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Objects from the
Gilman-Waite Collection
Ann K. Schwader
It was the strange appearance of the gold and coral sculptures—their ethereal moon-white luster—that first drew Wayland’s eyes to the museum poster. Objects From the Gilman-Waite Collection, its formal script announced. Unique cultural art-forms of Pohnpei.
The poster copy continued with a Scientific and Cultural Facilities District note, plus heartier thanks to the Manuxet Seafood Corporation for additional funds, but he was distracted by the sculptures themselves. Arranged on sea-green velvet with a tasteful scattering of shells, they still exuded a feeling he could only describe as otherworldly.
Yet, at the same time, their design seemed oddly familiar. He felt certain he had never been to this museum before—nor to any other displaying Objects from this particular Collection. Gilman and Waite were equally mysterious. But Manuxet? Was that where his déjà vu came in?
Wayland stepped closer to the poster, trying to decide. The museum lobby was almost deserted this afternoon. The desk attendant, a plain-faced older woman, sat silently at her terminal.
Just as well. He had no other hope of amusement, stranded by business obligations in this glorified cow town he had never visited before and was not eager to see again. Purchasing admission, he headed for the elevator and was soon navigating a maze of display rooms on one of the upper floors, searching for the Objects that had so intrigued him.
He finally located a small placard by one entryway: Gilman-Waite, with an even smaller notation forbidding photography. Wayland peered inside.
Aside from low-wattage spotlights illuminating various cases and signage, the narrow room was almost dark. And, apparently, deserted. A faint labored hissing came from one corner. Approaching cautiously, he was relieved—and slightly ashamed—to discover a dehumidifier, the first he had noticed in this building.
It too had a placard. This one warned how important it was not to turn the machine off, as excess humidity could endanger the Objects.
Wayland snorted. This high desert climate had kept his throat miserably dry all day. Still, the air here did seem moister than it had elsewhere in the museum. The thick shadowy carpet clung to his feet as he turned to read the nearest Object’s label.
RITUAL(?) ARMLET. Circa 18?? C.E., gold with coral embellishment. Embellishment wasn’t the word he’d have chosen. This coral mimicked the exact shade of pallid flesh—down to delicate blue vein-shadows, running through it by some trick of the light. Partially encased by the strange whitish gold, it twisted and writhed through the armlet’s design. Rather than accenting the precious metal, the coral appeared enslaved—even tormented—by it.
Wayland’s breath caught as he examined the goldwork more closely. What he had taken at first for arabesques now appeared as lithe, androgynous figures. The cast of their features disturbed him, though it took a few moments to see why. They echoed the armlet’s aquatic flora and fauna: bulging eyes and piscine faces, gill-slitted throats and shimmering suggestions of scales on shoulder and thigh. Spread fingers and toes revealed membranes as they wound through their strange environment, occupied in ways he did not care to consider.
He began examining the armlet’s shape instead. It seemed intended for a woman, but its wearer would have to be oddly muscled indeed to carry it comfortably on her bicep.
The strain and twist of muscles under slick cold skin, almost slipping from his grasp as she struggled…
“May I help you, sir?”
Wayland started. The young woman standing only a few feet from his elbow wore a docent’s badge. Its white plastic and her pale face bobbed in the dimness.
“I was wondering about the provenance of this piece,” he said. “Even if the artist is unknown, shouldn’t there be a tribal group or something?”
The wide dark eyes in that face stared at him, unblinking.
“Assigning such a label would add little to your experience of these Objects. This exhibit’s intent is to help viewers appreciate them purely as art.”
Eyes wider than human and darker than night ocean, boring into his soul…
Something in the back of Wayland’s mind shuddered. “Purely as art,” he echoed, feeling another unwelcome twinge of déjà vu.
Even if he let himself remember clearly what had happened that night, this couldn’t be her. It had been over fifteen years since that drunken, disastrous party back East. The townie girl one of his buddies had set him up with wouldn’t be a girl any more. She’d be nearly his age, and look older.
The docent gave him a sympathetic glance. “Perhaps you missed the first placard by the door.”
As she indicated it, he had an urge to bolt for the corridor, with its bright lights and desiccated air. If anything, the atmosphere here felt even moister than it had a few minutes ago. A faint whiff of decay rose from the carpet as he returned to read the sign he’d overlooked.
Aside from another nice fat thank you to the Manuxet Seafood Corporation, it didn’t say much. There was even some question about these Objects being from Pohnpei, as they represented “a design tradition divergent from all documented native cultures of that region.” The ritual aspect of many of the Objects was speculative, though Wayland had no doubts. There was too much reverence in the postures of some of the armlet’s aquatic figures.
The placard didn’t explain what was being reverenced.
Reading on more carefully, Wayland learned that most of the Objects had been brought to America early in the nineteenth century by one O. Marsh, a New England trading captain. How they wound up in the Gilman-Waite Collection was not noted. Instead, the placard quoted several local art critics, some of them specialists in native art of the Pacific region. To a man—or woman—they praised the exhibit’s “vibrant energy” and “mythic overtones,” without specifying which myths.
Wayland doubted they had a clue either. Turning away, he headed for one of the largest cases, gleaming under a spotlight in the center of the room. It held a single tall Object cushioned on green velvet.
To his relief, this one had no coral. It appeared to be a highly baroque sculpture—or at least, it did until he read its label.
RITUAL(?) TIARA OR HEADPIECE. Circa 18?? C.E., gold.
Which is clearly impossible. The “gold” looked even paler and more lustrous than it had in the armlet, suggesting (at best) some odd precious-metal alloy.
Odder still was the tiara’s shape. Though it did seem intended to be worn around something, that something could not be a human skull. The base was all wrong: more elliptical than round, with accommodations for odd bumps and hollows. It was also much too narrow even for a woman’s head—though the design suggested femininity.
He looked closer, trying to figure out why.
Cigarette smoke and liquor and beer, far too much beer, mingled with the tang of female sweat. With that shining, baby-silk curtain of hair, obscuring half her face as he pulled her down onto his lap. Even then, he’d felt her muscles resisting . ..
Wayland swallowed hard. Where had that come from? Surely not from these intricately entwined aquatic motifs—though there was something suggestive in all that twining. Suggestive and malignant, as though the lightless, sightless couplings of deep ocean denizens had been frozen in gold forever, survivals of another eon.
And where exactly had that eon passed? Like the Objects on the poster downstairs, this tiara reflected no familiar artistic tradition. Its craftsmanship was exquisite, but by whose standards? Another sensibility—another aesthetic entirely—had formed this piece.