Posts tagged ‘movie’

Caligula

Welcome to a week-long series of posts with the titles of classic porn films. Readers contributed titles in this post, and I am writing stories that somehow fit the title in an effort to stretch my ability to form creative connections. Could be hit or miss. We’ll see. Thanks for starting 2012 in my little sliver of the web.

The nuptials of Andra and MTM were a minimalist affair. We viewed the short ceremony on the steps of Charleston City Hall as our ticket to focus on the three things we REALLY cared about: taking an exotic trip to Australia, reading aloud to pass the down time as we moved from Sydney-to-Heron Island-to-Darwin-to-Adelaide-to-Melbourne-to-Tasmania, and…………well, you know.

The Future of the Past by Alexander Stille was the book that was buried until our last stop. It seemed fusty, one of those journalistic affairs where the reporter went around studying an issue for which he could convince a publisher to advance enough cash to pay for his vacations. I resent those books, principally because I cannot come up with my own voodoo-magic-book-idea.

On the plane from Melbourne to Tasmania, I cracked the spine of the thing and was hooked. Stille proposed that digging up lost civilizations, preserving antiquities like the Sphinx, and following dead languages may do more to harm history than to save it. I was enthralled by the chapter on the Sicilian mafia, its dead-of-night raids on ancient sites, and the complicity of major world museums in buying the stolen artifacts recovered. Instead of being a tedious academic tome, the book read like scenes from a raucous James Bond movie.

That MTM could barely get me to put the book down long enough to budge from the bed or even talk to him caused a few problems. In a fluke, we snagged a house on the grounds of Moorilla Estate, an old winery along the Derwent River outside Hobart. I ogled the pretty coins in the wall on the way to the smashing river view with its backdrop of lush mountains. The soaking tub overlooked the river, too. We had our own stocked wine cellar guarded by a cute ceramic cougar. I took one look at those riches, curled up with my exquisite book, and dared MTM to make me leave.

The very next afternoon, leaving was precisely what MTM tried to entice me to do.

I want to tour the museum here on the property he said.

My mind (and my mouth) screeched with whining. I’ve seen a million wineries. I don’t need to see another stupid wine museum. Go away and let me finish my book. I’m in the chapter on Roman Latin, after all.

But, it isn’t a wine museum he continued, patience personified. It’s an antiquities museum.

ANTIQUITIES? What priceless treasures could Tasmania possibly have? I wondered with a snort. Okay, let’s go see the crusty shackles from Port Arthur Penal Colony and the broken didgeridoo. I put my precious book on the table and stomped after him with limitless pique.

Our voices echoed in the sunny vestibule as the hermetic seal on the glass door closed behind us. We’re the only people in this place I complained. There’s nothing – and NOBODY – here.

Let’s just look around MTM said. This winery was started by an Italian man in the 1950′s. Growing grapes was his hobby, apparently, and this building was his house. It’s supposed to display his art collection he continued as we rounded a corner.

And. Stopped. With. Mouths. Agape.

We were standing in an entire room covered with Syrian mosaics. Hyperventilating, we moved on to the Ur Room, where we could reach out and touch tablets covered in cuneiform scribbles. Mummies were crammed into every cranny of the Egypt Room. The cute little cougar that guarded the wine cellar in our cottage? I stared into the clay eyes of hundreds of them, all ancient Mesoamerican treasures peering back at me.

OHMYGOD! I shrieked. My book is about this! He STOLE all this stuff! What ELSE would an Italian man be doing dragging all this haul to Tasmania in the ’50′s?!?!? Arms whirling like a propeller, I tried to point in all directions, at every object, to emphasize my point. I bet we find the secret portal to Heaven in THIS room I ranted as we entered a windowless space.

I was too shocked to breathe anymore. In a stupor, I wandered from glass frame to glass frame and peered at the history of the world in coinage. Clay orbs. Beads. Heads of every size and shape, etched into various surfaces. And, in the center of the room, a case held a forgotten hoard, an undulating wave of silver coins cascading from a clay vessel, displayed as they were found. Tiny fragments of the Roman Emperor Caligula, his polished profile twinkling through the glass, proclaimed that, even in death, he liked to be surrounded by a good orgy. If the orgy was antiquities, well, he would just have to make do.

Robert Johnson of The Quotidian Hudson contributed Caligula, one of the only remaining titles for which my feeble mind could conjure a story. Please forgive me for rewarding the same person twice.