now.

“Provenance? It’s been in my family for centuries.”

“No, no. I know its been in your family, I know the provenance, the history of ownership. I mean where it originates archaeologically—provenience—the find spot. Can you take me where you found the gold?”

Dimitar gave him another penetrating look while he listened to the chime of yet another clock.

“Tomorrow,” he said at last.

***

The three of them left Sofia early, at 6:30, after a hasty breakfast of pound cake and murky coffee. Dimitar pulled up in a dusty dark blue Mercedes with leather seats that were sticky with the heat.

Chatham raised his eyebrows.

“I got the car from a friend,” Dimitar said.

They drove through towns with empty factories, their windows broken; through towns with houses with roofs that sagged beneath a scatter of broken tiles.

“This is all that’s left,” Dimitar said, watching Chatham’s reaction. “Such is the fate and the evil of the crossroads. The Turks were wiser than the communists; they preserved the milk-cow. The communists cut off the head, destroyed the intelligentsia, and left the peasants.”

Stop complaining, Chatham thought. They left you with the gold.

Beyond the villages, the road ran through undulating country with fields of grain, of sunflowers, of small grapevines marching in rows over hillocks and through valleys billowing with acres and acres of roses. Here and there, stands of lavender dotted the hillsides. And over all hung a sweet, heavy scent of roses.

They finally stopped at a farmhouse between a lavender field and a stand of trees on the edge of a wooded area. Dimitar parked the car behind a house next to a stable and riding ring. “There’s no road from here. We need to go by horse.”

He got out of the car and called to a man working in the field beyond the stable. The man turned, removed his large hat to wipe his forehead, then came toward them, rubbing at his hands, slapping them against his jeans, rubbing them again.

They spoke quietly, Dimitar gesturing in the direction of the woods. They disappeared into the stable and came out a few minutes later leading three saddled horses and brought them over to a small box on the ground near the riding ring.

Dimitar positioned a horse next to the box and turned to Chatham. “You know how to ride horses?”

He held the reins across the neck of a roan with a hefty rump and motioned for Chatham to mount.

Dimitar adjusted Chatham’s stirrups. “You’ll be all right?”

He held a creamy Palomino for Irena and helped her settle in the saddle, and mounted a small chestnut himself.

“Let’s go,” he said.

They rode along a path toward the woods at an easy lope for a while, until Dimitar made a clicking sound with his mouth and kicked his horse slightly, spurring it into a faster canter.

Irena followed. Her lips parted; her cheeks flushed; her shoulders moved in elegant repose at one with the horse, her back straight, as she sat astride the saddle, gripping it with her thighs. Chatham rode next to her and watched her, hair pulled back with a ribbon from her perfect face. He watched the ends of her hair streaming behind her, brushing against her cheek as she eased gently back and forth, back and forth, in rhythm with the canter. He watched her and watched her. This is what I want forever, he thought, to ride next to her and watch her, and he kicked his horse lightly with his heel and moved along beside her, back and forth, back and forth in the saddle.

They rode through the woods until they reached a chain-link fence topped with rolls of barbed wire.

“My own land, my patrimony, no longer mine,” Dimitar said. “Fenced in and hidden from me.” He gestured in the direction of a small mound.

“There it is, beyond the fence. I found the gold there, buried with an ancient Thracian horseman.”

“You found it?”

“It was here to be found. My forefathers were horsemen. I was conceived among the horses. I am the guardian of all this, the guardian of time.”

He dismounted and gripped the fence. “Our minds are naked without the past, exposed to the cold winds of time. Everything we know is preserved but is warped by fire and hatred.”

“How did you find this place?”

“I told you, it’s my own land. Was. My heritage rests in the rocks, hides among the horses. As a boy, in the night, I walked among the shadows of dead ruins and heard the beat of horses’ hoofs in the distance. Each night I returned to that spot. Each night the horses came closer, until one night the horseman emerged from the darkness. And I followed.”

“What happened?”

“The horse was not shod, so I knew. I knew the horseman was an ancient one. ‘You know this place? You know what happened here?’ he asked me. And then he told me, ‘In the forest where no human voice had been heard, the ancient Getae came and built a sanctuary to the great God Zalmoxsis. Here they begged him for success in battle and sent a messenger, a brave warrior who had led in battle. He went over the cliff onto three sharp spears and they whispered their prayers while the spears still shone bright with his blood. They carried the warrior to the tomb, his drops of blood shining like rubies on the ground. From each drop grew a scarlet rose.’”

“Where did you hear this? There are texts?”

“I know. I just know. I heard it from the horseman.” He shrugged and held out his hands. “Eternity rests in the rock and hides among the horses.”

He walked back to his horse and remounted, pulling its head sharply in the direction of the farm where they had borrowed the horses. They ate under the trees at the farmhouse, a light lunch of bread and soup thickened with yogurt.

And then they drove back to Sofia, through the Valley of the Roses, through fields of roses burning scarlet in the sun.

Chapter Nine

Basel, Switzerland, August 9, 1990

Tamar took the airport bus from Mulhouse, the little airport in Alsace that serviced Basel, and checked into the Euler.

The desk clerk eyed her Indian gauze blouse and her jeans, her thick sandals. He pasted on a smile of mild disapproval. He asked for her passport and a credit card and looked pointedly at her dusty duffel bag while she rummaged through her purse.

Sedate ladies with pearls and portly businessmen in three-piece suits with gold watch-chains across their vests moved quietly through the staid lobby.

The clerk asked, “You’ll be here how long?”

Tamar wasn’t sure.

“A week,” the desk clerk said when Tamar didn’t answer. “Business or pleasure?” He rang for a porter and handed him the key. “Room 238. Elevators are around the corner to the right,” he said without looking up from the registration form.

A bellboy picked up her bag and led her to the elevator. Upstairs, Tamar followed him down a long hall to a room near the service elevator and across the way from the pantry that the floor concierge used for morning coffee. The bellboy opened the door, handed Tamar the key, placed her battered bag on the luggage rack in the closet, opened the drapes, smiled, held out his hand, palm up, and said, “You are pleased with the room?” He waited. “Everything is all right?” he asked.

She scrambled through her purse and found a dollar bill. “Dollars okay? I haven’t had time to stop at a bank.”

His hand was still out. She gave him another dollar.

He looked over the bills and turned them in his hand as if they were counterfeit. “Bottled water is in the refrigerator bar.” He gestured vaguely past the dresser, put the money in his pocket and edged into the hallway. “Call if you need something.”

He left, closing the door behind him.

She examined the room: the wood-paneled walls; the antique armoire; the small refrigerator with a false wood front in the corner next to the dresser; the feather bed, puffy with the pristine downy white of the comforter and thick pillows.

She stared blankly at the walls and thought about the mosaic, about the last day at Tepe Hazarfen. Something wasn’t right that day, even before she knew the mosaic was gone.

What was it? Something Mustafa said? Or was it earlier, was it Chatham?

Tired and thirsty, she rummaged in the refrigerator for a bottle of water and took a long draught before she fell on the bed and slept for an hour, dreaming of Alex again, as she always did.

This time, they were sipping iced tea on a terrace floating over an orange sea flecked with stars that blinked on and off, and Alex was saying to her over and over, “Be careful. It isn’t what it seems. It isn’t what it seems.”

When she awoke, she checked herself in the mirror and fingered the amber beads against her blouse—heavy, dark, strung on a leather thong.

This will never do, she decided. I have to look rich, like I can afford to buy a mosaic floor. She had little in her suitcase besides clean underwear and two light cotton dresses that she saved for weekends. She had thrown away her torn digging clothes in Turkey, as she did every year.

She unpacked, found a terrycloth robe in the bathroom, found the soap and shampoo on the counter next to the sink, and climbed into the shower.

She selected a pale green knitted dress to wear. In Turkey it looked elegant when she wore it with the amber necklace. Here it looked shoddy and second-rate.

She shrugged, flung the strap of her clumsy leather purse over her shoulder, and went down to the concierge desk in the lobby. She asked for a city map, and asked the concierge to show her the main shopping street.

Another patronizing smile, this time from the concierge. The concierge opened the map and began to trace on it with a pen. “Here, between Barfüsserplatz and Marktplatz, you will find everything you need.” She clicked the pen and looked Tamar over. “Shall I call you a cab?”

“It doesn’t look as if it’s that far. I’ll walk.”

The concierge looked down at Tamar’s sandals and smiled again. “The taxi is complimentary.”

“I want to get to know Basel.”

“Suit yourself. Enjoy the lovely day.” The concierge picked up the pen again poised it over the map. “When you leave the hotel, turn left, then right on this street.” She made a mark on the map. “Then straight on. You can’t miss the center of town.”

Tamar wandered for the better part of half an hour, viewing the burghers of Basel with their dark suits and briefcases, and the grim-faced housewives wearing print dresses and colored shoes and waiting patiently at street corners for traffic lights to change.

No one smiled.

It’s as though they have constipated souls, she thought, and went back to deciding what she had to buy. She had two credit cards, one for the hotel, one for clothes and other expenses. Shoes, she thought, shoes that match each outfit, like the ladies of Basel.

She passed a Bank Suisse and got two hundred dollars’ worth of Swiss francs from the ATM machine. She looked up at the street sign and found herself at the corner of Aeschenvorstadt and Aeschenplatz. It can’t be too far, she thought. She oriented herself on the map and found Barfüsserplatz.

She walked along Freiestrasse, looking in shop windows for appropriate clothes, taking short forays into side streets. She stopped outside a quiet shop with one dark outfit on a form in the window and peered inside. She saw a linen dress on a rack in the center of the shop, the kind of dress she needed, decided to look further, and continued on toward Marktplatz.

The Town Square, lined by corbelled houses, lay in the shadow of the Rathaus, the town hall, a red stone building adorned with frescoes and fluttering banners and topped by a multi-colored roof. Tamar navigated through a barricade of parked cars that edged the market in the center of the square.

She strolled through a cacophony of stalls that sold flowers, fruits, vegetables, bread, cheese, apples the color of the Rathaus, all under a sea of market umbrellas—white, yellow, fringed, scalloped. Pigeons cooed and bustled on the cobblestones below, pecking at bits of debris that had fluttered to the ground and lodged in little wet gutters between the stones.

She stopped at a fruit stand, drawn by the luscious scent of tiny wild strawberries, red and bright as the Rathaus.

“Picked fresh from the mountains,” a woman in an apron who stood behind the table told Tamar in English.

In front was an array of yellow peaches with blushing cheeks, the tantalizing aroma of their sweet-acid tang wafting on the air.

“You want to buy?” asked the woman.

Tamar nodded and reached for a peach with a luscious crimson glow. Before she could, the woman placed it on the balance pan with two others, fiddled with brass weights on the platform of the scale until it was level, and shoveled the peaches into a paper sack.

Tamar made her way back to the shop where she had seen the dress. A bell attached to the top of the entrance tinkled when she opened it. The faint odor of a meal, of cooking meat, drifted from somewhere in the rear of the shop.

A woman in a dark blue smock came through the heavy drape that hung over the entrance to the back of the shop. She was still chewing. She swallowed, wiped her mouth with a napkin and put it in the pocket of her smock.

“I can help you?”

“I would like to see a dress.”

The woman peered at Tamar and nodded her head. She took the napkin from her pocket and wiped at her mouth again. “You would like to see a dress?”

By the time Tamar left, she had bought three dresses. The last was a delicate aquamarine silk. “Just the color of your eyes,” the saleswoman had said. “You have very good taste.”

And now for shoes, Tamar decided. Shoe stores lined Freiestrasse, one after the other, all with Bally shoes. She found three pair to match the dresses, bought stockings, and a white straw purse with embroidered flowers.

Back at the Euler, Tamar assessed the spoils of her morning foray, hung the clothes in the closet, and lined up the shoes on the closet floor.

Shopping always tired her. She sat at the desk, stared at the drapes marching across the window in measured folds, wondering what she was doing here, how she could find the mosaic in the strangeness of Basel, and then roused herself to dress in her new finery and assail the lobby.

The manager stood near the revolving door talking to a stout matron when Tamar came around the corner from the elevator.

He raised his eyebrow in greeting, bowed to the stout lady and approached Tamar with a welcoming smile.

“Everything is to your satisfaction?” He reached out to shake her hand. “Charles Keller. Welcome to the Euler,” he said with a vigorous shake of her hand.

He glanced toward the clock above the registration desk. “Cocktail time. Will you be my guest?” he asked and gestured in the direction of the bar.

They sat in low chairs at a black glass table in the dim light of the bar. Snatches of German words escaped from the murmur of voices of a man and woman at the far end of the room, soft piano music washed over the room from hidden speakers in the background. Tamar ordered a sherry.

A lighted glass showcase, a vitrine, behind the bar held some remarkable pieces of Greek pottery.

“The owner of the Euler is a collector?” Tamar asked.

“I am the owner.” He gave Tamar a slight nod of the head. “And the manager. And a collector.”

“The pieces in the vitrine are real?”

“Real pottery, not real antiquities. Just very good copies. I once displayed real pieces here, but now in a public place, even here at the Euler….” He held out his hands, palms up and shrugged, “It is not a very good idea.”

“But you collect?”

“Everyone in Basel is a bit of a collector. Here in Basel, we have a fine
Antikenmuseum
. It inspires people to collect.”

“There must be a number of good antiquities dealers in Basel.”

“Of course. There is a fancy shop for tourists near the Art Museum. There is a famous art dealer on Engelstrasse. He acquired most of the collection for Dumbarton Oaks, specializes in Turkish material. He’s retired now, writing a corpus of ancient Byzantine coins. You can only see him by appointment.” He contemplated the vitrine with the pottery for a moment. “The best one,” he said, “the most reliable dealer with the best pieces, is Gilberto Dela Barcolo. He’s on Hohenstrasse, in one of the patrician houses off Engelgasse south of Saint Alban district.”

He looked over Tamar’s shoulder as someone approached the table and he rose to hold out his hand in greeting.

She turned to see a bronzed, compact man with gray smoky eyes.

“Ah. Enzio,” the manager said. “Good to see you back.” He turned to Tamar and indicated the man who had just joined them. “Enzio Egidio.”

Enzio acknowledged the introduction with a slight bow. “At your service. And your name?”

“Tamar Saticoy.”

“American?”

“From California.”

Someone in the lobby caught Keller’s eye. “You will excuse me?” he said, and left them in the bar.

“You want a Campari?” Enzio asked Tamar. His hands were perched on the back of her chair.

“No, I don’t.”

“You flew ten thousand miles and clear across the sea. You need something to soothe the aches and pains of outrageous fortune,” he said, and sat down.

She raised an eyebrow.

“I quote from Guglielmo Shakespeare, the famous Italian poet and playwright,” he said.

“You’re Italian?”

“From Napoli.”

A waiter in black pants and a white shirt came to their table and stood next to Enzio with a pencil poised over a pad. “
Prego
?”

Tamar ordered a bottle of Evian water.

“And a Campari for me.”

Tamar made a face. “Tastes medicinal.”

“I need it for your sake. You must be exhausted.”

“How sympathetic.”

“
Simpatico
is the word.”

“And brash.”

“That too.”

He was trying to be bright and witty, and not quite making it. Tamar felt embarrassed for him. She wanted to say, relax, be yourself, but contemplated him instead in comfortable silence.

He reached into his pocket and took out a packet of American cigarettes, Marlboros, and offered her one. She shook her head.

“No vices at all?” he asked and fiddled with the cigarette.

The waiter brought their drinks, set the water bottle and a glass in front of Tamar and poured some water into it.

“What are you doing in Basel?” Enzio asked.

Tamar sipped from her glass. “I came for the waters.” She put down the glass and made a circle with her fingers with the drops of water on the table. “I collect antiquities. I came to shop.”

“That’s a rich man’s game.” He seemed more at ease now, and leaned back in his chair. “You’re not rich.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You can always tell by the shoes.”

She moved her feet farther under the table.

“You’re wearing Ballys bought locally, not the kind for export.”

“I’m buying antiquities for my museum.”

“You’re a curator?”

“A university professor. Archaeologist.”

He looked skeptical. “Archaeologists don’t buy antiquities. I heard that it’s against their principles.”

“Usually. We had a windfall, a donor who gave us money to start a museum, and he wants it to open with some major pieces.”

“All with the proper provenance, of course.”

Tamar waved the word away with her hand. “Provenance is an art historian’s term.”

“And you don’t approve of art historians?”

“They only care about artifacts as
objets d’arte
, all out of context, all without meaning. As far as they are concerned, authentication comes from a list of previous owners—provenance.”

“And how do you decide about authenticity?”

“From provenience, from the find spot, the site and the location within the site. I want to know what place the artifact had in the life of those who used it, who touched it, who saw it. I want to feel the same awe that they felt when they held it.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I told you, for the museum. You seem to know something about the antiquities trade. You’re a collector?”