The Egyptologist (55 page)
against a wall, doing incalculable damage to the ancient masterworks,
"did a drunken ape paint those? Is
that
supposed to be an orgy?" I be•
lieve he was referring to Pillar Five. "Don't make me laugh—why
would he be petting a giraffe when he could have those two girls there?
Blessed Mother, are the walls
wet?
My God, they're bloody dripping!
What have you done with my money? Painting basement walls? Are
you insane?" Now, if anyone had led Finneran here and was still linger•
ing about outside and had heard
that!
An onlistener would have been
most puzzled, to say the very least. But it is all the simplest thing, and
CCF was learning about tomb preservation the hard way. You see, the
paintings are glossy, of course, from the preservative celluloid sprays I
have been applying to them, and the fresh, modern preservatives under
CCF's electric torchlight made the ancient paintings appear to be
damp,
which is a lovely but misleading effect.
And CCF, in his confusion at what he thought he saw, was reach•
ing out his hand to
touch
the fragile, ancient paintings on the surface
of one of the pillars, and I gently, very gently, pushed his hand away
with my cane, hardly at all, slightly, just enough to prevent him from
touching the surface, which being desiccated and 3500 years old,
would have disintegrated at the slightest touch, because while I have
been copying into
my
notes the magnificent workmanship of the
tomb, I still have not had an opportunity to complete the scientific
methods of preservation that would allow even a stray warm breath
on these masterpieces, let alone the mauling of a giant;s paw, and that
reminds me: CCF and I should be off to fetch more preserving mate•
rials today.
I had some sleep to catch up on, but that was not possible just then
as there was quite a bit of tidying up to perform, on the floors and walls
and whatnot, and just talking to your father was such a pleasure, as I
have been toiling without company for some time. As some of the
paintings had been slightly damaged by his clumsiness, he and I have
agreed to restore those and deal with preservation issues next. He is
eager to understand the tomb and to help me complete our work. Quite
a bit to teach him, obviously, but he is a remarkably adept student of
archaeology.
We finally fell asleep after that tidying up, and we were late in ris•
ing this morning, he exhausted from his travels, I from work, and we
woke still laughing at our awkward reunion yesterday, and celebrating
his renewed support (financial, moral, and material) of our great expe•
dition. We certainly did work hard into the night. "Right, my boy, but
hard work is good for us!" exclaimed my Master of Largesse, and sent
me off to town with his petty cash for food and water, and to check
the post.
CABLE. BOSTON TO RALPH TRILIPUSH, LUXOR, 12/19/22, 9:02
A.M. LEARNED FROM JP THAT DADDY IS COMING TO SEE YOU.
HE MAY BE ANGRY. PLEASE FORGIVE YOUR MF.
There, sure enough, I found your cable of yesterday. Funny! Oh, my
dear, if only you had been a few days more prompt, I would not have
had such a surprise last night. I was right: you did think he would still
be angry.
Well, you can set your mind at rest. He and I will come back to
Boston together at the end of this expedition, unless he goes off to
travel a bit on his own, or he decides to stay in Egypt for a spell of
tourism, or meets a lady, any number of places he would want to see.
No, of course, he and I must come home together, you are expecting us
both, now that we are here together. And you ask my forgiveness, my
darling.
CABLE. LUXOR TO MARGARET FINNERAN,
BOSTON, 20 DEC. 1922, 11.17 A.M.
YOUR FATHER ARRIVED SAFELY. WE ARE WELL AND BOTH SEND
YOU ALL LOVE. HE IS IN AWE OF OUR FIND, WILL STAY TO HELP
ME FOR A WHILE. HE ASKS YOU NOT TO WORRY. YOUR MOST
LOVING RALPH LOVES YOU BEYOND ALL MEASURE.
CABLE. LUXOR TO MARGARET FINNERAN,
BOSTON, 20 DEC. 1922, 11.21 A.M.
HAVE FOUND YOUR RALPH. ALL MISUNDERSTANDINGS SETTLED,
PLEASE DO NOT WORRY, HE IS A FINE FELLA. WILL STAY FOR A
SPELL TO WORK ON EXPEDITION UNDER HIS MAGNIFICENT
TUTELAGE. YOUR FATHER, CCF.
WALL PANEL K, CONTINUED: "THE BETRAYAL OF ATUM-HADU"
Text:
"You have betrayed me," King Atum-hadu said, calm despite
his anger and pain, confronting at last the Master of Largesse in the
royal palace. "I am abandoned by you whom I trusted. You would turn
the queen against her lord and master, turn her heart from righteous•
ness. You have weakened my force and my armies until we cannot do
battle." The king hesitated. His pity and his love and his meek nature
restrained his justified violence.
But the Master of Largesse raged, revealed ambitions, the power he
craved, the envy he felt for Atum-hadu. He cried out with mischief,
conflated truth and falsehood. The Master of Largesse revealed himself
to be no second father to the king, but a most treacherous asp in the
rush bed of an innocent child.
And in his madness, the Master of Largesse swung fists at the king
and pulled a flaming torch from the wall, and swung it with fire and
smoke at the earthly incarnation of Atum. "Stop, fool!" cried Atum-
hadu, retreating into the shadows of the empty palace. Still the king did
not wish violence against his former friend and adviser. "You do not
comprehend the harm you do. You have no idea what you risk. There is
still time to save all of this," the king called from the darkness. But still
the Master of Largesse sought him out and attacked like a wounded
lion, and so Atum-hadu had no choice, despite his wounds from fight•
ing the Hyksos, despite the nest of cobras gnawing at his insides, spit•
ting hot venom out behind him.
He had no choice. This greatest of all kings lifted his war hammer,
and the Master of Largesse bumped against a pillar, and the flame of
his torch faltered; the king brought down his weapon only once upon
his enemy's head, and not with much force, and the Master of Largesse,
taller and broader than the king, stood surprised as hot, red blood
began to stream from his fat, bald temple. The king offered peace even
now, but the villain swung at his king, and so Atum-hadu brought
down his war hammer again and the Master of Largesse dropped the
torch and Atum-hadu collected it and rained down blows upon the vil•
lain, alternating his hammer and the torch, and the heat of the torch
blistered the villain's skin and then the hammer came down and the hot
blood bubbled in the heat, and the blows fell again and again on the
softening head of the traitor, blow after blow upon the deflated head
and the spread limbs and the sopping clothes. Atum-hadu sat on the
fallen man's stomach, one leg to each side like a woman who sits upon
her lover as a hen. Atum-hadu rained down blows for many minutes
until his arms failed and his eyes stuck shut from the blood. And then
Atum-hadu saw that he was very alone and his stomach boiled with a
pain he had not yet known.
All at once, Atum-hadu understood that the end of everything had
arrived. Nothing that he loved would survive. All would be forgotten
or misunderstood.
He ran outside into the light of the palace courtyard, saw the blood
on his robes and on his hammer and on the torch, and he fell to the
ground and struck the ground and wept at the course of all things.
Illustration:
The long text beginning at the ceiling leaves little
space for illustration. Copying and translating this text into these notes
has taken most of the day. Explaining the hieroglyphic system and
grammar to CCF as I proceeded slowed me down, but the effort was
rewarded as he begins to grasp the depth of our discovery.
Then Chester and I cleaned up some of the mess in the tomb. I at•
tended to Wall Panel K and hurried to restore some of the damaged,
smeared, or stained illustrations or text that had suffered from
Chester's foolishness last night. I walked a bit down the path to try to
relieve my throbbing belly for a hopeless half an hour, my thoughts
wandering, so many tasks clamouring for priority. Return to the tomb.
Burn a few things in the first chamber, watch the smoke sucked out the
front door into the evening sky. CCF is very intrigued by how all this is
done. He is a great help. He is very paternal. I have not slept more than
a half-hour of last forty-eight. Really must sleep now though tormented
I forgetting leaving something undone needs immed att'n. CCF, am I
forgetting someth? No, go to sleep. Fine. Lie down but then right up
again because I hear voices in the front chamber, but its noth
Thursday, 21 December, 1922
Journal:
Reader, my fiancee's father has arrived in Egypt to help
with the expedition at the site, and this morning I assign him simple
tasks I can trust him to perform correctly inside Atum-hadu's tomb
while I have business elsewhere.
I find Carter's site has new facets. True to their word, the Metropol•
itan expedition has given him everyone and everything he needs. Miles
of bandages and calico and wadding to wrap his finds as they emerge
from underground. A motorcar. He is swimming in attention and help,
native workers, admirers and friends (though one wonders, with sym•
pathy, how he can distinguish the sycophants from the sincere). And
there are the thronged tourists again, even dear Len and Sonia
Nordquist right there in the front row, I am ashamed to write, cooing
and snapping photographs side by side with the great man himself.
Carter is swaddled in the trappings of a success beyond measure, but
he himself is quite unchanged. He still holds over all our heads that
Carter manner, that special secret knowledge that mists up your eyes
when you try to look at him directly. He speaks Arabic with a local ac•
cent, no must or mould of dusty academia on him. And even in a for•
eign tongue his manner is unchanged. How he carries this success!
"You there. Run ask Mr. Lucas if he has everything he needs," he or•
ders me in Arabic, the moment I place my head in his command tent to
say hello. I bow and do his bidding—what else can one do? Lucas is
easy to find. He is the chemical specialist on loan from the Egyptian
expert bowing down before the great leader,
feeding the insatiable furnace of Carter's ego. "Yes, thanks, all set,"
Lucas answers after I find him setting up his laboratories a few hun•
dred yards away in Tomb 15, emptied out for King Howard's conven•
ience. And there, more excess: the paraffin and preservative sprays in
labelled and numbered red cans, adhesives and solvents, the endless
and hyphenated names of chemicals, incomprehensible in their various
combinations, skulls on labels as if Lucas were a magician or an Over•
seer of the Secrets, the wax, the excess, the horrific excess in all things:
row after row of the simplest products, tool after duplicate numbered
tool, identical backup replacement extras in every direction, a vomit of
gluttony, as if by merely closing his eyes and imagining his desire,
Carter is serviced by some snivelling jinn. "Careful not to get that one
on your skin, boy," calls Lucas in poor Arabic, handing me bottles to
tote back to his master. Even Carter's minions have it, you see, this
inner knowledge he cannot be bothered to share as he knows you could
never understand its complexity. The sooner he can stop thinking of
you the better, the sooner he can return to the altitude where his
thoughts spin in patterns you will never grasp.
Friday, 22 December, 1922
Slept on the ridge in the open air and let CCF keep the cot. Prefer
to give him some privacy down there. Quarters too close to share.
Today Carter opened his wretched hole to the Press, and I do not
know why I do this to myself, the sight of the gawking tourists, the
sound of all that blather for a minor king, I should just walk away, but
it acts on me like a siren's lethal warble, and I went in to have a look at
Carter's tomb again, escorting a sarcastic American journalist who
called me Mohammed. It really is too awful: Tut displays quite the
same excess as his dapper little acolyte. And to see the Nordquists,
back yet again for more sugary excess, looking impressed out of polite•
ness, I could not even bring myself to talk to them, and that room, that
storage chamber of the little upstart's tomb, it is a grotesque display,
this waste pile, the leopard-skin robes, clothing crusted in gold sequins,
