The Pearlkillers Page 3

  Cindy grinned. Her eyes began to rove to other people. Lily moved her head and looked somewhere else.

  On their way back to the bus, Howie said, ‘You know what really turned me on to all this stuff? It was that big show from Tutankhamun’s tomb.’

  ‘Yes, I saw that, too,’ Lily said.

  Don pulled back on her hand. ‘You did?’ he asked. ‘You never told me that.’

  She shrugged. ‘Me and about fifty million other people. Didn’t you?’

  ‘No, I missed it.’

  ‘It was something,’ Ruth-Ann told him. ‘Talk about gorgeous – you can have all that Greek and Roman stuff.’

  ‘Oh, I like that too,’ Lily said. ‘Only it never grabbed me the same way. It didn’t have the philosophy.’

  ‘The what?’ Don asked.

  ‘Haven’t you been listening to what Lisabette’s been saying?’

  ‘Sure. All about the Nile god and the cow-goddess, and that kind of thing.’

  ‘The first pyramids were built in steps, so the Pharaoh could go up there and into the sky and come back down again. After they died, they had their insides put into separate jars and they sailed across the sky in a boat. When they got to the other side, they went into the palace of death and answered all the questions about what kind of life they’d led. And if it was all right, then they started to sing chants to get back their stomach and brain and everything. The priest and the relatives of the dead person would help from back at the tomb. There were even little prayers for the heart, except that was the one thing they didn’t take out. But I guess it had to be started up again. They called all the essential parts back into the body. And then the dead person would be whole in the other world.’ She stopped, breathless.

  ‘That isn’t philosophy,’ Don said.

  ‘Hit him with your handbag,’ Ruth-Ann told her.

  ‘I’ll hit him with the guidebook.’

  ‘It still wouldn’t make all that rigmarole philosophy.’

  ‘Well, religion. I like the way they thought about people and animals and kings, and all the natural elements: all in one big lump.’

  ‘They didn’t think much of women, though,’ Ruth-Ann said. ‘You see these big statues of men, and way down near their feet is a tiny little figure of the wife – that’s how unimportant they were.’

  ‘No, it’s just the opposite. The wife shouldn’t be there at all. If you see one of those statues, it’s really just supposed to represent the man, but he’s specially asked to have his wife mentioned – for luck, or for sentiment. It’s like nowadays, if a painter did a portrait of a businessman and the man insisted on taking a pose where he was holding a photograph of his wife. See? It’s a gesture of affection. Nothing to do with despising anybody. They told us that in the museum lectures I went to.’

  ‘There,’ Howie said. ‘They weren’t so bad, after all.’ He patted Ruth-Ann’s behind lightly. She shooed him away. ‘My wife’s got this thing about victimized females.’

  ‘My wife. He keeps saying it like that. I feel like I’ve lost my name all of a sudden.’

  ‘I like the sound of it,’ Howie said. ‘I like trying it out. It’s like driving around in a new car.’

  Ruth-Ann climbed into the bus. ‘Howie and his cars,’ she said. Don followed. As Lisabette gave the driver the sign to start, he said to Lily, ‘You should be hiring yourself out to one of these tourist outfits. I didn’t realize you knew so much about the place.’

  ‘I just went to all those lectures and I remember what they told us. You know how it is when you really like something.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I know how it is.’ He put his arm around her again and she relaxed. She’d forgotten her irritation. She was glad to be with him and to have him holding her close to him.

  *

  That night she had a dream. It began like the dreams she’d had before leaving on the trip: she was standing under the blue sky, with the sun pouring down, and she was looking at the hieroglyphics on the wall. But this time as she scanned the carvings, they began to form a story. The picture-writings seemed to be changing shape, running into each other and reforming. And after that, they became images that moved across the wall. It was like watching a film. In the picture-story she saw her first husband. He was standing on the bank of the river. Two servants were wrapping him in a length of white cloth that left him naked from the waist up. The material had been wound up into a long skirt. Then they continued. He raised his arms a little, while the men circled him with the bolt of material; they wrapped him to the midpoint of his chest, made him fold his arms, and proceeded to wind the cloth so that the arms were taped down.

  She started to feel anxious. The place she was watching from began to draw nearer to the riverbank but she was still too far away to reach him. The long, white banner went around his neck. She could see they were going to bandage his face, too. She tried to call out, to move forward, to do anything to stop the men; but nothing worked. They wrapped her husband up completely, as if he’d been inside a cocoon. Only his legs, under the skirt, were free to walk. She looked on miserably until the work was finished.

  The two men turned her husband around and walked him forward – one on each side – to the river, where a boat was waiting for them. As she saw him going away from her like that – entirely enclosed in white, and because of that seeming to be blind all over – she grew frantic. She screamed, but no one paid any attention to her. Her husband stepped forward into the boat. The servants guided him to the central part of the vessel, where a curtain hung. He went behind the curtain and she couldn’t see him any more.

  She wanted to go with him. She tried to run forward. The boat floated off, carrying him away. She tried to call out again, and again no one took any notice. She woke up. Don was kissing her in the dark. They began to make love before she realized that they were in their hotel room and that it was in Egypt.

  *

  The tour took them to the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens, the Tombs of the Nobles. Lily held their guidebook in one hand and talked as fast as a racetrack reporter about deities, animals, heavenly bodies, cults. Strange-sounding names flowed easily from her. Sometimes it seemed that in her zeal she was getting everything mixed up – that she was repeating a lot of misinformation, jumbling thoughts, condensing centuries, forgetting who the real people were and who were the gods.

  Ruth-Ann said that if she tried for ten years, she was never going to be able to pronounce the name Hatshepsut. ‘It’s quite simple,’ Lisabette told her. ‘Hat-shep-sut. Repeat that.’ Howie went off into a fit of giggles. Don said in a low voice that he found all of those names a little weird and couldn’t remember any of them.

  ‘That’s because you didn’t study them beforehand,’ Lily said. ‘If you don’t know the names, how can you tell one god from another?’

  ‘I can tell which one is supposed to be some animal. The cow-goddess and the jackal-god and the alligator-god.’ He laughed. ‘There’s even a hippo-god, isn’t there?’

  ‘She’s a goddess. She’s a goddess of childbirth.’

  ‘That figures. I guess they thought she had to be pregnant if she was so fat.’

  ‘They didn’t look at it that way.’ She was beginning to get annoyed with him again. ‘They thought that fat was a sign of abundance and good health.’

  ‘And a high social standing,’ Howie said. ‘You can’t stay overweight unless you keep up the food supply.’

  ‘That’s why the Nile was so important to them. They wouldn’t have had any food without it.’ The wind blew Lily’s hair back, the sun was hot on her face. You could feel it was a genuine desert air. And now that all the dust had settled from the storm, the clarity – the light, was like nothing she’d ever imagined.

  Ruth-Ann rejoined them. She said to Howie, ‘Where’s your sweater?’

  ‘It’s too hot.’

  ‘You know what Lisabette told us: you’ll pick up one of those bugs if you don’t keep it on.’

 
; ‘How could that help?’

  ‘Well, she lives here. She ought to know.’

  Lily teamed up with the Pottses, while Don got into a discussion with John Darrell. Orville and Selma – Selma especially – shared Lily’s interest in Egyptian art and mythology. Ruth-Ann and Howie kept to themselves for a while, occasionally bursting into laughter. Once Lily heard Ruth-Ann pronounce ‘Hatshepsut’ again in a loud voice.

  Lisabette concentrated on her three best students. Behind her shoulder, off in the distance, Patsy Darrell talked earnestly to her daughter; she’d come all the way around the world to do something she could have done at home – unless, possibly, the child was demanding the discussion in order to make sure that her mother didn’t have the time to enjoy herself.

  ‘I wish we were going to Saqqarah too,’ Selma said, ‘but we just don’t have the time.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Lisabette told her. ‘You will be fully satisfied by Karnak, I can assure you.’

  ‘And Abu Simbel,’ Orville said. ‘I’m very interested in how they moved it. That must have been a magnificent feat of engineering.’

  ‘And of international cooperation. It shows what can be accomplished when people work together in a spirit of peace.’

  ‘And honesty,’ Orville added. ‘They tried to save Venice too. Pouring all that money into rescue funds – so now they’ve made about three people there into millionaires and the place is still sinking.’

  ‘It’s such a shame to have just one week,’ Selma said. ‘Well, a couple of days over a week.’

  Lily agreed. She thought that she’d much rather go to Saqqarah than to Abu Simbel.

  ‘It isn’t on our tour,’ Don told her. ‘It’s back where we came from.’

  ‘We could change. Just go by ourselves one day.’

  ‘If we took a whole day out, we might as well go to Alexandria.’

  ‘But there isn’t anything there.’

  ‘There’s a whole town.’

  ‘There isn’t anything old.’

  ‘Lily, Abu Simbel’s on the tour. You know it’s going to be great. Haven’t you seen the pictures?’

  ‘Maybe we could stay on a little afterwards.’

  ‘Our plane tickets—’

  ‘Just a few days.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘We’ll see.’ He wouldn’t say no outright. He didn’t want to start an argument with her. She could see he was hoping that by the end of the week she’d have forgotten.

  She walked back to the bus with Ruth-Ann, who told her, ‘I was talking with Patsy back there. That’s a real sick kid she’s got. Jesus. She sets fire to things – I mean, like, houses. She isn’t in school because – if you can believe it – she just burned it down. Honest to God. They keep moving all around. He’s always got to find a new job, or get transferred.’

  ‘Isn’t there anything – doctors? Psychiatrists?’

  ‘They’re spending everything they’ve got on the doctors already. Her parents gave them the trip.’

  Lily looked again at the Darrells, who were now standing near Lisabette. She wondered whether anything could help a child like Cindy. ‘And they don’t have any other children?’ she said.

  ‘I guess one was enough. A brat like that – I’m telling you: I’d sell her to the Arabs.’

  ‘I don’t know that the Arabs would like her any better than we do. I wonder if she was just born that way, or what?’

  ‘You know what they say – some are born crazy, some become crazy and some have craziness thrust upon them. It all comes to the same thing in the long run.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s a real cute husband you’ve got there.’

  Lily smiled. ‘Want to trade?’ she suggested.

  Ruth-Ann shrieked with laughter. Howie came striding up to them, saying, ‘What’s she done – forgotten that name again?’

  *

  That night Lily had the dream again. She stood in front of the wall, stared at the writing, and it started to turn into pictures that told her a story. It was the same story, but this time the man being prepared for the ride in the boat was her second husband. She watched, as before: at the beginning surprised and touched to see him, and wanting to walk up and talk to him; then, when it was too late, desperate to be heard – trying to stop the others from taking him away. And she woke up again.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Don whispered.

  ‘Dream,’ she said.

  ‘I thought you were in pain. You were making noises.’

  ‘No, it’s all right.’

  ‘Maybe I’d better check everything, just to make sure. Does this feel all right?’

  She put her arms around him and said that felt fine; and there, and that, too.

  They went to Karnak. As Lily stepped into the ferry, she remembered her dream; but this was a modern craft, whereas the one in her dream had been like the ones on the frescoes, ancient.

  They both loved Karnak. Don took a lot of photographs and Lily changed her mind about the camera. She became interested in trying to get pictures of the undersides of the overhead stone beams. The intensity of light around them was so great that it was thrown up, illuminating the colours on the surfaces high over their heads.

  ‘This place is gigantic‚’ Don said. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’ He and Howie and Orville moved off together, leaving Ruth-Ann with Lily. Selma wanted Lisabette to look at something in her guidebook. Patsy, as usual, stayed at a distance from the rest of them, keeping watch over Cindy. John started to walk towards the group of men.

  ‘Those two‚’ Ruth-Ann said.

  ‘Patsy and John?’

  ‘Patsy and her child-arsonist.’

  ‘Poor woman. What can she do? All of a sudden when they’re five, you find out you’ve got a bum one – you can’t take it back to the store. She’s stuck with that, I guess.’

  ‘And so’s he.’

  Lily looked at the men. She noticed that Howie was in his shirtsleeves. All the others had on sweaters or jackets. John was gesturing up at the columns. ‘I don’t know‚’ she said. ‘He might walk out any time now. What do you think?’

  ‘Oh? I guess it’s possible. She can’t have much time for him if she’s got her hands full like that. Did you hear what happened when we were getting into the boat? Cindy said something to Selma.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I didn’t hear. But I’ve never seen such a reaction. Selma and Orville, too. Then the two of them started to say something to Patsy and she blew up. John tried to calm them all down. And that horrible, rat-faced kid just looked smug.’

  ‘I wonder what it was.’

  ‘Something mean, I bet.’

  Later in the day, Selma came and sat next to Lily. They talked about the ruins. Lily admired the other guidebook, which was larger than her own, and full of coloured pictures. ‘I’ll give it to you when we leave‚’ Selma said. ‘I bought two, because I knew the one I’d be carrying around was bound to get all tattered. Just tell me the name of your hotel in Cairo and I’ll drop it off there. If you don’t mind it in this condition.’

  ‘I’d love it,’ Lily told her.

  ‘I’ll tell you something, though: a lot of the information in it is different than we’re being told. Sometimes the change is just very slight, and sometimes it really contradicts what the book says. Makes you wonder.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, you know those two statues of the king on his throne? Here’s the picture.’

  ‘The husband and wife in their chairs. Sure. The ones that had the singing heads till the nineteenth-century restorers filled them up.’

  ‘That’s just it. That’s so far from what the guidebook says that you could suspect she just made it up. First of all, both of those figures are the king: Amenhotep III. Then, it says here that one of them, the north one, was so badly damaged in the earthquake of 27BC that part of it cracked and fell. And that was the one that became famous for singing – because the sun used to heat up the cracks, or the wind
got into it or something. But all that was way, way back. It was written about by the Romans. And the Romans restored the statue two hundred years or so after it was broken. So, Lisabette’s story about how they were built that way in the first place – it just doesn’t make sense. That’s what she said, wasn’t it – that they were part of the sun-worship?’

  They were, Lisabette had told them, embodiments of conjugal love; although the seated figures represented a great king and queen, who were the guardians of their people, they were also just like anyone else: a husband and wife. They too obeyed natural laws and worshipped the gods. When the sun-god reached the horizon in his boat and prepared to sail across the sky, they would welcome him, praising him with their voices.

  ‘They sang‚’ Lisabette had said. ‘They were constructed as musical instruments. A work of genius.’ Their heads were hollow, carved inside with a system of intricately fluted trails and passageways. When the morning sun struck their foreheads, its heat activated the air within and made the stone sing – not singing according to a melody, but long, sustained notes that changed tone as the light grew stronger. In the last century, in order to preserve them, the statues were repaired, the heads filled with cement. And now they no longer made a sound. The two giant figures stared straight ahead, waiting for the sun, silent.

  ‘Did you ask her about it?’ Lily said.

  ‘I told her my guidebook talked about reconstruction by Septimus Severus, and all that.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And she said that a lot of these books used different sources.’

  ‘That’s probably true, isn’t it?’

  ‘But not that true. Not so you’d make a mistake like that. And anyway, you can certainly see they’re both men – not a married couple.’

  ‘I think I like her version better.’