The Detour Read Online Free PDF Page B

unfamiliar sounds. I welcomed my chance to have a first genuine encounter with a Roman (the pensione lady and the waters, paid to serve me, didn’t count)—one who was willing to let art be the universal language drawing us into a brief fraternal bond. The brown finger touched the bottom of the bookmark, then pulled back, hovering near the open page.
    “This is the
Venus de Milo
,” I said, and paused, waiting to see how long his attention would last. A minute later, I continued, “You’ve probably seen an image of this before, or perhaps a replica. But did you know that it was discovered in an underground cave, by a farmer?”
    No reply in any language—yet he kept staring.
    “Good. You’re not going to ask me why her arms are missing. I’m glad.”
    He blinked, his long, dark lashes fluttering rapidly like butterfly wings before he froze again. I turned the page and felt him lean in closer, and more of his small, curly head came intomy sidelong view, so that I could make out the tendrils—moist from the sweat of clambering all over the piazza—framing his round face. I could just see a stripe above the boy’s soft jawline, where a trickle of sweat had made a pale track across an astonishingly dirty cheek.
    “That is
Nike of Samothrace
, from the Hellenistic period. I can tell you like that one better, and so do I. You’re impressed by her large wings. One can imagine the wind blowing against the feathers and against the draping folds of her clothes. Just the thought of it can be cooling, on a day like this.”
    He was even more still now, listening, if anything, more intently. His lips closed and I could hear the little whistle of his congested nose as he breathed softly through it, trying not to make a sound.
    “It isn’t easy to convey movement using the medium of stone. An artist has to be talented to do that. But which artists first
thought
of doing that? We take it for granted, seeing a dynamic posture in a statue …”
    I cleared my throat and prepared to turn the page, to reveal the most special of all pages, the one marked by the ribbon. In a flash, the chubby hand shot out.
    “I was just about to show you—wait!”
    The boy was scrambling away, his legs pumping so hard that his scuffed heels nearly spanked his own rear.
    “Don’t go!”
    Only then did I realize what the wicked cherub’s flurry of motion had accomplished. He had stolen the bookmark. He was running with it, joined now by his two friends, waving the thin red ribbon over his head without looking back, screechingand chattering like a pleased monkey, while I sat with my book in my lap, incredulous and finally resigned.

    Back at the museum a half hour later, I was shown into a conference room where half a dozen men were gathered around a large table. Minister Ciano stood with his hands resting on the back of a chair. As soon as I entered, four young Italians in dark-blue uniforms walked away and waited on a balcony, where they lit up cigarettes.
    Herr Keller looked up from the table’s far side, his arms folded across his chest and rested atop the paunch that had formed over the course of his Italian residence of the last two years. The shopkeepers of Rome had sold him ridiculous soft-soled shoes; the barbers had neglected to trim the slick waves that now fell nearly to his fleshy earlobes. But they had not managed to convert him entirely to their culture of indolence. He exhaled with impatience: “We’ve been waiting for you.”
    “But I was told ten by a man at the desk, and it
is
ten o’clock, sir—or rather, a quarter to—”
    “But we have been here since eight thirty. The reception clerk said he asked you to wait ten minutes—”
    Oh,
Scheisse
.
    “—and you vanished. We’re short for time, now. There are important matters to arrange.”
    I strained to recall the receptionist’s expression as he held up his ten fat fingers; I regretted my insistence on wandering away instead of waiting inside. How much Italian