Utz by Bruce Chatwin Page A

for ‘various reasons’ — as it had been shut in 1967. Only one room, on the ground floor, was open for temporary exhibitions. The current show was called ‘The Modern Chair’ — with student copies after Rietveld and Mondrian, and a display of stacking chairs in fibreglass.
    At the reception desk I asked to speak to the curator.
    Prague is hardly a stone’s throw, culturally, from Dresden. I knew that if I posed as an expert on Meissen porcelain, they would soon call my bluff. So I cooked up a likely tale: I was a historian of the Neapolitan Rococo and was writing a paper on the Commedia dell’ Arte figurines of the CapodiMonte factory. I had once seen Mr Utz’s lovely group ‘The Spaghetti Eater’. Was there any way of knowing where it was?
    A subdued female voice on the end of the line murmured, ‘I will come down.’
    I had to wait ten minutes before a homely, middle-aged woman stepped from the lift. Her head was wrapped in a deep lilac scarf, and there was a wen on her chin. She drew back her lips in a covert smile.
    â€˜It would be better,’ she said in English, ‘if we went outside.’
    We strolled along the embankment of the Vltava. The day was cold and drizzly, and the clouds seemed to touch the spire of St Vitus’s Cathedral. It was one of the worst summers on record. Mallard drakes were chasing ducks in the shallows. A man was fishing from an inflatable rubber dinghy moored in midstream, with the kittiwakes wheeling round him.
    â€˜Tell me,’ I broke the silence, ‘why is your museum always shut?’
    â€˜Why do you think?’ She let out a quick, throaty laugh. ‘To keep the People out!’
    She gave a furtive glance over her shoulder, and asked: ‘You have known Mr Utz?’
    â€˜I knew him,’ I replied. ‘Not well. I once spent an evening with him. He showed me the collection.’
    â€˜When was that?’
    â€˜1967.’
    â€˜Oh, I see,’ she shook her head forlornly. ‘Before our tragedy.’
    â€˜Yes,’ I said. ‘I always wondered what became of the porcelain.’
    She winced. She took half a step forward, a full step sideways, and then leaned against the balustrade, apparently uncertain how to phrase her next question:
    â€˜Do I think correctly that you know the market of Meissen porcelains? In Western Europe and America?’
    â€˜I don’t,’ I said.
    â€˜Then you are not a collector?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Or a dealer?’
    â€˜Certainly not.’
    â€˜Then you have not come to Prague to buy pieces?’
    â€˜God forbid!’
    My answer seemed to disappoint her. I had a presentiment she was going to offer to sell me Utz’s porcelains. She exhaled a deep breath before continuing.
    â€˜Can you tell me,’ she asked, ‘have pieces from the Utz Collection been sold in the West?’
    â€˜I don’t believe so.’
    A month or so earlier, I had called on Dr Marius Frankfurter in New York, in his overstuffed apartment a-twitter with Meissen birds. ‘Find me the Utz Collection,’ he had said, ‘and we will make ourselves really rich.’
    â€˜No,’ I said to the curator. ‘If anyone knew, it would be Utz’s old dealer friend, Dr Frankfurter. He said it was a total mystery.’
    â€˜Oh, I see!’ She looked down at the water. ‘So you know Dr Frankfurter?’
    â€˜I’ve met him.’
    â€˜Yes,’ she sighed, ‘it is also a mystery to us.’
    â€˜How is that?’
    She shuddered, and fumbled with the knot of her scarf: ‘All those beautiful pieces . . . ! They have gone . . . How would you say it? . . . Vanished!’
    â€˜Vanished?’ I could hear the air whistling through my teeth.
    â€˜Vanished!’
    â€˜After his death? Or before?’
    â€˜We do not know.’
    Until 1973, the year of Utz’s stroke, the museum officials were in the habit