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“Exactly.”

“Well, Mr. Annenberg must be very rich and very humble to do such a generous thing.”

“Rich and generous but not necessarily humble.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he has his name, just his last name, and the word Hall incised in great gold letters like they’ve been there forever just outside the dining hall in a hall that has until now been reserved for small marble plaques bearing the names of those sons of Harvard who were killed in the Civil War.”

“Really? Annenberg’s name stands out among the fallen heroes of Harvard?”

“Sure.”

“Isn’t that a little … louche?”

“Oh, no, Mr. de Ratour. It merely exemplifies what benefactors want in return for their money.”

“But those are heroes …”

“Yeah, but they only gave their lives …”

“And not for Harvard, either.”

“Do people give their lives for Harvard?”

“They’d rather have your money.”

I shook my head. “I really don’t see the point of trying to be remembered by people who don’t know who you are or what you were.”

Mr. Morin snorted. “Maybe that’s because the people they knew wouldn’t want to remember them.”

Mr. Sherkin then turned on what he must have taken for charm, telling me, “Your museum, Mr. Ratour, is virgin territory. I took a walk through it the other day. It was disorienting to find hardly anything named for a hit … I mean a benefactor.”

I nodded and dissembled a quiet excitement as a plan began to form in my mind. I asked, “What’s the actual mechanism for getting people to make really big contributions?”

Mr. Flaler inhaled sagely. “The approach. Asking for money is like asking for love. You have to do it right. Mostly, you get the rich to ask the rich. People with a lot of money need reassuring.”

“You have to schmooze them,” Mr. Morin put in.

“Schmooze?”

“Give them drinks and praise. Glad-hand and glad-mouth them. Talk up the vision thing.”

“Like we said, people like to see their names chiseled on buildings.”

“Yeah, it’s like the whole thing becomes their tombstone. Only it’s not in the cemetery.”

“Right. And buildings need names.”

I shook my head. “We have a policy at the museum. All gifts must be anonymous and with no strings attached. We are willing to consider naming a room or gallery or library for someone whose achievements in his or her field — Mason Twitchell’s, for instance — merit such consideration.”

Mr. Sherkin frowned. “Any gifts to the university need to be channeled through the Development Office.”

I grimaced a smile at the man and said nothing.

Mr. Morin cleared his throat. “Look, Norm, we’re making you an exceptional offer. Everyone wants a piece of the New Millennium action, but the deal is strictly limited.”

“And what does the Museum of Man have to do in return for this privilege?”

“Simple. You get your Board to agree to a closer association with the university. Then we can cut out all this crap in the courts.”

“I might even bring it up with the Board. And now, gentlemen, you’ll have to excuse me. I have a museum to run.”

It took me a while to extricate myself. Thanking them each graciously and shaking their hands, I picked up the impressively designed three-ring binder titled “Development Goals for the Museum of Man in the New Millennium.” It could well serve as the basis of a fund drive of our own.

But I must be careful. What I sense at Wainscott, what I don’t want to happen at the MOM, is the philistinism that can result when an institution becomes too consciously institutional and loses sight of its original purpose.

12

It is late evening and I sit under the eaves in an attic study I have had knocked together and fitted out with shelves for books and an old couch for dozing. It is a veritable eyrie and overlooks the backyard of the Dolores family, the nubile young girls of which sun themselves like semi-aquatic creatures next to the aquamarine pool during the sunnier months. (My father’s old study down on the first floor that I resorted to of yore has been turned into the entertainment center with the big television.)

It is nigh on Halloween, and I sit in this perch typing into my little tabletop