The Egyptologist (18 page)

wished to find (a disorder perhaps attributable to the influence of the
Creator-god Atum himself). They created. The two men fertilised their
discoveries themselves.
Fertilise
being the key word here, for let us re•
mind those who, perversely, have not yet read
Desire and Deceit in Ancient
Egypt,
in which these issues were most fully explored, the name Atum-
hadu translates as Atum-Is-Aroused. And, as any schoolboy who has
studied the Egyptian pantheon is quick to note, memorise, and then
quote in his own defence when interrupted in solitary creativity by a
nosy parent, Atum the Creator, the first being (and thus quite, quite
alone), made all the other gods and the world, too, by using his own
celestial hand to spill his own celestial seed onto fertile ground.

Atum-Is-Aroused: we are on the verge of Creation. Our king was
named for that throbbing instant immediately prior to the creation of
the universe. And, in a fertile act of Atumic homage not dissimilar,
clenched and trembling men like Harriman and Vassal cannot restrain
themselves from spilling educated and less educated guesses over bar•
ren, tattered evidence, producing great, pregnant speculations, each
bearing a book certain to resemble the father. (And, let us take a mo•
ment to enjoy the sight of Vassal, with Gallic shamelessness, accusing
Harriman of the same paternity claims of which he is equally guilty.)

In one reproduced ancient drawing I found as a boy and spent sev•
eral hours amazedly pondering (until, from over my shoulder, the vil•
lage librarian spotted it with a stifled shriek and confiscated the book,
securing it in the sepulchral and sealed Patrons' Private Reserve Sec•
tion), solitary, tirelessly creative, and divinely flexible Atum performs a
service on himself that most mortal men's spines will not allow them to
execute, though they all know it would be a marvellously convenient
knack. (Although in my day, I once saw twin Chinese brothers, acro•
bats in a travelling circus passing through Kent, who matched the god's
feat while hanging quite nude and pale yellow from trapezes, an act of
post-performance relaxation they indulged in upside-down and side by
side like two eighth notes, late at night in the darkened tent after every
show, while outside one could hear the drugged elephant being washed
and in the shadowed seats, one unseen audience member secretly

watched the meditative display and, probably alone in all of Kent,
knew that the two Orientals were, in their twinned self-absorption, un•
knowingly paying tribute to the god Atum.)

To Margaret:
My darling Queen, having spent several hours yes•
terday and this morning working on scholarly essays, I grew so sad
thinking about Marlowe's death and my distance from you that I de•
cided to put work aside for the afternoon and strolled through my
Cairo.

My Cairo, it affects me strangely still. Today was no exception: the
remnants of religious miseducation drilled into the soft part of one's
head, or just dumb superstition embedded in our systems: for whatever
reason, I walked through Cairo this afternoon handing out food and
some of my remaining money to those who looked most desperate—the
convincingly legless, the big-eyed infants innocent of drunkenness. I
hope you would have approved, my sweet Queen. Perhaps I did it for
you.

I watched the women, those caramelised confections, dark-irised
behind long lashes. Some are veiled, nothing but shifting eyes, always
downcast or glancing sideways. Others are uncovered, and one can
glimpse faces in the distorting heat and the interfering shadows of palm
fronds. One of these women was moving quickly from shade to sun,
and in that very first instant my eye played tricks: I thought she was
covered, forehead to collarbone, with the most intricate tattoo or

henna-art, a leering cobra winking at me with every movement of her
cheek. But no, that semi-instant was a play of light: as she stepped into
the sun I saw the rage and range of her birthmark—no cobra, no
shadow, but a purple splash across her face, too intricate not to imply
special knowledge and a claim to unique beauty. She looked at me with
a haughty sureness of her effect.

And playing off to her left, I saw one of those children dispatched
by Atum, Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, the Great Set Decorator, to crack
your heart in pieces, his poverty blurring his potential, his tiny face all
huge eyes. I called him over and nearly emptied my pockets into his
steady hands, laid bill after bill into his palm and watched him watch-

ing me. He seemed young enough to have faith still that someone
would naturally care for him. I wished I could justify that faith, urge
him never to lose it.

I walked in places tourists do not frequent, where lurk the spectacu•
larly freakish, those who slide from poor to deformed to performer with
a speed making them difficult to categorise: of course I give money to
the blind mothers cradling the blind infants next to the wall-eyed and
incontinent dogs, and to the fused-digit flipper children, but what of

the man tattooed all over in spider's webs, as if he himself were the
trapped fly? What of the man all knobbed joints and slippery-eel limbs
whose knees rest comfortably on top of his shoulders?

And everywhere young men glower with rage at everything and
everyone, until I wonder if I am even able to understand the facial ex•
pression at all; it must be something I do not understand, since no one
could be enraged by a tree, a cloud, the glowering friend he embraces.

On the narrower streets, like canals cut through the high, yellow
buildings, I press myself against the walls for the barefoot delivery boys
to pass with trays on their heads. I overpay them to sample the bread
and fruit and chicken legs moving at nose level as I roam. In front of me
at a fruit market I find an old father and his grown son. The thin,
bearded father selects from the wooden stand, talking to the grey grocer,
plainly his old friend. Behind him, though, his son has some sort of
palsy; his hands shake and try to fly away from his body while his head
snaps back and forth on an uncomfortable axis. His whole body sways
like a metronome set to largo. While the father chooses figs, the son's
condition worsens, and I have to take a step back not to be struck by
flailing limbs. His legs begin vibrating, and then his feet alternate leav•
ing the ground an inch at a time. The father, unhurried by what he must
know is happening behind him, pays and at last turns: he gently places a
hand on the boy's forearm. With that light touch he absorbs the spasms
and shudders, compels the boy to be still again, to take control of him•
self with the help of his father's patience and presence. The boy calms
down and turns his face up in a contorted smile to enjoy the sun and
crunch a hard yellow date. His father keeps a hand on him a moment or

two longer, grins a wrinkled grin, then turns back to address a few more
words to the untroubled grocer, who has no doubt seen this every day
for years. On their way past me, I slipped money into their bag.

The money itself is not an issue, as the Partnership's first wired pay•
ment is due presently. There is a mist of good luck, I suppose, hanging
about the worthy or at least the entertaining poor—as if their one com•
pensation for their lot is to decide upon your future, or as if they are an
easy way to impress whichever gods one thinks will be judging one later
or clearing one's path sooner. Or, perhaps there is no surer way to prove
to yourself that the poor are not you than by giving them your money.

And then to the post, my Margaret, to find
you
waiting for me in the
poste restante!
I sniffed the envelope right there in the Cairo post office.
Your precious scent was just discernible still, for all the distance trav•
elled, each jealous, grasping mile snatching an atom of your fragrance.

I tore open the envelope with a churning hunger for you and found
your letter (?) of 19-21 Sep.

I admit to spending some anxious hours pondering this fragment of
correspondence, M., but obviously it was an error of dosage or postage;
your sleeping draughts are quite seriously askew, or you lost the other
pages. Nevertheless, while I invariably finish your letters wishing for
more, in this case my ailment was extreme. I walked very slowly back
to the Hotel of the Sphinx, loathing Cairo for being the place where
you were not, the place where I could not take care of you as that

father took care of his son.

Sep.19. Evening

Dearest Ralph,

Well, it seems you left today.

Sep. 20
.
Evening

R, I miss you.

Sep. 31. Eve's knees

My Ralphie,

Now you are on a boat, I think, or something like a boat.
Something afloat.

Sunset on the Bayview Nursing Home
Sydney, Australia

December 16, 1954
Macy,

I apologise for the lost days. I've been ill, not to bore you with the details, but
today's my first day standing in a week. I see on the faces of my keepers a little dis•
appointment at the sight of me not yet dead, but they'll be in my place someday,
and that's comfort enough for me.

Writing about my trip to Boston daunts me. I'm just tired, I suppose, from my
illness. But even as I recall stepping aboard the
Angel of the Azores,
preparing to
cross the Atlantic, thanking heaven that a bloke like myself was going to have the
opportunity to see America because of my professional abilities, I sit here in the
wretched heat of the games room (two incomplete sets of draughts and one of
chess, some playing cards, and a heap of old droolers), and I'm having to over•
come something in me that's resisting buckling back to our work. I take no pleas•
ure in re-creating this leg of my adventure. I recall too well the price I paid for my
hard work and open heart in Boston. But here's my stack of blank stationery.
(Horrible, that emblem of the home, isn't it? Did they think a little drawing of the
sea would make it true? Take it from me, you can't see the Bay from this building
even if you jump from the roof. Which is tempting.)

I made notes and notes, cataloguing my suspicions and the case's loose ends
on that weeklong trip across the Atlantic: Trihpush, Marlowe, and Quint are Uni•
versity mates, except that the University has never heard of Trihpush, though
passing students have, years after he was there. Trihpush and Marlowe are
friends, War chums, likely something else unspeakable, and Trilipush writes to
Marlowe's parents, referring fondly to time spent with the old folks, whose names
he doesn't know and who've never met him, though their son spoke often of him
at Oxford. Where records indicate he was never a student. And the British Gov•
ernment claims to have no record of him participating in that War, though the
unreliable Quint claims Trilipush was at Marlowe's side until Gallipoli. But recall
that no one has any recollection of Caldwell, who for his part, has no reason in the
world to know Marlowe, a British officer, but Marlowe recommends him for pro-

motions, and they vanish together on a nameless mission,
after
the War is over,
while Trilipush is still far off in Turkey, "pulling through." My case diagrams were
more question marks than conclusions.

I had a girl at Tailor HQ cable ahead to be sure of Trilipush's presence at Har•
vard, using a false name as I didn't want to spook him just yet, didn't want to give
him time to cover his tracks. No, I wanted this one flustered and bumbling when
I got to grips with him. The girl, however, I later learned when I cabled back to
London for explanation, had foolishly asked if Trilipush "taught" at Harvard,
rather than if he was "at" Harvard.

So, October 13th, 1922, I arrived at ivy-blanketed Harvard University, wan•
dered from building to building looking for Egyptology, where I asked to see Mr.
Trilipush, only to learn from a secretary that he'd departed for Egypt not even a
month before on an exploration, and would be abroad well into 1923. So be it: I'd
find what I could here and then have a holiday in sunny Egypt on the Marlowes'
and Davies's shillings. So I asked for Trilipush's chief and was brought to the of•
fice of a little round Dutchman named Terbroogan, the head of Harvard's Egypt
men. When I told him I was looking for some information about his Mr. Trili•
push, he replied with a sort of spittly speech defect and Fritzy accent, "My dear
man, vatever elth he may be, by no thtretch of the imayhinathon ith he
my
Tchiliputh."

Terbroogan had few gentle (or dry) words for his employee, and the tenor of
the conversation was soon fine and candid, quite to my taste when compared to
the timid snobberies of the Marlowes and the shadowy half-truths of Quint. "In•
subordinate, arrogant, and wrong," chants the fellow. "Insubordinate, arrogant,
and wrong. If one is arrogant, one should at least be right. But his book is a tissue
of nonsense. I hope he is eaten by crocodiles out there." For a moment I found this
violent language suspicious, and wondered how Professor Terbroogan and his
rough fantasies might fit into our emerging picture. I wouldn't've been at all sur•
prised to learn he'd been in the same dangerous regiment in the desert or had some
other sinister connection, but no, it was a passing cloud: much of this language,
Macy I've come to understand, is quite common talk among University types, and
I admit that while I meant to take careful notes of Terbroogan's complaints about
Trilipush, I lost interest rapidly and now I'm having some difficulty making out
just what I meant by jottings such as "RT's book is about Atoomadoo, who was or
was not a king and was or was not a poet and is or is not buried where RT is going
and Egyptian poems do or do not rhyme. This is what these men do all day? For