The Egyptologist (15 page)

"Oh, yes, Egypt in all its exotic delights, but I really shouldn't tell tales if you
don't know him." And the young man walks off, quite unwilling to speak another
word but corroborating at least Trilipush's
unofficial
presence at Oxford, so not
bad, young Macy. The odd thing, though, is that this undergraduate in 1922, a
boy of eighteen or nineteen, wouldn't've been old enough to have attended Ox•
ford with Marlowe, Quint, and Trilipush back in 1914. Mysteries upon mysteries.
As you walk into the Oxford rain, puzzled by your discoveries, I'm still sitting in
the glowing, dust-freckled drawing room, refusing another plate of Turkish De•
light and sipping the thick, strange coffee offered by Mr. Quint, who's smoking a
long and peculiar cigarette in a holder and trying to make my interview most dif•
ficult, though I see much more than he'd have me see.

"Why didn't you serve in the Army, Mr. Quint?"
"Various weaknesses," claims my strapping interviewee.
"Were you conscripted?"

"Mmmm, I should think I would remember that—it sounds delicious."
"Did you correspond with Captain Marlowe when he was at war?"

"Bien sur.
I fretted dreadfully for him, but I knew he had Trilipush there to
look after him. Ralph and Hugo were based near those dreadfully grim pyramids
they so adored, fighting the Boche or the wogs or whomever merited a sound En•
glish thrashing, the lucky devils, until poor Ralph went off to fight in Turkey. We
thought we'd lost him, you know, but he's the sort who always pulls through."

All well and good, this tale, but there you sit, Macy, back at Tailor HC,
scratching your head at the official letter, just arrived, saying that His Majesty's
War Office,
just like old Oxford,
has no record whatsoever for anyone named
Ralph Trilipush.

"And what do you suppose became of Captain Marlowe, Mr. Quint?"

"What do I
suppose?
You Australians are terrible cynics. Just what the Army
said is what I suppose. I am not the sort who doubts the official version of any•
thing. He trotted off on leave to look at some dusty queen's tomb or another and
was probably set upon by swarthy, bearded bandits or desperately rugged,
whiskered Germans who treacherously but manfully refused to accept the
Armistice. They devoured him, belching at their good fortune. What
do you
sup•
pose became of him, feral Ferrell?"

"You didn't happen to save any letters from Captain Marlowe, did you?"
"Of course I did, and it would give me a warm and damp pleasure to deliver

them to you this very instant if they hadn't been ruined when I had some plumb•
ing problems a few months ago."

"Did Marlowe ever mention a Paul Caldwell in his correspondence?"
"I don't recall the name, no."

"Australian? Possibly involved with Captain Marlowe in archaeological mat•
ters? Or personal matters?"

"Speaking as one who knew Hugo's tastes," says this specimen of English
manhood, "I should be very surprised if he were too personally involved with an
Australian. Pioneer types not at all suited to his palate."

I hurry back to you, Macy, and we meet at Tailor HQ to exchange notes.
"What does it all mean?" you ask me, not without frustration. "It's too early to
say, Macy. Patience, old fellow, keep your mind open." And I send you off to book
our passage to the United States of America, expenses paid by our clients, Hector
and Regina Marlowe and Barnabas Davies. Oh, yes, indeed, America: where we
must certainly speak to our Mr. Trilipush, professor at Harvard University.

And what
does
it all mean? Trilipush, a man who apparently did not go to Ox•
ford and did not serve in the War, apparently did go to Oxford and did serve in
the War. A man who did not know Marlowe's parents pretended or believed that
he did know them, and so confidently that he pretended it
to them.
Or he
did
know them, and
they
lied to me to hide their embarrassing nicknames and the
scandalous behaviour that must have earned them. Further, Quint, who would
know, seemed to say Marlowe and Trilipush shared a shameful variety of inti•
macy. Meanwhile Quint and the men who served under Marlowe had never
heard of Caldwell, but the War Office and Marlowe's soldiers had never heard of
Trilipush. What could be clearer?

And with that, Macy, I post the latest chapter of our adventures to you.

Yrs,

Ferrell

(Thursday, 12 October 1922, continued)

Book notes:
To be placed after Author's Introduction and before
Journal Entries:
Egypt at the time of Atum-hadu:
King Atum-hadu, to
whom I owe my academic reputation and relatively small fortune
(dwindling, with ten days still until first financial reinforcements ar•
rive), reigned at

Journal:
Visit bank to introduce myself to manager, confirm estab•
lishment of account, preparedness to receive credits from abroad. Ad•
vise of my whereabouts for immediate notification when first wire, due
22 October, arrives from Hand-of-Atum, Ltd. Explain the need to
arrange a smooth transition to the Luxor branch of the bank as soon as
I make my move south to the site. The modern explorer, Reader, needs
to secure firmly his financial lifeline.

Having been well received at my bank, I then spend the rest of

12 October wrestling not with heavy tomb doors or incalcitrant work
crews or fading hieroglyphs suddenly and fearfully exposed to bleach•
ing sunlight, but with Franco-Egyptian bureaucracy. To what they sub•
mit an explorer nowadays! It was not always like this; there was once a
glorious golden age when men went into the desert with no one's per•
mission and no one's help. Wit and curiosity were the requisites. Once,
not even academic degrees were required: Belzoni was an Italian circus
strongman, Howard Vyse a demolition expert, but Egypt drew them
both into her embrace, and richly rewarded their manly love. Belzoni
simply carried off sarcophagi on his own knob-muscled back; Ferlini
knocked the tops off virgin pyramids, like a bear batting at a beehive,
and descended upon the sweet treasures nestled inside. The tennis pro•
fessional E P. Mayer, in a possibly misguided effort to understand how
the pyramids were built, hired a team of native workers and closely
monitored their work habits, exhaustion, and attrition as they disman•
tled a small Vlth- Dynasty pyramid stone by stone, wheeled the heavy
blocks through the desert on primitive rollers, cut the pyramid's perfect
blocks into rough, random, "natural" shapes, and buried them in a
quarry several miles away. The whole experience proved very little but
did reveal at the nearly empty pyramid's central chamber an extremely
small gold-flake figurine of Anubis, which I believe was melted down
by Mayer's children, after the explorer died quite mad, certain that
there was anagrammatic significance to be found in the name of the

Vth-Dynasty king Shepseka'are. At any rate, these explorers were
men. They came, they dug, they took risks, they walked off with their
finds, and their names have entered the pantheon. And while I cannot

always endorse the scientific value of their methods or results, they did
not wait while an application for an "Archaeological Concession" was
pondered by sleepy Frenchmen in a Cairo office, which in exchange for
mummifying explorers in red tape, extorts 50 percent of their discover•
ies to toss into the insatiable maw of the Egyptian state museums.

In short, my visit to the office of the Director-General of the Egypt•
ian Antiquities Service was a grave disappointment. Instead of the
ready assistance I could reasonably have expected, I was told that the
application letter I had sent several weeks earlier from Boston "wan•
dered, it is possible to say?"

"No," I instructed the secretary, a pale Frenchman who claimed
never to have heard of me or my application, "it is not possible to say
that my application wandered." He tarried a few minutes behind his
boss's evidently soundproofed door, then emerged with the news that
my application was once again under consideration and would I please
return to the office in eleven days' time.
Eleven days! 24
October is now
my earliest departure date for the site. I had intended to be under way
in two days, and budgeted accordingly. This is my error, of course, an
error of overestimating the efficiency of others, and now, under this in¬
fantilising regime, I have no choice but to postpone. I report to the
tourist agency and book first-class passage to Luxor on the
Luxor Princess
for the 24th, return to the hotel and extend my stay in the
Pharaoh Suite, an expense I had not foreseen in my planning sessions
with the Partners. The wire on the 22nd will be, it seems, more urgent
than any of us had intended.

My concession application is cannily modest. Unlike those who
would excavate vast stretches of the country on whimsical suspicions, I
have applied for the exclusive licence to explore only a very small strip
of cliff wall on the Nile's west bank, a secluded stretch of Deir el Ba¬
hari. While Professor Winlock burns the New York Metropolitan Mu•
seum of Art's money, throwing dust and earth about the open expanses
of Deir el Bahari, he has found nothing of significance in more than a
year and, predictably, has shown no interest in the spot a few hills
away that I intend to explore. I should be absolutely flabbergasted if he

or the Antiquities Service hesitate in allotting me my portion of the
ground. The Government does collect half of the results, after all.

Visit post to see if any news from Partners/Margaret in the
poste
restante.
Assure myself that the postal workers have the correct spelling
of my name. Cable CCF to assure my bank information is accurately
relayed to the Partnership's bank in Boston, and inform him of my
delay.

Begin looking for estate agents for rental of villa near the excava•
tion site in the south, see drawings and photographs of some exquisite
and suitable properties. Howard Carter himself used one of these
agents, the agent informs me. An impressive credential: the man will
know the sort of thing I shall need. Visit bazaar—find a light scarf for
Margaret as 'well as a small boy's hand reaching into my pocket. Nearly
snap the little thug in two before a hammy actress playing his weeping
mother appears to plead for his life.

Sit at an
ahwa
and have a coffee to calm my nerves. Note the day's
frustrating events in journal. Back to the hotel to bathe.

Friday, 13 October, 1922

Evidence pointing to the location of the tomb of Atum-hadu:
The
dillydallying at Antiquities allows me to address an implied question:
how does one know where to look for a tomb? To answer, I must begin
some years ago, when I cut my teeth as an Egyptologist alongside and
under the heady influence of Hugo St. John Marlowe, who would by
now have been one of the most celebrated members of our dusty frater•
nity had he not been cut down in the mad slaughter of the War.

Before that tragic day, we were both young captains, working for
our great cause side by side right here in Egypt (before I headed off in
'15 to fight in the Bosporus campaign). We had been at Oxford to•
gether, Hugo Marlowe and I, and both of us spoke modern Arabic flu•
ently, as well as knowing our way around ancient Egyptian. Our
linguistic gifts were duly noted by His Majesty's Army, our posting to
the Near East theatre merely logical. With our linguistic and cultural