The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras (4 page)

“That’s just guilty conscience.”

I knew she was right, but it still felt strange. I couldn’t escape the feeling I had barely averted a disaster, even though that wasn’t true. Guvelly didn’t even know I had been at the Museum until I told him. No one was watching. I had nothing to worry about. Right?

Susannah canted her head and said, “Tell me, Hubie. When you had that pot in your hands, did you think for just a moment about walking out with it?”

“I thought about how much I would like to have it. It’s an amazing piece of work, and it’s survived over a thousand years with just a little chip out of the rim. But I didn’t think about carrying it out.”

“Why not?”

“The building is too secure. The windows have steel bars. There are only two doors. The service door has a double cylinder deadbolt, the front door has a security camera, and both doors are probably alarmed. I know very little about locks and even less about alarms. There are at least two guards plus other employees around. There’s no way to get that pot out.”

“So you won’t be able to collect the twenty-five thousand.”

“I’m afraid not. I guess I’ll just have to earn my tax money legally.”

I was trying to get Angie’s attention, but Susannah said, “One’s my limit; I have a date tonight.”

“Someone new?”

“Of course someone new. You wouldn’t expect me to go out again with any of the losers I’ve dated in the past, would you?”

“So who is the latest contender?”

“He is soooo handsome. He has that LA look—spiky gelled hair, olive skin, and shoulders …”

“You’d like to rest your head on.”

“Well, for starters maybe. He smells good, too. Not a cologne smell; I can’t describe it, but it’s tantalizing. He must be giving off profiteroles.”

“I think maybe you mean pheromones. Is he a student?”

“No, he was the guest lecturer on Remington; he’s actually from L.A. Can you imagine that, Hubie, me, a simple ranching girl, going out with someone from L.A.?”

“He’s the lucky one, Suze. How much better a ranch girl than one of the phonies in southern California.”

I enjoy our conversations for what she says, but I like the way she says it almost as much. She is free from both that irritating nasal whine most young people have today and that affectation of ending every sentence with a tonal upswing.

“He’s just staying through the weekend,” she said. “I got to be part of the small group that showed him through the Museum after his talk—a private tour—and he asked me out. He wanted to go out right then, but I’d already had all those margaritas, and I didn’t feel like I could be very charming. Plus, what would I do if he wanted to buy me a drink?”

I looked at her blankly. “I give up; what would you do?”

“That’s the problem, Hubie; there’s nothing you can do. If you say no, then he won’t have one, and right away you’re off to a bad start because most dates start with a little getting to know you over drinks. Also, if I refused a drink he might think I don’t drink, and who wants to date someone who doesn’t drink?”

“Who indeed?”

“But if I did let him buy me a drink, it would have been my fifth one, and I might have started acting silly and he would wonder what kind of a girl gets silly after one drink.”

“I would wonder that too.”

“Exactly. So you understand why I had to tell him tonight would be better.”

“I do,” I said. So she didn’t have another drink, but I did. I took a sip when it arrived to make sure it was as good as the first one. It was. Then I looked up and the mysterious Angie was still standing there, her dark eyes looking at me from under those long lashes.

“Mr. Schuze?”

“Yes, Angie.”

“I need to tell you something. I’m not supposed to say anything, but I have to because you are… well, it just seems wrong not to tell you even though he made me promise I wouldn’t.”

I gave her an avuncular smile. “Who are you talking about?”

“He’s a federal agent, and he was asking questions about you.”

“Yes, I know about him. He thinks I did something wrong, but I didn’t, so I’m not worried about it. I won’t let anyone know you told me about him.”

“So you’re O.K.?”

“I’m O.K., so don’t worry about it.”

She started to walk away. “Angie,” I said, and she turned and looked at me. “Thanks again for telling me.”

Her wide smile softened her angular face. “We can’t afford to lose our best customer,” she said. The she swirled gracefully away, her long tiered skirt rustling like banana leaves.

The wind had died down as it almost always does at night, and I sat easily in the dry brisk evening enjoying the margarita and the scents of Dos Hermanas—the masa from the enchiladas, the smoke from the piñon logs in the fireplace, and Angie’s lemony perfume.

6

The only place I like better than Dos Hermanas is my own house.

I own, along with the Old Town Savings Bank, the east third of a north facing adobe located half a block off the Plaza. The house was built in 1685, although it’s impossible to know which parts are original and which parts belong to the countless remodels that have taken place over the last three centuries. There are four entrances: the front one to the shop, a back door out the kitchen that opens onto an alley, and two doors on the east side that open off the bedroom and living room respectively into a small courtyard. Come to think of it, I don’t know if the two doors to the courtyard can properly be called entrances since the courtyard is entirely surrounded by an eight-foot adobe wall so that entering from the east would require a big leap or a tall ladder.

Before I bought the place, it was a kitsch palace selling beaded purses from Malaysia, cactus candy from Canada, feathered headdresses from Honduras, and soft-serve ice cream from a chemical plant in the suburbs of Denver. Actually, I’m not certain where the chemical plant was. I’m pretty sure nothing in the shop was made in New Mexico.

When I was dismissed from the University, I sold the pots that had led to that event and used the money for a down payment on my part of the building. Being kicked out of college didn’t bode well for a job search, so I had decided to start my own business.

Since dismissal also meant loss of my student housing, I needed a place to live. The back portion of the space had been the storeroom, and its walls were a combination of exposed adobe, cement plaster, dirt plaster, plywood, fake tile laminates, and the odd cardboard patch here and there. I hired day laborers to strip everything down to the bare adobe, and then to place adobe bricks in every cranny that previously had any other material.

I’m a potter, so I know clay. Some generous friends and relatives have called me an artist, but I am an artisan at best. Making pottery is no more a fine art than is trimming trees into topiary.

When all the walls of my residence had been repaired, I set about plastering them with traditional adobe plaster. The formula calls for clay, sand, water, finely chopped straw, prickly pear cactus juice and donkey manure. Put in a blender and serve it over ice at Dos Hermanas and they might call it a “caliche cocktail,”; it couldn’t taste any worse than Campari. I left out the prickly pear juice and the donkey manure, but mixed in everything else including the straw which makes unfinished adobe glisten in the sunlight and made the Spanish conquistadores think they had discovered the famous seven cities of gold. They must have been having a few cocktails themselves.

The final result was spectacular. The plaster follows whatever irregular shapes existed in the walls and ceilings. The final coat is a brilliant white, and the effect is like a Georgia O’Keeffe painting. I had intended to hang a few prints, but the flow of the surfaces is so soothing that I can’t bring myself to disrupt it, so the walls remain bare.

The floor of my living quarters is piñon pine sanded to its natural color and waxed. Because the boards are neither stained, lacquered, nor coated with polyurethane, they emit on hot days the sweet scent of piñon, carnauba and beeswax. I walked over that floor from living quarter to workshop to shop, and opened the door for business.

Standing in front of it was Emilio Sanchez. He quickly removed his hat and said, “Buenos dias, Señor Uberto.”

“Buenos dias, amigo,” I replied, “Ha subido temprano esta mañana.”

The sun had not yet peeked over the Sandia Mountains to the east and the air was crisp and still. Emilio wore work boots, khaki pants, a chambray shirt, and a denim jacket. The pants and shirt were freshly washed and pressed, but the boots were scuffed and the hat in his hand was sweatstained.

“It is not so early, Uberto. When you are an old one like me, you do not sleep so well.”

I invited him in, shut the door and left the closed sign facing the street.

“You must not close your shop because of me,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” I assured him, “there won’t be any customers this morning.”

We went to my kitchen table and I gave him a cup of coffee and an apology for it in advance. Emilio carries himself like an eighteenth century duelist, erect and proud. Sixty years of manual labor have scarred his hands and darkened his skin, but both his posture and his spirit remain unbowed.

He sat upright in his chair, nodded to me and took a sip. He placed the cup on the table and crossed his hands in his lap. “Uberto, I have brought from the doctor a paper I do not understand. My English is not so good.”

“Your English is excellent. Not even an English teacher can decipher medical papers.”

“What means ‘decipher’, Uberto?”

“It is almost the same word in Spanish, decifre.”

“Ah. The same word but sounds different.”

I read the paper he had brought. It was an explanation of the requirements for a patient undergoing dialysis. After I explained it to him, I asked if he had another paper from the doctor.

“Yes, Uberto, I have this other paper you speak of, but I am ashamed to…”

“Senor Sanchez,” I said, “you must not prevent me from following the wishes of my parents. Give me the bill so that I can arrange for the insurance to pay it.”

“But I worry that you…”

“You worry about Consuela, Emilio; I’ll worry about the bills.”

Consuela Saenz—she didn’t become Consuela Sanchez until I was in college—was housekeeper to my parents, second mother to me, and cook to all three of us. I have three skills —making pots, speaking Spanish, and cooking Mexican food—and she taught me two of them.

“I do worry about her,” Emilio said, “It is a bad sickness.”

“It is,” I agreed, “but people live for many years with this condition.”

“This is also as the doctor says. He tells Consuela she can live to one hundred.”

“And what does she say?”

He looked up towards the ceiling. “She says she does not want to be one hundred; she just want to live long enough to see a grandchild.”

“That sounds like her,” I said.

“She also tell me, Uberto, that she gives thanks to the Virgin every day for your parents.”

“She was very good to them. And to me. Of course she spoiled me. I am never satisfied with Mexican food unless she has cooked it.”

It was good to see him smile. “Then I hope you will enjoy this small gift,” he said and removed a sack of breakfast burritos from his pocket.

7

As I had predicted to Emilio, no customers came in that morning.

Which was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I could have used a good sale. On the other, it gave me time to eat the entire sack of breakfast burritos, a quantity so large it took half a bottle of New Mexico’s finest champagne to wash them down properly. And if you think the phrase “New Mexico’s finest champagne” is unlikely, you haven’t tasted Gruet.

After breakfast, I pulled out an anthology of articles about Pythagoras and started reading them. I think most bestsellers are inane; why would anyone want to read books with titles like The South Beach Diet, Reinventing the Family, or Investing in Globalization? But I admit that an anthology on Pythagoras is arcane even by my standards. I had checked it out of the library only because I commented on a poster of Pythagoras near the reference librarian’s station, and she said there was a new collection of articles about him that were interesting. The next thing I knew she had placed the volume in my hand, and I took it along with the ones I had chosen so as not to disappoint her.

I had started out college as a math student, but all I knew about Pythagoras was what everyone else knows; he discovered the theorem that has been the curse of a hundred generations of eight graders. The Pythagorean Theorem tells us that the square of the two short sides of a right triangle is always equal to the square of the hypotenuse, a piece of information most people forget the morning after their geometry class ends.

What I didn’t know is that Pythagoras was also a world traveler, writer, philosopher, poet, mystic, and all around fascinating guy. The frontispiece of the volume had this poem attributed to him:

Speak not nor act before thou hast reflected, and be just.

Remember we are ordained to die,

That riches and honors easily acquired are easy thus to lose.

As to the evils which Destiny involves,

Judge them what they are, endure them all and strive,

As much as thou art able, to deflect them with good.

I thought Pythagoras expressed some noble ideals, and had it been New Year’s Eve, I might have adopted a resolution to follow them, especially since “riches easily acquired” could describe digging up pots.

I had thought poetry without rhyme was a recent aberration, but I guess it’s been around for over two thousand years. Or maybe it rhymes in Greek. With or without rhymes, I suspect his poetry would appeal to more people than his theorem, and it has the added advantage that so far as I was able to determine, none of his poems include the word ‘hypotenuse,’ which would be almost as difficult to rhyme as ‘plinth’.

I actually got so absorbed in Pythagoras that I didn’t see the young lady until the bong signaled her entrance. She had a wide face with good cheekbones and a nose that was slightly out of alignment to her right. She was about five foot, three inches tall with a full figure and more hip than is considered desirable these days but would have made Renoir jump for his canvas and brushes.