"Hello, Lara," Frank says. "You, too. You can call me Ferenc, now, by the way. A little in-joke," he adds.
I am perplexed. "She doesn't know yet," Cybil says.
"What don't I know?" I ask, but the others just laugh.
"You'll have to wait a little longer to get in on the joke, I suppose," Frank says. "But not to worry, it will happen soon."
"Anna!" Frank exclaims when he sees her. "My goodness. You're here."
"Hello, Frankie," Anna says. "Yes, I'm here."
"Why that's… that's wonderful!" Frank says. "And so unexpected." I wonder what that means, too.
At that very moment Courtney goes to a microphone near the bottom of the escalator that leads to the second floor. "Ladies and gentlemen," she says. "The official part of this reception, the unveiling, is about to take place. I would ask you to leave your drinks here—I can promise there will be more later—because food and beverages are not allowed in the galleries."
"The suspense is too much," Diana says as we reluctantly set down our champagne, and the curtain comes down on the cast ascending to the second floor.
ACT TWO, SCENE one takes place in the gallery of prehistoric art. A small platform with three chairs and a podium has been set up at one end, and a spotlight shines on a museum case that, as the scene opens, is covered in dark blue silk. The Cottinghams take their seats on the platform, beside a woman in a rather unpleasant dress and overly coifed hair. The action begins as Woodward Watson takes the stage.
"My name is Woodward Watson," he begins. "And I am chair of the board of directors of this museum. It is my pleasure to welcome you here tonight on behalf of Major and Courtney Cottingham. This is a truly historic occasion," he says. "Or perhaps I should say this is a truly prehistoric occasion." There are titters and groans from the audience.
"This is going to be a long evening," Frank, behind me, whispers.
"That was terrible, wasn't it? I couldn't resist," Woodward says, with a self-deprecating smile, and the audience laughs with him. Morgan blows him a kiss. "There are a number of very distinguished people here this evening," he goes on. "The Cottinghams you know, of course. Take a bow, Major and Courtney." They do, to polite applause.
"The Cottinghams have made a real difference to the cultural life of this city, so generously donating their collection and building this very fine museum, and we thank them for it." Another smattering of applause.
"Someone else who is making a real difference to the cultural sector is our next speaker," Woodward says, introducing the woman with the terrible hair, the minister of museums and something or other, and soon she is at the microphone, congratulating herself for promising to give the Cottingham a loan with which to advertise the Magyar Venus internationally. She has an unpleasant voice, the sort that gets harsher the more excited she is, and she is clearly very excited now.
"If I had to wake up to that voice every morning," Frank whispers again, "I would have to kill myself."
"Thank you, Minister," Woodward says. The minister smiles and waves. "The Minister is only one of the extraordinary ladies you will meet tonight, and I know that there is a very special one you all want to be introduced to soon," he says, gesturing toward the shrouded display case. "So without further ado…"
Behind me, Frank says, "How sad. Here I was counting on a lot more ado."
"Without further ado," Woodward repeats. "I'm pleased to present our brilliant new executive director, the man we managed to lure away from the Bramley Museum in London, England, no less, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Karoly Molnar." A handsome man in a dark suit, white shirt, and red tie bounds up the steps onto the stage to considerable applause.
"What?" I say, and the others put their hands over their mouths to stifle their snickers. "What's he doing here?"
"Surprise!" Frank says.
"Thank you, Woodward," the man says. The others, by now, are almost doubled over with laughter.
Karoly Molnar, I think. Charles Miller. Karoly is Charles in Hungarian, I suppose. Miller, Molnar. They sound somewhat similar. That's what Frank had meant when he'd referred to himself by his Hungarian name. I raise my eyebrows at the rest of them.
"She's got it," Cybil whispers. "His real name is Karoly Molnar. Apparently he just made up an English version for himself when he went to university."
"Why didn't I know this?" I said.
"I don't think he's been looking up his old classmates," Diana whispers. "He's created a new persona, and he's sticking with it. Frank knew, for reasons that will soon become apparent, and he told Grace. That's how I got the job here."
The woman standing to one side of us looks on disapprovingly, and we all fall silent. I, however, am feeling quite school-girlish about seeing my old love.
"I'm afraid I am going to make you wait a little longer before I unveil the lady you have all come to see," he says, gesturing to the display shrouded in blue, "the lady of the hour, the Magyar Venus, because I want to tell you something about her.
"Let me begin by saying that some women reveal their charms all at once," he says. "Rather like a harlot," he adds, and the men in the audience laugh. "Others reveal themselves more slowly, and they are all the more alluring for it. This lady belongs to the latter category. Like so many women, she was loathe to reveal her age." The audience laughs again, but I find myself uncomfortable with this analogy, and try to recall if Karoly was something of a male chauvinist when we dated.
"But with a little encouragement from science, her secret has been revealed," he goes on. "She is about twenty-five thousand years old." The audience gasps.
"This places her squarely in a period called the Upper Paleolithic, the most recent stage of what some people call the Old Stone Age. This was a lengthy period which included the last great Ice Age, when, for part of it at least, both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, our ancestors, coexisted. Earlier theories to the contrary, we are not descended from Neanderthals. We are the creatures that were first able to think creatively, had some concept of the other, I suppose you might call it, whether that might be magic, or a higher power, perhaps even life after death. It is in this context perhaps that our little lady was carved, from mammoth ivory, the inner part of the tusks of the now extinct great mammoth. She was placed deep in a cave, in what may well have been a shrine, near the grave of someone undoubtedly special. We know that because the skeleton was adorned with necklaces and many, many bracelets made up of thousands of shell beads. Only a person of some stature in the community would be buried that way. On her we have found traces of red ochre, which was, we think, a substance both significant and precious to Paleolithic man. We cannot, of course, know exactly what her creator was thinking, but we cannot help but feel she had some magical power. You'll understand what I mean when you see her.
"She is extraordinarily beautiful, and she will now take her position in the group of what have come to be called Venus figures, art mobilier or portable art, that date from very ancient times—the Venus of Willendorf, the Venus of Lespugue, the Venus of Vestonice, extraordinary goddesses all, who were created in Europe during the Upper Paleolithic. These Venus figures were found in a band stretching from Siberia to France. This is not to say there are many of them today. They are exceedingly rare, of course. But there are a precious few, and some believe that they represent a cult, common to ancient people in those areas over a significant period of time, that worshipped goddesses. These Venuses are now all named for the places they were found, Willendorf in Austria, Lespugue in France, Dolni Vestonice in what is now the Czech Republic, for example, and our lovely lady will be no exception. I will return to that in a minute.