From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg
Jamie smiled, “It’s a good thing that I’m insane about walking. Otherwise, you would never have found that typewriter.”
“And it’s a good thing that I’m an excellent observer,” Claudia added.
They marched up Fifth Avenue and were delighted to find a piece of paper already in the typewriter. Across the top of the page someone had typed: Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. Claudia didn’t know that this sentence was a common one used in practice typing. She thought it appeared appropriate to their message and would add a proper note of mystery besides. (Here, Saxonberg, is a copy of the letter Claudia typed. You can see that her typing needed a great deal of improvement.)
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party;
Dear Museum Head,
We think that you should examine the bottom of the statue for an important clue. The statue we mean is the ocn you bought for $225.00. And the clue is that you will find Michelangelo’s stone* mason’s markk on the bottom. If you need help about this clue, you may write to us at Grande Central Post Office. Box in Manhanttan.
Sincerely,
Friends of the Museum
Pleased with their effort, they felt that they could take the rest of the day off. They wandered around Rockefeller Center and watched the skaters for a short while. They watched the crowd watching the skaters for a while longer. When they returned to the museum filled with satisfaction and with snacks for their supper, they saw a long line of Sunday people waiting to climb the museum steps. Knowing that everyone in that line would be shepherded in and out, in front of and past the statue in a matter of minutes, they decided to enter through the rear entrance instead. The guard at that door told them that they would have to use the Fifth Avenue entrance if they wished to see Angel.
“Oh, we’ve already seen that!” Jamie said.
The guard from friendliness, helpfulness or, perhaps, sheer loneliness (very few people had entered through his door that day) asked Jamie what he thought of it.
“Well, we need to do more research, but it seems to me that …”
Claudia pulled Jamie’s arm. “Come along, Albert,” she urged.
On their way to the rooms containing Greek vases, they again observed the enormous crowd passing by the statue.
“As I was about to tell that guard, it seems to me that they should try to get to the bottom of the mystery.”
Claudia giggled; Jamie joined in. They spent exactly enough time among the vases of ancient Greece to be able to man their waiting stations and not be discovered.
7
WHEN THEY LEFT THE MUSEUM ON MONDAY MORNing, Claudia walked to the bus stop without even consulting Jamie.
“Don’t you think we ought to get breakfast first?” he asked.
“Mail early in the day,” Claudia answered. “Besides, we want them to get this letter as soon as possible.”
“It will get there faster if we deliver it by hand,” Jamie suggested.
“Good idea. We’ll get our mailbox number, write it in, and then take it to the museum office.”
Since Jamie was official treasurer of the team, it was he who approached the man behind the cage window at the post office.
“I would like to rent a post office box,” he declared.
“For how long?” the man inquired.
“For about two days.”
“Sorry,” the man said, “we rent them quarterly.”
“All right, then. I’ll take eight quarterlies. That makes two days.”
“Quarter of a year,” the man said. “That makes three months.”
“Just a minute,” Jamie said. He held a whispered conference with Claudia.
“Go ahead. Rent it,” she urged.
“It’ll cost a stack of money.”
“Why don’t you find out instead of arguing about it now?” Claudia’s whisper began to sound like cold water hitting a hot frying pan.
“How much will a quarter of a year be?” he asked the postman.
“Four dollars and fifty cents.”
Jamie scowled at Claudia. “See. I told you a stack.”
Claudia shrugged her shoulders, “We’ll take a long, long bath tonight.”
The postman hardly looked puzzled. People working at the Grand Central Post Office grow used to strange remarks. They hear so many. They never stop hearing them; they simply stop sending the messages to their brains. Like talking into a telephone with no one on the receiver end. “Do you or don’t you want it?” he asked.
“I’ll take it.”
Jamie paid the rent, signed a form using the name Angelo Michaels and gave his address as Marblehead, Massachusetts. He received a key to Box Number 847. Jamie-Angelo-Kincaid-Michaels felt important having a key to his own mailbox. He found his box and opened the little door.
“You know,” he remarked to Claudia, “it’s a lot like Horn and Hardart’s. Except that we could have a complete spaghetti dinner for both of us coming out of the little door instead of just empty, empty space.
Paying four dollars and fifty cents for empty space had been hard on Jamie. Claudia knew they wouldn’t take a bus back to the museum. They didn’t.
Both Claudia and Jamie wanted to deliver the letter, but neither thought he should. Too risky. They decided to ask someone to deliver it for them. Someone with a bad memory for faces. Someone their own age would be best; someone who might be nosey but who wouldn’t really care about them. It would be easiest to find a school group and select their messenger. They began their search for the group of the day by looking in the usual places: Arms and Armor, the Costume Institute, and Egyptian Art. As they approached the Egyptian wing, they heard the shuffling of feet and a sound they recognized as the folding of chairs and the gathering up of rubber mats. They weren’t anxious to hear the talk about mummies again; they never watched repeats on television, either. But they decided to look the group over. So they waited inside the tomb.
(Now, Saxonberg, I must tell you about that Egyptian tomb called a mastaba. It is not a whole one; it is the beginning of one. You can walk into it. You can spend a lot of time in it, or you can spend very little time in it. You can try to read the picture writing on the walls. Or you can read nothing at all. Whether you read or not, whether you spend a lot of time or a little in that piece of Ancient Egypt, you will have changed climate for at least that part of your day. It is not a hard place to wait in at all.)
The group was moving past the entrance. Claudia and Jamie were relaxed and waiting—wrapped up in the vacuum of time created by those warm stone walls. Puffs of conversation broke the silence of their tomb.
“Sarah looks like pharaoh. Pass it on.”
“When are we gonna eat?”
“Man, what a lot of walking.”
The conversation rained in softly and comfortably and told the two stowaways that they had the correct age group. That was the way kids in their classes always talked. Words continued to drizzle into their shelter.
“Hey, Rube, look at this.”
“C’mon, Bruce, let me borrow it.”
Something else now showered down upon them. Something much less comfortable. Familiarity! The names, Sarah, Bruce, Rube, were familiar … Ages ago, in time well outside the mastaba, they had heard these names—in a classroom, on a school bus …
Closer, louder, the sounds poured in. Then one small cloud burst right outside their door.
“Hey, let’s go back in here.”
Jamie’s eyes caught Claudia’s. He opened his mouth. Claudia didn’t wait to discover whether he opened it in surprise or to say something. She clamped her hand over his mouth as fast as she could.
An adult voice urged, “Come on, boys. We have to stay with the group.”
Claudia took her hand from Jamie’s mouth. She looked at him solemnly and nodded yes. The “come-on-boys” voice belonged to Miss Clendennan, Jamie’s third grade teacher. Rube was Reuben Hearst, and Bruce was Bruce Lansing. Sarah was Sarah Sawhill, an
Jamie was furious. Why had Claudia muzzled him? Did she think he had no sense at all? He pulled his eyebrows down and made his best possible scowl. Claudia held her finger up to her lips and signaled him to stay quiet yet. The sounds of third grade shuffling and third grade jostling faded from their shelter. The quiet of the ages returned to the tomb.
But not to Jamie. He couldn’t contain himself another minute. He could still feel the pressure of Claudia’s hand over his mouth. “I have half a mind to join that group and go back with them and just be mysterious about where I came from.”
“If you do that, it’ll show that you have half a mind. Exactly half. Only half. Something I’ve suspected for a long time. You can’t even see that this is perfect.”
“How perfect?.”
Claudia slowed down. “You go to the museum office. Deliver the letter. Tell them you are in the third grade group that is visiting from Greenwich and someone asked you to deliver the letter. The teacher said it would be O.K. If they ask you your name, say Bruce Lansing. But only if they ask.”
“You know, Claude, when I’m not wishing I could give you a sock right in the nose, I’m glad you’re on my team. You’re smart even if you’re hard to live with.”
“You’ll do it then?” Claudia asked.
“Yeah, I’ll do it. It is perfect”
“Let’s hurry before they come back.”
Jamie entered the museum office, and Claudia stood guard outside the door. She intended to step inside the office if she spotted the class returning.
Jamie wasn’t gone long. Everything had gone well, and they hadn’t asked his name. Claudia grabbed his arm as he came out. All the energy of Jamie’s wound-up nerves let loose. He collapsed as hard as if Claudia had suddenly jumped off the down end of a teeter-totter while he was still sitting on the up end.
“Yikes!” he yelled. Claudia was tempted to muzzle him again, but didn’t. Instead she led him out the door into the Fifth Avenue crowd and began walking uptown with him as fast as she could go.
8
ON TUESDAY THEY AGAIN DID THEIR LAUNDRY. THE product of their efforts this time looked only slightly grayer than it had the time before. Claudia’s sweater was considerably shrunken.
They knew that it was too early to get an answer to their letter, but they couldn’t resist starting down to Grand Central Post Office to take a look anyway. It was noon by the time they stopped and ate breakfast at a Chock Full O’Nuts on Madison Avenue. They dragged it out beyond the patience of the people who were standing waiting to occupy their seats. Both Claudia and Jamie almost didn’t want to look at their box in the post office. As long as they didn’t look, they still had hopes that they could find a letter there.
They didn’t. They strolled along the streets and found themselves near the United Nations building. Claudia suggested to Jamie that they take the guided tour she had read about when she was studying the Tourguide Book of the American Automobile Association.
“Today we can learn everything about the U.N.”
Jamie’s first question was, “How much?”
Claudia challenged him to walk in and find out. Fifty cents. Each. They could go if Claudia was willing to skip dessert that afternoon.
Jamie added, “You know, you can’t have your cake and take tours, too.”
“How about having tours and hot fudge sundaes, too?” Claudia asked.
They stood in line and got tickets for a tour. The girl selling tickets smiled down at them. “No school today?” she asked casually.
“No,” Jamie answered. “The boiler on the furnace broke. No heat. They had to dismiss school. You should have heard the explosion! All the windows rattled. We thought it was an earthquake. Fourteen kids got cuts and abrasions, and their parents are suing the school to pay for their medical expenses. Well, it was about ten in the morning. We had just finished our spelling lesson when …”
The man behind Jamie who was dressed in a derby hat and who looked more as if he belonged in the U.N. than visiting it said, “I say, what’s holding up this line? I repeat, what is holding up this line?”
The girl gave Jamie the two tickets. As she did so, the man in the derby hat was already pushing his money onto the counter. The girl looked after Jamie and Claudia as they were leaving and said, “Where is …”
She couldn’t finish her question. The man in the derby hat was scolding the girl. “No wonder it takes the U.N. forever to get something done. I’ve never seen a line move more slowly.” He only looked as if he belonged; he certainly didn’t act it.
The girl blushed as she gave the man his ticket. “I hope you enjoy your tour, sir.” She acted as if she belonged.
Jamie and Claudia sat with other ticket holders waiting for their numbers to be called.
Claudia spoke softly to Jamie, “You sure are a fast thinker. Where did you cook up that story about the furnace?”
“I’ve had it ready and waiting ever since we left home. First chance I’ve had to use it,” he answered.
“I thought I had thought of everything,” Claudia said.
“That’s O.K.”
“You’re quite a kid.”
“Thanks.” Jamie smiled.
The guide who was calling the numbers finally said, “Will the people holding tickets number 106 to 121 please go to the double doors on the wall opposite this desk. There your guide will begin your tour.”
Jamie and Claudia went. Their guide was an Indian girl who wore a sari and whose long hair was bound into a single braid that hung down her back to well below her waist. With one hand she lifted the folds of her sari; her walk was flavored by her costume: her steps were short and light and there appeared to be great movement around her knees. Claudia looked at her guide’s skin and thought of smoky topaz: November, her mother’s birthstone. She listened to her guide’s accent and formed the sounds in her mind without listening to what the sounds said.
Thus, when the tour was finished, Claudia was no expert on the United Nations, but she had discovered something: saris are a way of being different. She could do two things, she decided. When she was grown, she could stay the way she was and move to some place like India where no one dressed as she did, or she could dress like someone else—the Indian guide even—and still live in an ordinary place like Greenwich.
“How did you like those ear phones where you can tune in almost any old language at all?” Jamie asked his sister. “Pretty keen, huh?”
Claudia seemed to have a far away look in her eye.
“Yes,” she answered. It sounded like “yah-ess.” Jamie inspected Claudia closely. She was holding one arm crooked and the other pressed against her stomach. Her steps seemed shorter than usual and lighter than usual, and there appeared to be great movement around her knees.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked. “You got stomach cramps or something?”
Claudia lowered her eyes to him and said, “Jamie, you know, you could go clear around the world and still come home wondering if the tuna fish sandwiches at Chock Full O’Nuts still cost thirty-five cents.”
“Is that what gave you stomach cramps?” he asked.
“Oh, just skip it! Just skip it.” Claudia knew she would have to discover some other way to be different. Angel would help her somehow.
Her hopes centered more than ever on Box 847 in the post office, and the following day when they peeked through its little window, they saw an envelope. Claudia was prepared to be the discoverer of great truths, Greenwich’s own heroine of the statue—and only twelve years old. Jamie was so excited that he could hardly get the key into the lock to open the box. Claudia waited while he opened it and the envelope, too. He held the letter unfolded and off-center so that they could read it together. In silence.
Saxonberg, I have here attached a copy of the actual letter which I have in m
Dear Friends of the Museum:
We sincerely thank you for your interest in trying to help us solve the mystery of the statue. We have long known of the clue you mention; in fact, that clue remains our strongest one in attributing this work to the master, Michelangelo Buonarroti. Other evidence, however, is necessary, for it is known that Michelangelo did not carve all the marble blocks which were quarried for him and which bore his mark. We cannot ignore the possibility that the work may have been done by someone else, or that someone counterfeited the mark into the stone much later. We summarize the possibilities as follows:
1. The work was designed and done by Michelangelo himself.
2. The work was designed by Michelangelo but done by someone else.
3. The work was neither designed nor done by Michelangelo.
Our hope, of course, is to find evidence to support the first of these three possibilities.
Neither Condivi nor Vasari, Michelangelo’s biographers who knew him personally mention the master carving this little angel; they mention only the angel carved for the altar in Siena. However, in a letter he wrote to his father from Rome on August 19, 1497, Michelangelo mentions “… I bought a piece of marble… I keep to myself, and I am sculpturing an image for my own pleasure.” In the past experts have believed the image which he sculptured for his own pleasure to be a cupid. Now, we must examine the possibility that it was an angel.
The problem of Angel has now become a matter for consensus. Four Americans, two Englishmen, and one German, all of whom are experts on the techniques of Michelangelo have thus far examined the statue. We are presently awaiting the arrival of two more experts from Florence, Italy. After all of these experts have examined the statue, we will write a summary of their opinions which we will release to the press.
We greatly appreciate your interest and would enjoy your disclosing further clues to us if you find them.