The Murder in the Museum of Man (5 page)

I remained, of course, noncommittal, except to say out of ordinary politeness when he pressed me, that I would consider a visit to the pavilion to see the changes in the physical plant and to see what they were doing. There is something about the man. His large teeth, perhaps. I pictured him, for a horrifying moment, as a cannibal, feeding with fiendish glee on human flesh. He is certainly the most hirsute person I have ever seen. I mean, the hair of his forearms comes down well over his knuckles. He’s one of those men who shave from one hairline to another. Of course, in a jacket and bow tie at a departmental meeting, he doesn’t look all that different from his colleagues.

As far as that goes, I don’t know of any credentials he has as a trained primate trainer. He began at the pavilion, if I remember correctly, as an assistant in charge of feeding the chimps and gorillas (we had several more of the latter in those days) and cleaning their cages. He has a knack, apparently, for teaching the animals various tricks, and through some highly publicized stunts (he taught an old female chimp how to knit — but not
purl), he has parlayed an essentially janitorial job into something approaching academic respectability, whatever that means these days. He is now, believe it or not, the Ruddy and Phyllis Stein Keeper of Great Apes in the Museum of Man. I would have thought my own position as Recording Secretary warranted endowment before one that involves little more than animal training. But then, I have not sought publicity the way Damon Drex has; nor have I stooped to the kind of genteel beggary needed to shake money out of the sort of people who launder their reputations at places like the MOM. But I am being catty. Our benefactors include many wonderful and disinterested people.

Still, as I stood there listening to him and watching his eyes, I could not rid myself of the notion that Damon Drex might be the culprit. The man certainly looks the part, and I’m sure Cranston Fessing made inquiries about the finances of the pavilion. But isn’t that the insidious thing about a murder like Fessing’s? After a while you start to suspect everyone — Corny Chard, Thad Pilty, Damon Drex, the poor apes themselves. I know a few people probably even think
I
did it. Just yesterday, Marge Littlefield, whom I have known forever, gave me a long, searching glance and then shook her head as though to say,
Not him
. I mean really.

Well, enough of this. I certainly am not going out of my way to provide Mr. Drex with a forum for his chimp show, however cunning the stunts. And, to judge from the interviews Malachy Morin and I conducted this morning with candidates for press assistant, it seems I will be in that position for some time. What pathetic ignorance permeates the world today! One young man, the lobes of his ears arrayed with rings, his hair dyed orange, allowed how he really “grooved” on the idea of working for a “museum of anarchy.” When I corrected his misunderstanding, he nodded knowingly and said, “Yeah, man, I hear what you’re
saying.” So Mr. Drex is going to have to put up with me for a while longer. More important, I’m afraid, is that I will not have the time to devote to working on the history of the museum. Strange, isn’t it, to feel that if I wait much longer it will be too late to write such a history.

Well, enough of this. But Drex’s laugh … it’s the stuff of nightmares.

Speaking of which, I found an anonymous message from someone in the Genetics Lab waiting for me in my e-mail when I returned from lunch today. I am punching it up, as they say, right into this journal:

There have been rumors for some time now, somewhat better punctuated and spelled, I hope, than this one (which I cleaned up for the record), that Stoddard Gottling has been bending if not breaking the formal and informal restraints normally placed on genetics research and applications. But I don’t see what that would have to do with the murder of Cranston Fessing. Unless … Unless the consolidation would mean the termination of some project … No, it’s too fantastical. Or is it? In crime as in art and science and life, one must consider all the possibilities.

I suppose I should send a copy of this communication over to Lieutenant Tracy. But, frankly, I doubt very much that it has anything to do with the Fessing case, about which I can report no breaks. Amazing, isn’t it, how quickly interest in the most hideous of crimes fades away. I haven’t heard from the lieutenant in a week, and life around here has resumed its unpunctuated equilibrium.

Speaking of the late dean, there have been some rather tasteless jokes circulating about his fate. I hear someone has come up with a “Decanal Cookbook” and is soliciting recipes over the e-mail network. Even my friend Izzy Landes has not been impervious to this ghoulish ribaldry. Last Friday I ran into him in the Club library. Over coffee we got to talking about the dean, and about what had happened and what was happening, when he asked me, with that mischievous sidelong glance of his, what I thought “they served Fessing with.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“The wine, Norman, the wine. Was it a red or a white? Red I would think, a Bordeaux, but not a
premier cru.”

I tutted at him, but his face was a moon of mirth. “Really,” he went on, “what are we, after all, red meat or white meat?”

I tutted again and told him he had been spending too much time with Corny Chard.

Well, I must say it’s good to get back to this unofficial Log after nearly a week. I feel as though I could go on writing for another hour. Perhaps, though, I am simply reluctant go out into that good night, which will, I know, remind me of Elsbeth, and I will arrive at the Club in a maudlin state and perhaps drink more wine than is good for me.

Despite a contretemps today with the egregious Mr. Morin and the worthies of the Wainscott Public Relations Office, I have been in an absolute dither of aesthetic bliss since yesterday afternoon. Perhaps I should describe the unpleasantness first.

Upon arrival this morning I learned that the university has appointed someone named Oliver Scrabbe to succeed Cranston Fessing as Visiting Dean to the Museum of Man. All well and good. (Although I had hoped that the university might desist in its plans after what happened to Fessing, not that good should come from evil, although it often does.) At any rate, a Mr. Bells or Balls in the Wainscott Public Relations Office called to tell me that he was faxing over Dean Scrabbe’s CV and that I was to draft a press release announcing the appointment and send it over to them for approval. I refused on the simple grounds that I do not
report to anyone at Wainscott and that the appointment is being made by the university and not by the museum.

As I should have expected, they went over my head to Malachy Morin, who came lumbering into my office with a “what’s this about our not writing the press release for the new dean?” I told him quite simply that I don’t see why we should do their work for them, especially since they, along with everyone else, deserted me when there was a real public relations crisis. I insinuated that his toadying to the Wainscott bureaucracy was a form of cowardice, especially for someone as big and strong as he was. It was enough to make him beat a quick retreat, and I nearly felt sorry for him when his secretary, Doreen, an attractive but hard-faced, gum-chewing type, brought me a page of the most pathetic copy. Apparently he had tried to get her to write it. I finally decided to help them. It would have been just like him to put the thing out under my name, and I don’t want to get off on a poor footing myself with Oliver Scrabbe, who must be a brave man, considering Dean Fessing’s fate.

I don’t really know much about the man. He doesn’t play tennis, as far as I know, and I haven’t seen him at the Club. It would appear from his
curriculum vitae
that he is another scholar turned administrator. The title of his Ph.D. thesis, “Elements of Philo-Semitism in the Writings of Adolph Schicklgruber: A Deconstructionist Reading of
Mein Kampf,”
indicates he is some kind of language theorist. I assume he will be going over the late dean’s files, including copies of my memoranda to Dr. Commer and the Board. Somehow I will have to call his attention to my views on the proposed consolidation in a way that doesn’t sound repetitious. Perhaps I could talk Dr. Commer into a response to the Interim Status Report, which I will write, of course, and in which I will stress our wholehearted endorsement of the late dean’s recognition of our unique status
vis-à-vis
the university. Perhaps I can get to it next week, although I will be spending
more time with Malachy Morin, interviewing another batch of candidates for the press assistant position. All this busywork. I simply must find time if I am to start work on the history of the museum.

But I also have some good news. I received by registered mail yesterday morning a miniature Ming Buddha carved in ivory. It’s no more than an inch and half high in a full lotus position, and the ivory has aged beautifully, giving the Gautama’s genial face an old and wise aspect. And while it’s going to cost me a small ransom (I have it on spec from Remstein’s of New York), I have such a perfect place for it that I will simply have to have it. The wonderful thing about collecting is that one can indulge and invest at the same time, although I cannot conceive of cashing in a single one of my precious things before I cash in myself. Anyway, I showed the piece to Esther Sung Lee, whose office is right next to mine. I know it is genuine, of course, Eliot Remstein being who he is; but I don’t think I have seen Esther so enthusiastic about a piece of mine since the white Qing snuff bottle with a dragon carved in blue overlay that I acquired some ten years ago. (Esther also knows that my collection will go to the museum.)

I left work early and hurried home with my treasure safely tucked under my arm in its packing box. I knew exactly where I was going to put it. For several years now, I have been nurturing a small grove of red cedar bonsai arranged in a semicircle at one end of a redwood planter measuring roughly two by three feet. The sides come up about six inches, giving it the appearance, what with soil, moss that passes for grass, and sand that simulates gravel, of a walled garden. Not long ago I found for it a shallow dish of milky jade that I set into a bed of tiny pebbles so that it looks exactly like a goldfish pool. Well, I cannot tell you how exquisitely my little Buddha fits in, seated just on the lawn in front of the trees contemplating the pool. If only I could find some tiny, tiny goldfish!

The arrangement is such a success I have placed it on the gateleg table in the window alcove of the living room. I think it calls for a dinner party. On the other hand, perhaps it doesn’t. I already think of my little garden as a refuge, a place in my mind where, serene as Buddha, inhaling the fragrance of cedars, I contemplate the peace of the void.

Speaking of voids, the fog appears to have kept Mr. Drex and his beasts at bay for the night. And there’s a concert at the Conservatory to look forward to, even though the Newhumber Players will more than likely make a hash of the Dvořák Piano Quintet in A, and there’s the obligatory piece of noise by a student of Beaumont, and then one of those infinitely sad, infinitely beautiful late pieces by Brahms. Strange, when I think of it, how Elsbeth never cared much for Brahms.