The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy [02] (30 page)

I told him the story came from Martin’s pueblo and had been told to me by Martin’s uncle with Martin translating. My English version probably didn’t do the story justice from a poetic perspective, but it was all I had to offer.

“The rain god mated with the river goddess and a set of twins resulted from their union. They were beautiful children and she named them Left and Right, but the rain god’s wife, who was the mountain goddess, was jealous, so she stole the twins and buried them in the mountain. Those are the two peaks visible to the north of the pueblo, the ones they call left peak and right peak. The mountain goddess also made the rain god promise to withhold rain from the land through which the river flows, and the river dried up and the land became a desert. When the river goddess discovered her twins were gone, she began to weep, and her tears eroded the soil off the mountains, releasing the twins. They went down to the river and each one started a tribe. Left did not honor his mother, and for half the year she thinks about him and weeps and the river flows. Right did honor his mother, and she thinks about him for the other half of the year and the river dries up.”

“Let me guess,” said Masoir. “The way in which Right and his tribe honor his mother is to seal up gold in their pots to symbolize the twins in the mountains.”

We sat in silence for several minutes. Masoir seemed to be reflecting on what I’d told him. Finally he turned to me and said, “I am indebted to you, Hubert. For the first time since I left the University, I’m excited about my discipline again. I thought all that was behind me, but the trip to San Roque and the saga of the pots have reminded me of why I took up anthropology all those many years ago as a young man. Think about that story. Twins are a recurrent theme from Cain and Abel to Romulus and Remus, and of course the use of two hills or peaks to symbolize the female and fertility is found in every human myth. I could go on,” he laughed, “but I fear I would break into a lecture.”

“When you came to my shop earlier this month, you asked me what big ideas I learned in anthropology.”

“As I recall, you didn’t answer that question,” he said with a gleam in his eye.

“Well, I’m prepared to answer it now. The most important lesson I learned is that all people in all places at all times are basically the same. In the million years since we started speaking and using tools, we humans have developed thousands of cultures, but the ways in which they are alike are fundamental, and the ways in which they are different are only superficial.”

“Well put! And were it not true, there would be no science of anthropology because no culture would ever have enough in common with another to study and understand it. Of course our insights about other cultures are perhaps never completely accurate, but we might say the same of our own culture. Indeed, the longer I live, the less I seem to understand my own culture.”

I knew exactly how he felt.

He shook his head in wonderment. “Of course the differences in cultures are not to be disregarded. I sought assistance from you by explaining what the situation was and what I hoped you would do, and Martin’s uncle sought assistance in the same endeavor by simply putting a pot in your hands. Theirs is an amazing culture.”

“It is. I was a volunteer teacher at their pueblo many years ago as an idealistic undergraduate. I asked one of the kids to draw a horse. He started by drawing four ovals on the paper. Those were the hooves. Then he drew the rest of the horse. It wasn’t drawn any better than you would expect from any grade school kid anywhere, but the hooves were exactly where they should be when a horse is standing. So I asked him to draw a running horse, and he drew four more ovals. When he completed that horse, it looked like it was running.”

“Remarkable.”

“I thought so. Incidentally, that little boy’s name was Martin Seepu.”

61

When I got back home from the Masoirs, it was a cold and crisp high desert night and the stars were beckoning.

I aimed my refractor at Jupiter, a popular target for amateur astronomers because it’s two-and-a-half times larger than all the other planets combined and therefore easy to see. It’s also got a lot to look at with its many moons, colorful alternating bands and famous red spot. The spot is actually a storm, somewhat like a hurricane on Earth, except ours are atmospheric hiccups by comparison. Jupiter’s storm is three times bigger than earth and has been swirling around for at least four hundred years!

But I wasn’t thinking about Jupiter as much as I was about Stella. When Tristan had shown me the tape – or whatever it was in his Berry thing – of her newscast, it started with her theme song,
Jupiter
, from Holtz’ famous work,
The Planets
. Holtz subtitled Jupiter “the bringer of jollity.” But I was feeling pangs of longing.

I don’t like most classical music, but
Jupiter
is the best of Holtz’ eight themes. Why only eight? Because the ninth planet hadn’t been discovered when Holtz wrote
The Planets
. Pluto was first sighted in 1929 by Clyde Tombaugh who, rather ironically it seemed to me at that moment, taught astronomy right here in New Mexico. He is also credited with determining the vortex nature of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot which I was gazing at that very moment.

Professional astronomers often call Jupiter a “failed star.” If it had been a little larger at the birth of the solar system, it would have become a second sun in our solar system. Jupiter is not like earth at all. It’s a large whirling mass of gasses.

Jupiter could have been a star. Stella and I could have been … What?

I saw a shadow on Jupiter’s surface and, after a little work, managed to focus in on Io, the moon that was casting that shadow. I felt that was an omen because you rarely get a good look at Io unless it’s against a background of black sky above Jupiter’s equator. Galileo was the first person to spot it, and that was 400 years ago using a very crude telescope by today’s standards.

The name is from Greek mythology. Like most stories from Greek mythology, the tale of Io combines a few observations about human nature with a very confusing plot line I can never remember. The part I did remember was that Zeus fell in love with Io. Hera, Mrs. Zeus, was jealous and gave Io to Argus, the guy with a hundred eyes. I guess that’s why a brand of cameras was named after him. Io later set Prometheus free, or maybe she chained him up – I don’t remember. But it got her condemned to wander forever.

Io is solid like earth and has plains, volcanoes and an atmosphere. The amosphere is mostly sulfur dioxide. Volcanic soil is good for growing grapes and sulfur dioxide is used in winemaking, but the temperature on Io is a bit frigid for viticulture. It’s only a third the size of Earth, so it doesn’t have much gravity, but it does have some, sort of like our moon. I remembered those spectacular pictures from our moon looking back at Earth, and I tried to imagine what it would be like to be on Io looking down at the swirling mass of gas that is Jupiter. You’d be able to see huge lightning bolts and extensive auroras. I wondered if you could hear the Jovian winds. They blow at over 500 miles per hour.

And after a while I realized it had happened. My concerns had drifted away, leaving me to contemplate a pleasurable ignorance. If I lived as long as Io, I would still never understand how the universe came to be. We can find the things that are out there, and we can measure and track them, but we can never really understand. Without realizing it, I had stopped thinking about Stella.

The heavens are awesome and addictive. Clyde Tombaugh was one of the addicts. He made his first telescope as a boy using discarded farm machinery parts and a drive shaft from his father’s 1910 Buick. Sixty-five years later, the Smithsonian Institute asked if it could have that first telescope for its museum. Clyde told them, “I’m still using it.” He lived to be ninety and was fond of saying, “I’ve had a tour of the heavens.” He didn’t know how prophetic those words would be. NASA launched a space probe to Pluto in 2006. The distance to that farthest planet is so great, it will take the probe until 2015 to arrive even though it is traveling at 50,000 miles per hour!

And nestled in among the various scientific instruments is a small metal container with the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh.

62

“Sorry I couldn’t make it yesterday, Suze. I enjoyed visiting with the Masoirs, but I really missed our daily chat and our margaritas.”

“When you were explaining about the blood on the couch, you said the breakthrough was when you realized it made more sense to think the murderer wiped the blood
on
than it did to assume he tried to wipe it off.”

“But that does make more sense.”

“I agree. What doesn’t make sense is comparing it to Ptolemy and Kepler giving two explanations for the same thing because Ptolemy’s explanation is wrong. Earth is not the center of the universe, and planets don’t travel in circles.”

“I didn’t know that.” I pictured a map of the State and realized she was probably right. Willard doesn’t have many claims to fame – they can’t even claim Susannah since she actually grew up on a ranch twelve miles south-southwest of Willard.

“Anyway,” I continued, “the universe, unlike New Mexico, has no perimeter. It’s infinite. Therefore it has no center.”

She mulled that over while she chewed on a chip. “O.K., but the planets don’t travel in circles.”

It was my turn to think for a while. “The goal of Ptolemy was to explain the motion of the planets. His system does that just as well as Kepler’s. The only reason we think Kepler’s system is better is because it’s simpler.”

“But if you were way out in outer space, outside our solar system and looking at it, you’d see the planets traveling in ellipses, not twirling around in circles around circles,” she said.

“You might see them doing figure eights. Viewed from earth, the planets look like they reverse themselves. What you see is a function of where you are.”

“And how many margaritas you’ve had,” she said. I guessed that meant she was tired of astronomy talk because the next things she said was, “I met Bob today for a cup of coffee.”

“When we were discussing how we would recognize each other, he asked me for a suggestion and I said, ‘You could wear a monocle,’ and he laughed. We settled on him wearing a checked shirt, but when I showed up, he actually had a monocle. Anyway, we have our first date tonight.”

“Several times. But heroes don’t need iron wills or steel nerves. All they need to do is the right thing, and you did that, Hubie. You returned those pots to the Ma.”

“Of course. The pots he threw you out for selling were ones you dug up by yourself. You never lied about that. Gerstner said he was returning the pots and then didn’t. It’s not the same thing at all.”

“I guess you’re right. Thanks, Suze.”

“Hubie, don’t look now, but a reporter has just roved in to
Dos Hermanas
.”

I suppose the picture on the bus was professionally done and touched up to make her look her best, but she looked even better in person. Her hair and make-up were flawless, her skirt flared, and her taupe sweater fitted in such a way as to remind any good anthropologist of the myth of the twin peaks.