Saint Peter’s Wolf by Michael Cadnum

and despite his measuring eye, I could not feel threatened. He did not seem at all like a hermit. He seemed to be a man easy with himself and with life.
    â€œI bought them,” I said, “and now I don’t know what they mean.”
    â€œThey mean money. For you, because you can’t lose money buying that sort of thing. And for the Babylonians. What else would they put in writing except something about money? A laundry ticket, or a check for coffee and a doughnut. Have a seat. I’ll get you anything you want. Coffee, tea, any kind of drink.”
    I agreed to tea, and he pushed a button twice. “The history of the world is money,” he said. “You study history and you realize that’s all that matters.”
    I would have disagreed if anyone else had made that statement. But something about Zinser made me realize that while he believed that what he said was true—he would not waste his time trying to strike a pose—he knew, at the same time, that money was only money.
    â€œI understand,” I said, “that your collection is expanding into the area of the arcane.”
    â€œArcane? There’s nothing arcane about a shrunken head. I’ve got twenty-one of them, three sets of siblings among them. You can see the family resemblance. Sure, I have all kinds of stuff. You name it.”
    A silver tea service was brought in by a woman in black, but both of us ignored the tray.
    This was such an opportunity that I nearly could not speak. “Could you describe for me some of the more unusual?”
    â€œDescribe? No. I won’t describe. I’ll show you. Come on.”
    I could not move for a moment: I was about to see Zinser’s famous collection in its own vault, and, further, I was about to see his collection of arcana, and I marveled at my good fortune.
    The vault was a cold room at the end of a long corridor. An oak door had opened without a sound, but slowly, betraying the fact that this was only an oak veneer. The door was steel, and the room was lined with steel and concrete, I had heard, but, although it was windowless, it had the comfortable feel of a very quiet and quite empty men’s club. There were trophies on shelves, and paintings on the walls, except that when you examined the shelves the trophies were medieval helmets and Ming vials, and the paintings were anatomies by da Vinci, sketches in charcoal by Renoir.
    On one wall hung shields and swords, morning stars and gauntlets. One or two of the swords were badly corroded, the handles rusted away to a rough iron core. Roman, I guessed, probably from one of the more recent digs in England. Zinser had been active as a collector of ancient arms, too, and I knew this was only a fragment of his collection.
    He noticed my interest in the weapons. “They appeal to the little boy in us. Before we knew what getting hurt is all about.” He gestured at the room around us. “We could stay in here for days,” he said. “Weeks. And never see it all.” He pressed a button beside a leather sofa and a panel slid, with a squeak, and steel drawers, not unlike safe deposit boxes, reflected the glow of the lights. “And I have double this amount on loan to museums all over the world.” He was not bragging. He sounded as though it were nearly a complaint.
    He seemed to read my thoughts. He shrugged. “I have stuff all over. So much of it I have trouble keeping track of it. All of it priceless. What do you want to see?”
    I was still amazed at his casual kindness, and his unpretentious—even happily blunt—manner. I stammered something about not knowing where to begin.
    â€œYou don’t want to see manuscripts. Autographs aren’t your field. Although I have a fragment of a Mozart concerto no one believed was authentic. The tune is too ugly. They do that with Shakespeare, too. If a passage in Macbeth is too stupid, a witch talking in a way that doesn’t sound