The Egyptologist (60 page)

Finally, I stopped to rest and take a tea at my
abwa.
The children re•
treated across the street, and a few minutes later I was assaulted at last
by the great sleuth Ferrell. Something of a relief to see the dullard in
the flesh, to put an end to this hovering phantom secreting a slimy ecto•
plasm of lies wherever he drifts. You know him: a small, orange man,
peculiarly excited, unable to sit still, feverishly scribbling my every
word, though I can read upside-down, and I often spoke slowly for him
when he fell behind. In truth, I tried to help him with his various tasks.
As you know, he is looking for a missing Australian soldier, this ama•
teur archaeologist you mentioned, and he also had some vague business
with your father. I tried my best to calm him down and help him. I told
him CCF and I will meet him on the riverboat on Monday. And I told
him again and again that I never knew this Aussie boy. But still he sat
there, poking at me, nibbling his raw, red lips, and generally being dis•
agreeable.

He is obsessed with the strangest, unrelated things, events having
nothing to do with Atum-hadu, or even with me, as if, at this great mo•
ment in Egyptology, when I am on the verge of revealing my work to
the world, I have suddenly been saddled with a deranged, babbling
child spouting nonsense questions:
Where is Marlowe?
Missing, pre•
sumed dead.
Where is Paul Caldwell?
The same, though I did not know
the name at first.
Where were you when they vanished at Deir el Bahari?

Stumbling back to Egypt from Turkey. Round and round he circled
these simple facts. He was a bore, utterly without imagination, as most
critics are. For make no mistake, he is a critic of the Trilipushian proj•
ect, properly to be ignored. It is almost a dictate from heaven: ignore
this man, Margaret, lest he confuse you, lest he confuse us all, lest he
distract from what great accomplishment has been granted us here in
the desert. Can we not all simply agree amongst ourselves, as rational
people,
to
ignore him?

Ferrell had become confused, you see, Margaret, by three docu•
ments: two missing and one incomplete. This often happens with peo•
ple new to interpreting texts. They take any one document much too
seriously, when of course nothing can be understood from a single doc-

ument. When it comes to incomplete history, one needs to encircle the
truth, not bound at it like an amorous kangaroo. But for men like Fer•
rell, if the first thing they happen to read says
x,
they believe
x
forever,
and if a second document should say the opposite, they grow confused
and begin shouting, "Conspiracy!" When they cannot find something,
they assume it is because it never existed. Why is there no record of my
career at Oxford? he demanded, as if the answer was not patently obvi•
ous: because someone misplaced the file or misspelled my name. For
this, a detective has sailed across the globe and I have lost my job and
my money and perhaps even your love? It does not matter, not any•
more: I will have my discovery.

A small scrap of words can yield as many interpretations as there are
interpreters. I tried to explain this to him. He is in a line of work not dis•
similar to my own, except that he is incompetent. He has a scrap of "pa•
pyrus," an official scribe's notation—in his case a little synopsis of British
Army records, telling the moth-eaten story of Marlowe's disappearance,
a lacy collection of loose ends and outright admissions of ignorance. Fer•
tile ground, in other words, for the assumptions of asses, for the annunci•
ation of inanities. As I explained to the slothful sleuth, in the face of such
spotty knowledge, how many images come to the mind of an imaginative
archaeologist? A dozen or more. And with a dozen minds at work, a
dozen dozen possible explanations, a hogshead of possibilities.

This is a valuable lesson in textual veracity for us all, courtesy of the
doltish detective. It is only a few years since the tragic death of my
friend, and it is already damned difficult to say just what happened.

Now, cast our vision back three and a half millennia, and from a few
such documents let us determine with 100 percent certainly what was
happening in Thebes, amongst a people we scarcely understand whose
language remains so much a mystery we do not even know how to pro•
nounce it. (Gramophones! If the ancients had had gramophones —
those great guarantors of immortality for countless singers today—then
we could have heard them speak to us, and we would have known
everything. A scandal, in a way: the gramophone has rearranged the
nature of immortality in our degraded times: we may never really know

how to pronounce
Atum-hadu,
but the world will remember forever the
names of Daisy Montgomery, Victor Edwards and His Tuxedoed
Chums, Will Wrentham and the Wellington Warblers.)

Inevitably, horrified by blunderers like Ferrell, one wonders about
one's own archaeologists, certain to be drawn buzzing to our posthu•
mous fame. What if it were me being sought, now or a thousand years
in the future, by a china-shopping bull like Ferrell? What will be mis•
construed or simply lost in the record I will have left behind, either
knowingly or inadvertently? May the gods protect us all from excava•
tors like Mr. Ferrell! Perhaps, like him, my future chronicler will find it
significant
that the War Office, in its infinite clumsiness, lost my dossier
whilst stamping
returned
over
missing.
Thus are false lives stacked upon
the crumbling foundations of real ones.

And you, my darling? Where would we be if I believed everything I
heard today about you from Mr. Ferrell? Do you need the whole pa•
thetic scene? It went like this, as best I can reconstruct it, though it
makes me choke or laugh, I can hardly say which: "You and Finneran
are going back to Boston? Really?" The demonic detective looked
peakish at the prospect. He could not bear the thought of me returning
to you, and tried several tactics to dissuade me.

"Of course," I said. "Why not?"

"But she abandoned you. Rejected you."
"No, no, not at all. You are confused."

"She told me to throw this in your face." Ferrell showed me the last
cable I sent you, urging you to remain calm, telling you I did not be•
lieve the break between us was your will. He had several letters I had
written you. Why did you give them to him, Margaret?

CABLE. LUXOR TO MARGARET FINNERAN,

BOSTON, 30 NOV. 1922, 9.33 A.M. RECEIVED YOUR LETTER OF 15
NOV. WILL DISREGARD FALSE CABLE OF 29 NOV. FERRELL LIAR.
ALL WILL BE WELL. ETERNALLY YOURS IN ANY AND ALL
CIRCUMSTANCES, NO MATTER.

YOUR RMT.

"She is a marvellous woman," he mused, leered, implied personal
knowledge of you. "Tragic, though, her sickness."

"Curable," I said, disgusted at his intrusion into our life.
"Curable? I don't know. Opium's a difficult burden to shake, and

when I saw her last, she — "

"Opium?" I admit he startled me with the vast enormity of some of
his lies, and so he stuck to this one. "Don't make me laugh, Trilipush. I
know men like you. I'm surprised to hear you're going back, going
through with the wedding. Why bother? You have your treasure, you
got Finneran and his friends to pay your way here, you're done. Why
marry her now? Or is that something you need? You like her fuzzed up
with opium, I'm sure, easy camouflage for your depravity. A pity. She's
a beautiful woman. I left her sighing my name in her bed, you know,
and I can tell you it's a waste to drug her and turn her into camouflage
for you and your boys. I say, Trilipush, you look jealous. Now why's
that, I wonder? Did you think the drugs alone would keep her satis•
fied? How little you know of women, of course."

Margaret, he described you as lovers, embracing in your room on
Commonwealth Avenue, described you in great detail, your moan and
sigh, your shape, the colour of your limbs. I choose not to believe this
tale—how could I do otherwise? It makes no sense to me, even if, as he
insisted, you have been taken prisoner by narcotics. That, too, makes
no sense to me. No, I know enough about policemen and their ways. If
they think you are hiding something, they will buffet you with painful
lies until you dislodge what they seek. "Harry, "you cried out, he said,
leaning back in his seat and pressing his fingertips together, rolling his
eyes and licking his dry lips at me. "Harry, you are my one and only
handsome man."

I kept my dignity, though in better health I would have thrashed
him for you. I could have shot him, I suppose, but we were in public,
and I have not fired my Webley in years. Still, the prospect of my re•
turn to Boston—to you—brought out the devil in him: "I can have you
killed, Trilipush. If I tell O'Toole you stole his money, your life is
through. Stay away from her, and I'll let you live." And he tried

bribery: "Pity, Trilipush. Caldwell is owed a great deal of money. If you
tell me how to find his remains, we could share that money."

And so we must leave Ferrell behind. He is threatening to turn up
at my work site with policemen and dogs, for reasons beyond any logic.
It does not matter. I am sorry that he has bothered you, has tried to
pollute the limpid truth of our lives. I will not think another moment of
what he said of you. I beg of you to dispel him with a wave of your
lovely hand.

But why did he have that cable? Did you really give it to him, reject•
ing it with a laugh, as he claims? Did you give him my letters? It hardly
matters now. Once it would have. Forget it, love. Forget Ferrell's
muddy footprints. This journal is the only letter you need from me.

For, observe: after all his fuss, what did this grimy archaeologist of
divorce and insurance fraud want from me? My confirmation of fairy
tales of murdered men and your father fleeing debts. All madness, the
fantasies of fabulist Ferrell. He must be ignored, dearest, or every•
thing will be blurred, the truth, the tomb, my immortal accomplish•
ment.

At the end of it all, my little
tete-a-tete
with the detective almost
made me happy. Having waited so long for his arrival in some anxiety,
and then to find at the end that one is pursued for something having
absolutely
nothing
to do with one is something of a relief. One had wor•
ried it was all going to be about something real, but of course it was
not. "Wait a moment—you believe I killed Paul Caldwell?" I asked, ab•
solutely tickled when his ravings finally sputtered to their lunatic con•
clusion.

But ironically, that turned out to be the single pleasure in the detec•
tive's repellent company, the one element of interest in his mad tale: the
tale of the missing boy. I heard quite a lot from Ferrell, and the entire
business surprisingly touched me, the history of that marvellous boy
and his Father Rowley. I am only repeating what I heard from Ferrell,
but there is something I would ask you.

I know that you love me. I know that our misunderstandings will be
cleared up. I know all this. But what if I were not all you had dreamed

of? I have a confession: I was born to this role. I did not have to fight
to win it. And I confess, I am ashamed.

For, from what I have been told (perhaps Ferrell told you the
same), this boy scratched his way out of poverty and mistreatment. No
love, money, simple kindness, encouragement. He was born with
nothing, and yet from that nothingness, he created himself. Were you
to drop Hugo Marlowe or Ralph Trilipush or some other wealthy, well-
educated, well-bred fellow into Paul Caldwell's youth, what would they
do? Drop them in the slums of Sydney, and be sure to take their money
from them. Strip them of their fine manners. Deny them everything

that was not in their heads and hearts the day they were born, and
what would they become? I am afraid that, without their received gifts,
their internal strength would not suffice. Men like that (like
me,
it is a
shameful fact) can never know with certainty what parts of themselves
are truly their own. They are confused their whole lives, befogged by
what they inherited. When they accomplish something (a degree, a job,
a wife), they do not really know if
they
did it alone, if it was not the re•
sult of their fathers' example, their mothers' advice, their professors'
pricey teachings, all the undigested bits of other people that the rich
man calls his personality. But Paul Caldwell educated himself, had no
family, took advantage of minuscule opportunities hardly worthy of the
name, which no one else could even see, and what did he do with
them? He turned them to greater advantage than you could imagine, I
am led to understand, a story of self-creation worthy of Atum-hadu.

"What became of Paul Caldwell?" Ferrell demanded again and
again. I do not know, but if he had not been killed in the War, what
might
he have become? In better circumstances, a fellow like that might
have risen to become my assistant. Would the world have allowed him
to shine in his self-made glory, and admired him for it? Or would the
world require him to cover himself, lest his inferiors be blinded and
confused by the glow they could never produce?

Surely, he would have done anything to impress a beautiful and so•
phisticated woman. And would you have been as impressed by him as
he would have been by you? Could you have loved someone like him,