Cold Tuscan Stone by David Wagner (ebook reader for pc and android TXT) 📗

Zerbino unbuttoned the suit jacket and hooked his thumbs in the small pockets of his vest before going on. “The Guarnacci donation, the core of which you see in these rooms, includes one of the finest collections of Etruscan funerary urns in the world, more than six hundred in number, which are divided in the museum by theme. As you can see, those in this room are decorated with animal motifs.” He stood in the middle of the small room whose shelves were covered with urns similar in size to the one Rick had seen in Beppo’s office in Rome. While Zerbino continued to talk, Rick walked closer to the shelves and examined a few of them, frequently glancing back at the curator so as not to appear rude. The urns were decorated with animals, mostly wild and some more ferocious than others. All were still as vibrant as when their carvers had put chisel to stone more than two millennia earlier. The next room’s urns had a more poignant theme, the voyage from this world to the next. Clearly it was a popular thematic choice; it was the first of four rooms whose urns depicted the transition to the afterlife, always using modes of transportation well known to the Etruscans. Here were horses carrying the deceased, in the next room they traveled in covered wagons pulled by oxen, and in another the chariot was used.

“There certainly are, well, a lot of urns,” said Rick as they entered a sixth room whose walls were once again lined with shelves. Zerbino emitted the sigh of the cognoscenti forced to mingle with the ignoranti, but managed a benevolent smile.

“It can be a bit overwhelming, Signor Montoya. But for Etruscan specialists, each one is a treasure. We hate to part with them, even for a short time, but as you can see I occasionally lend pieces to other museums for special exhibits, under the assumption that they will reciprocate when called upon. We also allow serious academics to take them from the shelves for study and analysis.” He pointed to a small card propped up on one of the shelves. It was clear that the missing urn must have been displayed there for decades, its base had left a light, rectangular spot on the wood. Rick had noticed a few other such cards in the previous rooms. If Beppo’s plan were to pay off, would the recovered urns be displayed in one of these rooms? Probably not, there were enough museums in Rome which would love to get their hands on such treasures.

Zerbino continued his lecture. “The urns in these next rooms deal with stories from Greek mythology. The religion of the Etruscans was of course very close to the Greeks, and they shared much of their mythological tradition. Yes, Renata?”

The last question was directed to an earnest young woman with glasses who had approached as he was talking, and she curtly told him that his appointment had arrived. Zerbino turned to Rick.

“I’m terribly sorry, but I really must not keep this person waiting. Please take your time in seeing the rest of the museum; it is at your disposal. And I hope you will give my warm greetings to Beppo. I trust he is well.”

“He is, and I will certainly give him your regards. Thank you for your time.”

Zerbino gave a stiff hand to Rick and hurried out of the room, followed closely by his secretary.

Rick knew the trick well, it was one his father still used to perfection in his diplomatic work. You tell your secretary to come and get you after a specified time, allowing an escape if the situation requires it. But at least Zerbino had given Rick about twenty minutes of his time and had told him a bit more about those wacky and mysterious Etruscans. To begin with, they sure liked funerary urns. Rick walked along the shelves that lined the room, his eyes moving from one urn to the next. He came to a space and read the card that stood in the place of the missing piece. It had the date, a scribbled set of initials, and the notation that it was on loan to a museum in Germany. He continued to walk around the room, thinking how similar these urns were to the one he had seen in Beppo’s office in Rome.

Rick was not close to becoming an Etruscan scholar, but he was convinced after wandering these rooms that Beppo’s urn was from Volterra. He was also starting to understand why Erica had opted for the Mannerists over the Etruscans, not that those were her only two choices. At that point he came to another card, telling him that the urn that had been in that spot was now undergoing restoration. Into the next room he strolled. Amazing: more funerary urns.

He instinctively reached to his pocket to check the time, but realized his cell phone was at the front desk. Perhaps it was time to start wearing a watch again. Fortunately a bored museum guard sitting in a corner was able to give him the time, and he saw he still had a couple hours before his appointment with Donatella. He walked up the stairs, passed a large statue of the museum’s benefactor sitting in his ecclesiastical robes, and began to work his way through the rooms of the second floor. Here the institution seemed to be reluctantly changing its image from one of a 19th century museum to a modern one. Some rooms still had the old wood and glass cases filled with small artifacts and even smaller cards identifying them, while others had their pieces featured in a more dramatic display, with hidden spots and back lighting. As sometimes happened to him in museums, even the best ones, everything was starting to look the same, but he wanted to see what his guidebook described as the most famous work in the