Imagining Muriel Muriello

North Miami Beach, Florida 3-2-2000 Aaron H. Schectman

THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on issues, ideas and reflections on the times. Published now and
then. Opinions pro or con are welcome.

IMAGINING MURIEL MURIELLO

I think I told you that I have been writing on a novel for years. I have
several parts of a book scattered around in hard copy and on disks and
different hard drives. I've been thinking of pulling some of the parts
together so as to show how they are connected and tell a longer and more
complete story by bringing it up-to date.

I cannot tell you where the character of Muriel Muriello came from. She
has a doctorate in archaeology, is Italian, Jewish, and is involved in some
intricate dealings with groups of smugglers of ancient artifacts most of
which are without authentication. She has dark good looks, is thin, wiry
and nearing middle age. I think she was married when quite young, divorced
soon after and went to school to study subjects not usually open to women in
Italy. Along the way she became interested in law, particularly law dealing
with titles and property. So she added a law degree to the list of initials
following her name.

Although she did not practice law in the usual sense, her research skills
won her a name and cachet that was invaluable to both the legal and the
suspicious side of antiques trading. Tomb robbing was and is an ancient
trade in Italy. Desultory government supervision could not interrupt the
continual mining of Italian soil for the riches suspected lying undisturbed
for centuries below ground. For some families grave desecration was a
tradition and some grew rich and respected. It was with these that Muriel
established a relationship because suspicion about each new "antiquity"
followed its announcement every time. Disputation over the objects was
fueled by the avarice of fabulously wealthy collectors. Muriel's reputation
grew but she was untouched by the smoke of scandal that usually accompanied
the item when the government tried to show it was stolen recently from sites
in Tuscany or Taoromina.

She was "adopted" by Harry Morris. He was a professor in his sixties from
America and one of the central characters of the story. They met at the
First International Conference of the Society for the Study of Utopia held
in Reggio Calabria and Rome. One of the society's members, an Italian
professor, Eugenio Battista, had spent some years as an exchange professor
at the University of Pennsylvania's Nittany Campus. He met some of the
founding members of the "Utopian" society and with them made plans to
incorporate this organization with one Eugenio had made some efforts to
begin in Italy. The rest was history. The society was started on an
international level and attracted, despite its arcane nature, a sizeable
membership. The drive to publish by scholars needing stature in order to
secure university professorships practically guaranteed a group of
productive researchers who could put together works on some aspect of
"Utopia".

Harry attended the first international meeting and met Muriel there. He
took a protective role over her because she was young and attracted a lot of
attention from younger journeymen scholars. They spent time together
discussing her problems and particularly her affinity for and involvement
with clandestine groups of dealers. She asked his advice, took some of it,
and warmed up to him as a father figure. Both were Jewish, although neither
were observant and Muriel's Jewishness was affected by the German take-over
of Italy in the last years of World War II. Her parents disappeared just
after she was born early in the 50's and she was raised by survivor
relatives and educated by nuns in an urban neighborhood near Rome. She was
able to get a fine education with the facilities of Rome nearby. How she was
able to afford school beyond a basic education is another story.

One conferee who was attracted to Muriel during that conference and the
ones that followed was a close friend and colleague of Harry. Chet, a
professor of Medieval Languages who dabbled in Arabic and ancient cuneiform.
His facility with languages was, to him, just that. Harry considered him a
genius but too much of a confirmed bachelor for Muriel. This is a side
issue to the main story line of the search for Nebuchadnezzar's Pillar, the
almost mythical column of gold described in the Biblical Book of Daniel.
Carol's Evaluation: 3 out of 10. Carol vociferously opposes sending this
out.