Read The Mummy or Ramses the Damned Online
Authors: Anne Rice
The Mummy or Ramses the Damned (61 page)
Stepping over the silver walking stick, ignoring the shouts of the merchant behind him that he had lost his cane and must wait, he walked out of the bazaar with long easy strides.
The sun was high above in the noon sky as he left Cairo, as he walked on along the thin road to the east. He did not really know where he was going and it didn’t matter. There were monuments and wonders and cities enough to behold. His steps were quick, and the desert had never seemed so beautiful to him, this great monotonous ocean of sand.
He had done it! And there was no undoing of it now. Eyes fixed on the vast azure emptiness above him, he gave a soft cry intended for no one, merely the smallest, most spontaneous expression of his joy.
They stood on the deck, the warm sun blanketing them as they embraced one another. She could feel the magic moving through her skin and her hair. She felt his lips graze hers, and suddenly they were kissing as they had never really kissed before. It was the same fire, yes, but now her strength and her urgency came to the fore to meet his.
He lifted her and carried her back into the little bedroom and laid her down on the bed. The veiling fell silently around them, snaring the light and wrapping them up in it.
“You are mine, Julie Stratford,” he whispered. “My Queen forever. And I am yours. Always yours.”
“Lovely words,” she whispered, smiling at him almost sadly. She wanted always to remember this moment; to remember the look in his blue eyes.
Then slowly, yet feverishly, they began to make love.
HE YOUNG doctor grabbed his bag and ran towards the infirmary, the young foot soldier running beside him.
“Just dreadful, sir, burned to a crisp, sir, and wedged down there under the crates at the very bottom of the freight car. I don’t know how she can be alive.”
What in God’s name was he going to be able to do for her, out here at this godforsaken outpost in the jungles of the Sudan?
He steadied himself against the doorjamb as he came to a halt inside the room.
The nurse shook her head as she came towards him. “I don’t understand it,” she said in a stage whisper, with a pointed glance at the bed.
“Let me see her.” He pulled back the mosquito netting. “Why, this woman’s not burned at all.”
She lay asleep against the white pillow, her black wavy hair stirring in the sunlight, as if there actually were a ghost of a breeze coming from somewhere through this infernally hot room.
If he had ever seen a woman this beautiful, he couldn’t remember it and frankly didn’t want to be reminded of it just now. It was almost painful to look at her, she was so beautiful. And it wasn’t a china doll prettiness she had; her features were strong though exquisitely proportioned. Her rippling hair, parted in the
middle, made a great shining pyramid of darkness beneath her head.
As he came round the side of the bed, she opened her eyes. How remarkable that they should be so startlingly blue. Then the miracle of miracles. She smiled. He went weak looking down at her. Words like “fate” and “destiny” came to his mind, idly, yet persistently. Who in the world could she be?
“What a handsome man you are,” she whispered. Perfect British accent. One of us, he thought, hating himself instantly for the snobbish thought. But her voice was purely aristocratic.
The nurse mumbled something. There were whispers behind his back. He drew up the camp chair and sat down beside her. As casually as he could he lifted the white sheet up over her half-naked breasts.
“Get this woman some clothing,” he said without looking up at the nurse. “You gave us all quite a scare, you realize. They thought you were burned.”
“Did they?” she whispered. “It was kind of them to help me. I was in some close place where I could scarcely breathe. I was in the dark.”
She blinked up at the sunlight coming in the window. “You must help me up and out into the sunshine,” she said.
“Oh, it’s much too soon for that.”
But she sat up, clearly undeterred, and started to wrap the sheet about her like a gown. The fine dark eyebrows gave her a distinct look of will and determination, which he found oddly exciting in a very direct physical way.
Like a goddess she looked, with the thing draped over one shoulder as she rose to her feet. Again that smile flashed at him, subduing him utterly.
“Listen, you must tell me who you are. Your family, your friends, we’ll send word.”
“Walk outside with me,” she said.
He followed her almost stupidly, taking her hand. Let them whisper! They’d come running with stories that she was burnt like overdone beef! There was nothing at all wrong with this woman! Had the world gone mad?
She went across the dusty yard, leading him through the gate into the small garden, which was his actually, not for the patients, just adjacent to his bedroom and his office doors.
She sat down on the wooden bench, and he sat beside her. She threw back her hair as she looked up into the hot sky.
“But it’s no use your being out in this terrible heat,” he told her. “Especially if you have been burned.” But this was stupid. Her skin was flawless and radiant all over; her cheeks were beautifully flushed. He’d never seen a healthier human being in his life.
“Is there someone I should contact?” he tried again. “We have a telephone and a telegraph out here now.”
“Don’t concern yourself about it,” she said, lifting his left hand and playing idly with his fingers. He was ashamed suddenly of what this aroused in him. He couldn’t stop staring at her, at her eyes and then at her mouth. He could see her nipples through the sheet.
“I have friends, yes,” she said almost dreamily, “and appointments to keep. And accounts to settle. But tell me about yourself, Doctor. And tell me about this place.”
Did she want him to kiss her? He could scarcely believe it and he had no intention of passing it up. He bent to touch her lips, hmmm. He didn’t care who was watching. He ran his arms around her, and gathered her against him, stunned by the manner in which she yielded completely, breasts hot against his chest.
In another second he would drag her to the bed, if she wouldn’t come of her own free will. But he knew she would.
“There’s no great hurry to contact anyone,” she whispered as she ran her hand inside his shirt. They were on their feet, moving together across the flags towards the bedroom door. She stopped as if she could not even wait for that. He picked her up and carried her.
Sinful, wicked, but he couldn’t stop himself. She clamped her mouth on his and he almost dropped in his tracks. He set her down on the mattress, and shut the wooden blinds. To hell with everyone else.
“You’re sure you …” he faltered. He was ripping off his shirt.
“I like men who blush,” she whispered, gazing up. “And yes, I’m sure. I want to be prepared before I see my friends again.” She unwound the sheet. “Very well prepared.”
“What?” He lay down beside her, kissing her throat, running his hand down over her breast. Her hips rose against him as he climbed on top of her. She was undulating like a serpent in the bed, but she was no serpent. She was warm and fragrant and ready for him!
“My friends …” she whispered, staring at the ceiling as if faintly dazed, a tiny spark of distress in her blue eyes. But then she looked at him—all hunger suddenly, voice dropping to a monotone as she stroked him, her nails deliciously grazing his shoulders. “My friends can wait. We have time to see each other. All the time in the world!”
He hadn’t the slightest idea what she meant. And he didn’t care.
THE END
An excerpt from
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
H
E CAME
before the day Karl died.
It was late afternoon, and the city had a drowsy dusty look, the traffic on St. Charles Avenue roaring as it always does, and the big magnolia leaves outside had covered the flagstones because I had not gone out to sweep them.
I saw him come walking down the Avenue, and when he reached my corner he didn’t come across Third Street. Rather he stood before the florist shop, and turned and cocked his head and looked at me.
I was behind the curtains at the front window. Our house has many such long windows, and wide generous porches. I was merely standing there, watching the Avenue and its cars and people for no very good reason at all, as I’ve done all my life.
It isn’t too easy for someone to see me behind the curtains. The corner is busy; and the lace of the curtains, though torn, is thick because the world is always there, drifting by right around you.
He had no visible violin with him then, only a sack slung over his shoulder. He merely stood and looked at the house—and turned as though he had come now to the end
of his walk and would return, slowly, by foot as he had approached—just another afternoon Avenue stroller.
He was tall and gaunt, but not at all in an unattractive way. His black hair was unkempt and rock musician long, with two braids tied back to keep it from his face, and I remember I liked the way it hung down his back as he turned around. I remember his coat on account of that—an old dusty black coat, terribly dusty, as though he’d been sleeping somewhere in the dust. I remember this because of the gleaming black hair and the way it broke off rough and ragged and long and so pretty.
He had dark eyes; I could see that much over the distance of the corner, the kind of eyes that are deep, sculpted in the face so that they can be secretive, beneath arching brows, until you get really close and see the warmth in them. He was lanky, but not graceless.
He looked at me and he looked at the house. And then off he went, with easy steps, too regular, I suppose. But then what did I know about ghosts at the time? Or how they walk when they come through?
He didn’t come back until two nights after Karl died. I hadn’t told anyone Karl was dead and the telephone-answering machine was lying for me.
These two days were my own.
In the first few hours after Karl was gone, I mean really truly gone, with the blood draining down to the bottom of his body, and his face and hands and legs turning very white, I had been elated the way you can be after a death and I had danced and danced to Mozart.
Mozart was always my happy guardian, the Little Genius, I called him, Master of His Choir of Angels, that is Mozart; but Beethoven is the Master of My Dark Heart, the captain of my broken life and all my failures.
That first night when Karl was only dead five hours, after I changed the sheets and cleaned up Karl’s body and set his hands at his sides, I couldn’t listen to the angels of Mozart anymore. Let Karl be with them. Please, after so much pain. And the book Karl had compiled, almost finished, but not quite—its pages and pictures strewn across his table. Let it wait. So much pain.
I turned to my Beethoven.
I lay on the floor of the living room downstairs—the corner room, through which light comes from the Avenue both front and side, and I played Beethoven’s
Ninth
. I played the torture part. I played the Second Movement. Mozart couldn’t carry me up and out of the death; it was time for anguish, and Beethoven knew and the Second Movement of the symphony knew.
No matter who dies or when, the Second Movement of the
Ninth Symphony
just keeps going.
When I was a child, I loved the last movement of Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony
, as does everybody. I loved the chorus singing the
Ode to Joy
. I can’t count the times I’ve seen it—here, Vienna once, San Francisco several times during the cold years when I was away from my city.
But in these last few years, even before I met Karl, it was the Second Movement that really belonged to me.
It’s like walking music, the music of someone walking doggedly and almost vengefully up a mountain. It just goes on and on and on, as though the person won’t stop walking. Then it comes to a quiet place, as if in the Vienna Woods, as if the person is suddenly breathless and exultant and has the view of the city that he wants, and can throw up his arms, and dance in a circle. The French horn is there, which always makes you think of woods and dales and shepherds, and you can feel the peace and the stillness of the woods and
the plateau of happiness of this person standing there, but then …
… then the drums come. And the uphill walk begins again, the determined walking and walking. Walking and walking.
You can dance to this music if you want, swing from the waist, and I do, back and forth like you’re crazy, making yourself dizzy, letting your hair flop to the left and then flop to the right. You can walk round and round the room in a grim marching circle, fists clenched, going faster and faster, and now and then twirling when you can before you go on walking. You can bang your head back and forth, back and forth, letting your hair fly up and over and down and dark before your eyes, before it disappears and you see the ceiling again.
This is relentless music. This person is not going to give up. Onward, upward, forward, it does not matter now—woods, trees, it does not matter. All that matters is that you walk … and when there comes just a little bit of happiness again—the sweet exultant happiness of the plateau—it’s caught up this time in the advancing steps. Because there is no stopping.
Not till it stops.
And that’s the end of the Second Movement. And I can roll over on the floor, and hit the button again, and bow my head, and let the movement go on, independent of all else, even grand and magnificent assurances that Beethoven tried to make, it seemed, to all of us, that everything would someday be understood and this life was worth it.
