The Detour Read Online Free PDF Page A

examination chair for a moment myself, on a day when I expected the tests to be challenging and the examiners unforgiving.
    It was while I was most vulnerable, half-dressed and fighting the temptation of further ruminations, that the incident occurred. There was a quick knock—no calling out, no request for permission to enter—and the bronze knob turned. In shuffled the bowlegged signora with a small wooden tray in one hand, catching me standing in front of the mirror, unclothed above the waist. My clean shirt was just beyond my reach, laid out on the sagging bed. Our eyes met, her chin dropped, and there—on my bare rib cage—her gaze rested and stubbornly remained.
    She lowered the tray onto my nightstand, refusing to look away, chattering insistently, without any comprehension of my distress. I reached for the clean shirt and struggled to pusheach fist through the tight sleeves in an effort to shield myself. But even through the fabric, I continued to feel the heat of her curious gaze on that jagged, pink scar.
    Artists are careful with raw materials because they know no amount of technical ability can make up for faulty marble or poorly mixed paint. The raw material of the moment was my own psychic equilibrium, not to be regained.
    Of course, how much easier it was to blame a flash of insecurity than anything that had preceded it; how much easier to focus on a stranger’s indiscretion, rather than any personal complicity or weakness in days prior. But it was all wrapped into that moment, somehow. And why shouldn’t it have been? The question of a body’s classic beauty—or its deep flaws—was integral to my artistic training, related to the item I had come to see and transport, and was in all other ways inseparable from why I had come to Rome. In any case, I did not appreciate her staring and reminding me—least of all on that day.
    As soon as the signora backed out of the room, I finished dressing, left the breakfast roll untouched, and grabbed my essential materials, including my sketchbook and the di Luca volume two—but not the dictionary, which I left behind in regrettable haste.
    My interests in Greco-Roman statuary, interests born humbly but cultivated with great sincerity, predated even the beginning of
Sonderprojekt
by seven years. Yet it would be made evident in just a few hours that I was to be treated here in Rome not as an art expert, not as an authority working on behalf of
Der Kunstsammler
, but as a courier. A mere courier.
    But I didn’t know that yet, so you can imagine my pride and carefully contained excitement as I climbed the timeworn steps to the side entrance of the museum where I had been scheduled to meet with the minister of Foreign Affairs and my own German Cultural Affairs contact, Herr Rudolf Keller, at 8:30 A.M . The seller himself—perhaps dispirited by local criticism over the controversial sale—had declined to take part.
    I waited in front of a security desk, where a heavy, untidy man with slicked-back hair attempted to convey a message.
    “
Dieci
,” he told me. My watch read 8:15.
    “
Dieci
,” the guard repeated, grinning obsequiously as he held up all ten sausage-shaped fingers. Yes, even without the dictionary, I understood that. I had been warned about Italian manners. The meeting had been delayed an hour and a half, until 10:00 a.m.
    “
Dieci
,” I parroted back, and the man’s smile cracked wider yet. He pointed to a bench and held open a cigarette case, but I shook my head and made for the open door.
    Four blocks away I found a pavement café and waited in line for a table, or attempted to wait. The two bustling waiters were following no procedure that I could understand. An elderly man arrived several minutes after me and was ushered toward an empty chair in front of a dirty table. Pigeons darted between people’s feet. The ground was strewn with crumbs and mottled with sticky patches. The warm air carried the strong smell of coffee—well, that was good,