of the museum, repeated as he stepped through the door of the conservation lab. Arthur was a hoverer. He gave us all turns, popping in when least expected.
“This head that P.P. just purchased. It’s the head that was stolen a few years ago from a famous Cambodian sculpture. I’m sorry—it looks like the head of that sculpture. That head was broken right off the work while it was still in the museum.” I cursed myself and my tendency to speak before thinking. One was always better off saying as little as possible to Arthur, since he had the innate ability to turn the simplest thought, act, moment into a drama.
He sidled into the small space between us. He was a narrow man, physically and intellectually.
“That isn’t good. We don’t want stolen art in our museum . . .” He began to dither, circling P.P. and the head. P.P.’s jaw locked. So did mine. Philen was impossible.
“I can’t be sure it’s stolen,” I said. “It could be an extremely good copy. I need to do some research, and Tyler should examine it.”
“Tyler,” P.P. said flatly, as if the excess energy that kept him in motion at all times had been drained from him. He held the head more closely to him.
“Conservator,” Arthur said, picking up not only P.P.’s abbreviated style, but also a bit of his lilting accent.
P.P. rolled his eyes. He knew who Tyler was. P.P. practically lived in the museum.
“Yes, once Tyler goes over it and we’re certain it’s the original, then we can decide what to do.” A cramp began to knot my calf, and I pushed up on my toes. I’d been so busy with my upcoming exhibition of Chinese Qing monochrome porcelains, I hadn’t found much time to ride my bike.
“Where is Tyler? This is his lab, why isn’t he here?” Arthur spun around, looking for the missing Tyler. He would have been a great dancer if he wasn’t so uptight. I could see that he was beginning to get his underwear in a knot.
“P.P., you can’t bring stolen art into our museum,” Arthur said primly, circling around the head and P.P. Though he waved his hands around, he didn’t seem interested in touching the head, or admiring its great beauty. Not for the first time, I wondered if Arthur really liked art. He wouldn’t be the first art historian who didn’t. I couldn’t think of anyone else in the museum who thought less about art. Even the guards were always up on current exhibitions and grilled me on what museums I’d visited when I traveled. Our staff parties were permeated with art, with art history charades, more obscure with each passing year, as details of paintings—not just complete paintings—made their way into our charade lexicon.
P.P. glared at him and shifted his body, causing Arthur, in his ever-tightening progress around the room, to run into the worktable. “Didn’t know.”
“Of course he didn’t know,” I said. “We don’t know. Arthur, please, we need to do some research. If it does turn out to be the original head, P.P. will happily return it to the Cambodian government.” I looked meaningfully at P.P. His mouth was set in a harsh line, but he nodded agreement.
“Return it? Without being asked?” Arthur began marching again, gesticulating as he did. “Return it like that famous lintel that was returned to Thailand, or those sculptures to Cambodia a few years ago?”
Arthur’s parts made one view him as a two-dimensional fabrication—a mechanical toy with jerky movements and exaggerated physiognomy. Aquiline nose, a slab of a face, limbs extended like Laurel in that old Laurel and Hardy movie when he was stretched on a rack. Right now the gears in the head of that mechanical toy were moving so fast I feared it would suddenly begin to do a full three-sixty spin.
The grinding of gears in Arthur’s head always aligned with his desire to get attention, to get noticed. Arthur sought affirmation as a way to negotiate himself into Caleb New’s position as the museum’s director. Everything he did, every word he spoke, was an attempt to move him in that direction.
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves, Arthur.” I may be small and young, but I can be forceful. I can also be impulsive, as evidenced by my initial certainty that this was the genuine head. But Arthur was gone, popping out as quickly as he’d popped in, leaving P.P. and me looking at each other, holding the proverbial bag, or in this case, the head. “Uh-oh,” I said.
P.P. scowled and said, accurately and succinctly, “Idiot.” Then he resumed caressing the head. I had to keep reminding myself that the head belonged to him and it wasn’t my place to chastise him for not wearing gloves. Somehow, having the head here in the conservation lab, in the midst of microscope, beakers and brushes, lacquers and paints, all the paraphernalia of the science of restoration and conservation, made his stroking seem all the more incorrect.
“Fake would be good,” P.P. said.
For a second I didn’t understand. “Because you could keep it?”
He nodded, running his finger around and around the whorl of that perfect ear.
“I thought you said it was expensive.”
He shrugged.
There was something he wasn’t telling me. I pulled the gloves back on and took the head from him. It took some strength, not just because the head was heavy, but because P.P. was firmly attached. I turned it upside down as I wrestled it away and looked at the break, but there wasn’t anything unusual about it. It was irregular, rough, one side of the neck extending further than the other. Not cut with a modern saw, or so it seemed. Which was weird, as hadn’t the head been cut from the sculpture?
I looked up and out the high windows that lighted the conservation lab, trying to recall what I knew about the theft. The alarm system malfunctioning, the only guard asleep in his office, the head detached at an old break. Ah, yes, that would explain the uneven surface. I looked back at the neck, where one would expect to find some of the adhesive that had attached the head to the body at the old break. I couldn’t see any, but I would have Tyler check for it, as it was an important clue to whether the piece really was the original.
Then I looked closely at the stone. It appeared to be the good, fine-grained sandstone typical of Cambodian sculptures. It wasn’t concrete or resin mixed with crushed stone and poured into a mold, the way some fakes are created today.
“I’ll put it on Tyler’s priority list if you don’t mind leaving it here for a while,” I said. “He really needs to check it under the microscope. Secondly, do you mind if he chips a tiny piece away from the lower section of the neck? So that he can see how deep the skin of patination is and if it’s irregular, as one would expect from an old piece. You know, since the discoloration wouldn’t be uniform over the surface.”
P.P. didn’t speak, and I realized that he’d mentally answered my first question and wasn’t going to bother to answer my second, impatient, as he always was, with the obvious.
“Sorry, P.P. Let’s go to the registrar’s office and get you a receipt for the piece.”
“Oh, well,” he said as we headed for the door.
“What do you know about the people who sold the head? The person who bought it originally?”
He didn’t answer.
“P.P., don’t get secretive on me now.”
“Never should have shown you,” he sulked, holding the door open for me.
