The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy [02] (25 page)

You might be thinking my actions were highly out of character, that I was taking quite a risk breaking in to Gerstner’s office in broad daylight. You might also think that hauling his filing cabinet away was rather brazen, but I can tell you I was not the least bit nervous. Most universities are low security institutions. Anyone can walk on to a campus and more or less have the run of the place. Of course if someone saw you loiding a door, they might call security. They might even ask you what you were doing if they saw you loading a filing cabinet in to a beat up old Bronco, although I doubt it. But I wasn’t concerned about any of that because other than the one student, I knew there was no one in the building. All classes in anthropology and archaeology had been cancelled for that morning, and all the faculty and staff who worked in that building were attending a memorial service across campus for Ognan Gerstner.

50

I drove home and hauled the filing cabinet to my patio.

The lock was sturdy but the cabinet was just a boxy tin can. I used a long-handle screwdriver to pry open the top drawer, then I reached inside and bent the vertical rod that allows the single lock to control all four drawers.

I spent a couple of hours going through the papers in the top three drawers. Most of them were of no value to anyone now that Gerstner was dead – old class lecture notes, correspondence with booksellers, programs from professional meetings, and offprints of some of his articles. I put all of those in my
kiva
oven along with some piñon logs. It was cold in the shade of the patio.

There were some papers that might be useful back at the University, things like recent letters of recommendations that students might need and minutes of curriculum committee meetings. I stuffed those in to a couple of padded envelopes and addressed them to the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University. I omitted the return address.

I kept a few more papers I thought might be helpful to me.

I put the blade of the screwdriver against the metal inventory tag on the filing cabinet and struck it with the heel of my hand. It flew off. I picked it up off the flagstone. It was very light, some sort of aluminum alloy probably. I tossed it in the fire and watched it melt in to a little ball that shimmered and shimmied like mercury.

Then I removed the tape, brown paper, and bubble wrap from the three pots I’d found in the bottom drawer. I got almost the same feeling I get when I dig up old pots, a mixture of excitement, awe, and reverence. I held them in my hands and felt their heft and their curve. I wished I could have watched while the potter made them.

They were obviously part of a set – same size, shape and colors, but different designs. The pot I’d seen in Gerstner’s hutch wasn’t one of the three I found in the filing cabinet, but it belonged to the set. The varied designs had one thing in common, a stylized rendering of their pueblo with mountains in the background. The feeling I’d had when I saw the one in the hutch déjà vued me. You’d think after looking at thousands of pots over the course of twenty-five years, I’d be able to spot what was off kilter, but I couldn’t.

I re-wrapped the pots and put them in a box in the Bronco. Then I drove to the post office where I mailed the two envelopes to the university and to the dump where I deposited the filing cabinet sans inventory tag.

My final stop was at my dentist’s office. It was closed, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t need any dental work. I had called ahead and asked my dental hygienist to do me a favor, and she was waiting for me.

Sharice and I have more than a hygienist/patient relationship. We flirt with each other. Actually, she does most of the flirting. It’s hard to reciprocate with her fingers in my mouth. I took her to lunch once and we had a good time, so I asked her out. But she said her boyfriend wouldn’t approve, and then after my next appointment she said she didn’t have her boyfriend anymore, but I was seeing someone else by that time, so we’ve never actually had a date. I don’t know if she’d like me to ask her out again, or if she’s content to leave it at the flirting stage. I don’t know how I feel about it either. She’s attractive enough, but do I really want to date someone who scrapes my teeth?

We chatted amicably for a while after she did the favor for me. Then I stopped by the police station on the way home and asked Whit to give me a copy of the paper with the first three letters of my name on it, the one they’d found in Gerstner’s wallet.

I took it outside and looked at it as I sat behind the wheel of my Bronco. Despite the cool air, the inside of the Bronco was toasty thanks to its expansive glass and the robust New Mexican sun. It felt a little strange being parked in front of the police station with three stolen pots in my vehicle, but the only people who knew they were stolen were the Ma, and I doubted they’d reported it to the Albuquerque Police Department.

The letters looked like this: нцв.

Definitely the first three letters of my name. They were typed, so I didn’t think anyone was going to claim that Gerstner started to type my name but didn’t have time to finish. Unless he was sitting at the typewriter when he was shot. Then I remembered people don’t use typewriters anymore.

I noticed the little squiggle on the lower right of the ‘ц’. They call that a serif. I had read a book that summer by Father Edward Catich called
The Origin of the Serif
in which he claims serifs originated in ancient Rome when they carved words in stone. The letter outlines were first brushed onto the stone to show the carvers where they went, and when the brush first hit the stone it would leave a narrow mark and then widen out as it was pressed down. The stone carvers were illiterate, so they blindly followed the brush marks and that’s how we got serifs. I hadn’t dared mention the book to Susannah for fear of the scolding I knew she’d give me.

51

I put the Ma pot on the shelf, the wheel on slow, and my hands in the clay. The pot conquered my potter’s block. The clay rose under my gentle urging to the exact shape of its inspiration on the shelf.

I spent all afternoon experimenting with different slip mixes and couldn’t find one I thought was right, so I limited myself to one margarita with Susannah and then drove west that night to the
Rio Puerco
and dug up some clay. Digging clay is not illegal, and it’s ridiculous that I have to do it under cover of night, but if I’m caught digging anywhere, you know what the authorities will think.

I spent the next three days on the project and never opened the shop.

When the copy was finished, I lined a box with bubble wrap and hauled the thing to
Dos Hermanas
. On the way, I happened to spot one of those pseudo-trolleys at the Old Town stop, and I saw the gorgeous Stella on it. I stood there gawking, and then I started laughing. Then I started looking forward to telling Susannah.

But when she saw me with the box, Susannah wanted to know what was in it, so I showed her the Ma copy. She said it was beautiful. I agreed, but it wasn’t conceit. The design was someone else’s. All I did was copy it.

“I did pretty well with my project, too,” she said and handed me the paper on Tsarevich Dmitri (or Czarevich Dmitri). The professor had scrawled some nice comments and a big red A on the cover page right above the title.

I played with some of the Cyrillic letters in my head for a minute and it came to me, but I decided I had to find out what it meant before saying anything about it to Susannah.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Now I take the real pots to Martin’s uncle to see what he can tell me about them.”

I took a sip of my margarita, and it was delicious. Being abstemious for a few days had whetted my thirst. Then I told Susannah I knew what sort of work the gorgeous Stella did, but I didn’t say what it was. I took another sip of my drink.

“She wasn’t
in
the thing, Suze. She was
on
it.”

“I don’t get it. What’s the difference?”

“When you’re
in
the trolley, you’re inside in a seat or hanging on to a strap. When you’re
on
the trolley, you’re outside. Well,
you
aren’t outside, but your picture is. A real big picture right there on the side of the trolley.”

“Well you don’t own a TV, so that’s no surprise, and I’m in class most nights or in the library, but at least I know the name. Hubie! Every man in Albuquerque sees her on TV and wishes…well, you know, and here you’ve been rolling in the hay with her. That’s fantastic.”

“Maybe. But I don’t think I can keep pretending I live in Rio Grande Lofts and have a wife that ran off with a younger man.”

“You’ll have to level with her, Hubert. Tell her—”

But I didn’t get to hear how I should do the leveling because Freddie arrived and Susannah left, and I stayed and had another margarita.

When I got home, I called Tristan and asked him to make a videotape of Stella doing her reporting.

52

Jack Wiezga’s studio in the Fine Arts Building was fifteen feet square with shelves on one wall and canvases leaning against the other three. The shelves were full of paint cans and brushes and the floor was layered with paint splatters. It looked like one of his canvases except the composition was better.

“He said that crazy pottery thief came by and tried to get information about the Rusyns, but all he would tell you about was the flag.”

His sloping brow slid down as his eyes narrowed. He tossed his brush in a can of turpentine and wiped his hands on his coveralls. Then he dug a pipe out of his pocket, filled it with tobacco, and lit it. The smoke smelled like burning tires.

“Balkan Sobranie,” I guessed.

“You know tobacco?”

“Not really. I had a roommate who smoked that my freshman year. That’s probably why I abandoned dorm life at the first opportunity.”

He laughed. “Balkan Sobranie was a well-known female repellent. They don’t make it anymore, but not for that reason.” He held up the pipe and looked at it fondly. “This is straight latakia. It comes from Ukraine.”

When he finally looked up, his eyes were still narrow and his prominent jaw set. “Looks like the first three letters of your name.”

53

I placed the pots on Martin’s kitchen table, and his uncle’s normally stoic countenance melted to reverence as he stared at them.