This is the fourth installment of a series. Click on the link at the bottom of the page to continue to the next installment.  Or, click here to read from the very beginning. Previously:

Wayfarer was warming to her subject, the possible unsecured antiquity. “So you might say that we’re looking for an object like everything else around it, but not quite: an artifact with an accent.” “Well, the generator goes off at nine pm sharp,” Rankle interrupted her,” so if you’d like to see your little unsecured antiquity in the light, you’d better do it soon.”

The Unsecured Antiquity

Professor Einer Wayfarer hadn’t wanted an audience for her first view of the mystery object that had brought her to Beit Bat Ya’anah, but ultimately it hadn’t been possible to avoid it. She supposed it was her own fault: after her spirited exposition at dinner, everyone wanted to see what she was going to do. She felt she couldn’t refuse to satisfy the students’ curiosity – it was a legitimate educational opportunity for them – so she found herself following Wilson A. Rankle, marching downhill across the rough, stony soil of the moonlit compound to the lab, trailing a string of students and staff behind.

The one-room lab was the dig camp’s only intact hard-sided structure, left over from a failed settlement attempt in an earlier decade. Although recently painted, it was both shoddily built and structurally weathered – and it smelled like dry rot and insecticide – but inside there were cabinets and file drawers, a couple of light-tables, writing tables with archaic wooden school chairs with green backs and split black vinyl seats, and a banged-up dry sink that at night collected a surprising assortment of joint-legged samples of the local fauna that, once in, couldn’t escape its vertical sides. If the lab had housed a entomological research effort, this sink would have had appreciable scientific value, but as it was, everyone was merely repelled by what showed up in the porcelain trap every morning, and devised ways of not being the first one in who, by convention, had to liberate the leggy zoo with a four-by-six file card and a jam jar.

All the lab’s windows were high on the block walls. Many were painted shut, and those that weren’t opened just wide enough to let in small puffs of hot air and large numbers of moths and scarabs. The lighting was better than anywhere else in the compound, but still barely adequate for night work. This was where the senior staff and a handful of conscripted underlings worked afternoons and after dark, until the generator shut down, writing up daily reports, plotting features and matrices on maps of units, and recording on cards anything significant that came out of the ashy soil that day, which was a rare event. There was a skeleton library with basic resources: a beat-up first edition of Aharoni’s book in Hebrew, Shepard’s and Amiran’s books adjacent, dated but still useful, a few back issues of the BAR and JNES, and monographs and annual reports from other sites. There was one electric fan whose weak output everyone fought over except Shams, the dig’s meticulous draftsman/surveyor, who never sweated and was seldom seen without his stingy-brimmed panama hat, and who didn’t want a feeble breeze stirring his ink renderings even a little.

Now Shams, Zvia, Rory, about eight other grad students and staff plus the one eager undergrad named Eric – his neck still blotched and hot from the wasp stings – were sitting in the hard green chairs watching William A. Rankle rummage through a drawer.

“Where the hell is it, Ben-Tor?” he grumbled. It occurred to Wayfarer that the director didn’t know what he was looking for. Zvia went over and directly pulled a plastic bag out of the drawer he was disarranging. “Those are all in locus order, please, Dr. Rankle,” she pointed out, firmly. “Here; Dario said it’s this one.”

This reminded Rankle again of his missing staff member. He looked around, as if the young man might have somehow recently manifested. Not finding him, he asked, “Where did you say he is?” No one answered.

Wayfarer received the bag from Zvia, hefting it in her palm: it was weighty for its volume, but not large. She asked, “May I handle it?”

Rankle laughed. “Knock yourself out. It’s nothing special. Despite what Dario says.”

Dr. Wayfarer noticed Zvia turn slightly pink at the last part of this remark, as if it were directed at her. “Everyone’s an expert, aren’t they?” the professor commented neutrally as she took the object out of the plastic bag, and laid it on the table. Then she pulled out her glasses, and perched them on the end of her nose to take a good long look at the Object.

Evidently the AWOL Dario, whoever he was, had a sense of humor: after staring at it for no more than thirty seconds, she declared authoritatively, “Well, it’s definitely not a spoon.”

What she had placed on the table – the “mystery object”, the much-anticipated unsecured antiquity – appeared to be nothing more than a lump of broken pottery: a handle, evidently broken off of a medium-sized vessel, with a fragment of neck joining the two ends. There was no sign of surface decoration, such as glaze, slip or incision. The clay body was gritty and brown, and the item was neatly if casually formed. But Wayfarer wasn’t an archæologist; the unrefined ceramic fragment meant little to her, yielded nothing to her inexpert examination. She cleared her throat; a noise that sounded distinctly like hrrmph. “Someone tell me about the type of vessel this comes from. Please.”

Rankle prompted, “Ben-Tor?”

“Pottery man did that one,” Zvia said. “Since Amit wasn’t here.”

“Pottery man” — Amit’s grad student Lior — spoke up promptly, “Fragment; strap-handle. Probably from an amphora; retrieved from an Iron Age exterior residential midden, stratigraphically undatable; maybe a small Canaanite jar, originally for transport, maybe afterwards re-used for domestic wine storage.”

Wayfarer hrrmphed again; it was the closest she was going to get to wine tonight, apparently. But she nodded at Lior, summarizing, “An undatable storage jar handle. Thank you.” She placed her finger in the loop of clay and held the fragment up once more. The shape was unremarkable, the construction was unremarkable. It was merely household waste; part of a broken, discarded wine jar. Very disappointing. Worse yet, she found herself in agreement with Rankle: the object was nothing special. It was an unremarkable fragment altogether, with nothing at all to recommend it for her further notice.

She was about to say so when something stopped her. Pulling her blunt finger out of the handle and looking underneath it for the source of a sensation of roughness against her skin she asked, “Does anyone have a dental mirror?” One was handed to her, and she slid it under the strap of clay.

On the underside of the handle, where it was invisible to the eye but would have been felt with the fingers of anyone picking up or pouring the vessel, the mirror reflected a small textured mark. It had been pressed into the clay while still soft: a geometric, elemental symbol that was very familiar to Dr. Wayfarer within the narrow context of her own literary subject.

Was this what Avsa wanted her to see – not a piece of pottery, but a character? Characters she knew something about. A character, Wayfarer thought, she might be able to do something with.

To be continued…

To read Part 5 “The Character”, click here.

This is the third installment of a series. Click on the link at the bottom of the page to continue to the next installment.  Or, click here to read from the very beginning. Previously:

“There’s half an hour until dinner. Would you like to see the object now?” After coming halfway around the world on short notice, she was being offered just half an hour of face time with the mystery object? Not damn likely. “Thanks, Wilson,” she said, “but it can wait until after dinner, I think. I’d like to chat with your staff.”

Wayfarer’s explanation

“Every museum in the world has some, imprisoned in drawers, supporting rodent traps in off-site storage lockers, hunkered down in the bottom of boxes with yellowing, silverfish-nibbled labels,” Professor Wayfarer was warming to her subject. Overhead a string of low-wattage bulbs twinkled, shedding a soft glow onto the dining tables at the dig camp. After dinner, her first night on site and against her better judgment, Wayfarer found herself explaining – more or less – why she was at Beit Bat Ya’anah.

She was at the excavation site at Avsa Szeringka’s request.  But that she was explaining why publicly was William A. Rankle’s fault: during the meal he had started in, critically, about Szeringka’s well-known professional eccentricities. In a different field, he didn’t know Avsa personally: he was just repeating hearsay, which irritated Wayfarer particularly. She felt she ought to put up some defense for a friend, even though she herself wasn’t entirely convinced of her colleague’s recent research direction. Pushing her plastic plate across the oilcloth table cover, the professor noticed that it was a cheerful printed version of the floral-on-white pattern of the eastern mediterranean faience glazes still common on clay tableware and tiles in the homes and suqs all over Israel and Lebanon, Rhodes and Cyprus, as well as excavated from ruins of the countryside. So much cultural division in this part of the world, she reflected, yet so much cultural continuity visible in the tools of everyday life.

She continued, “Every day these ‘mystery objects’ are re-discovered during routine organization and clean-up of collections; they’re liberated while searching for other accessions; they arrive well-wrapped in crated bequests and cartons of anonymous donations; they’re even unearthed alongside provenanced artifacts at excavations: the so-called unsecured antiquities.  Most of the time, however, they’re not even noticed. They’re the objects that no one knows what to do with, not the world-class ethno-pundits, the egg-head art history mavens, not even the archæo-techs with their analytical equipment or the archæo-geeks with their objective, impersonalized classification systems.” Not above this jab at Rankle, and never averse to holding forth in front of an audience, Wayfarer was in full spate. It was pleasant sitting under the high-starred indigo sky, her bobbed gray hair ruffled by a light breeze that was almost refreshing, with a group of attentive students listening to her over empty plates. Still no wine, but at least there were no mosquitoes, either, unlike in Lassiter.

“So, you’re trying to identify these unsecured antiquities?” asked the undergraduate, whose wasp-stung neck had sprouted a couple of painful-looking swellings.

“No, I’m an expert on neither archæology nor ancient history. My specialty is a body of literature in a language very few people outside the field have ever heard of. But a small number of my colleagues – Avsa Szeringka foremost among them – questions the likelihood that any culture would leave a substantial amount of written material behind them but no quotidian artifacts. She thinks the scattered numbers of bastard belongings – the unsecured antiquities currently unrecognized in university, museum and private collections all over the world could be ‘mined’ for candidate items, for the belongings of this crypto-culture, these hidden people.” That was sufficient; the students didn’t need to know the rest of Avsa’s controversial theories, and Rankle was already hostile enough.

Wayfarer noticed Zvi was watching the director now, whose mouth was set in an asymmetrical, skeptical line.  But the big grad student with the impressive beard was watching her.

“Unrecognized in museum collections?” he asked.

Rankle said, “Zohn thinks he’s interested in museum studies.”

A good-natured booming filled the space under the tarp and bowled Rankle’s condescending remark cleanly out into the desert. “I am interested in museum sciences,” Rory laughed.  “And I’d like to know what to keep an eye out for, since I’ve got an intern-fellowship starting next fall at the Ashmolean. The Tradescant Collection must be full of unsecured antiquities.”

“Exactly; it’s one of Avsa’s favorite places to dig for them,” commented Wayfarer, “Oxford is within easy range of the Szeringka Institute… you may run into her searching for things.”

“Like what kinds of things?”

Wayfarer shrugged. “Like spoons,” she said, holding hers up, “for instance.”  The professor knew the word spoon was usually good for a laugh, and the students obliged.

“I mean that fairly literally,” she told them. “Spoons have been around for millenia. It’s just the sort of thing that might show evidence of cultural personalization, or a declaration of ethnic association. It’s not uncommon for cultural cohorts without a dedicated homeland to maintain their social, ethnic, religious, or ancestral identity in their implements of daily life.” This didn’t seem like something she should need to explain to this group, in this place.

“You’re looking for a personalized spoon?” asked the wasp-stung undergrad. The maroon welts on his neck clashed with his bright blue Oriental Institute tee shirt, its white Achæmenid winged lion design cracked and sun-faded, and full of tiny holes at the letter-edges.

His tenacity made Wayfarer smile. “What’s your name, son? Well, Eric, perhaps not actually a spoon. But I would start by looking for an object with an identifying mark, a distinctive and perhaps unexpected characteristic.” Years of teaching had shown her that if you wanted students to understand, you had to speak their language. “A logo, if you will: like on your tee shirt. It could be a symbol, or a character, something that sets it, and its owner, apart from the neighbors. In fact you could say,” she wound up thematically aptly, “that we’re looking for an object like everything else around it, but not quite. As someone who studies language, I might say, an artifact with an accent.”

Rankle interrupted this lesson pragmatically. “Well, the generator goes off at nine pm sharp, so if you’d like to see your little unsecured antiquity in the light, you’d better do it soon.”

There were a dozen or so pairs of eyes on her. It didn’t seem as if this day was ever going to end, but Wayfarer stood up. “By all means,” she said, “let’s have a look.”

To be continued…

To read Part 4, “The Unsecured Antiquity”, click here.

I wrote the following promo last month and then promptly forgot all about it in my WordPress “drafts”. So, here it is, to be used as a reminder that the exhibition is almost over:

Allison Shock/Three Star Owl is pleased to debut the new piece “Assemblage: Owl Hives” at the Arizona Clay Annual Juried Exhibition at the Chandler Center for the Arts. The “Assemblage” is a group of artefaux which may provide evidence for the ancient and apocryphal practice of strigiculture — the raising of owls — for either domestication or ritual purposes.

detail, “Assemblage: Owl Hives” (photo and piece by A.Shock, click to enlarge) >>

The Exhibit features work by more than 40 Arizona clay artists, and runs from 18 March – 16 April 2011. Come to the Chandler Center for the Arts, and see what the Arizona clay community is up to.

An Exhibition of Clay Works by Arizona Artists

March 18 – April 16, 2011

Jennifer Allred∗Linda S. Baker∗Barbara Baskerville∗Sandra Blain∗David L. Bradley∗Cheryl Brandon∗Sarah Brodie∗Stephen Bunyard∗Tristyn Bustamante∗Robin Cadigan∗Susan Cielek∗Jeanne Collins∗Shirlee Daulton∗Ken Drolet∗Paulette Galop∗Jan Gaumnitz∗Audrey Goldstein∗Rena Hamilton∗Lisa Harnish∗Pam Harrison∗Susan Hearn∗Julie Hendrickson∗Janet Wills Keller∗Alene Kells∗Sue Kopca∗Gabrielle Koza∗Sandra Luehrsen∗Patricia Manarin∗Steve Marks∗Constance McBride∗Mirjana McLadinov∗Kim Mendoza∗Candice Methe∗Kaye Murphy∗Virginia Pates∗Karen VanBarneveld Price∗Kazuma Sambe∗Allison Shock∗Phyllis Stringer∗Genie Swanstrom∗Christopher Torrez∗Neal Walde∗Diane Marie Watkins∗Annette Weaver

Exhibition Dates: March 18 – April 16, 2011
Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., Saturdays, Noon – 4 p.m.
at: Chandler Center for the Arts
250 North Arizona Avenue
Chandler AZ 85225
Sponsored by the Chandler Center for the Arts, the Chandler Cultural Foundation, and the Chandler Arts Commission, Chandler Cultural Foundation
Images courtesy of the artists.
For more information call 480-782-2695.

This is the second installment of the series, click on the link at the bottom of this page to continue to the next installment.  Or, click here to start reading from the very beginning.  Previously:

Wilson A. Rankle waved a hand to indicate they should follow the goat track back down to camp. “Well, it’s almost tea-time,” he said. “Mikka will have put out mits, biscuits and hot water. Oh, there’s coffee too…” “Marvelous,” Professor Wayfarer said, not impressed with the standard options of reconstituted juice or hot drinks. “Lead the way.”

Tea and Announcements

The staff of Beit Bat Ya’anah was clumped along one edge of the dining tarp at the dig camp compound. The sun was low, and there was only a small trapezoid of dirt on the east side of the shelter that wasn’t in the sun. A table for dry biscuits, teabags, instant coffee, cups, and a hot water urn took up the prime part of the trapezoid, and everyone was crowded into the remaining geometry of shade around it. Nobody was talking much, except to pass the sugar or powdered milk, or to ask for water to dilute the puckeringly sweet mits fruit juice.

Einer Wayfarer inserted herself among the subdued group, managing to get most of her upper body out of the sun. But her feet, already dusty again from the walk from the shower to her cabin-tent to the tea table, were baking in the late afternoon light. She was still mildly disgruntled from discovering that the showers, an open-air affair on a rough cement slab surrounded by semi-opaque plastic sheeting and inadequately shaded by camo-mesh, were communal, with set times for men and women.

In Wayfarer’s firm opinion, this rustic system wasn’t ideal: the real possibility of getting sunburnt while bathing did not appeal; and the water, heated by the sun all day in exposed plumbing, had been unpleasantly hot. Furthermore, the cracked and pitted cement looked like a prime breeding ground for foot fungus. Still, considering the remoteness of the site, she was pleasantly surprised to find running water at all, and wondered about its source.

Precise enough to note physical discomfort, but too practical to be hampered by it, Wayfarer got on with studying the dig staff. It was apparent that the BGU archæology department didn’t employ local workmen: to judge by the accents she was hearing this was a diverse international bunch: she counted fourteen, mostly Yanks and a few Aussies and Europeans, plus a handful of Israelis. All of the staff she saw were the right age to be grad students or post-docs, except for one precocious American undergrad who must have been deemed sufficiently mature by his advisor to be packed off to help. That meant everyone was working for free, receiving either course credit or resumé-plumping experience in exchange for heavy manual labor, long hours and mediocre food.

She decided that archæology students presented more disreputably than her tidy literary lot back in the states, and that all of the Americans and most of the Aussies were even grungier-looking than the Israelis, if that were possible. Of course, this was to be expected; it was the tail-end of a long, hard season, and everyone looked tired and worn as thin as their grubby tee-shirts.

Wayfarer also noticed that besides herself and the person she assumed was the cook, Mikka, who had startlingly pink hair and a nose stud, there was only one other woman present – young, almost as short as the professor but a good deal slimmer, and who, having grabbed a styrofoam cup of coffee, was headed directly at her.

“Zvi,” the young woman said briefly, then elaborated “Zvia Ben-Tor. You must be Professor Wayfarer. My advisor’s your buddy Ballard Sybar, at Princeton.” She held out a square palm to shake. Everything about her, starting with her name and her haircut, seemed abbreviated.

“Ah, Ballard,” Wayfarer said diplomatically. “We missed him at the ESSA meeting this spring.” This was an outright lie. No one ever missed Sybar — he was a bully and a pain in the ass. Wayfarer thought if this compact young woman could put up with Ballard, she could put up with anything.

“I’m sure you did,” Zvi said, with equal truth and perfect understanding. “By the way,” she added quietly. “The E-word is a four-letter word around here, just so you know.”

Wayfarer, recalling Wilson Rankle’s earlier peevishness, said without lowering her voice, “Yes, I gathered as much. Both directors?”

“Just Dr. Rankle,” Zvi explained. “Amit’s a love-muffin. Not literally,” she added quickly, as Wayfarer’s pale blue eyes latched onto her inquisitively. “I mean, on that topic. Maintains an open mind, at least. He hired me, for example. I’m the only Elennuist on the staff, practically.”

“Practically?” asked Wayfarer; one was either an Elennuist or not.

Zvia opened her mouth, but closed it again, and tilted her head to point. “Oh, here comes Dr. Rankle. It’s afternoon announcement time.”

Wayfarer looked. Wilson A. Rankle was approaching, the comb-over now firmly in place against his pink scalp. He was holding a cold bottle of soda in one hand. No doubt it was from some personal supply; she imagined there might even be a padlock involved. Wayfarer disliked soft drinks, but she disliked self-endowed aristocracy even more.

“Good afternoon, people. Ben-Tor, put on some shoes, will you, unless you’re trolling for scorpions?” He opened his mouth to continue, but something caught his eye. “Eric, what’s that mess you’re holding on your neck?”

“Ice,” the sole undergrad explained, “in a baggie. Area D has wasps in the balks again.”

“Are you allergic? No? Well then, I’ll get on with it. Have you all met Dr. Wayfarer? She’s from MacCormack U and is here to look at our supposed Mystery Object in case it’s something special. Please extend her the courtesy of showing her the ropes around camp and in the lab for however long she’s with us. Also, I have a general announcement that I shouldn’t have to make, but since Dr. Wayfarer has just arrived, it’s worth informing her and reminding you all that this late in the season, water is in very short supply, so limit your showers to three minutes and keep them within the afternoon hours, so the pumps have enough time to refill the cistern, otherwise we’ll go dry. Limit clothes-washing to bare necessity, too. What’s so funny, Zohn?” he added wearily, as if engaged in a habitual battle.

The remark was directed at a sturdy staff member with a nimbus of brown hair and a patriarch’s beard. “Just thinking how appropriate the term rank and vile will be,” he joked. Everyone tittered.

“That’s rank and file, Zohn,” the director corrected, as if it were ignorance and not a pun. He went on as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “And, let me remind everyone, once again, that for your own safety the upper wadi is strictly off limits, at any time, but especially after dark. None of you has any reason… any reason to be up there. At all. And I mean none of…” he looked around and demanded, “where’s Dario?”

No one said anything.

Rankle finished up abruptly, “Well, I think I’ve made myself clear. That’s all.”

He turned to Einer Wayfarer. “There’s half an hour until dinner. Would you like to see the object now?”

Half an hour? Half an hour? She’d come half-way around the world on short notice and she was being offered half an hour of face time with the mystery object? Not damn likely. Wayfarer settled her dense body weightily onto a bench and folded her short-fingered hands firmly around her styrofoam cup.

“Thanks, Wilson,” she said, “but it can wait until after dinner, I think. I’d like to chat with your staff.”

To be continued…

To read Part 3 “Wayfarer’s Explanation”, click here.

(This series is a prequel to the eight-part “Ganskopf Incident”, click here to read the Ganskopf Incident; earliest posts are at the bottom; scroll down to start there.)

The Owl Hives are in Chandler.

On Friday night, March 18, the All AZ Clay Invitational Exhibition opened at the Chandler Center for the Arts, displaying the work of more than 40 clay artists from all over the state of Arizona.  Among them is an installation of artefaux by me, entitled Assemblage: Owl Hives.

>> Assemblage: Owl Hives (photo and piece, A.Shock 2011)

The piece is composed of a variety of related, archeologically-themed elements, and is intended to be viewed on its own æsthetic merits.  But, if you read this blog regularly, parts of the installation will look familiar to you, since I’ve posted bits and pieces of it before, in progress.  Also, in the Assemblage, you may recognize a tie-in to the fictional posts that appear here irregularly: according to the signs, the piece is purported to be on loan from the august but mysterious Ganskopf Foundation.  In addition, the ubiquitous and insinuating Dr. Darius Danneru has graciously provided an excerpt from a recent article, supplying authoritative and scholarly, if prolix, context for the piece.  <<

I hope you can stop by the Chandler Center for the Arts’ Vision Gallery anytime before April 16, when the show closes, to see what the Arizona clay community is up to, including three pieces by Don Reitz, from the CCA’s collection.  More info below, or click on Three Star Owl events.  (Photo E.Shock>>)

Exhibition Dates, Hours, and Location:

March 18 – April 16, 2011
Vision Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday, 10 am – 5 pm, Saturdays, Noon – 4 pm
at: Chandler Center for the Arts
MAP/Directions
250 North Arizona Avenue
Chandler AZ 85225
For more information call 480-782-2695.

(Remember, for guaranteed fiction, look for the Pseudopod Waltz logo: “You Never Know Which Foot Is When.”)

This is the first installment of a series. The events take place many years before the “Ganskopf Incident”. Click on the link at the bottom of the page to continue to the next installment.

Wayfarer Arrives:

Deep in the Negev Desert, Israel, in the early 1980s.

After the long flights, with the long layovers, first in Chicago then in Hamburg, the long sherut taxi ride from the airport, and the long, jarring jeep ride from the university, Einer Wayfarer stood overlooking a dry, hot, honeycomb of trenches and pits on the top of a dry, hot ridge in a dry, hot, central Negev valley. Her ankles were swollen, and she badly wanted a glass of wine, and a dim bar to sip it in. The glare of the sunlight off the pale soil hurt her eyes, the heat hurt her nostrils, and Wilson A. Rankle’s droning voice hurt her ears. He was saying something she supposed she should be attending to: “…primarily MBIIa to judge by the pottery, the same date as the walls although we haven’t located a glacis or any major fortifications… the early LBI strata are largely absent here at Beit Bat Ya’anah except in Area D…”

Dr. Wayfarer was a philologist first and only secondarily a historian, and she couldn’t understand why archeologists used so many letter-abbreviations that looked like the names of viruses. Furthermore, she knew little of the history of the Bronze Age – or any other Age, frankly – in the Levant, and was really only here at the behest of her colleague and friend Avsa Szeringka, who had somehow herself managed to remain comfortably ensconced at the Institute near cool, gray Oxford. This, too, was a gray landscape but a harsh, scorched gray, not a muffled cloud-gray. Here cobbles and stones lay like bare bleached bones on the dirt surface, excavated unscientifically by the winds.

She turned to the dig director, hoping that watching his lips move would help her comprehend his monotonous jumble of letters and digits, but she only managed to observe that his comb-over had flopped to the wrong side of his scalp in the hot wind. He was pointing with his hat in his hand, and she wished he would replace it on his cranium; he was pink and sweating and Wayfarer believed he required its floppy brim more for shade than for an ineffectually vague indicator. She looked away again, to be safe: at any moment, the comb-over would flop back, or, worse yet, erect itself like a hoopoe’s crest and stay that way. In her sleep- and shower-deprived state, she could not guarantee her decorum if that occurred.

Finally Wilson A. Rankle stopped talking, stopped waving his hat imprecisely, and smoothing the buoyant flange of hair with a self-conscious and practiced gesture he jammed the hat back onto his head saying, “Well, that’s about it, site-wise. So I suppose you’ll want to see the object now.”

Wayfarer detected peevishness in this flat, ungracious offer. She knew the source of the peevishness, and it sunk him even lower in her estimation. Squinting against the glare, her pale blue eyes didn’t meet his, but she said mildly, “Of course. But first, I’d like to unpack, and, if it isn’t too much trouble, perhaps something to drink?”

He waved a hand to indicate they should follow the goat track back down to camp. “Well, it’s almost tea-time,” he said. “Mikka will have put out mits, biscuits and hot water. Oh, there’s coffee too…”

“Marvelous,” Wayfarer said, not impressed with the standard options of reconstituted juice or hot drinks. “Lead the way.” Sliding a bit unsteadily down the unconsolidated trail behind the archeologist, she was already calculating the least amount of time she could possibly spend on this romp.

To be continued…

To read Part 2 “Tea and Announcements”, click here

What if you had to raise large numbers of owls, herds of owls, swarms of tiny owls, all at once? What if that was your job? What would you need? You might need an Owl Hive. Or a cluster of Owl Hives. What would an owl hive be like? Each hive would have to have entrances, so that the owls could fly in and out. There would have to be an interior chamber, so the owls could build their elaborate, communal owlcomb. There would have to be access for you the Owl Keeper, to extract whatever product the owl colony produced and stored inside, like vole honey or rabbit suede. It would need a lower hole to expel pellets and admit fresh air. At the very least, there would need to be a roof for the owls to land on, and a lofty perch from which to Keep an Eye on Things.

Here are some detail photos of unfinished architectural-effigy-nest-vessel-box objects in progress, some only bisqued, some completely innocent of the kiln as yet — the most recent Three Star Owl clay project. They might be Owl Hives. They might be sculpture or effigy vessels. They might be small ovens or incense censors. Or, they might be actors, waiting to be cast as archæological artifacts in an upcoming fiction post on this blog. Of course, they might be all of the above. Stay tuned to this location to see how it goes. (All photos and objects A.Shock)

(This is the FINAL final episode, the Epilogue to an eight part series. To read all the episodes, click here: The Ganskopf Incident or on The Ganskopf Incident category in the sidebar to the left. The earliest posts are at the bottom, scroll down to read them chronologically from the bottom up.)

“That’s what conservation departments are for.”

That remark by Dr. Danneru stayed with me a long time, quite as long as the shock of seeing the fragile amber “fetish” destroyed by infinitesimally improbable misfortune and scofflaw beverage consumption. His controlled tone was either supremely insensitive or genuinely kind: either a willful effort to deny the magnitude of the loss, or a desperate reassurance intended to put things in perspective for us. I’ve never been able to decide which. Coming from the person most responsible for the disaster, it was certainly self-serving.

In any case, the statement was mere bravado – the piece was unrecoverable, as he must have known. My stained, smeared drawing of it was used as evidence in the insurance inquiry and subsequent lawsuit, and I had to return to Lassiter for a day in court where I answered a lot of questions asked by precisely-speaking men in expensive suits. Surprisingly, the question of tea never came up. Apparently ranks had been closed in the face of investigation, perhaps agreements reached. Museums, collectors, academia, and the legal profession are a squabbling ménage, yet they perennially cohabit, with law enforcement and insurance their prying neighbors, ears pressed hard to the walls.

I never heard the outcome of the case, but I was fascinated to hear that the monetary figure in question – the insured value of the shattered piece – was put at an amount well above what I could earn in a year. This official valuation had been provided by an unexpected expert witness: Dr. Darius Danneru, PhD, MacCormack University, member ESSA, ICER, fellow of the Szeringka Institute, etc etc, who, it seemed to me, was hardly impartial in the matter but who turned out to be the world’s leading expert on the subject, which explains a lot.

Except for a final payment for the straw owls drawing, I never heard from Dr. Harrower again, or went back to the Ganskopf Collection to draw. I don’t know if this was because the project was finished anyway, or if it ended precipitously as a result of the calamitous mishap. There had been dialog between us concerning the drawing of the archaic stone owls, which Dr. Harrower insisted he hadn’t requested, and so did not intend to pay for. Rather than pressing for payment, I called him to ask for the drawing back. In a refined Texas drawl, he politely agreed to send it, but the only thing the mail ever brought was an apology from him with a message that he seemed to have misplaced the drawing. I let it drop at that.

My other drawings of owl “fetishes” eventually appeared (without credit, to my astonishment and irritation) in a popular archæology magazine – a news stand “glossy” – accompanying a fluffy article about mystery artifacts by Dr. Harrower, confirming the moonlighting theory. I thought the illustrations looked pretty good, despite the printer having used a heavy-handed red in the page (nobody thought to send me the color proofs to check), and the layout was a welcome addition to my portfolio. Of course I’m no expert, but the text seemed somewhat trivial to me; and I keep recalling that poorly restrained, haughty sniff Dr. Harrower’s colleague had emitted at the mention of his name.

Strangely, not long after the incident I received a cold-call from someone named Rory Zohn at NEMECH, the New Elgin Museum of Cultural History, inviting me to interview for a full time position as Illustrator for the Unsecured Antiquities Collection. The interview got off to an odd start: Dr. Zohn’s first question wasn’t to see my portfolio or about previous job experience, but to ask me to recount the Ganskopf incident, even though he seemed to already know a lot about it. I didn’t leave anything out or spare anyone, including Dr. Danneru and his illicit mug of tea, and when I got to the comment about conservation departments, my interviewer just shook his head, muttering something that sounded like “supercilious bastard,” but clearly smiling behind his beard. I got the job, and I’ve been working there since, now fully acquainted with what “unsecured antiquities” are, and glad to not be surviving on freelance work alone. Stranger still, just last week while rummaging through a flat file at work, I found the archaic stone owls drawing. Rory said he’d had it for quite a while but had forgotten, and I was supposed to take it home. Somehow, distracted by his bad joke about the owls finally coming home to roost, I never heard how they had come to him.

I’ve always wondered what happened to Miss Laguna – almost immediately after the incident, her name was gone from the staff roster on the Gankopf Foundation website. I couldn’t find out if the poor woman had been fired, or if she had quit. Perhaps she had fallen back on her night job. I wondered if anyone – like for instance the person whose carelessness had lost her her career – had made any effort on her behalf. Considering his apparent lack of concern about the shattered “fetish”, it seemed unlikely. Yet, thinking of my own out-of-the-blue offer of a plum job at NEMECH, I had to admit it wasn’t impossible.

One thing I know with certainty: whoever replaced Miss Laguna as Ganskopf Librarian is bound to be a dragon for regulations concerning food and drink in the reading room. That was one damn costly mug of tea.

End

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Coming soon, the next series, a prequel to the Ganskopf Incident:

“What happened at Beit Bat Ya’anah”

or, Dario and the Mother of Owls

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(This is the eighth and final installment in a series. To read previous episodes, click here: The Ganskopf Incident or on The Ganskopf Incident category in the sidebar to the left. The earliest posts are at the bottom, scroll down to read them chronologically from the bottom up.)

As [Danneru] turned, a little tea sloshed from his cup onto the floor, but he moved away without noticing. Miss Laguna had gone to retrieve the desired journal, and I was face to face with the fragrant artifact…

Realizing that this was a piece I wouldn’t have another chance to see, let alone draw, I sketched carefully but fast. Also, Dr. Danneru was watching me work, which I found moderately irritating. After Miss Laguna had brought the dull green journal he’d requested, instead of reading it, he’d put his mostly full mug of tea on the table nearby and unexpectedly settled himself in the chair next to me, a little too close for perfect ease. Periodically he’d make a small sound of enlightenment, and jot something down on his notes, but mostly he watched my drawing progress. Ignoring this scrutiny, I kept working, adding detail and shading, building up volume and trying to capture the translucence of the little figurine.

The scholar’s proximity proved to be useful, however. At one point I paused as I detailed the lower edge of the piece, not knowing how to proceed without referring to the underside of the small figure, which I couldn’t see, or touch to turn over. Dr. Danneru noticed my hesitation, and after checking Miss Laguna’s whereabouts he reached out, criminally barehanded, and gently rolled the piece onto its back on the padded tray. Afterwards, the guilty fingertip brushed his lip in a conspiratorial request for silence, which I had no intention of breaking.

Before long I was through, and stood back to check my drawn work against its source object: a visual proof-reading, making certain I’d placed on the paper all the information needed to transmit the form and spirit of the spectacular little figure successfully to a hypothetical viewer who would never see the original object. Dr. Danneru stood, too. “Satisfied?” he asked, regarding me obliquely. I nodded, and he summoned Miss Laguna, who came over directly. She seemed relieved to be putting the item away; I suspected she didn’t feel quite right about the “irregularity” of letting me draw the piece, even sanctioned by Dr. Danneru’s haughty authority.

Satisfied? It was an unusual choice of words, but I was satisfied: in my sketch I’d captured both the precision of the artisan’s work, and the vivid imagery carved in the fragrant tree-gem. I’ve included the finished rendering here, since I think that the drawing will give a better idea of the remarkable piece than my words could.

As I finished, it was just nine o’clock, closing time. Out in the main reading room, the janitor was pushing a drymop around the chairs, shoving each one in tidily after she cleaned under it. The thick glass that separated the main room from Special Collections muted the skid of the chairs’ heavy wooden feet on the linoleum floor. The janitor was nodding her head rhythmically to music we couldn’t hear, coming from an aged radio perched on top of her supplies cart. The security guard smiled and said something, and she smiled too and kept dipping her head and guiding the broom. On our cloistered side of the glass, Miss Laguna, Ganskopf Special Collections Librarian, still pristine-fingered in her purple non-latex gloves, took up the tray with the small amber sculpture on it, to nestle it safely in its climate-stabilized, fire-proofed, motion-detectored, authorized personnel only, pest-free drawer in Secured Stacks.

As she passed me, she stepped in the small pool of contraband tea spilled earlier by Dr. Danneru.

The Ganskopf Foundation is an august and well-funded institution, its seasoned custodial staff diligent and conscientious. Each week without fail they buff the Library’s venerable linoleum to a waxy gleam, imparting to its smooth surface an elegant sheen.

In an instant the librarian’s foot slipped from under her, and her hands involuntarily jerked upward, still clutching the tray. While we watched helplessly, the precious object launched straight into the air over our heads, turning over and over – each turn in its tumbling arc seemingly lasting an eon – then it plunged back down from its height. Suddenly spry, Dr. Danneru lunged forward, palm outstretched, but I was in his path, and we collided. I crashed hard into the heavy wooden table, which lurched, sloshing a warm wave of tea from the mug, drenching my soluble sketch.

The plummeting object actually brushed his reaching fingertips, but this barely altered its descent. I heard someone swear loudly – I don’t know which of us did – loudly enough so that through the glass I saw the janitor turn, her mouth open, catching sight of the commotion. Then I heard the sound of bright amber shattering, brittle against old linoleum.

Then silence.

Ribs aching, I pushed myself off the table and stared. Amber was everywhere – liquid amber tea soaking the white paper and umber lines I’d drawn; the scholar’s shocked amber eyes open wide above a wrist pressed ineffectually against his mouth; glittering fragments of amber sprayed across the floor; shivered amber spangling Miss Laguna’s dark skirt and shoes where she sprawled among the fragrant shards, cradling one arm.

“Leyla, are you all right?” Dr. Danneru asked, bending towards her, hands outstretched. The librarian shook her head, then nodded, then shook her head again; she looked angry, and her cheeks were wet. He helped her up, their shoes crunching amber grit. It seemed as if the scholar wasn’t concerned about trying to recover what was left of the object he’d just been studying so minutely, so intimately. It was me, the non-expert, kneeling on the floor meticulously collecting shards, carefully trying to gather them up, keep them together. Dr. Danneru told me, “Leave it.” I looked up. He said quietly, “That’s what conservation departments are for.”

It was at this point that the security guard, alerted by the janitor, tardily burst into the room. Absurdly, his hand was hovering over his sidearm, in case shooting was called for. “Is everything all right in here?” he asked.

No one said a thing.

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(stay tuned for the Epilogue to the Ganskopf Incident)