The Murder in the Museum of Man (17 page)

From defecation, the discussion moved to food. Professor Pilty mentioned quite casually that there would be a wild boar roasting over a simulated fire in the middle of the encampment. Professor Brattle asked if a man or a woman would be shown turning the spit. When Professor Pilty said they hadn’t decided, Professor Brattle pointed out that to have a woman doing it would reinforce stereotypes that a woman’s place was in the
kitchen, however rudimentary the kitchen. Izzy Landes countered that to show a man tending such an impressive culinary chore might reinforce the impression that most of the great chefs of the world were men.

His remark set off a lively discussion about model roles and role models in the course of which Professor Dearth told Professor Pilty that he objected to the representation of a wild boar on the spit as it “would strike a very strong Gentile note.” Professor Landes guffawed at that, saying, “Ariel, be serious. You’ll want to show them observing
kashrut
next.” An incredulous Professor Pilty asked Professor Dearth if he were really suggesting that the Neanderthals be portrayed as members of the Jewish faith. Undaunted, Professor Dearth responded that he was concerned about the impact the sight of a roasting pig would have on Jewish children visiting the museum. Izzy Landes wondered aloud whether Professor Dearth was thinking of the Neanderthals as a Reform or an Orthodox congregation and, if the latter, would they not have to wear yarmulkes made of fur, which Professor Athol would no doubt object to. This time Mr. Onoyoko’s amusement reached the table-pounding stage. When Professor Pilty remarked that he understood many Jews eat pork, Professor Dearth replied that whether or not that was true, the presumption of “depicting a roasting pig shows precisely the lack of sensitivity that has this committee very concerned.” Professor Pilty, with a shrug of helplessness, said that to show them roasting a bovid would offend Hindus. Professor Landes, who seemed nearly as amused by all this as Mr. Onoyoko, added that a butchered horse would offend some important alumni. Professors Dearth and Athol said nearly in unison that they failed to see the humor in what was being discussed. Professor Landes made a face and said, “Oh, for God’s sakes, Ariel, we are descended from Gentiles.” For that matter, Professor Pilty added, we are all descended from apes. In an aside that most of us heard, Professor Dearth said, “The apes I don’t mind.”

The matter might have ended there had not Professor Chard, with utter seriousness, proposed that “we show them eating another Neanderthal.” He said there was good evidence from the Krapina excavation, a site in Croatia, “that Neanderthal man” (Professor Brattle: “And woman …”) “yes, yes, of course, and woman, practiced systematic cannibalism.” When Professor Brattle asked him if he was being serious, Professor Chard said that the diorama should be realistic, that it shouldn’t distort man’s … and woman’s past. He said it would be instructive to show them butchering a body, perhaps cutting off strips to hang up for drying as jerky. He went into such gruesome detail — “the heart would be cut out and eaten raw by the priest-god in the manner of the Rangu on Loa Hoa or burned in an offering to the insatiable gods in the manner of the ancient Aztecs” — that we all listened in a rapt, horrified silence. I couldn’t help thinking, as the bandy little man prattled on, that he was describing what he and perhaps others had done to Dean Fessing. Even the irrepressible Mr. Onoyoko stopped laughing as a morbid hush thickened in the room. Professor Landes, no doubt trying to lance the ballooning absurdity of Chard’s speech, remarked that if these Neanderthal cannibals were going to be shown keeping a kosher kitchen, it might not do to have them eating a Gentile. Professor Dearth, with some real anger, said he did not find Professor Landes’s remark funny in the least. But Mr. Onoyoko nearly had to be helped off the floor.

During this presentation I covertly watched Thad Pilty. Heretofore, I would have expected him to dismiss such suggestions as Chard’s with a jesting remark. Instead he listened attentively, his glance keen, as though with some secret knowledge. There seemed something darkly significant in the look he exchanged with Chard when Ms. Parkers interrupted the latter’s cannibal ramble with “Professor Pilty, what do you think about representing early men and women as cannibals?” I wasn’t altogether mollified when he replied, “There’s certainly some very suggestive evidence indicating
cannibalism, even at the Lucille site. But I think the issue might best be dealt with on one of the informational plaques accompanying the diorama.”

Professor Brattle said finally we would have to move on to other items, as “this whole line of discussion is in really poor taste considering what has happened to Dean Fessing.” Ms. Parkers asked, Why couldn’t the cave men be shown roasting a wild sheep? That, she said, should offend no one. Professor Athol said it would offend him, to which Professor Landes retorted, “Everything offends you.”

In concluding the meeting Professor Brattle announced that she had talked to President Twill about having the committee address itself to “the underlying conditions at the museum that had fostered an atmosphere in which the tragedy could occur that had befallen Dean Fessing.” She also announced that Professor Ray Mooney, a former associate of the Masters and Johnson establishment, and perhaps the Reverend Farouk Karoom would join the hearings in the future.

As I’ve remarked, it was all a waste of goodwill and good time. Despite that, I find myself, surprisingly enough, with more than a touch of sympathy for Ariel Dearth’s position. While he is overly sensitive, I think, to criticisms, overt and insinuated, regarding his coreligionists, the depiction of an ancestor of
Sus scrofa
as standard Paleolithic fare does suggest a dietary orientation bordering on the invidious. His objections, surely, have more weight than those of Professor Athol. But even Athol’s point about wearing fur shows what a minefield the diorama could turn out to be in this age of highly evolved sensitivities.

The fact remains, however, that the committee failed to address any issues of substance. There was no discussion about how the construction is going to disrupt the rest of the permanent exhibits; what it is going to cost; whether Mr. Onoyoko’s support is in the best long-term interests of the museum; where the temporary exhibitions are going to be placed henceforth; and
last, but by no means least, where exactly we are going to hold the Curatorial Ball. Really, I am more than half tempted to send a letter to the Board of Governors to arrange a special meeting with an agenda addressing exactly these questions.

I have to confess that, curiously enough, I missed the sore thumb of Bertha Schanke’s presence today, even though I did manage to reach over and grab the Blueberry Filled before anyone else.

Ah well, the students, bless them, are gone for the summer. The rhododendrons have begun their dignified blaze. Honeysuckle, mock orange, and bridal wreath scent the air. Commencement culminates tomorrow with an impressive array of distinguished honorands and speakers. I will attend as usual (I am still, technically, a graduate student at the university), wearing my biscuit-colored linen suit and a rakish boater I reserve just for the occasion. My friend Izzy dismisses it all as an academic Mardi Gras, a sentiment to which I respectfully demur. I see it rather as a day when the members of the academy take a moment to acknowledge themselves and their achievements before withdrawing for the summer to retreats far and near for a well-deserved rest.

Speaking of which, I am determined to put this Fessing business aside for a long weekend whilst I take a well-earned vacation of my own to work, at home, on the history.

I returned to work this morning refreshed and inspired from having taken a long weekend off. It was a blessed relief to get away from the sump of suspicion and fear into which the Fessing case has turned this venerable establishment. I made and kept, with
only a few lapses, a determination not to dwell on that grisly business. Perhaps, as some have ventured, the dean’s demise was strictly an off-campus affair. And while one always wants to see the guilty brought to justice, I might not regret seeing the whole affair simply fade away.

It was a gorgeous time to take off. My roses are just coming into their own. I do nothing fancy, a few teas and a wall of climbers. The resident mockingbird is a regular Caruso. And the weather was like a mellow Beaujolais. It allowed me to spend most of the days in the shade of my garden sifting through, poring over, utterly spellbound by a banker’s box full of diaries, records, letters, memorabilia, and so on having to do with the founding of the museum. History, or at least the history of the MOM, turns out not to be quite as tidy as I had imagined. In fact, I have made a most extraordinary discovery regarding the museum and fear my scruples will be tested if I am to render an accurate account of its origins.

As I related not long ago, I have unearthed the log of the
Silver Fleece
, which for some years was under Captain Reuben Remick Riley, one of the Remicks of Boston. Riley, it turns out, was an accomplished explorer and botanist in his own right (he corresponded with Darwin and Wallace and was an early advocate of the theory of evolution). In his log he relates a story altogether at variance with the official account of what happened to Nathaniel, who was thought to have gone down with his ship off Loa Hoa. In the winter of 1875 Riley had occasion to explore those same distant shores where Nathaniel’s ship had come to grief. He reports in his meticulously kept log being treated “with exceptional civility” by the Rangu, “who showed me every courtesy, including the company of their choicest maids.” It appears that this particular tribe were in the custom of venerating the skulls of their former chieftains, which they kept prominently displayed on raised platforms of stonework of considerable grandeur. Riley records his surprise at finding that one of the skulls
“evinced a large gold tooth and prominent deeply clifted [
sic
] jaw that were distinguishing marks of my late and still lamented cousin.” After much palaver Riley succeeded in trading “a spyglass, several rifles, a barrel of nails, and a quantity of rum” for the skull. He also reports hearing about a mountain village where blue eyes and sandy hair were common among the populace. His log recounts how they searched for this village up and down steeply wooded ravines “to the point of exhaustion and exasperation before returning to the
Fleece.”

Not long afterwards, Riley came back from his expedition with the gold-toothed skull and stories about the blue-eyed natives. This began, from what I have been able to gather, a royal family row. Sarah, widow of Othniel, getting on in years and the “reigning matriarch,” as one account puts it, would not hear of having this “heathen relic” interred in the family vault in Hope Cemetery. In a letter to her daughter Eudoxia that I chanced across, Sarah castigates Riley, saying he was not really a Remick but a Riley and “who are these Rileys, anyway?” Eben, however, was convinced the skull was that of his brother, a fact he noted several times in his diary and in letters to other family members, notably his eldest son, Thomas, to whom he wrote, “I know it to be Nathaniel and I cannot in good conscience, after these kindly, untutored savages have made him an object of veneration, simply stick him in the ground.”

He decided not long afterwards to establish an institution “dedicated to the study of man and his artifacts, among the treasured objects of which will be my late brother’s noble skull with the sole condition that it never be put on public display.” From that unexpected grit, the pearl of this institution began. In making subscriptions among the first families of Seaboard to support and supply the museum, Eben dissembled its original purpose, i.e., as a place of honor for what remained of his brother’s remains.

In this matter, I think my duty is clear. I must not quail in
making a full account of the incident, if only because, without it, the museum might not have come into being. I have filled out a requisition for the skull and sent it to Alger Wherry, who is in charge of the Skull Collection. (The MOM has several thousand skulls, one of the largest cataloged skull collections in North America, if I’m not mistaken.) I will need to have it examined by Professor Duggerson, who, though retired now, was an eminent anthropometrist in his day. Surely he would be able to tell if the skull is that of a native of Polynesia or Seaboard. And surely a forensic dentist should be able to determine whether the gold tooth was fitted to the jaw where it is now or torn from the original owner by some warrior chieftain and stuck in his own mouth. I will have to deploy the most careful language if I am to be both honest and edifying in telling this part of the story. Why is it, I wonder, that there’s always a fly in what we think is the purest of ointments?

Speaking of flies in ointments, I returned to find a most curious transmission from Pan House, ostensibly keyed by one of the beasts I can hear shrieking below in their exercise yard. Here, for the record: