The Magyar Venus

CHAPTERNINE

August 19

This cave is proving much more fruitful than the last. The work, while slow, has gone rather well this month, with much progress being made. We have continued to dig down and have reached a depth of approximately six feet now. We have found some potsherds near the surface, and some crude implements of stone lower down. We have also found some indications of fire, and a skull that I believe to be that of a cave bear, but no sign of human bones. We have not yet reached bedrock, and so I remain optimistic that we will find the evidence of early man I so devoutly hope for. I hope so. Summer is wearing on, and my time here is limited to fair weather.

I have some help with the digging at last, the excavation team now being constituted as follows: Zoltan Nddasdi, second son of my landlord who is interested, as I am, in science, Peter and Pal Fekete, sons of the redoubtable Fekete Neni, and of the same good character, and S. B. Morison. Peter's wife, a lovely girl from the village by the name of Piroska, brings us our midday meal so that we may continue working.

While the others rest after the meal, I walk. I find it calms me, although today I came to a place where it is said that lovers, fated to be apart, leap to their deaths. If one can forget that, the vista is spectacular. I wonder how desperate these lovers must be to cast themselves off the cliff.

September 17/18

Mihaly Kovacs's green Camry was found two twists and turns away from where I'd parked my car, after I'd led police to the spot where I'd found him. His head had been bashed in. I suppose if I hadn't spent a half hour or so huddled in the cave, it might have been possible to save him, but I doubt it, given the good thirty minutes or so it took me to drive back down to a village and make myself sufficiently understood that police were called. After I found the spot again, with some difficulty, the police had a good look around, while one of them, who spoke a little English, sat me down on a log and asked me a lot of questions. I couldn't understand a word the others were saying, but I could tell they'd reached the same conclusion I had. Kovacs had tried to edge along the rock face, just as I had, but in his case, he hadn't quite managed it.

I was in a turmoil of conflicting emotions, and thoughts that ranged all over the map as well. My first thought was that I'd been very lucky. Those unnerving feelings I'd had weren't just paranoia after all. Kovacs had been following me. I just wished I knew why. Given he'd been prepared to track me all the way into the Biikks and up the side of a hill on to a narrow rock face meant he must have been pretty serious about it. Had he come to do me in because he believed I really had found some anomaly in the records on the Venus and was going to get him sent to jail? That could only mean that there was something wrong, and so far I hadn't found it. Given the developments in my love life, I wasn't sure I wanted to.

The other thought I had, and one that there was no point in trying to discuss with anybody in my immediate vicinity, was that there seemed to be rather too many people taking headers off high places. Yes, the ledge was very narrow, and yes, it was slippery. He hadn't had the shoes for the expedition, that I knew. His city shoes were the second thing I'd seen, right after I'd stepped on his arm. He hadn't known where I was going. Even I hadn't known only a few hours before I left. I hadn't told anyone where I was going, either. He couldn't have come prepared.

I asked the young policeman what he thought had happened, and he seemed to think it was all pretty clear. The man had fallen, pure and simple. He did, however, have to ask me to go with him to the police station to discuss one or two things.

I spent several hours in Miskolc, a city that stretches on endlessly and not in a particularly attractive way. But maybe it was my mood. While I waited for them to check that my passport was valid, I was asked a number of questions about what I was doing in the Biikks. I told then I had Hungarian friends in Toronto who had raved about how beautiful they were, that I loved hiking and climbing, and that I'd just decided to go and have a look. They asked me if I'd come alone. I said yes. They asked if that wasn't a bit unusual for a woman. I just shrugged.

They asked me several times if I'd come with Kovacs. I said no. I told them I'd stayed at the Flora Hotel the night before, and that I'd been alone, something I thought the hotel would verify. I then waited while they checked. They did not ask me if I knew the victim, which was a jolly good thing, because I had no idea what I would say. If they found out later, I'd just have to pretend I hadn't understood them, which was not so far-fetched, because by and large I couldn't. All the while they were asking, they kept looking at the car rental papers, my passport, my driver's license, my birth certificate. This was clearly a country in which papers matter a very great deal.

Then I waited some more. I picked up the diaries and reread the sections on the Biikks.

September 14

Today is the most exceptional of days, so much so that my hand shakes as I write this. Our work, undertaken at considerable inconvenience has reached a happy conclusion. I will put it simply. We have found a skeleton in the second cave! It is, I am certain, very old, and a most distinguished individual, judging from the decoration of the cadaver. On the bones there are traces of a red substance, and it is much garlanded with necklaces and bracelets, made, I believe, of shells. What is particularly interesting is that we have some idea of how this person died. There is a smallish stone which has been worked into a point and surprisingly sharp, that, for all the body has been disturbed, it is still possible to hypothesize once rested between the ribs. It can only be that this person was stabbed and died of the wound.

With the skeleton we have found a carving, the like of which I have never seen, but very fine in character. It is of a woman, but unfortunately much damaged, except for the head and part of the torso. It is, I believe, of some sort of bone or perhaps ivory. I am much taken with it, not just because it is beautiful, but because it is an indication that this man and those of his time, capable of such artistry, are worthy ancestors indeed. That this object could have been carved with the crude tools we have found in the same stratum as the skeleton is a wonder.

My companions are quite as excited as I. We will carry the skeleton down to Lillafured to study it more carefully.

"IS LILLAFURED FAR from here?" I asked my English-speaking policeman.

"Not far, no," he said. "It is very beautiful."

"I'd like to see it," I said.

"You can go now," he said. "No climbing on rocks, please, alone." I went. The restriction was just fine with me.

Lillafured is indeed beautiful, situated as it is where two rivers meet, in a long and narrow gorge with waterfalls cascading out of dense woods. It has a rather grandiosely large and semi-elegant hotel in a turn-of-the-century hunting lodge kind of way, the Palota, in which I had no trouble getting a room. Indeed, it looked as if the season in Lillafured was almost at an end. It had a kind of "last days at Marienbad" feeling what with the spa downstairs and the dining room empty except for a few desultory visitors like me, and except for the decor, which was what Clive would call ye olde Englishe, a medieval theme with the waiters in silly costumes. I suppose it might, under different circumstances, be rather romantic there, but right now, romance was far from my mind. I called the hotel in Budapest and asked for Morgan.

"Where are you?" she said.

"Lillafured," I said.

"Lilla what?"

"It's a town in the Biikks where Piper stayed," I said. "When he was digging in the caves."

"Have you found the cave yet?"

"I'm afraid not. I did find a body, though."

"What?"

"Some guy fell," I said. "I had to spend most of the day in a police station, and I am still a little shaken, so I decided not to drive back to Budapest tonight."

"I guess not," she said. "You poor thing."

"How did you all do on Piper's house?" I said, trying not to burst into tears at this expression of sympathy.

"This is really difficult. Grace keeps saying that we mustn't complain in her usual schoolmarmish way, and Diana keeps grumbling that this is just not possible, because there have been two wars since Piper lived here, and the city was rather badly bombed. Both points of view have some validity, I suppose. Cybil on the other hand is right into this. She's convinced she's lost five pounds already. I can't tell you how far we walked. My feet will never recover."

"Does the term sensible shoes mean anything to you?" I said.

"No, it doesn't," she replied. "Despite all of the above, we have three possibles. We figured out from our 1900 book that Leopold korut is now Szent Istvan, St. Stephen, kbrut. Then Grace and I walked north and west from the Basilica—also called Szent Istvan, by the way—while Cybil and Diana walked in from the Danube near the Parliament buildings. We think the house has to be a little bit north of the Parliament, actually. There's one place on a street called Honved utca, and another one on a street called Falk Miksa utca. The third is on a street that crosses both, Marko I think it's called."

"Did you say Falk Miksa?" I said.

"Yes," she said. "Neoclassical building just up from the Parliament. Do you know it?"

"I think so," I said. Of course I did.

"Are you all right?" she said.

"Yes," I said. "I wish I was in Budapest right now, though. The hotel is practically empty and it's starting to rain. But Piper was here, so I'll have a look around and come back in time for dinner tomorrow."

"That reminds me," she said. "I picked up your messages. You're invited to dinner with Laurie Barrett and Jim McLean. Do you know these people?"

"I met Laurie in the Gerbeaud," I said. "That's nice of her. Give me the number and I'll call her."

"There's another message, too," she said. "From Karoly Molnar. Perhaps you know him too."

"See you tomorrow," I said.

"Hold it!" she said. "Since when was Karoly in Budapest?"

"A couple of days, I think. Gotta go, though. This call may be expensive."

"No, you don't," she said. "I'll reimburse you. How would he know where we were?"

"Frank told him," I said. "And don't bother asking me who told Frank, because I don't know. I'd like to, though."

"So would I," she said. "I'd vote for Cybil."

"Talk to you later," I said. She sounded genuinely surprised about Karoly and Frank, but right now I was too tired to think straight, and I wasn't convinced my antenna for deceit was working as well as it should.

I ate my dinner in the medieval-themed dining room which was in the basement, when it came right down to it, a round, tower-shaped room with stained glass windows that were supposed to represent territories stolen from Hungary over the years. The waiters' costumes had not improved any since I'd peeked in on my arrival. I sat there feeling as if the walls were moving in on me. I suppose spending time hiding out in caves will do that to you, especially if you find dead people when you venture forth. I was more shaken by what had happened than I would ever be prepared to admit out loud. It was bad enough that he was dead. What was worse was that I had no idea why he'd followed me. I'd made him very nervous, asking all those questions about the Venus's provenance. He knew where my hotel was. If he wanted to say something, why didn't he just talk to me there? If I'd really rattled some skeletons on the subject of the Venus, maybe he intended to kill me, and a nicely isolated spot in the country was the place to do it. Maybe it was a really lucky break for me that he'd fallen.

Besides me, there was a family of six obviously enjoying their meal, and another solitary diner nearby, a rather robust woman of about sixty with rosy cheeks and awfully sensible shoes. "Enjoying your stay?" she said, in German-accented English.

"I just got here," I said. "Late this afternoon."

"Here for the hiking, are you?" she said. "Or is it the caves?"

"I've seen enough caves," I said, in something of an understatement.

"Hiking, then," she barked. "Lots of fresh air. It's supposed to be a sunny day tomorrow. You should get out. You look a little pale."

I felt pale. Having said that, I did not feel much like hiking. I did, however, want someone to talk to, seeing as how I was going slightly barmy all by myself. "Perhaps you could tell me a relatively easy route to get me started," I said.

"All the hiking around here is easy compared to what I'm used to," she said. "Although for you—"

"I'm just a beginner," I said.

"I'll tell you my favorite, then, shall I? Nice vistas, that sort of thing. At your age you should still be up to it. Bring some color to your cheeks."

"Okay," I said. That I was participating at all in this conversation showed just how desperate I was for someone to talk to.

She then proceeded to give me directions, something about walking out the northeast side of the hotel property, along the highway, which wasn't much of one at this point, crossing the Hamor Lake dam, then up to some peak. "Lovely view over the valley of Also-Hamor," she said. "There's a legend about the place. There was a mill at the base of the cliff. The miller took a very young wife, who loved another, a young man from the area. In some versions, the young lovers threw themselves off so they could be together in heaven or some hogwash like that. In the other, the miller climbed up on the cliff because he suspected his wife of infidelity, and when he saw the young man creep into the house, threw himself off in despair. Apparently people have been doing the same thing rather frequently ever since. The cliff is named for the mill, the miller, actually. It's called Molnar-szikla. Molnar is the Hungarian word for miller," she added. "All very dramatic, of course. But it's a good walk. You should try it."

"Perhaps I will," I said. I wasn't in the mood for stories about people being thrown or choosing to heave themselves off a cliff. What was interesting, I suppose, was molnar being the Hungarian word for miller. Karoly had called himself Charles Miller, hadn't he? He hadn't just made up a name. He just translated the one he had. I didn't know whether that made me feel better about him or not.

"I'm off to bed," the woman said. "Must get my beauty sleep. Perhaps I'll see you out on the trail tomorrow."

"I hope so," I said. Not a chance, I thought.

My beauty sleep consisted of listening to rain pelt against the window, wondering why I was there. When I did doze off, horrible things, for example Mihaly Kovacs with his head bashed in, were creeping up on me as I sat trapped at the back of a cave. To keep myself from drifting off to this unpleasant vision, I tried my version of relaxation: I shopped. In this case, I made my way down Falk Miksa, choosing treasures for the store. Usually I don't get further than a store or two when I do this, but this time, instead, I found myself shopping for Jennifer and Rob, a fine bottle or two of Hungarian wine for him, and a red leather jacket I'd seen in a store window near the hotel for her. I knew she'd look fabulous in it. Given the state of my personal life, this was not only depressing, it was downright stupid. It also made me homesick.

But, as predicted, the sun was shining the next morning, and I left the hotel in a more positive mood. I'd see Karoly that evening. I'd phoned Laurie and asked her if I could bring a colleague from Toronto who'd arrived in Budapest unexpectedly.

"Not the Karoly Molnar," she exclaimed. "That divine fellow from the Cottingham? I can't wait to meet him!"

I WAS ON the outskirts of Lillafured when I saw the sign. Antik Bazar, it said. This is a sign that someone like me finds almost impossible to pass by. In this particular case I had two good reasons to go in. The Antik part, and a second sign that presumably gave the name of the proprietor, Nadasdi Gyula.

It was an unusual shop, it must be said. There were a number of paintings that probably dated to the turn of the century, some nice old furniture, but primarily there were bugs, rocks, and stuffed animals. By stuffed, I am not referring to plush children's toys, but rather animals once alive, and now staring at me from various vantage points through glassy eyes. There was a huge collection, under glass, of beetles of some sort, and butterflies pinned everywhere. Boar heads protruded from the walls all around the room. Various birds stared at me from glass cases.

There were also old binoculars, guns, and a shelf of old shoes. There was a particularly attractive pair of hiking boots, handmade of beautiful leather, and for a moment I entertained the idea they had belonged to Piper. I don't know why, except that they looked to date to the same time period, and Piper was much on my mind. But they were very small. They certainly wouldn't fit my average feet, and most likely had belonged to a small woman. I wished I knew someone to buy them for, they were that appealing.

The proprietor, who by sign language managed to convey that he was Nadasdi Gyula himself, was interesting in a frightening kind of way. He was obviously rather odd, maybe even completely insane. His hair stuck straight up from his head, his eyes resembled those of the animals around the room, and he spent most of the time I was there just giggling and chattering away, particularly after I had introduced myself as McClintoch Lara. McClintoch was too much for him, but he liked Lara. I showed him my business card, and I believed conveyed that I was also in the antique business, but I'm not entirely sure. "Lara," he kept saying, holding up yet another stuffed creature for me to see, and collapsing with laughter when he was able to sneak up behind me and startle me with some fish or something. Such is the tough lot of a dedicated antique hunter.

Despite the proprietor, I love places like this. You never know what will turn up, and I've often found really quite valuable pieces hidden amongst the junk. Nothing, however, prepared me for my discovery at that moment.

I declined the animals on offer, but purchased a pair of bronze art deco bookends I was reasonably sure would fetch a decent price at home, and was turning to go when I saw something rather unusual, even for this store. "What's that?" I said, pointing to a very worn leather case.

Nadasdi turned and picked up a stuffed woodchuck, or something, and brought it to me.

"No, nem," I said, trying out one of the three Hungarian words I had mastered, and pointing again. After several tries he brought me the case. In it was an extraordinary collection of stones. The stone shapes were not random; they had obviously been worked. I was way out of my depth here, but I was pretty sure these were really, really old stone tools. A couple of them could have been hand axes, for example, another, pointed, the end of a spear or something like that.

"Where did you get these?" I said. He looked at me blankly.

"Barlang?" I asked.

"Igen," he said. "Barlang." Yes, they had been found in a cave.

There was so much I wanted to ask him, and it was terribly frustrating not to be able to do so. We just looked at each other for a minute, and then he beckoned me behind the counter, and into a back room which was even weirder than the first, where he pointed at a glass case.

I was dumbfounded. "What is that?" I exclaimed.

"Sztalin," he said, laughing.

"Stalin?" I said. He just kept laughing.

"How much for Stalin?" I said. He didn't understand me. I got out my wallet, and pulled out a few forint. A few thousand, actually, forint being one of those currencies that requires hundreds if not thousands of them for relatively small purchases. He named a sum, which I couldn't understand, so he wrote it down. I couldn't afford Stalin.

"Nem, nem," I said, pointing to my head.

"Igen," he agreed, sadly. We bargained, me pointing to my head and saying nem, no, over and over, and eventually I parted with rather a lot of forint, plus some of my U.S. currency, and my new friend Gyula Nadasdi put the wooden box with its clear plastic top that slid in to protect the contents, in the trunk of my rental car. Whereupon, Stalin and I headed for Budapest.

I spent half of the drive trying to figure out how to get Stalin into my hotel room without anybody seeing him, and the other half wondering if I was truly out of my mind. I stopped at a little town just off the M3 before I got to Budapest, and spent my remaining few forint on a blanket, which I wrapped around my purchase. When I got to the hotel, I had a quick look around the lobby to make sure none of the Divas were about, and then, spurning several offers of assistance, I carried the box, which was rather heavy, up to the room myself.

I double-locked the door, and, setting Stalin on the bed, carefully unwrapped him. What Nadasdi rather humorously—a little communist in-joke, perhaps?—had named Stalin, was a skeleton, minus the head, a deficiency that had enabled me to get the price down to something I was prepared to pay. In place of the skull, some wag, probably Nadasdi himself, given his rather immature sense of humor, had placed a Soviet military cap. The skeleton also came adorned with a gun, an old pistol. I had bought it, hat, gun, and all, not because this was my idea of funny, but because the skeleton itself was obviously very, very old, crumbling away even under glass. He or she—I didn't know enough about bones to say—had been decorated in shells, bracelets, and necklaces, thousands of them. The rib cage had collapsed, but I could see a piece of stone there, one that had been worked to a point. Stalin, who minus the hat and gun matched the description of Piper's bones just about perfectly except that he was missing his skull, had been in the possession of a man by the name of Nadasdi, which just happened to be the name of Piper's landlord in both Budapest and Lillafiired, and indeed the name of one of Piper's excavation team members.

As I stood there staring at this thing, there was a tap at the door.

"Who is it?" I called out.

"Karoly," the voice said.

"Just a, minute," I said, looking desperately about the room. Stalin was way too big to put in a drawer or the cupboard. In an instant, I hefted the box, and stuffed it under the bed.

"Aren't you a bit early?" I said. "I haven't even showered yet."

"Perhaps I'll have one with you," he said.

"The Divas will see you," I said. "I thought we were going to meet at the restaurant."

"I don't care if the Divas see me," he said, wrapping his arms around me, and guiding me in the general direction of the bed. "Although I suppose it might be a problem if you are sharing a room with one of them. I'm going to assume from the double bed that you aren't, unless you tell me otherwise."

From there it all went about the way you would expect it to, except for the moment when he stubbed his toe on something protruding very slightly from under the bed. "Ouch," he exclaimed. "Do you have something hidden under the bed?"

"Just a body," I said.

"No problem, then," he said.

I suppose that was one for the record books, la grande horizontale over what might well prove to be a twenty-five-thousand-year-old man. It was not entirely lost on me that while I was more than a little besotted with Karoly, I did not trust him sufficiently to tell him about the bodies, either of them, that I had encountered in the last day or two, including the fact that one of them was in the room with us. Karoly knew Kovacs; he'd purchased the Venus from him after all. And he would surely, given he'd edited Piper's diaries, understand why I'd spent a lot of money on Stalin.

We spent a very pleasant evening with Laurie^ and Jim. We went to the Muzeum Kavehaz, a beautifully restored nineteenth-century coffee house and had a great meal, with terrific wines, piano music, and conversation. Karoly was charming, as were Laurie and Jim. I felt almost happy sitting there, for the first time in many months.

It didn't even bother me when the conversation turned to the article in the Toronto paper that had hinted that the Venus might be a fake. Apparently Jim stayed in touch with home through the Internet.

"I am firmly convinced the Venus is authentic," Karoly told them.

"Who wrote the article?" Jim asked. "Was it an expert of some kind? I don't think I remember the name."

"Dr. Thalia Lajeunesse," Karoly said. "Nobody knows who it is. Nobody, that is, except me, which is the way it is supposed to be."

"So who is it?" I said.

"Someone who knows nothing about paleolithic Venuses, I can assure you. Somebody with an ax to grind."

I guess I looked baffled. "You'll have to delve back into Greek mythology," he said. "Then you'll know."

"Very mysterious," Laurie said.

Karoly looked a little bothered for a moment, but then suddenly he laughed, and put his arm around my shoulder for a quick hug. Laurie gave me a little knowing smile, and the conversation moved on to happier topics.

But later, back at the Hilton, I spent the dark hours of the night awash in anxiety as to whether or not the next morning might be the day the housekeeping staff at my hotel cleaned under the bed, and puzzling my way through a series of questions. Assuming Stalin was Piper's skeleton—and this was a very risky assumption, I knew—what was it doing in Lillafiired? It had been found there, yes, but I thought the diaries made it pretty clear that the bones were going to England for study, and certainly England was where Piper gave his presentation. Had it been sent back, then? And if so, why?

And more to the point, if the body was in Lillafiired, where was the skull?