The Detour (8 page)

“Certainly more than sixty?”

“
Ja
.”

I looked past the driving wheel, searching in vain for an odometer or speedometer, and located only a moving needle under a scratched dome of glass, jumping wildly, as if recording earthquakes instead of motor speed.

“We will call it eighty,” I said firmly.

I reached for the unfinished postcard in my pocket and marked several lines along its edge using the map’s key, turning it into a rough ruler. With a pencil, I made a light tick on the map.

“You don’t mind if I mark up your map, Enzo?”

“
Va bene
.”

And why should he have minded when there were marks all over this map already? No doubt, some of these notations had been made earlier that morning while I was strolling the streets of Rome, eating a pastry and losing my favorite bookmark to a scheming toddler. Herr Keller—for I still assumed that he was a trusted contact, even if the policemen in the truck were suspect—stood around that conference table with Minister Ciano for a good hour, discussing how best to move the statue safely across Italy, and if I didn’t know where each road led, it was because I had not been present for the discussion.

With every tick mark, I attempted to erase the sting of that failed meeting. Every hour, I would make a mark on that map again, estimating perhaps on the conservative side of
kilometers covered, but there was no way to be perfectly accurate. One had to do something, after all. If one was demoted from curator to mere courier, then one had to be the best courier possible.

With every tick mark, I felt more certain that my superiors had chosen well by assigning me to this task—someone scrupulous, with no personal agenda, apolitical, rule-abiding; more than a mere courier, really, because who else understood the value of the cargo we carried? At the ’36 Olympics, our nation had instituted the tradition of carrying a torch from Greece to the Berlin Games, in memory of the Olympics’ classical origins. The value of each torchbearer became clear to anyone who saw the final runner pass. A statue is more than a statue; a flame is more than a flame.
To think any less
, I told myself then, seeking a strength from the symbols around me that I could not locate in my own life or feel from within my own imperfect body,
is to reject civilization
.

It was late afternoon when Cosimo’s eyes began to look glazed. I tapped on his shoulder. “Do you think you need a break? Perhaps the drivers should change every hour.”

“I am the only one that drives the truck.”

“But your brother knows how to drive a scooter.”

“It’s not the same. He is a very good mechanic, but …”

Enzo twisted to face me, tapping me on the knee to gain my full attention, grateful at last for some trivial conversation.

“This is how I meet Mister Keller. He has a touring car, Alfa Romeo, you know this?”

“Alfa Romeo,” I said, to stop the tapping. “Yes.”

“1930 Zagato Spider. Very red, very nice. When he visits Bologna last year, I come to see him, and I fix it. This visit, in Rome, I help him look at another car, more expensive.”

“He likes expensive cars, does he? I wonder how it is he can afford them.”

To the east, a low range of purple mountains faded into the distance as we curved west, climbing past more fields and dusty silver trees and the occasional rustic village with a bell tower. There was a disturbing lack of signs, but I supposed that many of these hamlets were too small to merit inclusion on a national road map.

“Well, it is same as art,” Enzo insisted, unfazed by my lack of engagement. “You want something, you find a way to pay. Your government pays a lot for this statue. They pay more than he pays for his new car.”

“Collecting art is not like collecting cars, Enzo.”

“Very special, very expensive—no matter, statue or good car. Someone has good taste; he knows what he likes.”

“Fine art is one of a kind.”

“Yes? But your statue is a copy.”

“It’s an ancient Roman copy. That makes it very different from a modern copy. It’s irreplaceable.”

Enzo asked Cosimo to translate something, but Cosimo was ignoring us, his eyelids heavy, the steering wheel tugging gently left and right between his loose fingers.

“So you are saying it is so special,” Enzo tried again. “So special that maybe Italy should not give it away.”

“Your government sold it. It was not given away.”

“But Italy should not sell it.”

“Past tense. Sold. Finished deal.”

“So Italy should not sold it, you are saying.”

“Obviously I’m not saying that.”

But we had not been talking about art or automobiles; we had been talking at first about the tired driver, and whether it made sense for someone else to help with the driving. It couldn’t be me. Except for one weekend of driving lessons, which only convinced me of the great value of public transportation, I didn’t know how to handle a motorized vehicle. “Your brother might need a break, I think, if you could take over for a short while.”

“He is a good mechanic, my brother—good enough for extra pay,” Cosimo commented placidly. “But my brother doesn’t know how to drive. It’s better. This way, we have different specialties, and we each have a job.”

“Well, that’s fine as long as we make unhampered progress. Florence by tonight, for example? That isn’t too much to expect?”

Enzo considered, frowning. “Florence maybe tomorrow. Earliest, morning.”

“But I should think that Florence is one-third of the way. Isn’t that true?”

Enzo began to nod, slowly at first, then with greater enthusiasm. He had found it in his heart to forgive me for previous
disagreements, at least for the moment. “Florence is a magnificent city. You are there a while, on the way to Rome?”

“No. I traveled directly.”

“But you are a student of the history of art? Florence has more art than any place in the world!”

“I did not have time.”

“And you will be passing close by it again—and to not visit? To not see the art?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He tugged at a loopy curl over his ear, fatigued by my contradictions. “It does not matter?”

“I did not prepare for Florence.”

“You cannot prepare.”

“Yes. One can.”

“No,” he said, as if I simply hadn’t heard him. “For beauty, you cannot prepare.”

“You read, you study, you determine in advance—”

“No, no,” he objected, smiling.

“—you determine what you will see,” I said, finishing my thought, “and you prepare to understand and appreciate it.”

He shrugged. “So you do this next time. Soon. When you are in Italy again.”

“I don’t enjoy traveling.”

He tallied on his fingers the famous enchantments of Florence: “You have the Ponte Vecchio. You have the Botticelli, the da Vinci. You have, of course, the
David
. Your
Discus Thrower
is not even as tall as me. But the
David
, he is twice as tall.”

“It is three times as tall,” I corrected him. “It is just over five meters. It was started by Agostino di Duccio and the commission was taken over by Antonio Rossellino—”

“No, friend, it is by Michel—”

“—before the commission was given to the young Michelangelo, then twenty-six years old.” Just two years older than me, and already immortal. Not to suggest I had any lofty aims for myself, only that I recognized youth was a relative concept, and no excuse for anything.

“That is very good,” Enzo said, smiling at my recitation. “Very good.”

“That is nothing. I am unschooled in the finer points of Renaissance sculpture. These facts I have told you are just facts, as a tourist would memorize them from a guidebook. And anyway, more to the point”—I was speaking too quickly, causing Enzo to wrinkle his brow and lean toward me in an extra effort to catch and translate every word—“the point you are making about the
David
’s greater height is no point at all. We don’t judge art by its
size
. We are not selecting modern
furniture
.”

Even confused, he still managed to look at peace. Grinning, he said, “But to go to Florence and actually
see
. This is different from facts.” Eyebrows lifted, he affected the high-pitched tone of an adult trying to pique a child’s interest. “It is
tempting
.”

“It is not.”

And this made me feel better as well. Perhaps this was why I was chosen—not because there was no other choice, but because I was the kind of person who preferred to be home, who could not be lured by the exoticism of distant borders,
the distraction of foreign offerings. I was not even inflamed by passion for art outside my classical specialty—and good thing, or I never could have crossed such a treasure-filled country on a deadline.

In the beginning, our
Sonderprojekt
department had been staffed by twice as many men as women, even in the clerical positions. But almost as soon as I’d joined, following certain new arrivals and departures, the balance had reversed. It occurred to me only now that Gerhard’s had not been the first unexplained change. There had been other quiet demotions and outright removals, less apparent to me then because I’d been so new, less worthy of reflection of any kind in Munich, with its day-to-day concerns and distractions—whereas here there was only the sound and rhythm of the wheels on the road, and more time—perhaps too much time—to think.

As it turned out, one could have too much knowledge and experience in the arts to be the best match for certain kinds of employment. Someone older than me, who had worked in the field longer and under a different zeitgeist, would have developed many ideas and tolerances that were no longer acceptable. When I first started working in our office there had been several modern art curators among us, but invariably, their tastes became problematic. Perhaps they defended an artist, living or dead, or had certain ideas about embracing new possibilities, or weren’t sympathetic to the anti-modern “degenerate” exhibitions supported by the government.

None of that involved me, not because of my own political or personal views, but only because I knew so little about modern art, had never written any papers, made any
statements, or even attended many gallery openings of note. I had not been strategically avoiding controversy. I was simply not part of that intellectual sphere, due to my own inadequate schooling and my late discovery—one of those doors that opens after another closes—of art itself. My ignorance, in a sense, had made me safe, even while my lack of broader knowledge pained me. But this wasn’t the time to be a Renaissance man. This was the time for the deep, clean, and relatively painless cut of narrow knowledge.

At this moment, I reminded myself, lest my own thoughts circle too endlessly, the statue was my only priority, followed by the job awaiting me back in Munich. Surely, regardless of Herr Keller’s intimations, the job
still
awaited. If I had erred during the first hours of my assignment, injuring my reputation in some way, then surely that error could be overcome. I had done nothing wrong, at any time in my young career or at any point in my young adult life. But if doing nothing was some kind of magic armor, why did I feel so exposed and out of sorts?

Enzo had picked up on my pensive melancholy, or perhaps he was simply trying to shed his own. He suddenly sat upright. Something had caught his attention out the window.

“Close your eyes,” he said to me.

“Your brother might need a nap, but I’m fine.”

“No, quickly. Close your eyes. It is something incredible coming, but you should see it only closer. Do this for me, please.”

I relented. I closed my eyes and kept them closed for several minutes, enjoying the heat on my eyelids.

“This is most incredible thing you will ever see in your life,” he said.

“Is it a fancy car?”

“No,” he laughed. “I am not only liking cars. This is something everyone likes.”

A minute passed.

“Is it a pretty girl?’

This made him laugh again. “Pretty girl? She is very big pretty girl if I see her from so far away and we are not passing her yet after this much time. Don’t you think?”

“Just tell me when you’re ready.”

“No. Not yet. It is better soon. Yes, now, open! Look!”

“I’m looking.”

They covered the horizon. Fields of tall sunflowers: dark faces fringed with bright yellow petals, nodding slightly, all facing one direction, bowing to some distant altar. I had never seen so many in one place. I had never seen such a broad expanse of yellow and green, on the left and on the right, ahead of and behind us. An ocean that turned toward the sun.

“Yes?”

“I see … flowers.”

His eyebrows were furrowed, his features clownishly collapsed. “That is all? You see flowers?” He reached across me to grab me by the shoulders, squeezing the shirt fabric of which he only somewhat approved.

“Yes, Enzo. I see flowers.”

He released my shoulders. His face said it all. It was done.
He
was done—with me and my refusal to be charmed, my refusal to be like him. For a moment, I experienced the thin,
taut pleasure of having stood firm, followed by a slow and sighing deflation—the sinking realization that one has declined in another’s already-modest estimation.