The Cabinet of Curiosities

Then, abruptly, she backed away, turned, and began retracing her steps as quickly as she could. Now it was all clear. How perfectly disgusting. Her only thought was to get out of this terrible place as quickly as possible. All desire to see Monet’s water lilies had flown from her head. She hadn’t wanted to believe it, but it was all true. It was just as she’d heard tell on the 700 Clubon television, New York City as a modern Sodom and Gomorrah. She hurried along, her breath coming in short gasps, and she looked back only once.

When the swift footsteps came up behind her, she heard nothing and expected nothing. When the black hood came down hard and tight over her head, and the sudden wet stench of chloroform violated her nostrils, the last vision in her mind was of a twisted spire of salt glittering in the desolate light of an empty plain, a plume of bitter smoke rising in the distance.

TEN

THE EMINENT DR. Frederick Watson Collopy sat in state behind the great nineteenth-century leather-bound desk, reflecting on the men and women who had preceded him in this august position. In the Museum’s glory years—the years, say, when this vast desk was still new—the directors of the Museum had been true visionaries, explorers and scientists both. He lingered appreciatively over their names: Byrd, Throckmorton, Andrews. Now, those were names worthy to be cast in bronze. His appreciation waned somewhat as he approached the more recent occupants of this grand corner office—the unfortunate Winston Wright and his short-tenured successor, Olivia Merriam. He felt no little satisfaction in returning the office to its former state of dignity and accomplishment. He ran a hand along his well-trimmed beard, laid a finger across his lip in thoughtful meditation.

And yet, here it was again: that persistent feeling of melancholy.

He had been called upon to make certain sacrifices in order to rescue the Museum. It distressed him that scientific research was forced to take second place to galas, to glittering new halls, to blockbuster exhibitions. Blockbuster—the word tasted repellent in the mouth. And yet, this was New York at the dawn of the twenty-first century, and those who did not play the game would not survive. Even his grandest forebears had their own crosses to bear. One bent with the winds of time. The Museum had survived—that was the important, that was the only, point.

He then reflected on his own distinguished scientific lineage: his great-grand-uncle Amasa Greenough, friend to Darwin and famed discoverer of the chitinous monkfish of the Indochine; his great-aunt Philomena Watson, who had done seminal work with the natives of Tierra del Fuego; his grandfather Gardner Collopy, the distinguished herpetologist. He thought of his own exciting work re-classifying the Pongidae, during the heady days of his youth. Perhaps, with luck and a goodly allowance of years, his tenure here at the Museum would rival the great directors of the past. Perhaps he, too, would have his name graven in bronze, enshrined in the Great Rotunda for all to see.

He still couldn’t shake the feeling of melancholy that had settled around him. These reflections, normally so soothing, seemed not to help. He felt a man out of place, old-fashioned, superannuated. Even thoughts of his lovely young wife, with whom he had sported so delightfully that very morning before breakfast, failed to shake the feeling.

His eye took in the office—the pink marble fireplaces, the round tower windows looking out over Museum Drive, the oak paneling with its patina of centuries, the paintings by Audubon and De Clefisse. He regarded his own person: the somber suit with its old-fashioned, almost clerical cut, the starched white shirtfront, the silk bow tie worn as a sign of independence in thought and deed, the handmade shoes, and above all—as his eye fell on the mirror above the mantel—the handsome and even elegant face, if a touch severe, that wore its burden of years so gracefully.

He turned to his desk with a faint sigh. Perhaps it was the news of the day that made him gloomy. It sat on his desk, spread out in glaring newsprint: the damnable article, written by that same vile fellow who had caused so much trouble at the Museum back in ’95. He had hoped the earlier removal of the offending materials from the Archives would have quieted things down. But now there was this letter to deal with. On every level, this had the potential to be a disaster. His own staff drawn in; an FBI agent running around; Fairhaven, one of their biggest supporters, under fire—Collopy’s head reeled at the possibilities, all too hideous to contemplate. If this thing wasn’t handled, it could very well cast a pall on his own tenure, or worse—