The Magyar Venus

CHAPTERSEVEN

June 1

I have received word from T that he has been delayed in his arrival due to business matters in Vienna, and may indeed not reach Budapest for some weeks. As a result, I am determined to visit the hills north and east of the city to ascertain whether the account of them I have heard is true, and if so, whether or not they might lend themselves to the sort of scientific study I am of a mind to do. If the hills are, as I am told, formed of sedimentary limestone, clay, slate, and dolomite, and marked throughout by caves, what better place for the earliest man to live? I am intrigued too by some small pieces of stone and flint that Fekete Neni has shown me. Her two sons, Peter and Pal, work on the Nddasdi estate near a place that was named, fairly recently if I understand correctly, Lillafured. The two young men like to explore the caves, and have given these objects to their mother. I have studied these very carefully, and have reason to believe that their form is due not to natural forces but rather to the workings of man. I am therefore most interested to visit these caves.

I am not blessed with the gift of making friends easily, and am therefore most grateful for the kindness of Fekete Neni, but also the Nddasdi family whom I admire very much, their every word and action of such grace and refinement. The children are schooled at home by private tutors, and speak several languages, French quite beautifully. I was fortunate indeed to take dinner with them one evening, invited, I believe, in order that I might speak French with the children. The furnishings in their sitting room would rival anything I have seen in London or indeed anywhere. I was particularly enchanted by a lovely painting, a landscape with mountains. The family tells me that it is the site of their country home.

I have booked transport with Fekete Neni's help, and have packed my trunk with clothing and supplies that I hope will be useful. Mr. Galton's advice, I now see, is rather more suited to darkest Africa or the deserts of the Maghreb than to the lands under the dominion of Franz Josef. However, I have purchased clothes which I hope will suffice, most especially a pair of rather splendid leather boots. No doubt I will make quite a good impression in my cotton shirts, black trousers and those boots. My pistol cannot help but add to the impression of my seriousness.

I am told the towns that I shall pass on my journey are rather more provincial than Budapest, and I am certain that will prove true. But I am told that I will be able to find a meal and lodging, and perhaps some workmen to help with the tasks ahead. First, though I plan to explore the area on horseback, and where the terrain requires, on foot.

HADN’T THAT JUST put the cat among the pigeons, hinting that I might be on Karoly's side of this little drama. Diana went off in a huff immediately, without even leaving her share of the bill. The others tried to carry on as if nothing had happened, until at last dinner was over. Grace and Cybil took a taxi back to the hotel. Morgan and I walked out to the Danube. The bridges were all lit up, as was Buda Castle across the river. It was a really beautiful sight. I travel to a lot of places, and like a lot of them, too. But every now and then I happen on somewhere new and lose my heart, and this, I knew, perhaps because it was such an unexpected pleasure, I was in danger of doing in Budapest.

Morgan felt it too. "You want to walk for awhile?" she said. We ambled up Vaci utca to Vorbsmartyter, and headed into the Gerbeaud for a nightcap.

"Are you really on Karoly's side?" she asked.

"I'm on no one's side right now," I said. "The point I was trying to make, which is the one I've been trying to get across all along is that—"

"I know," she said. "You will trace the provenance of the Venus, but it won't necessarily come out the way we want it to. I think all of us except Diana know that. She is just so convinced she's right, that she can't imagine another outcome, and therefore you will be her enemy if you don't prove her right. It's something of a bind for you, but I want you to know that I do understand. I did have to smirk quietly to myself when she said she had nothing to hide, and then proceeded to tell us that she'd essentially been stealing documents from her employer. What did you think of that business about tenure, by the way?"

"I don't know what to think. It's true, of course, that if you want a long career in academia with a nice pension at the end, you have to be tenured. But could one person prevent her getting it? I don't know. Does it have to be unanimous? I don't know that either, but I wouldn't think so. And would she be denied it if everyone but Karoly thought she was fabulous? I doubt it."

"Just what I was thinking," she said. "I'm not sure where the truth lies there."

"Speaking of truth, I have a question for you," I said.

"Shoot," she said.

"What happened that night in the bar, after I, you know, passed out."

"You didn't pass out, exactly," she said. "You were acting a little peculiar, though. I wondered if you were ill. Your eyes looked funny. The thought crossed my mind that you might be on drugs, actually. Sorry. I'm sure you weren't. Were you? Anyway, we all left shortly after that. Diana said she'd get you home. I had to drag Woodward away from Courtney. He's boinking her, of course."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," she said. "Have I caught them in the sack together? No. Have I even seen them smooching in a restaurant? No. But yes, I'm sure. Was your husband unfaithful to you?"

"Yes," I said. "But not until, as he'll tell you, it was essentially over. And did I know at the time? Yes, I did. I gather you've met Clive."

"Yes," she said. "Cybil told us she'd called you the other night, but that you hadn't responded. And you didn't answer calls the next day either. Then we got your e-mail. So I was delegated to see if I could find out what hotel you were in. Clive is rather cute, by the way. Are you still in love with him?"

"No. I like him a lot better now than I did when I was married to him. He probably feels the same way about me. We were a disaster as marriage partners, but we are a good business combination. And he never lets me wallow in self-pity, which is a good thing, because I am inclined to do so from time to time."

"I've been wallowing in it a bit myself, lately," she said. "I could use a Clive. Are you wallowing in self-pity now?"

"A bit, I suppose. There is no question I have not been my usual optimistic self. I broke up recently with a man I'd been with for a few years. A lovely man really, by the name of Rob Luczka. I don't know why I left him, other than that we'd hit a rough patch. His daughter had some bad things happen to her, and we tried to help, but neither of us really talked about it, how we felt, what we thought we needed to do. Perhaps it was all just too painful. I've always thought we discussed everything, but it turns out we didn't. I didn't feel that I could. I think maybe it was like a worm eating its way into my feelings for him."

"Too bad," she said. "I wish I could confront Woodward on the subject of his philandering, but I just carry on as if I don't notice. That night at the Cottingham he wanted me to chat up some bank president because his company has run into some financial difficulty, and needed extended credit, so of course I did it, even though I felt like a whore. It was 'darling this' and 'darling that' all evening while he's making goo-goo eyes at Courtney. Pathetic, isn't it?"

"I suppose I could say to both of us what Clive says to me on a fairly regular basis these days: Shit happens. Get over it."

She laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks. "I'll try," she said. "I'll try."

"Me, too. Why did all of you rush to follow me here?"

"I don't know. Perhaps it was because Diana insisted. I just wanted a break from Woodward. I think maybe Cybil just wanted to get away, too. None of us had been to Budapest before, so it seemed like a bit of a lark. Diana couldn't pay her airfare by the way, even though she was the one insisting on coming, and we got these fabulous last-minute tickets. I paid for her ticket. She says she'll pay me back, but I'm not sure how she's going to do that, given her circumstances. Was she that sour in college, do you recall?"

"Not quite so bad," I said. "But there always was an edge there. And Cybil always ran herself down, and Grace never really shared her thoughts with any of us."

"I don't remember her being quite so sanctimonious, though, do you? You know, we're too old to be bickering like children, that sort of thing," she said. "She is rather tiresome, isn't she?"

"I guess!" I replied.

"And you and me?" Morgan said.

"I always admired you because you had so much courage," I said. "You did things the rest of us wanted to, but didn't, and you didn't give a hoot what people thought."

"I'm not very courageous now, am I?" she said. "I should leave Woodward, get my own place, and find a real job. But somewhere along the line I lost my nerve. As for you, speaking of courage, I always thought that beneath that very refined exterior of yours, the daughter of a diplomat schtick, the person who tried to do the right thing and say the right thing at all times, there was someone else. I only looked like the rebel, you know. I was the one that cut classes, smoked and drank, and slept around, but I was a fraud, and the real rebel of the group was you. I thought in many ways you were absolutely fearless, and I still think so."

"I don't know," I said.

"Oh!" she said. "I almost forgot. Have you seen this? Where is it?" she said, pulling at least three cosmetic bags out of her bag before she found what she wanted. "Here. What do you think? It ran the day after you left. I ripped it out of the newspaper on the plane."

"It" was an article from a a local Toronto paper. "Forging the Past" was the headline. The subhead said something to the effect that on the unveiling of the Magyar Venus at Toronto's Cottingham Museum, it was interesting to note how many of the museum world's most treasured objects had been found to be fakes. The author argued that the advent of better and better testing methods had set the museum world on its ear as more and more of the world's most treasured antiquities were found to be fakes and forgeries, or at least suspected as such. Amongst the Mayan incense burners, the gold mask of Agamemnon, the Minoan Snake Goddess, and other antiquities that someone at some time had questioned, there was an ivory head of a woman called the Venus of Brassempouy, that was supposed to be about the same age and material as the Magyar Venus, but which some expert somewhere had decided was suspect. There were photos of several of these objects, and one of the Magyar Venus. Are they real? the cutline asked. By the time most people had read through to the end, they'd be forgiven for concluding that the Magyar Venus should be added to this ignominious list. It was a rather cleverly done hatchet job on the Magyar Venus. Without ever saying so, its authenticity was called into question.

"My, my," I said.

"Yes, indeed. I wonder who the author, this Dr. Thalia Lajeunesse, is. It doesn't give any credentials."

"No idea," I said. "Never heard of her. I assume it's a her, with a name like Thalia."

"I confess I was rather wondering if it was Diana under a pseudonym," Morgan said. "I asked her if she'd written it, but she denied it. She did not deny enjoying reading it, though."

"I'll bet," I said.

"I know everybody keeps asking this, but where do we go from here?" she said. "I'll help you any way I can."

"There'll be assignments," I said. "Don't you worry."

And there were. The next morning at breakfast, I handed all of them copies of a list I'd spent a good part of the night drawing up—I'd slept for about four hours, making it a very good night. Early the next morning, I'd arranged to have the list copied at the front desk, one for each of them.

"Okay, here's the drill," I said in my chirpiest voice. "These are all places that the diaries mention," I said. "Some of them you should be able to find easily. Others will be a little harder. Sugarut, for example, does not exist today, at least not on my map. But the diaries say the Opera House is on it. That might mean it's an early name for Andrassy ut, which is just a couple of blocks away. You'll need to go over to the Opera and see when it was built, if it was in that same place in 1900. Your assignment is to make sure these places exist, that they are where the diaries say they are, and where there is a discrepancy, make a careful note of it."

"Why are we doing this?" Diana demanded. "I think you're just sending us off on a fool's errand while you do something else."

"She's checking to make sure there are no mistakes, no anachronisms, in the diaries," Cybil said. "Isn't that right? If there's a mistake, then it calls the whole thing, the Venus and everything, into question."

"Exactly," I said.

"What are you doing then?" Diana asked, in a somewhat mollified tone.

"I'm tracking down the lab that tested the Venus to see what they have to say, and—"

"What about the invoice?" Diana said. "You said you found the invoice in the stuff I gave you."

"I've already been there," I said. "I talked to the proprietor."

"And?" she demanded.

"And he refused to tell me who owned the Venus previously. I will, of course, be asking him to reconsider, but we can't count on it."

"That's very suspicious, isn't it?" Cybil said.

"Not really," I said. "If Mihaly Kovacs walked into McClintoch Swain and asked who had previously owned an object I'd had in the store, I wouldn't have told him. It was worth a try, but it didn't work. Now, be back here at four, and we'll go over what we've learned."

By ten, I was in an Internet cafe, googling, to use the new term, Dr. Frederick Madison, the person Karoly had thanked in his preface to the book for testing the Venus. Madison headed up a lab in Arizona, and I managed to find his phone number reasonably easily. With several time zones between us, however, I was going to have to wait until the afternoon to call. I sent him an e-mail telling him what I wanted and that I would call him in the morning his time.

Next I tried to see what I could find out about weather in the British Isles over a hundred years ago. Piper had obliquely referred to an extraordinarily hot season the previous summer and an equally unpleasant February. It took me about half an hour, but the Internet is a wonderful research tool, and I was able to confirm that indeed the summer of 1899 was an unusually hot one over much of Britain, and February 1900 was one of the rainiest months on record. I'd see what the others had found in their expedition, but so far the diaries were tracking just fine.

Then I went to a pay phone, managed to figure out how to use it, and called Mihaly Kovacs.

"Janet McLean," I said. "I was in yesterday?"

I heard a rather pronounced intake of breath on the part of Mr. Kovacs. "I've run into some, shall we say, anomalies in the accounts of the Magyar Venus," I said. "I haven't been able to reach Dr. Molnar to question him about them, given the time difference, but I am asking you once again, to provide information about the previous owner."

"No, I cannot," he said. "That is not possible." He almost croaked out the words.

"Okay, then," I said. "I suppose I may have to call in the authorities. Thanks for your time." I paused for just a moment to see if there would be any reaction. Instead of a goodbye, or whatever, there was this annoying clatter and banging, and I realized that Kovacs had dropped the phone. I waited until the line went dead. Mr. Kovacs was rather, shall we say, high-strung, and I seemed to be making him very nervous. If you've lived under the Communist regime, you would have some anxiety around officialdom, and perhaps my call, and my use of the term authorities, had touched a nerve. On the other hand, maybe there was something he didn't want me to know.

I decided to make it even worse for him. I went back to Falk Miksa utca, the street of antique shops, and just hung around. I looked into Kovacs's shop, and caught a glimpse of him scurrying quickly into the back room. I went in and asked for him, whereupon the assistant pretended not to speak English, but managed to convey that Kovacs had gone out. I hung around outside then, peering into store windows until I was rather bored, and then hungry. Giving up on Kovacs, I set off to find the restaurant I'd happened across the previous day, the one with the delicious soup and dessert, but I couldn't retrace my steps. I tried to ask a policeman on one corner if he knew of the place, but either he didn't understand me, or he didn't know. As I stood beside the officer at a traffic light, I saw Kovacs at the window table of a cafe on Szent Istvan korut not far from his store, and he saw me. He literally paled before my eyes. I couldn't understand why until I realized that he was looking not just at me, but at the policeman beside me, the one to whom I had just spoken. As I'd already concluded, something was really bothering Mihaly Kovacs, and I'd undoubtedly spoiled his lunch. Maybe I'd call him again later in the day.

I went back to the hotel, stopping at a coffee shop for a bite to eat, and thence to my room to place the call to Frederick Madison. I had told him via e-mail that I was writing an article for an antique dealer's newsletter on the Venus—in my defense, I did write articles from time to time, although this wasn't one of them. I said that I had interviewed Dr. Molnar, which was true, although some might call it a date, and that Karoly had told me that Madison's lab had authenticated the Venus, and suggested I call. I got through to him right away.

"I got your e-mail," he said. "I'm happy to talk to you."

"I'd just like to know a little bit about the testing that was done on the Magyar Venus," I said. "Dr. Molnar told me your lab did the work."

"Lovely piece," Madison said. "And yes, we did the testing. The mammoth ivory was found to be in the range that Dr. Molnar claims."

"So the Venus is twenty-five thousand years old, or there about."

"The mammoth ivory is about twenty-five thousand years old."

"You're saying that someone could have carved it much later."

"We couldn't find any indication of that. There were no metal knife marks or anything," he said, chuckling.

"So are you completely comfortable that the Venus is authentic?"

"For me to be completely comfortable," he said. "I would want stratigraphic documentation. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Sort of," I said.

"We use provenance a little differently from you antique dealers," he said. "You look at the hands the object in question has passed through. In archaeology, we consider the provenance, or provenience, of an artifact to be the find spot. There are cases in the authenticating of antiquities where it is possible to know who owned an object at any given point of time over decades if not centuries but where no one can say with any assurance where the object was originally found. This is apparently one of those times.

"Despite all the science of dating, stratigraphy is still the principal way to evaluate objects at an archaeological site. We call it archaeostratigraphy when it's used in archaeology, for obvious reasons. It all has to do with where exactly an object was found, on a horizontal matrix or grid and a vertical dimension as well, that is to say, in what layer, or stratum, the object was located, its relativity to other objects above or below it, or even in the same layer. If I'm being too academic here, please tell me."

"No, this is very helpful," I said. "Please continue."

"Ah, there's nothing like an interested audience for a lab man. You may have to stop me sooner or later. I'll try to be brief. The principles, the rules if you will, that govern stratigraphy are actually pretty obvious. Older strata are covered by younger strata, right? Material from an older stratum might make its way into a newer one, but not the other way around. If an object cuts across several strata, it can't be older than the uppermost strata in which it's been found. There are others, but this should give you the idea. Are you still with me?"

"I think so. If I were to excavate a site in, I don't know, Mesopotamia, or something, I would, as I go down, pass through several different civilizations and perhaps cities. If I found an object at one level, it could be older, and still in use. I'm an antique dealer, after all. I want people to use objects from an earlier era today. So for someone to have a pre-Columbian statue in their living room in twenty-first century New York, is not only possible, but it happens reasonably frequently."

"Exactly," he said. "But you wouldn't find a plastic baggy in the fourth-century level, or if you did, you would have a problem. You would definitely have had disturbance at the site."

"Right," I said.

"So stratigraphy is invaluable in assessing the sequences at a site, and the relative age of artifacts in context. Now these so-called Venuses of the Paleolithic," he said. "They've been found everywhere, and several of them are not documented properly. They just seem to turn up from time to time. They're found in a cave somewhere or other, nobody can remember which. They're found in the foundations of a house. One was found by the side of the road, if we are to believe that account, which I, for one, don't. We would be compelled to say that an exact stratigraphic determination would be pretty much impossible under these kinds of circumstances. Some, of course, were found by archaeologists in the course of excavation. Now with those, we can test the object, but we also have the stratigraphic evidence. We can date other objects in that stratum, using different dating methods, depending on the object. All dating methods have their limitations, you see. We used radiocarbon dating on the Magyar Venus, because it is made of mammoth ivory, and carbon dating works well on organic objects, that is objects that were once living things, up to about fifty thousand years old, no matter where they are found. Carbon dating is not much good beyond fifty thousand years, but the Venus is well within the range. For inorganics, ceramics for example, or flint which has been burned before it was buried, we could use thermoluminescence dating, or TL, which in principle lets us date way further back than fifty thousand years. So if we found the Venus in the same stratum as flint tools or ceramics, then we might be able to date both, and if they matched, then we'd be much more confident about the results."

"So for this particular Venus, we have a radiocarbon date of about twenty-five thousand years, and only anecdotal evidence as to where it was found," I said.

"Exactly. It is said to have been found in a cave. Which cave? Where in that cave? In what context? Dr. Molnar showed me the diaries of that fellow… what was his name?"

"Piper."

"Piper," he agreed. "We tested the diaries too, and the ink and paper checked out. Now Piper seemed to know what he was doing, and everything he did was well documented, so the anecdotal evidence is better than most. But we don't have the site, do we?"

"So what are you saying, exactly?"

"I'm saying that the mammoth ivory is about twenty-five thousand years old, that we could find no evidence, no smoking guns as it were, pointing to forgery, that the ink and paper on the diaries dates to about 1900. That is all I can say. I suppose I could add that most of the Venuses tend to date to that approximate time period, so at least it's consistent. And it fits the pattern. They're all essentially rather large around the middle with large drooping breasts, but small heads and tapering heads and limbs. This Venus is consistent with that, too."

"What about the ochre?"

"Right. There were traces of ochre. Dr. Molnar tells me that ochre was mined not far from there between about thirty and forty thousand years ago. Older than the Venus by quite a bit, but it does show that ochre was valued in that part of the world."

"Thank you for all of this," I said.

"My pleasure. I hope I didn't bore you."

"Not at all," I said. "In fact, it is all fascinating. Thank you."

"A pleasure," he said.

"Can I ask you one last question?"

"Shoot."

"My personal theory about testing is that you do it when you have a bad feeling, for want of a better term, about an object. I mean if I look at an antique, and there is something about it that bothers me, even though I can't point to anything specific about it, then I'll have it tested. So, leaving all that stuff about archaeostratigraphy aside, and trying to forget for a moment all the provisos you have to give when you're asked about the testing, do you have some sense about the Magyar Venus. Do you think it's genuine?"

"I can't really do that," he said. "But I suppose… my answer would be yes, I think it's genuine."

"Thank you," I said.

"Send me a copy of your article, will you?"

"Sure," I said. I would, too, if I ever wrote it.

It was hardly absolutely definitive, and there was certainly wiggle room no matter which side of this puzzle you were on. If you wanted to believe the Venus was genuine, there was evidence it was. If you didn't want to believe it, if you were Diana, just to pick a name out of a hat, then there was enough there to give you some small measure of satisfaction. To my mind, though, this was starting to look like a convincing if not airtight case for the Venus. I looked at my watch. It was time for the report from the Divas.

They were down in the lobby bar having tea, and looking rather well pleased with themselves. "We're done," Cybil said. "All of it."

"I'm impressed," I said. "What have you got?"

"You first," Grace said. I told them about my lengthy conversation with Frederick Madison. I did not tell them about Kovacs.

"Now it's your turn," I said.

"You go, Cybil," Morgan said. "You're the one that made the big discovery."

"What big discovery?"

"Wait for it," Morgan said. "Cybil?"

"We went along Andrassy ut," Cybil said. "We checked some guidebooks, and, as you suspected, Andrassy was called Sugarut early on. And the buildings, now shops and other businesses, do look like mansions. We walked right up to the top of Andrassy, or is it the bottom, to Hosbkter, Heroes Square. There is a building that matches the description you gave us. It's called the Palace of the Arts, or something, and it has what Grace assures us are Corinthian columns, just like the diaries say. Then we went into the city park. It's neat, by the way. There is a castle and it is peculiar-looking. We bought a guidebook, and according to that, the castle was built in 1896 for the Hungarian Millennium celebrations—theirs, not the century to come. There is also a restaurant in the park. It's called Gundel's, and we wished we could afford to eat there. We had a look at a menu, though, and it would have been there in 1900, but called Wampetics, just like Piper said.

"We also took a tour of the Parliament Buildings, but it seemed to us that they were open in 1900, while the diaries say they were under construction. So we went for lunch nearby, and that's when I found this great book. It's a book of photographs of Budapest in guess which year?"

"Nineteen hundred!" they said in unison.

Cybil waved the book in triumph. "See, the Parliament Buildings and the Elizabeth Bridge really were under construction that year, as was part of Buda Castle. Look, here's the bridge with the scaffolding on it. There's a photograph of the Emperor Franz Josef and his wife, Elizabeth, although I don't know about the reference to her death."

"I do," I said. "I checked some of the historical stuff on the Internet this morning. Elizabeth, or Erszebet, was in fact called Sisi by the adoring Hungarians, and she was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist in 1898. I also looked up the weather in Britain, by the way, in 1899 and 1900, because there are references to that, and it also checks out."

No wonder Diana was quieter, and more sullen-looking than ever.

"That doesn't necessarily mean that the diary, and by extension the Venus, are authentic. Someone wanting to fake the diaries could pick up the same book you did." I said. Diana brightened considerably. "But the details do bring an air of authenticity to the pages of the diary, there is no question about it," I said. Diana's face fell again.

"So what next?" Morgan said. "Are there assignments for tomorrow?"

"I'll have to think about that. I'm going to my room to do some more research. I'll see you in the morning." What I really wanted to do was have a nap. Despite all the walking, however, I just lay there, rigid and wide awake, until the ringing of the telephone jarred me to my feet.

Once again the caller felt no need for a salutation of any sort. "Will you have dinner with me tonight?" the voice said.

"I'm in Budapest, Karoly," I said.

"That is just as well," he said, "Because, as it turns out, so am I. Let me pick you up at your hotel around 7:30."

"The Divas are here," I said. "All of them. They arrived yesterday." I found myself wondering if the airlines had noticed this sudden spike in air travel to Budapest. Certainly it wasn't panning out exactly the way I'd planned it. "I don't think you want to show your face in this lobby."

He laughed. "Does this mean you don't want to be seen with me? Okay. You're near the Opera, correct? Off Andrassy lit? There's a very nice bistro nearby. If you walk out to Andrassy and turn right, you'll come to it within a block or so. It's called Voros es Feher." He spelled it for me. "That means red and white, as in wine. It's a wine bar. I'll meet you for a drink there at, say, seven, and then we'll go somewhere far away from your hotel for dinner. If you need to call me in the mean time, I'm at—"

"The Hilton," I said. Didn't he always stay there? At least when he was on an expense account. "What are you doing here?"

"The Hilton, yes. How… ? Never mind. I could ask to yours, Frank dragged me here. Some book deal he wants to put together about the Venus. I have an appointment with some people at the Magyar Nemzeti Muzeum, the Hungarian National Museum, as well, to see about an exhibit on prehistoric art in Hungary I want to mount at the Cottingham in conjunction with the Venus. They are interested in doing a joint exhibition that would include the Venus. Frank will want to do the catalog. He's discovered art in his old age. And you?"

"I'll tell you when I see you," I said. I set down the phone and called Clive.

"Clive," I said. "We've already had this conversation. You are not supposed to tell anyone else where I am!"

"I haven't told anyone," he protested.

"You did so. You told Karoly Molnar."

"Who's he? Not that guy at the Cottingham? Why would he be asking where you are? Speaking of Molnar, though, have you heard the Venus may be a fake?"

"No. Frank Kalman, then?"

"I don't believe I know Frank Kalman, either. Look, it is true that, as is my wont, when I saw the particularly comely Morgan, I lost all sense of space and time, as well as all discretion. Yes, I blabbed your whereabouts. But I haven't told anyone else."

"Okay, sorry," I said. "I'll talk to you soon."

"Is that all you called for? You haven't called to tell me what flight you're on, when you'll be back pulling your weight in this store we share?"

"Bye, Clive," I said, hanging up before he could protest some more. It was a puzzle though. If he hadn't told Karoly, who had, and what did it mean? That one of the Divas was not entirely frank about her reasons for being here? That was hardly a surprise. One of them had spiked my drink, too. I hoped it wasn't Morgan, but I really couldn't be sure. She was the one, by her own admission, who'd gone and seen Clive to find out how to find me. It would hardly have been Diana who had told Karoly, would it?

Voros es Feher was indeed a rather lovely wine bar. Karoly ordered me a glass of red from the wine country around Eger, and it was a pleasant surprise. I associated Hungarian wines with the plonk I'd drunk in my poverty-stricken student days, but this was rather good. I would have been happy staying there for dinner, too. The food looked and smelled just fine, but Karoly had other ideas. We took a long taxi ride across the Danube, and then some miles to a restaurant called Remiz. It, too, was a splendid place, a series of little rooms framed by French windows and doors, and a lovely garden outside. I let Karoly order for me without protest this time, given I hadn't a clue what was on the menu. He ordered goose liver on toast to start, and fish for the main course, something he called fogas, a fish he claimed could only be found in Hungary's Lake Balaton, a kind of pike/perch. Whatever it was, it was delicious. The wines were very tasty, the dessert divine, and the conversation quite companionable, once we got a contentious subject or two out of the way.

"Is there any chance the Dea Muta would tell me what she's doing in Budapest?" Karoly asked. "I believe I've told you why I'm here."

"You didn't mention you were coming here when we had drinks at Canoe," I said.

"No, because the plans were not firmed up. I did call you to tell you where I would be once I heard from the museum here that the person I needed to see would be available for only about three or four days. I was going to suggest that you come with me. You weren't there. I don't recall receiving a message from you. I thought perhaps, despite what you'd said, that I'd offended you. The comment about the drugs."

"You can let that one go," I said. "I found it educational. As to why I'm here, it's kind of hard to explain, even to myself," I said. "I decided a few weeks ago that I needed a break from the store, and I wanted to go somewhere different, somewhere I don't usually go on my business trips. I didn't want a beach, and when I was looking to see where I could get a cheap last-minute flight, Budapest came up. We'd talked about it, and you'd told me how lovely it is, so I booked the flight and here I am. The rest of the gang, the Divas, just kind of tagged along. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I suppose I'm still a little confused about our relationship."

"I'm not," he said. "I want us to have another go."

"I don't know," I said, for possibly the hundredth time. "Perhaps it's too soon after the end of my last relationship. How did you find me? Did Clive tell you?" I would believe Clive over Karoly any day, I was sorry to say, so this was definitely a test.

"Frank told me," he said.

"How would he know?" I said.

"I have no idea. I can only assume one of the Divas must have told him. He knew where you were staying as well. Why don't you want to be seen with me?"

"I don't mind being seen with you. It's just that some of the Divas are not your biggest fans at the moment. I believe you fired Diana. That's whom you meant when you told me that you had had to fire a person in a position of trust that night at the Cottingham, is it not?"

"Will I get sued if I confess?" he said. "Yes, I fired her, but please don't ask me why. It would be inappropriate of me to tell you."

was hardly a surprise. One of them had spiked my drink, too. I hoped it wasn't Morgan, but I really couldn't be sure. She was the one, by her own admission, who'd gone and seen Clive to find out how to find me. It would hardly have been Diana who had told Karoly, would it?

Voros es Feher was indeed a rather lovely wine bar. Karoly ordered me a glass of red from the wine country around Eger, and it was a pleasant surprise. I associated Hungarian wines with the plonk I'd drunk in my poverty-stricken student days, but this was rather good. I would have been happy staying there for dinner, too. The food looked and smelled just fine, but Karoly had other ideas. We took a long taxi ride across the Danube, and then some miles to a restaurant called Remiz. It, too, was a splendid place, a series of little rooms framed by French windows and doors, and a lovely garden outside. I let Karoly order for me without protest this time, given I hadn't a clue what was on the menu. He ordered goose liver on toast to start, and fish for the main course, something he called fogas, a fish he claimed could only be found in Hungary's Lake Balaton, a kind of pike/perch. Whatever it was, it was delicious. The wines were very tasty, the dessert divine, and the conversation quite companionable, once we got a contentious subject or two out of the way.

"Is there any chance the Dea Muta would tell me what she's doing in Budapest?" Karoly asked. "I believe I've told you why I'm here."

"You didn't mention you were coming here when we had drinks at Canoe," I said.

"No, because the plans were not firmed up. I did call you to tell you where I would be once I heard from the museum here that the person I needed to see would be available for only about three or four days. I was going to suggest that you come with me. You weren't there. I don't recall receiving a message from you. I thought perhaps, despite what you'd said, that I'd offended you. The comment about the drugs."

"You can let that one go," I said. "I found it educational. As to why I'm here, it's kind of hard to explain, even to myself," I said. "I decided a few weeks ago that I needed a break from the store, and I wanted to go somewhere different, somewhere I don't usually go on my business trips. I didn't want a beach, and when I was looking to see where I could get a cheap last-minute flight, Budapest came up. We'd talked about it, and you'd told me how lovely it is, so I booked the flight and here I am. The rest of the gang, the Divas, just kind of tagged along. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I suppose I'm still a little confused about our relationship."

"I'm not," he said. "I want us to have another go."

"I don't know," I said, for possibly the hundredth time. "Perhaps it's too soon after the end of my last relationship. How did you find me? Did Clive tell you?" I would believe Clive over Karoly any day, I was sorry to say, so this was definitely a test.

"Frank told me," he said.

"How would he know?" I said.

"I have no idea. I can only assume one of the Divas must have told him. He knew where you were staying as well. Why don't you want to be seen with me?"

"I don't mind being seen with you. It's just that some of the Divas are not your biggest fans at the moment. I believe you fired Diana. That's whom you meant when you told me that you had had to fire a person in a position of trust that night at the Cottingham, is it not?"

"Will I get sued if I confess?" he said. "Yes, I fired her, but please don't ask me why. It would be inappropriate of me to tell you."

"She says you blocked her getting tenure at University," I said.

"What!" he exclaimed.

"She said she got her doctorate, and everything, but you spoke eloquently against her, or something like that."

"I did nothing of the kind. In fact you might inquire where—" He stopped, midsentence. "No, I am not going to get into a slagging match here. I will say nothing more."

"And the woman you broke up with that night? Morgan, by any chance?"

"Did she say that?" he said, hesitating. "I don't like to kiss and tell."

"I'm putting two and two together here."

"I see. And do the rest of the Divas have a bone to pick with me as well?"

"Nothing specific that I've heard, but they are all friends, so if one of them is mad at you, there is a reasonable chance the rest of them will be."

"No doubt," he said. "You Divas always were a rather closed circle. Look, I know I was a love 'em and leave 'em kind of guy. I suppose I'm paying for that now. But I left you because I felt like a fraud. I've already told you why. I am not going to answer to any more of these accusations. You are going to have to decide for yourself if you believe them, or you believe me. So which is it? Where are you on the subject of Karoly Molnar?"

"I'm here having dinner with you, aren't I?" I said. He didn't say anything for a moment or two, but he looked a little sad, really, and with good reason. I hadn't answered the question, nor was I capable of doing so at that moment.

"I feel as if I've spent the last several years searching for something, love, success, my roots, peace of mind, you name it," he said finally. "I've hopped from museum to museum, every job a little better than the last, certainly, but I haven't stayed long. I went through a string of women until I married Peggy, and still I wasn't happy. I had a good job at the Bramley, we went to all the best parties, and I felt like a complete fraud. I came back to Toronto tail between my legs, broke, publicly humiliated by the wife, fired from the Bramley because I couldn't get along with the curators, or something equally ridiculous. Did I mention that my wife's father was chair of the Bramley board?

"Then, out of the blue, I discover that everything I wanted was here all along. The Cottingham may be a fraction of the size of the Bramley, but I'm happy there. You know I was always trying to make the institutions I worked in more responsive to what the public wanted. At the Bramley, I tried some innovative exhibit design, I tried to popularize the subject matter. And I was blocked at every turn by the staff, most of whom had been there for decades. The truth was they didn't want to change. The museum could gather dust, and become increasingly irrelevant, and they would be working away at what they'd done for years and years and calling it scholarship, even though there was no one interested in it any more. The Cottingham is different. I told Courtney and Major that I wanted to build a cave exhibit for the kids to play in, maybe have a make-believe archaeological dig site right in the cave where kids could pretend to be archaeologists looking for the Venus. They loved the idea. And what Major and Courtney say, goes. I think I can do some truly innovative things there.

"And, best of all, I found you again, after all this time. I want us to be together. I want to be able to hold hands in public, go to the same parties, neck in the back row at the movies, just like we used to, no matter who is there. I don't care what the Divas think, or anybody else for that matter.

I'm not divorced yet, but I soon will be, so the only impediment from my perspective are your feelings for me. I know I'm pushing too hard on this, but I feel I've wasted a lot of time."

"Karoly, I am very glad to see you again after all these years. Really, I am. And I like being with you. I'm thrilled the Cottingham is working out well for you. But for now we are going to have to leave it at that. There are a few, what will I call them, outstanding items in my life that need to be resolved before I can make that kind of decision."

"I'm not sure what you're saying. Can we continue to see each other?" he said.

"I would like that," I said.

"I suppose that will have to do," he said. "I'm not going to give up, though."

That last statement made me think of Rob, something I didn't really want to do at that moment: Rob when he'd said he was going to put his effort into getting me back rather than getting over me. "Could we talk about something else?" I said.

"Of course. I'm sorry. Whatever you like."

"Budapest, then. I went to Falk Miksa utca. I suppose I can't get too far away from antiques. I remembered you'd mentioned it. Where exactly was your store?"

"I take some comfort from this, that I was obviously on your mind." He made a bit of a face, but he got out a pen and a piece of paper and drew me a map. I asked him what other places I should see, and after a minute or two, the conversation naturally moved on to safer topics.

At the end of the evening, when it came time to go, Karoly helped me with my coat. He was standing behind me, and rather than stepping away, he put his hands on my upper arms, very gently, and just stood there. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck, and the pressure of his hands through my coat. Don't lean back, I told myself. If you do, you know how this will end. But then I felt a wave of emotion wash over me, part loneliness perhaps, part nostalgia, and also, to be honest, a large measure of desire, feelings so intense, I felt as if there wasn't enough air for me to breathe. I very slowly leaned back until we touched, his arms came around me, and my resolve vanished.