The Egyptologist (28 page)

right eye that no mirror can confirm and no gallery tolerate. So I in•
struct him that the painting is to be delivered upon repair and comple•
tion to the Explorers' Club, from whom he may collect payment.

And back to the hotel, where the morning manager—an Egyptian —
wants to know how much longer they should expect the pleasure of my
stay, as I have extended my original reservation. The international sys•
tem of money wiring is infuriating: these native fellows are doing their
best, running a not-at-all-bad hotel to the best of their ability, and it is
quite disheartening that they should be so much at the mercy of a bank.
But I shall need a base of operations in Cairo, of course, even when I
am working down south—mail forwarding, my suite on short notice, a
place to store some items, a
pied-a-terre
for my fiancee or my business
partners as they come through town, a central facility for certain Gov•
ernment celebrations projected for early December. And so, excellent
news for the manager: his most expensive suite of rooms will be occu•
pied well into the winter. I hold it until January 1, for now, and per•
haps longer, I will wire from Luxor with final dates. I pay a small
portion of my balance to hold the suite until then. I distribute copies of
Desire and Deceit in Ancient Egypt
to the concierge, the bellboys, the
African chambermaids, et cetera. Supplies to be left in the suite: the
Victrola XVII, largest of my gramophones. Supplies to take for the trip
south: more letterhead for the journal, convenient towels and bedding
sets: the hotel's absurd emblem and motto should be highly amusing to
everyone at the site. Have my bags taken to the dock, and enjoy one
last drink on my veranda while I update this log. I shall miss the

padded bed. I shall miss the Sekhmet Bar in the lobby, decorated with
paintings of that ancient lion-headed goddess who would, were she
ever allowed to sober up, destroy humanity. I shall miss the service. I
am older now than when I was in the Army, you know, and cannot say
these creature comforts mean nothing. Oh, make no mistake, I shall be
delighted to lie again on a camp bed under the stars, guarding my find,
coping with heat and cold in rapid alternation, singing and chatting
with the native men who treat me both as one of their own and as their
natural leader. But I am not as devotedly rugged as all that, not any-

more. Sixteen nights in the splendour of the Hotel of the Sphinx, on
my smooth bedsheets printed with the vulture, sphinx, cobra, and
HORUS CONSUMES THE HEARTS OF THE WICKED—well, I shall warm

myself with them (and the memories they carry) on cold desert nights.

One last visit to the bank: nothing.

And at last, at last, my great voyage has begun: I write now from
the deck of the steamer
Cheops.
Ahead of me, a journey 500 miles to the
south, 500 miles up the Nile to where my king awaits me, to where
Marlowe and I found Fragment C, and where he later lost his life.

My departure and the setting of the sun coincide, and from the
white deck under the purpling sky and over the boiling, blackening
Nile, I see Cairo recede, the crowd on the dock, the lights of the

square, the smoke rising from the houses and the
abwas
and shops, min•
gling with the smoke from the boat. One can almost see from this dis•
tance the smiling faces of the luggage porters as they sit down on the
dock to begin without delay their study
of Desire and Deceit in Ancient
Egypt
(Collins Amorous Literature, 1920). One wears one's twill suit,
tailored by one of Egypt's greatest men of the needle. One leans on the
polished wooden parapet on the port side of a fine vessel. One watches
in anticipation and relaxation as one chugs past narcissistic palms and
nearly naked peasants, virtually unchanged from their portraits on an•
cient papyri. One admires the ladies onboard—almost all American,
one notes—and one thinks of home (so far) and of destiny (so near),
and one remarks with frustration the premonition of thundering stom•
ach pain to come. Descend to my cabin.

Later, calmer, below. I was soon able to rise to the saloon level, the
god of belly disorder granting a respite after only an hour or so of en•
forced worship. Soothing drinks above and belowdecks. And a jazz trio
in the saloon, Egyptians, in fact, tootling competently enough. While I
danced with tourist ladies rapt by tales of exploration, the native band•
leader, in red smoking jacket and fez, slapped a banjo while another
honked a dented cornet and a third crooned, with a wonderful accent,
songs such as "You're a Lucky Fellah" and "I Love That Man and I'll
Keep Him, Just Aziz" and:

In old Pharaoh 'd Egypt,
The Hebrews came to stay,
Until old Moses rode up
To lead his folks away.

"Let my people go," said Moses..
And Pharaoh said, "No,sir!"
And then gave baby Jesus

Gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Quite so. That and the oily churn behind the boat do give one a
sense of peculiar disorientation that the gin cannot quite overcome.

Margaret:
Tonight on the boat to Luxor, my dinner companions at
the small table set for three were an old American couple, who I as•
sumed were on their first travels abroad, the spicy reward for a life of
bland savings, children and grandchildren seeing them off for their
whirling adventure, their last but one. But, no, they turned out to be
something much more substantial, difficult to explain as I lie now in my
cabin, trying to capture their charms as sleep gnaws at me and the rec•
ollections of what they showed me tonight fog my thinking. They were
not like anyone I have ever known. Such a s
oftness
to them.

They hail from Minneapolis, or some such outlandish hamlet in the
corn-blanketed depths of your America. There, Len and Sonia
Nordquist are pillars of society, such as it is. He is an executive in a
grain-milling concern of some sort and is fascinated by how the Egyp•
tians harvest and process their flax and millet. She is on the board of
the little city's museum, its theatre, its school for deaf-mutes, all manner
of thing. Of course they did not appear as grandees. In their travel kit
(he in light Scotch hunting tweeds, she in a stylised pith helmet with
some symbolic mosquito netting tied under her chin), the two grey
birds were peculiarly American in their friendliness. They sat hand in
hand whenever possible, but she would often take my hand in her old
fingers, or Len would pat me on the back paternally. When one of them
irritated the other, they would snap with much rolling of eyes and

headshaking wonder at their mate's stupidity, and then, a moment later,
they were holding hands again, or stroking their partner's sagging
cheek. Len suffers terribly from the climate or the dust; he was an al•
most constant source of noise, but Sonia would hand him a handker•
chief without even looking up or dropping a line of conversation.

Taking care of him seemed to have become like breathing for her. It
was quite a sight, M., quite magnetic, and I thought of you and me as
old folk.

They asked about Oxford and you, and my explorations and hy•
potheses. They bubbled with enthusiasm to hear about Atum-hadu,
even asked me to recite a quatrain or two. "Oh, you must give us ab•
solutely the most scandalous one," Sonia pleaded, and Len concurred,
sneezing. "Yes please. Don't spare our sensibilities." I started them on
something mild, your favourite, Quatrain 35 ("She will be mine"), but
when I reached the end, the dear little lady looked rather blank: "Is
that it? Really? I can hardly see what the fuss is about. Surely they get
spicier than that?" "Positively Scandinavian," Len concurred. "Was
your Atum-hadu a Lutheran?" "Very well, then," I said, "let's try 57:
Roused from sleep, the hooded cobra." After this quieter recitation (the
jazz band was resting and some of the younger ladies in the dining
room seemed to be looking our way, leaning towards earshot), the an•
cients only stuck out their lower lips and wagged their heads from side
to side, the identical gesture in them both. "Yessss," said Len, dubi•
ously, "I suppose some might find that a little off-colour, the snake
image, but from your description of the man, I imagined something
more." "Right then, folks, we'll have 48." I leaned far in and whispered,
as the room's other diners had stopped talking entirely. Now Sonia was
convinced, her hand over her mouth, and Len was nodding quietly.
"Oh, my, oh, yes," sighs Sonia. "You must find this fellow's tomb! He's
enchanting!" "I'll have to recite that at the next meeting of my lodge,"
says the old man, and Sonia agrees: "Please do write it down. I belong
to a poetry club in Minneapolis, and the other ladies will think me quite
clever to have found this." I promised them copies
Desire and Deceit

before they disembarked; their pleasure and gratitude at the gift was

quite overwhelming. Soon there were endearing invitations to explore
Thebes and the Valley of the Kings together, and to visit them in Min•
neapolis, spend a summer at their house on some lake with an enor•
mous Red Indian name.

We ate lamb and couscous and drank quite a good claret, and over
dessert (a sticky native pastry of honey and sesame and orange flower
water), Sonia passed Len a clean handkerchief, waited until he had
honked his nose again, then asked him, "Well, shall we propose it to
our new friend?" and Len said, "By all means. I think Ralph will jump
at the chance. Besides, I want to meet the old lech." And Sonia turned
to me and petted the back of my hand and stared into my eyes with a
mischievous little grin and sweetly asked if I would like to know any•
thing more about my Atum-hadu, or my prospects of finding him, per•
haps even to learn where he was that very instant?

Oh, what a pity, I thought with real sadness to have so quickly lost
something of value, the old things are daft. "You have access to such in•
formation?" I asked, masking my horror as best I could.

"Perhaps, yes," said Sonia, and she smiled with such broad joy and
excitement, while Len nodded sternly and repeated, "Oh, yes, that we
do, dear friend." Could they have some scholarly background? One of
the younger Nordquists perhaps an Egyptologist at Minneapolis's agri•
cultural university? "Patience, Ralphie, patience," Sonia said slyly as I
followed them, spry for their aggregate centuries, out of the dining
room, down the hall, up the main stairs, and along a vibrating passage
to their door.

They had taken a cabin easily six times the size of my own, and I
had splurged (still confident in your father and the Partnership, as I
still am, no question at all). Near an upright piano, on a round table
with a fringed green baize cloth reaching nearly to the floor, sat a silver
candelabra with three intertwining arms, each with a zebra-striped
taper, which Len lit before extinguishing the overhead electric lights
and covering the porthole. "Sit, dear boy," said Sonia, wheeling three
small chairs to the table.

Len joined us, and my hands were taken by my neighbours. "Oh, it
feels lovely tonight, doesn't it, bear?" she asked, and Len replied, "It
does, dearest, the air quite hums."

"Please state your name and your purpose, dear heart," she said and
squeezed my fingers with surprising strength. "For all to hear."

"My name is Ralph M. Trilipush, associate adjunct instructor of
Egyptology, Harvard University, author of
Desire and Deceit in Ancient
Egypt,
Collins Amorous Literature, 1920, new edition projected from
Harvard's press next year. I am the leading scholar of King Atum-hadu
of Egypt's XIIIth Dynasty. I have come — "

And with that the candles extinguished themselves. Neither Len nor
Sonia blew them out. And, Margaret, they did not snuff out as if

blown, the flame leaning first to the side opposite the source of the
wind. No, they turned themselves off, darkened from the top down,
with no scent of smoke. I was stunned, as anyone would have been,
and assumed some trick, though I cannot say what or how.

"Oh, that's remarkably good!" said Sonia, pinching off the circula•
tion in my fingers. "You've been heard very fast indeed!"

"Is that Your Majesty, great King Atoom-hadoo?" intoned the chief
salesman of Minnesota's largest food manufacturer. And, Margaret, the
table jumped slightly off the floor. A trick, of course, Margaret, of
course, and yet, the effect, then, was really astonishing. And they are
very old to be lifting tables with their knees.

"Do you have a message for our dear friend the professor?" she
asked, and the table bumped the floor again.

"Do you wish to be found by the professor?" Bump.

"Do you wish to tell him where he can find you?" Bump.
"Will he succeed in finding you?" Bump.

"Will anyone help him?" Bump.
"Someone on this boat?" Bump.

"Do you wish to speak through the board?" Bump.

"Your wish is our command, great king," said Len, very much the
polished courtier.