The Medusa Stone

Chapter 4

Dr. Helen Barry smiled contentedly as she walked through the mass of visitors at the British Museum. Since the new exhibition of Antique Greek Art had been on display in the museum, there had been an influx of not only local but global attendants. Most of the attention garnered from the academic community, though, came from the three life- sized sculptures featured at the beginning of the exhibit. Like Soula Fidikos, one of the two sponsors lending their own private collections to the British Museum for the next three weeks, Prof. Barry found the unknown pieces alien and eerie.

Then again, with the interest shown in the works, she was not about to complain. Ticket sales rocketed for the private lecture Dr. Heidmann offered to collectors once a day. Public donations peaked and new benefactors came to the fore from various countries never before involved with the arts in Britain. Most of the latter was apparently due to the direct influence of Dr. Heidmann through his own ex-colleagues or via sponsors previously assisting him in procuring some of his unique items.

“Don’t look so serious, Helen,” a female voice reprimanded, starting the poor curator. Helen slammed her hand on her chest and caught her breath, “Jesus, Soula! Don’t do that!”

Soula Fidikos laughed heartily and comforted the curator with a quick hug. “I’m sorry,” she apologized, still cackling by herself. “Why are you so jumpy? Look,” she motioned to the turn-out, “the exhibit is a rousing success, my darling. You have nothing to be anxious about. I venture to guess you have not had this kind of attention in this old museum in years.”

“No, about that you are dead right, Soula,” Helen admitted, still steadying her heart rate. “I just cannot help but feel creeped out but Heidmann’s three statues. And what he calls them just freaks me the hell out.”

“I saw that,” Soula scoffed indifferently. “Where do you acquire a piece called ‘Son of Zyklon-B’? What are the other two? Something that shows how ambivalent Heidmann was in naming them…”

Helen turned to face Soula in front of a large painting, pretending to discuss the artwork, but she was of the same mind as the Greek millionaires. “The others are called ‘Klónos²’ — one name for two statues — which is Greek, is it not?”

Soula nodded. “It means ‘clone’ in my mother tongue, but here is another oddity. The two statues are probably the reason for the small number two, you know, making it ‘Clone Squared’.”

Helen was flabbergasted. Now it made more sense to her.

“Ah, I thought ‘Klónos’ was Heidmann’s erroneous interpretation of Kronos, the Greek Titan,” she told Soula, who shook her head slowly.

“I thought so too at first, but the fact that there are two of the same size and features explained it to me. Dr. Heidmann is quite a jumpy fellow, have you noticed? I could be wrong, but he appears to be anxious when he is around us,” Soula remarked, looking around her crowded surroundings to see if he was there.

Helen smiled, “He confided in me about that, actually. And it’s your fault.”

“He did?” Soula asked.

“Yes, he told me that being in the presence of someone as knowledgeable and upstanding as you made him very nervous. Look, I’ve known the man a few years, and he has never been timid, but I understand that he finds your stature intimidating and captivating altogether,” Helen explained on behalf of her old acquaintance.

“Bullshit. It’s the money,” Soula rasped in her strong voice, looking highly amused nonetheless.

The two women chuckled in front of the prominent painting they pretended to discuss, which is where Helen’s assistant found them.

“Professor Barry! Professor, thank God I found you. I have been looking everywhere for you,” the small female undergraduate sighed in relief. “Begging your pardon for the interruption.”

“No problem, Gail,” Helen replied. “What’s the matter, love?”

“It could be nothing, but you know me. I just want to make sure you are kept up to date with things,” Gail said.

“Is this a private matter?” Soula asked. “Should I excuse myself?”

“No, no, Mrs. Fidikos, by no means,” Gail protested cordially. “I merely wanted to let Prof. Barry know that the weather channel predicted an earthquake that could strike London within the next 24 hours.”

“An earthquake?” Soula frowned.

“Thank you, Gail. I will look into it and see if we need to take precautions, alright?” Helen assured her assistant.

“Okay, Professor. See you in the office,” Gail replied, turning on her heel and heading for the administrative offices.

Soula and Helen shared a long look, both trying to determine the legitimacy and urgency of such a claim. Helen drew a deep breath.

“I suppose, just for safety sake we should get the maintenance people out to secure the sculptures and the vases on display,” she told Soula.

“Alright, you do that. I have a previous engagement to get to in Oxford, so I will take off now. Please, let me know immediately if there is anything I should be made aware of, Helen,” Soula requested, laying her jewel-adorned hand on Helen Barry’s shoulder.

“I shall,” Helen nodded.

She made her way to the medium sized display chamber especially laid out for the ancient Greek Art exhibition, where both Soula and Heidmann’s collections were tastefully presented. The room was decorated in such a way as to denote a feeling of antiquity as if it was, in fact, a temple from millennia past. Even the air conditioning was altered to dispense the scent of spices, mud and incense every few hours to effectively capture the smell of old papyrus and musty sarcophagi to give the exhibit an authentic feel.

Even though the chamber was occupied by at least 60 beguiled visitors, milling in aimless intrigue to examine the astonishing fluency and perfection of the artworks, Helen still felt uneasy at the sight of Heidmann’s works.

Among the murmuring onlookers, she moved to make her way to Dr. Heidmann’s section of the display, checking the sturdiness of the pieces and how they were fixed to the pedestals rigged by the maintenance staff that constructed it. It looked sound to her, but of course, Helen was no expert.

She could not help but once more fix her eyes on the amazingly accurate sculptures with the strange names. In fact, she was quite excited to see Dr. James Heidmann again to ask him how he decided on the names. On the other hand, she wondered if they were already named so when he acquired them.

Either way, their identification made them no less mesmerizing in form. There were three in total, in the way of statues. The other pieces Heidmann possessed existed in the form of pottery and etched plaques in limestone and clay. Helen and Soula had examined the fine perfection of human posture and resilience the day the pieces were delivered. However, it was peculiar, according to Soula Fidikos, that two of the figures did not contain Epirus limestone or traces of the more durable Pentelikon marble, which assured that the artworks would not crack or crumble too easily. Yet here they were, thousands of years old according to their records, in good condition.

She could not help but find them completely spellbinding, akin to the grotesque brilliance resident at the Musée Fragonard in Paris. In fact, Dr. Heidmann’s three sculptures reminded her very much of the flayed cadavers modelled by 18th Century French anatomist Honoré Fragonard. Perhaps this was why she felt an eerie fascination for them. It was like witnessing the aftermath of a highway pile-up. She could not look away without scrutinizing the most trivial of aspects about the figures, down to the visible pours on their skins. Helen shivered from the chill she felt as she studied the two entwined statues, a mere foot away from the other sculpture.

At the foot of their platform, their strange appellation still confounded her. It seemed to beckon for attention — ‘Klónos²’.

Helen looked at the statue on the left in comparison to the one of the right. They were precisely similar in height and build, but they lacked the intrinsic muscle definition of the era, appearing almost robust. However, their musculature was extremely well displayed in perfect anatomical prowess. For a moment, Helen pictured Michelangelo’s ‘David’ as a warrior or centurion, and that would be what ‘Klónos²’would resemble.

Had it not been for her intricate knowledge of Greek and Italian art in general, Helen would not have been able to tell the difference between ‘Klónos²’ and ‘Son of Zyklon-B’. She could barely discern the discrepancies, yet she could tell exactly where they differed.

“The interwoven bodies of ‘Klónos²’ depict not conjoined twins, but two men fused into a forced symbiosis, although of the same species. No facial features are present on either head, yet the sculptor gave them distinct jaw lines to depict their independence,” Dr. Heidmann thundered behind Helen, sending her into a frightful jolt.

Feeling stupid at her reaction, she chuckled along with the amused group of people who followed the lecturer to his pieces for a more in-depth tutorial.

“My apologies, Prof. Barry,” Dr. Heidmann smiled. “We did not mean to scare you back to the Stone Age.”

The people in his group smiled apologetically at the curator as she shook her head sheepishly. “I’m sorry, Dr. Heidmann. I was just…”

“Yes, I’m sure they do set one up for a good scare, don’t they?” he said loudly to accommodate his followers as well. The group mumbled at the startling effigies and soon forgot about the curator, who elected to tag along and get an idea of how Heidmann himself perceived the works.

“In effect,” he continued professionally, “they are a symbol of socialist defeat, not so? Rather, I would like to think that the artist wished to portray the efficacy of dual ambition when assimilated into one ideology.”

Helen noted the posture of the two figures, seemingly reaching for the sky while Heidmann’s words trailed off in her head. Both faces were blank, the heads earless and the bodies were nude while their feet were nailed together and their legs bound by thick rope, excellently carved from limestone in pristine detail.

“What gives the sculptures a distinguished image from the Hellenistic look, as you will see, is the manner of carving uniform locks on their heads, unlike that of famous busts of that time, capturing the human properties of philosophers and gods,” he preached as he pointed out the other exemplary pieces from Soula Fidikos’ collection in the chamber.

The people nodded in agreement and Helen took notice of these small details for the first time. The hair on ‘Klónos²’ was in fine, myriads of stripes painstakingly applied in the limestone. Only now did she realize how truly unique these pieces were.

“Why did the artist bother to give them hair if they weren’t important enough to have faces?” asked one of the younger members of the group, a slight built Scottish lad in his high school years.

James Heidmann took a moment as everyone waited. Finally, he shrugged with a humorous smirk, “Who knows, maybe the sculptor was a woman, seeing men as faceless and yet insisting on grooming them.”

The youth looked satisfied with the evasive comment as the rest of the group found Heidmann’s response a polite way of admitting that he did not know. Helen shook her head amusedly, but she had a question of her own.

“Dr. Heidmann, when you acquired these pieces,” she asked loudly to get everyone’s attention, “were they mounted upright or lying down?”

He cast Prof. Barry a look of bewilderment, “What difference does that make, Professor?” He tried to smile to maintain the light hearted nature of the lecture, but she could see that he was not pleased with her question at all, for some reason.

“No reason, really, other than curiosity, Doctor. I was just wondering, because if you procured ‘Klónos²’ in a lying position, that maybe that was the sculptor’s intention, that’s all,” Helen Barry noted. “Maybe the artist’s meaning would transpire in different ways if the piece was in its original position.”

“I’m sure that was of no consequence, Prof. Barry,” Heidmann answered abruptly. “The sculpture still exhibits the exact same features, which makes it irrelevant.”

“Of course,” Helen conceded. And with that she turned to go and take care of some administrative work, smiling to herself.