Did Eros remember her name?
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 26: Stories for Today
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Frank Moorhouse
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It was at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna that Edith noticed that Ian was behaving in a curious way, bending down as if looking at the showcase of liturgical objects but, in fact, she realised, looking at her through the showcase.
He was her secretary of mission at this International Atomic Energy Agency conference – ‘aide-de-camp' was the term he used, either comically or pompously, she wasn't sure, or as a way of baulking at his subordinate role.
She entertained the illusion that his odd behaviour was perhaps a way of showing a carnal interest in her in some perverse way, although he'd talked about some girl in London.
Given the age difference between her and her aide-de-camp – he was younger, she put him at around forty – it had to be a wishful illusion on her part.
‘Go back around the other side of the case, Edith.'
‘Why?' she asked, doing his bidding. ‘Here?'
He bent down again and squinted at her through the double glass. ‘Now crouch down.'
She obeyed. ‘How long must I remain here?' she asked, smugly pleased that she could hold the crouch without showing any strain. By sheer willpower she tried never to allow her chronically sore knee to determine her movements.
‘It's all right, that's it,' he said, standing up.
‘What was that about?' she asked, as she also stood up and went around to where he was.
‘There was an optical distortion,' he said. ‘It pleased me. I could see you as a young girl – you looked very girlish.'
She did not quite know how to take this. She knew he'd not been drinking. ‘Would that one could always move, then, in a glass showcase.'
He did not smile.
‘I think it was the magic coming off...' He glanced at the label in the showcase. ‘This second-century glass liturgical vessel.'
She thought but did not say that she sometimes felt like a second-century liturgical vessel.
They moved listlessly through the museum.
Ian was charming enough and not uncultured, and was physically well-turned-out. They had a science background in common – and a sense of the absurd. They'd both spontaneously laughed at the letter that President Jimmy Carter sent to be read at the opening of the conference. In the letter Carter said the United States would permit the IAEA to apply its safeguards to all nuclear activities in the United States – ‘excluding only those with national security significance'. Every country wanted to inspect: no country wanted to be inspected.
She'd seen that Ian had Goethe's Faust as his travel reading. That was encouraging. Her travel reading was an old collection of von Heyse short stories from her childhood.
‘You seem glum,' Edith said.
‘Too much history. Human race too old,' he said.
She liked his reply but he was too young to be saying it. ‘Indeed, too old,' she said. The young never chose to entertain what it was to which they were headed – ageing. Just as well. No one would go there.