The Egyptologist (25 page)

house unaccompanied, but she's been slipping free of her guard and is obviously
unwell again, and if Trilipush ever found out about it, the engagement would
probably be off, and Finneran looks defeated at the thought of it, forgetting for a
moment that the blessed fiance has lied to them about his education and perhaps
more.

This display was grotesque, Macy. The strong, rich businessman was on the
verge of sobbing because he was unsuccessful in his attempts to imprison his
daughter, who suffered, it was plain to me, from nothing more than youthful
high spirits and a nasty engagement to a sodomistic murderer, whom the family
had desperately been trying to
impress. They
had been lying to
him,
telling him
Margaret suffered from a rare but curable disorder causing her sleeping spells,
mood swings, and so forth (as if Trilipush would even care, since his interest in
her extended no further than her father's bank account). It was the sheerest,
most sickening lunacy. Finneran didn't want my opinion, which would've been
simple enough: save your daughter by letting her be. You're going to kill her in a
social-climbing accident. And any pommy idiot who'd refuse to marry her be•
cause of a little high-spirited adventure deserved to be shot between the eyes.
But I couldn't quite tip my hand that far, and instead I just said I'd try to keep
an eye on Margaret, if he wanted, see if she was really in any kind of trouble. He
shook my hand. "That's a great relief to me, Ferrell. Thank you, thank you. I
didn't know who else to turn to," he says, as if it'd been his idea. "She's my little
girl, you know, just want what's best." Right, course you do. Humans, my dear
Macy, are one and all champions at claiming they're worried about someone
else when they're only worried about themselves. "Count on me, Chester. I'll
look after her for you."

"Your father's worried about you," I told her that evening, sitting on a couch
at JP's, before she'd gone upstairs. I thought she'd laugh with me, find our new sit•
uation funny, not without its charms, and maybe that would lead to a gentle dis•
cussion of Trilipush's weaknesses, and that would lead to—

"Harry," she said. "We're having fun, aren't we? It's nice to have a pal to escort
me out on the town when my beau's away, right? So now, please, Harry, I'm beg•
ging on my hands and knees: don't be a stinking bore." She stood up, her first step
towards the stairs. "Why don't you talk to one of those nice girls while I'm gone?"
she suggested, pointing to the tarts JP employed to set the male customers at
ease. "Do you even
like
girls, Harry? Don't they teach you how to talk to girls
down there on the bottom of the world? Just don't bore 'em, Harry, even if these
ones here are paid to listen to you."

Friday, 20 October, 1922, Hotel of the Sphinx

Margaret:
My love. The first thing this morning, while I was sit•
ting for my portraitist, a boy brought up the oddest cable from you r
father. Absolutely the oddest thing. I read it without exaggeration a
dozen times and then finally, feeling anxiety spread to my gut, I had no
choice but to send the painter home. It is a nine-word communication
from across an ocean, but apparently across even vaster gulfs of confu•
sion: CLARIFY OXFORD IMMEDIATELY. FERRELL QUESTIONS YOUR ACCU•
RACY. MUCH DEPENDS.

Nine word s drawn at random from a hat, some obscure parlour
game of the Boston rich? Wha t does you r father mean, my love? He is
confused about Oxford and needs clarification. Of its existence? Its
function? Wha t is a ferrell and in wha t conceivable manner can it ques•
tion my accuracy? On e point is unquestionable: much does depend.

Sunday the 22nd, I shall walk into the ban k here to find my account
fattened by the prearranged credit which is to be wired from Boston
the 22nd of every month as long as the expedition progresses. Oh yes,
much depends indeed. This is no time for parlour games.

I am relying—it is this morning clearer than ever—on men far
below the calibre I would have hoped for. No t you r father, of course,
my darling, but his evidently jumpy partners wh o have prompted this
oddity. I accepted his money as a gesture to him, because I love you,
M. I will not claim I was blind to the effect I have on him; English
snobs and Irish mobs seem to thrill our CC F equally, but I could have
found my backers in more respectable, traditional circles. You kne w
that, and that is wh y you suggested this as a gift to you r father. I sin•
cerely hope our favour to him—mine to you—will not be one I live to
regret.

Enough. If I am anxious now, it is because I find myself running out
of funds, expecting you r father's help to arrive in forty-eight hours, and
instead he sends me riddles. I shall not sho w yo u any of this. It will re•
solve itself.

But I will someday be able to hold you, in our own home, and re•
mind you of the moment I knew I would marry you: May, only three or
four weeks after my talk at the Historical Society. You are in excellent
health, and as lovely as anything imaginable in this life. We walk along
the banks of the Charles, with giant Inge gliding a constant ten yards
behind us, first to our left and then to our right, as if she were a dinghy.
The sky rolls and the clouds wring their knotted fingers, nervous to
rain on your beauty. You float forward away from me as I bend to tie
my shoe (and Inge stops the same respectable margin behind me, pre•
tending to sniff a spray of blue flowers), and one ray of sun emerges
and paints a patch of river and your white dress with a single brush•
stroke, and while I fumble with my bootlace, I watch you bend to pat
the head of a small tan-and-white hound with a wonderfully wrinkled,
smiling face. He has just run through a picnic, collecting a string of
sausage without breaking stride, dodging all avengers, leaving chaos in
his wake, but at the sight of
Margaret,
he stops, drops his prize at your
feet, and allows you to scratch his chin, while he tips back his head and
stretches his neck to savour the affection. That was it, my love: I decide
at that instant to make you my consort in this world and the next (for
you will be mentioned in my every written work, assuring your immor•
tality, too). And at that instant, I imagined you sculpted by the great
artist Thothmes, bent over the banks of the Nile, placing a long-
fingered hand upon the soft head of a canine envoy of Anubis. "I have
something urgent to ask you," I shouted as I stood. "What did you
say?" you cried, the rising wind bringing your voice to me. "I have
something urgent to ask you!" and I began to run towards you. My ex•
citement agitated the little dog, who began to run in circles, howling

the most melodious song, leaving his sausage in the grass as if he had
stolen it not from any hunger but from sheer joy of mischief. "You must
be my queen, you must, you must."

"You will be the one to rescue me? "you asked as I took you in my
arms.

"Of course I will. That is why I'm here with you."

It was days later when you suggested your father's investment club,

eroded my doubts and arguments, and some weeks after that when I
asked him for your hand. And yet today I am forced to sit as a python
squeezes my belly, and I scratch my head and puzzle over his cryptic
cable, running through a dozen styluses for the WC gramophone, and
in short losing a day to worry. I suppose all of this agony is somehow a
tribute to your beauty and love, my troublesome darling who brought
us all to this point, but I trust you are already setting your father
straight.

Journal:
Find, with much trouble, an open cable office, and cable
Boston to confirm certain details necessary for the Partnership's first
scheduled wire, as preliminary resources are dwindling, and we are
only beginning.

Bank closed. No one responds to knocking.

Call for portraitist to return; nothing else to be done on a Friday in
a Mohammedan city.

CABLE. CAIRO TO C. C. FINNERAN,
BOSTON, 20 OCT. 1922, 3.18 P.M.

OXFORD UNIVERSITY IS IN ENGLAND. NO FURTHER
CLARIFICATION OF MY ACCURACY NEEDED. KNOW NO FERRELL.
22ND APPROACHES. MUCH DEPENDS. Q3: IN ALL ATUM-HADU'S
REALM, THERE IS NO MAN MORE TRUSTED/THAN HIS MASTER OF
LARGESSE, WHOSE EVERY MOVEMENT IS DIVINE./I SHALL
REPLACE WITH GOLD ANYTHING OF HIS WHICH IS RUSTED/AND I
SHALL ASSURE HE CAN AT HIS WHIM SWIM IN WINE. DADIAE,
CAL, 1920. RMT.

Saturday, 21 October, 1922

Journal:
Today, with time nipping at my heels and still no word
from the Antiquities Service, I paid them a call. For last night, in trou•
bled pre-sleep clarity, it occurred to me that I have been fooled into
worshipping a slip of paper. Such fragile fetishes, an archaeologist
knows better than anyone, are not carved in stone. There is no use

making a god of before-the-fact permission, as Marlowe used to say in
the matter of applying for leaves. A man-to-man chat with the Director-
General, perhaps a gift and a candid negotiation over terms, even an
expression of willingness on behalf of Hand-of-Atum, Ltd, to offer him
an honourary share in our discovery, and with that, we should at last
be under way.

I presented the D-G's secretary with a signed first edition
of Desire
and Deceit in Ancient Egypt.
He was duly impressed, grateful, muttered
some French. I requested an urgent audience with the D-G himself, to
share my latest thinking about the tomb of Atum-hadu.

"You are wanting to make change of your application?" asks dubi•
ous DuBois.

"No, I am wanting to
enhance
my application, ducks." Which is true:
I am willing to make one last goodwill gesture to their rules.

As DuBois apparently could not blink without clearance, he duly
retreated into the D-G's chambers and left me standing at his desk. The
trappings these office-officers feel they need! "From the desk of the
Director-General of the Antiquities Service." "From the Desk of the
Chief Secretary to the Director-General of the Antiquities Service."
Wax and seals, presigned, prepaid blank telegraph forms. Frippery.

I waited my turn in one of the overstuffed leather chairs, withdrew
my papers from my bulging briefcase, and have now updated my Jour•
nal to the present moment. And I wait, hopeful that my visible willing•
ness to submit myself to their corrupt rules will unclog the constipated
system.

And now it is later this same evening and I am back in the hotel,
and it is with pride and excitement that I write these words: today I
met and befriended one of my great heroes, a man whose professional•
ism and dedication I respect above all others, even though he is now re•
duced to chasing shifting shadows in the Valley of the Kings.

Sitting, waiting the word of the D-G, and having finished my up•
dating of the Journal, and still with no sight of the toadying Frog, I felt
the shaking-jelly preamble of a medium-grade gut attack, and so I re•
treated to the gilded facilities of the Antiquities Service's gentlemen's

lounge. Though it may strike you as indelicate, I must invite you,
Reader, to join me there, as I wash my hands and watch in the mirror
as the colour returns slowly to my damp, exhausted face.

I had recognised — from the sounds of unhappiness in harmony with
my own that had risen from the next closet over—a fellow member of
the digestively damned, a brother of the beastly bowel. And then at the
sinks and mirror, as I rose from the basin with my face dripping luke•
warm water and cursed the native towel-boy who took his sweet time
drying me before my shirt collar was soaked, I examined next to my
blinking reflection that of a moustachioed older man studiously soaping
his hands. I recognised him at once: my indigestive colleague had been
none other than the great Howard Carter, former Inspector of Antiqui•
ties, discoverer of countless tombs and treasures, including Thothmes
IV and Mentuhotep I, currently the well-endowed beneficiary of the
Earl of Carnarvon's aristocratic interest in Egypt, painter, authority,
and great genius of digging, now on the verge of (it is hardly credible
even as I write it), his
sixth
long season seeking and failing to find a
minor XVIIIth-Dynasty king's tomb on the scantiest evidence. Six

years, wasting Milord's money! One could hardly be surprised that the
poor fellow's stomach was in open rebellion.

I studied him in the mirror, the grace with which he moved, the
bearing, the air of masterful indifference. He wore a light twill suit. I
was fascinated to see, even in his dotage, the obvious relationship be•
tween his manner and his expertise. Like Marlowe, he is one of those
for whom his work is his destined calling, and so it is visible even in
how he washes his hands, how he bears up under the banal but omni•
present burdens of his body. I introduced myself.

"Trilipush?" he repeated. "Trilipush?" He washed his hands and
peered into my reflected eyes, all of Egyptology nestled in his memory,
organised and comfortably accessible. " 'The pornographer'?

His sympathy at the pain I have suffered at that idiotic epithet ap•
plied by small minds to my work was evident in his compassionately
humorous "quoting" tone of voice; we both knew that even one more
word on the topic would be lending the ignorant too much of our time.