SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue Two - Journal - Page 114
SINE QUA NON
Andrea Ferrari Kristeller
Professor Rizzo’s Box of Snails
Interviewing the most important archaeologist in the history of the province of Misiones
in her own small, box-like flat on a sixth floor in La Plata, close to the Museum, already made
me nervous. Me, an unknown young student from the same province she had explored in the
1960’s as a female scientist, leader of the expedition at that time. Images came to my mind
of cotton tents on the banks of 3 de mayo stream, of the dark, frond covered entrance to the
Indian Grotto like a black mouth waiting to devour them during her team’s long hours of
excavating. I remembered the rest were all men, and had smiled for the photos like children.
I wondered if she had been like a queen bee for all of them, or if her now thin pencilled
eyebrows and heavily made-up lips had exerted upon them the same fascination they had
on me as I sat on the opposing sofa, in front of two cups of coffee with dog images on white
porcelain, as fascinating as her immense body in front of me. The pearls in her necklace and
earrings looked like small, frightened white clouds around her face, which seemed to have the
temper of a summer storm. That she’d be so grand, so much sprawling on the red sofa, and
that her fingernails be so small and so red.
Even less did I expect to see, almost at the same time I sat down and offered my best
smile, that there it was: a cardboard box on top of the piano, against the wall. It looked
much worn out, and was held by one of those thick rubber bands, stretched to its limit.
She immediately noticed where my glance had gone to, and without losing her teacherly
composure, said:
“Ah, you’ve heard about it, too,” sounding almost resigned.
I assured her the interview was for my Faculty magazine, and that I wanted to ask her
about her career, with a focus on her expeditions to Garuhapé and the Indian Grotto, as
my face went red. Now that Carbon data had thrown the amazing amount of almost four
thousand years for the remains found by her, forty years ago, her findings at the cave had
become the oldest in the region, and had obviously renewed the attention on her studies now
that she was 77.
All this I said, as I couldn’t take my eyes from her thin red lips, from the dogs that
seemed to jump along the coffee cups as she served both of us, and yes, when she was not
looking, from the box on top of the piano, centred on it as if it were an altar of some kind.
The perfume of talcum powder reverberated in the heat of that Sunday afternoon. I’d taken
the two-hour train trip from Buenos Aires where I was visiting relatives for Christmas. The
chance to interview her had come up at the end of the term.
“If she ever receives you,” my archaeology teacher had said, smirking, “that’d make a
good article for our magazine. I’d be interested in the female-led expedition point of view,
please.”
What my teacher had not known is that I was keenly interested in the interview, but for
an altogether spurious reason. The box of snails, but that I didn’t mention.
It was late one night at the small restaurant right in front of the Indian Grotto that I first
90
