"There were fabulous things to be found. A lot of art was confiscated during those terrible years and redistributed—I suppose that's the word—to people deemed worthy by the regime. With the Communists gone, and capitalism restored, there were suddenly a lot of people rather badly off, and selling their art was one way of getting cash. Budapest was, at the turn of the last century, a very cosmopolitan city, certainly the equal of Vienna, for example, and it may even have put London to shame. People were well educated, and cultured. So yes, there was a lot of art to stock my shop, but it was perhaps best not to ask too much about where it came from. People simply walked in with it. There are government-controlled antique shops, but also private ones. I was on Falk Miksa. Do you know Budapest at all?"
"No. I've never been there."
"Falk Miksa is a relatively short street at the Pest side of the Margit Bridge. You know that Pest is on one side of the Danube, and Buda on the other? Yes? The street is very near the Parliament Buildings. And it is just lined with antique stores. So it was a good place for the shop, and it was where Szilagyi's family had theirs before it was taken over by the state. My wife hated Budapest. She couldn't speak the language. It was the beginning of the end of our marriage. I suspect now that she took up with a Hungarian. Women find Hungarian men very attractive."
"You are a Hungarian man," I said.
He laughed. "You're right. I never thought of it that way. I loved being in Budapest. The cafes, the opera, the theater. It was ridiculous of me to think, though, that my wife, sitting in our apartment just off Andrassy ut, nice as it was, would be having a good time all by herself."
"But the diaries?"
"Right. The diaries. An elderly Hungarian woman walked in one day with a box of stuff that she said had belonged to her father. I took a look through it. There were letters and, as it turned out, several pages from a diary, as well as some sketches that were obviously part of it. It was in English. I felt sorry for the woman, and bought the whole box of stuff, although there was nothing, I thought, of interest. Shortly after that, my wife put her foot down and demanded we go back to England. I finished up my other freelance work, which was the touring exhibit I mentioned, sold my interest in the shop, and we moved back to England. I took the box with me. I have no idea why. Fate, I guess. There seemed no reason to leave it in the shop because there was nothing of value there.
"One day—I was back at the Bramley Museum, forgiven, and in fact promoted to chief curator, because I'd done that exhibit—I was going through a collection of papers belonging to C. J. Piper. He'd held the same position I did, and all his documents came to the Bramley when he died. In any event, as I was going through the papers, I found a record of a presentation he had made to a group of men that apparently met monthly in a private room in a pub just off Piccadilly. Some of these men were doctors, several worked at the Bramley, including Piper, and others were just some interested citizens. They all apparently had an interest in paleontology. This particular presentation was about the discovery of a grave in the Biikk Mountains in Hungary, and there were drawings that accompanied it. I knew there was something familiar about the drawings, and several days later it came to me. They were more formal renderings of the sketches I'd seen in the diaries I'd purchased in Hungary. You can imagine my excitement. I went back through the diaries, and found the story of the expedition that had found a burial in the Biikk. How they became separated, I don't know, and why the diaries were back in Budapest, when the work had been presented in London, I'm not sure either. I'm making a rather long tale out of this, aren't I?"
"I'm enjoying this," I said.
"You're in the business. You have some idea how I felt, particularly when I got to the part about finding a skeleton in a cave with a lot of beads and a carving of the head and torso of a woman. There and then began my search for the Venus."
"And you found her where?"
"I got her from a dealer in Europe. He'd been shopping her around. You get to hear these things. I tried to be pretty cool about it, but the dealer either knew what he had, or could sense my excitement, as much as I tried to hide it. He'd been trying to flog it to various museums, without more interest, but that may be because this was not a formal meeting of the Royal Geographic Society, or anything like that. This just seems to have been a group of men who got together once a month to hear someone talk on a subject that had to do with their interest in bones. It may simply have been an excuse to get out of the house and drink and smoke cigars for all I know."
"So where did Piper find the Venus? Did you not say we didn't know exactly where?"
"The diaries detail Piper's excavations in a cave in the Biikk Mountains of northern Hungary, not far from a place called Lillafured. But there are hundreds and hundreds of caves there, and we don't know exactly which one Piper found the skeleton and the Venus in. But there was enough evidence in the diaries, and a very detailed description of the Venus and I knew I'd found her. The dealer told me the asking price. I laughed. There was no way the Bramley would have purchased it. But then I ended up in Toronto for various reasons, and I managed to find a donor for it in Lily Larrington. I went back with Lily's lovely money and made the dealer an offer he couldn't refuse.
"I still had a few bad moments, you'll understand, while the tests were being done, but the Venus panned out. She's real, and she is, despite what you think of my male chauvinism, so beautiful she takes my breath away. If a man can be in love with an inanimate object, I am that man."
"I can't disagree with you," I said. "She is beautiful. There is something almost magical about her. Especially when you think how old she is. And now what are your plans? This will surely make your reputation. You could go and work anywhere you want, couldn't you?"
"I don't know whether that is true or not, but at this point, I am very happy to be here. I like the Cottingham very much, and I think it has all kinds of potential. Major didn't have a clue about running a museum. He just wanted the tax receipt and the ego massage. There is much that can be done, and Courtney, bless her, is very amenable to the kinds of things I am proposing. You probably noticed that Major is more than a little out of it, so she is the person I deal with.
"I don't want you to think I'm enjoying a paid retirement, or anything. I work hard there, but I often think of Piper, who apparently felt his work in the Biikk was enough. When I was working on the book, I went and found his favorite haunts. I even know where he is buried. I found the graveyard in Devon. He was considered quite the expert, and was consulted widely on ancient man during his later years. I can't find any record of his having done much after the work in the Biikk. Perhaps it was enough that he could dine out on it indefinitely, lucky sod. I'm hoping to do the same now, of course, that the magic of the Venus will rub off on me." He smiled rather sheepishly.
"I'm sure it will," I said. One way or the other, I thought. We were both quiet for a minute or two.
"Do you remember your favorite antique purchase?" he said. "Or the first?"
"The first, for sure," I said. "And because it was first, it may even be my favorite. I have it in my den still. It was a carved daybed and side table, and I found it in a barn and restored it myself. I used it as a bed all through college. It was in my studio apartment on Dovercourt."
"God, it was uncomfortable," he said. "Not that I cared."
"It was just fine for one person," I said.