Free The Murder in the Museum of Man by Alfred Alcorn Page B

got to know him beyond the conventional pleasantries, and though getting long in the tooth now, he still moves with the aggressive, forward-leaning stride of a younger man. His museum office was directly under mine when he was curator of the Oceanic Collections. Back in the late sixties and early seventies, he achieved some small fame as a proponent of what he called “re-creational” experimentation in anthropological research. The role of the anthropologist, he contended, involves more than just digging up objects and analyzing the past; he must try as well to comprehend it in all its living aspects through a vigorous re-creation of life patterns, including rituals, food, tools, and art forms.
    He is an authority on the life and rituals of the Rangu, a tribe occupying the beautiful island of Loa Hoa in the Marquesas group. The area figures prominently in the founding of the museum and was the locus of the Schortle Expedition in 1892, the museum’s first serious collecting/research venture. Schortle returned with vivid accounts of the loose amorous arrangements among the Rangu, their predilection for sporadic warfare with neighboring tribes, their taste for what they called long pig, and the ease with which they cultivated breadfruit (whatever they are). I remember vaguely a
National Geographic
article devoted to Brauer’s work at a site far up one of the deeply clefted valleys that divide the island. There was a picture of him in a loincloth, his torso heavily tattooed, as he instructed several graduate students in some native custom with the help of a local chief. Insome quarters he was dismissed as a charlatan. But that could have been academic pique at the amount of publicity he was garnering for his work and for himself. He used his so-called methodology, it was said, to recruit his graduate students, including several young females, for participation in a dance that included public copulation and culminated in a general free-for-all. More disturbing was the persistent rumor that, during one of these expeditions, Brauer and his understudies got carried away with their methodology to the point where they sacrificed one of those hapless, unaffiliated types that show up out of nowhere and volunteer at digs. The rumor has it they not only sacrificed this young man but cut him up and ate him, according to the custom of the Rangu. There has been talk over the years of a Brauer cult, maintained by him and his students who were present at the alleged murder and cannibalism. They meet, supposedly, and do things that cults do. I have never subscribed to the rumor myself. It strikes me as apocryphal, one of those tasteless jokes that gets started around the campfire and takes on a life of its own. Besides, I can’t imagine academics letting something like that go by without someone, somewhere, publishing a paper on it.
    Now I have my doubts. Now I have my suspicions. But suspicions, however compelling, are not proof. I will need to do some digging, to go into the archives and go over the original files of those expeditions.
    Well, on other matters, quickly, before I take my yawning self home to bed. My e-mail has certainly been busy of late. I arrived this morning to find a note from Oliver Scrabbe announcing that he has established himself in the late dean’s office and will be meeting with each of us individually “to bring us up to date on the consolidation process.” It would seem that for him the takeover of the museum is a foregone conclusion. I was tempted to write him (I never use the e-mail, it seems so ephemeral) aresponse pointing out that a final decision had yet to be made but decided against it, at least for the moment.

MONDAY, MAY 4

    I walked this morning through a bird-loud world enveloped in a veil of gauzy verdure of just-leafing trees prinked here and there with the pinks of the blossoming cherries and the unequivocal yellow of forsythia, which is common as blue jays and quite as beautiful. From the