The Pearlkillers Read online

‘No, dear. Not if it’s fictitious. The truth is always better.’

  ‘If you can tell what it is.’

  Selma sighed and said how strange it was to be in a modern country whose whole appearance was still dominated by the culture of its past. Cairo was a modern city, to be sure, but so much of Egypt seemed the same as in ancient days. Yet it wasn’t the same, naturally. The only country left where you could say the past and present were still the same was India: she’d always wanted to go there, but Orville had this ridiculous feeling against it. He wouldn’t go. ‘All the methods of making things, the craftsmanship, is still the same there,’ she said. ‘They still wear the same clothes. But above all, what makes the real difference is that they still believe in and practise the same religions. And that’s all gone here.’

  Lily said yes, and thought again about the two statues. She looked up into the huge gatework of sunlit, painted stone, down at the canyoned pathways in shadow. ‘You can still feel it, though,’ she said. ‘Especially in a place like this.’

  ‘Yes indeed. It’s like the travel people said: you can almost imagine the gods walking here.’

  Lily remembered the Englishwoman who lived in the house that was supposed to be dedicated to Isis. ‘There’s something I’ve got to ask Lisabette before I forget,’ she said.

  ‘Make sure you check it in a book afterwards. Unless it’s something about herself. Now that’s a tragic story. She told me her father was killed in the First World War, her first husband and her brother died in the Second World War and her son was killed in the June War.’

  ‘I guess that’s one of the things that lasts longer than religions‚’ Lily said. ‘People killing each other.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of one person having so much bad luck. Orville said how did I know she hadn’t just concocted the story about her sad personal history – that’s what he said: concocted. But I can’t believe it. No. You can see she’s had sorrows in her life. Maybe they’ve driven her to – you know, sort of invent things. Well, not really. They wouldn’t hire somebody who did that. I expect she exaggerates a little, that’s all.’

  Lily got to her feet. She said the thing about bad luck was that no matter what kind it was, a little went a long way.

  She found Lisabette standing in the shade, not far from Orville and Ruth-Ann. ‘I wonder if you can help me,’ she began.

  Lisabette moved her head stiffly. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve heard about an Englishwoman who lives in Egypt – I think maybe in Cairo – in a house she thinks used to belong to a priestess of Isis. I wondered if you’d know anything about her. Or even about the house.’

  ‘No, I’ve never heard of this.’

  ‘It was on the radio. She did excavation work on the house and found the garden, and that kind of thing.’

  ‘I don’t know of such a person.’

  ‘Could you tell me where I could go to find out?’

  ‘Possibly the embassy?’

  Of course, Lily thought. She should have figured that out herself. The woman had been working with the British archaeological teams; the embassy would know how to get in touch with them.

  ‘Isis?’ Ruth-Ann said behind her shoulder. ‘She’s the one that cut off her husband’s prick and grew him again from it. That’s some trick, huh?’

  ‘It’s one of the great pagan myths,’ Lisabette said curtly.

  ‘And how.’

  ‘Containing profound observations on the nature of death, sacrifice and regeneration, life after death, and the power of love.’

  ‘And bereavement,’ Lily said. Lisabette’s eyes met hers. The old woman’s face lost its lecture-look; it lapsed into a softer expression that made her appear even older and more exhausted. It reminded Lily of the way Don’s small, ugly, buck-toothed mother had looked when she’d wished them both a happy marriage and added that her own wedding day had been the happiest day of her life.

  ‘Just so‚’ Lisabette said.

  On the way back from Karnak there was a quarrel among the other passengers, or perhaps a continuation of whatever had already started between the Darrells and the Pottses. In the stark, offended silence that followed, Howie’s voice could be heard announcing that he didn’t feel well; he was sure it was the restaurant they’d been to the night before: the lousy, contaminated food they served you in this country. Lisabette threw a lizardlike look over the back of her seat and told him without sympathy that he shouldn’t have taken off his pullover while the wind was still blowing so strongly – it was no wonder he’d caught something.

  ‘I really do feel pretty bad,’ he said a few more times. By the end of the ride he looked almost green in the face. As they left the ferry, Ruth-Ann told Lily and Don that if Howie had to change their travel arrangements, this would be goodbye, but she wanted to say it had been nice to meet them. Everyone offered to help. Ruth-Ann shook her head. She’d ask the hotel, she said; they’d find her a doctor if Howie needed one.

  *

  Late that evening Lily said that she wanted to go to Abydos and Saqqarah. And they should be staying on the other bank anyway, in Luxor.

  ‘I guess we’ll have to leave them for another trip,’ Don told her.

  ‘When do you think we’d ever get back? It’s such a long way from home. Doesn’t it make more sense to go now, when we’re here?’

  ‘We just don’t have the time, honey.’

  ‘And at Luxor: the temple. We’re right here on the spot.’

  ‘We can’t. We—’

  She stood up and delivered a tirade about the importance of beauty to the development of a culture. He didn’t know what she was talking about, and he didn’t think she understood half of what she was saying, but in the end he agreed to change all their plans, so that they’d be able to get back to Luxor. Abydos was out, he declared. If she got Luxor, he’d be allowed Abu Simbel.

  She then wanted to start telephoning the British embassy to find out where to get hold of the priestess of Isis. ‘Later‚’ he told her: after they got back from the next day’s sightseeing.

  On their way out in the morning, the man at the desk handed Lily a package – a book wrapped in a piece of hotel writing paper that was held tight by a rubber band. On the paper was a short note from Selma, saying that they too had changed plans and were going to visit a shrine somewhere out in the desert. The book was the guidebook she’d promised to let Lily keep.

  Lily’s pleasure in the book was the only sign that she still considered the world worth noticing. She read while standing, sitting or walking. She read the book all through the journey to Abu Simbel and parts of the actual tour. She was in such a bad mood that Don was almost frightened for her.

  They had said goodbye to Lisabette and the Darrells. Now they were with a larger group, of sixteen people: Americans, Australians, Britons and South Africans. Their guide was a young man named Franz, who came from a part of Switzerland that was mainly German-speaking. His accent was a good deal better than Lisabette’s, but he had a rapid-fire delivery that left many of his hearers mystified, especially when he reeled off lists of ancient deities or rulers.

  During one of the breaks when they were supposed to wander around by themselves or take their photographs, Don sat down next to Lily. He tried to coax the guidebook from her. She dodged away. He dropped something into her lap. ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘A lucky stone. It’s got a ring around it.’

  ‘Stones don’t last long in the desert,’ she said. ‘They all turn to sand.’ She picked the stone out of her lap and threw it away. It bounced off the side of a larger stone and fell into a heap of pebbles. The bright light made it indistinguishable from the other shapes around the place where it had landed.

  ‘I ought to hit you,’ he said.

  ‘Go ahead. Go right ahead.’

  ‘You won’t take anything from me, will you?’

  It was true. She wanted to scream with rage, or get up and start running, or hit him first. She’d never treated anyone so badly
. She was ashamed of herself, but she couldn’t quit. She even wondered if she’d married him because – believing that there was a curse on her – she’d been willing to let him die. She also realized that although she couldn’t accept his love, she wanted him to keep on caring. Her resistance to him was like a lack of faith, an atheistic impulse; if there were suddenly nothing against which to fight, she might be completely lost.

  ‘Christ, what I’d like to do to you‚’ he said.

  She thought he really was going to hit her, but he turned and stormed off in the direction of the river. He stood looking out at the water, with his back to her.

  She felt tears of stubbornness and remorse rising in her eyes. Her throat ached. But she was also proud at the way he was standing up to her. If he could hold out like that, he might win her over and exorcize the curse. Or maybe it had nothing to do with him; it might be more important that she should talk with the priestess of Isis.

  That night, as they were getting ready to go to bed, Lily said, ‘I wonder where the others are now – if Howie’s all right.’

  ‘He’ll be fine. People don’t die of a stomach ache.’

  ‘I wonder what the quarrel was about. The one between Selma and that horrible little girl.’

  ‘What are any quarrels about?’

  ‘Well, I guess each one’s different.’

  ‘Your mother warned me about you, you know.’

  ‘Great‚’ she said. ‘That’s the kind of mother to have. OK, what did she say?’

  ‘Oh, never mind.’

  ‘You can’t leave it there. If you don’t tell me, I’ll call her up long distance, right this minute.’ Her mother; suddenly it was like having another person along on the honeymoon. Her mother envied her the two widowings. They were even more romantic and dramatic than Ida’s divorce.

  ‘She said you thought there was a curse on you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, I sometimes feel like that, yes.’

  She got into the bed, taking the guidebook with her, but when he reached towards the lamp, she put the book on the night-table. He turned out the light. She waited in the darkness for him to go on with the conversation.

  At last he said, ‘You never talk about the others.’

  ‘What others?’ she whispered.

  ‘The other two.’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Your husbands‚’ he said.

  There was a silence again, longer than the first one.

  ‘What for?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s something important in your life.’

  She rolled to the side, to get near the edge of the bed. He put out his arm and pulled her back.

  ‘It was a long time ago‚’ she said. ‘They both were. I don’t remember. And I don’t want to. When people die, you get over it by moving forward.’

  ‘And I guess some people never get over it.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I don’t know what other people remember, she thought, but I remember everything – every room we were in, every place. Love does that; everything new, fun, easy to remember. It was the only time I felt I was living. I just can’t talk about it, that’s all.

  ‘If I died, you’d move-forward?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s a dumb thing to say. Besides, you had girlfriends before you met me.’

  ‘I was never married.’

  ‘It amounts to the same.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. It’s completely different.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  He said, ‘I used to have this idea that you were like one of those maidens in the fairytales, who had to have the spell broken.’

  ‘And what do you think now?’

  ‘I think maybe you don’t love me very much.’

  Here it comes, she thought. But no, he wouldn’t really believe that. He’d just want her to say: Of course I do.

  She said, ‘You don’t have any reason to think that. It’s because I get into bad moods, isn’t it?’

  He stretched and shifted his weight, moving his arm an inch higher under her back. He said, ‘Well, not exactly.’

  His voice sounded faint and sad. Suddenly she was weeping uncontrollably. ‘Of course I love you‚’ she sobbed. ‘Of course I do.’

  *

  Their time was running out. They could go back to Cairo and enjoy the town for a day, or they could see one other site and hurry back. Lily held the guidebook tightly and said that she absolutely needed to see Abydos and Edfu and Bubastis and Saqqarah: and after that, they had to have a few days extra in Cairo so that she could find the priestess of Isis.

  ‘Say all that again‚’ he told her.

  ‘The sanctuary of Abydos and the sacred lake of—’

  ‘No: the priestess part.’

  She told him about the Englishwoman who lived in Cairo and believed herself to be the incarnation of an ancient priestess of Isis.

  He said, ‘Listen, you really want to see some old crone suffering from delusions? Didn’t you notice, we’ve got plenty of those at home?’

  ‘We don’t have the temple of Isis or the house of the priestess.’

  ‘Well, we can ask somebody, I guess.’

  ‘I asked Lisabette. She hadn’t heard of her.’

  ‘That settles it.’

  ‘She said I should try the embassy.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I did. When you went to see about the tickets. But I don’t think I got hold of the right people. Nobody knew. They gave me a lot of names of different people and they turned out to be away on trips. But all I need to do is wait. Lots of people must have heard of her if she was on the radio.’

  ‘I’m not going to spend all the time we’ve got left, trying to track down some old woman. She’s probably died by now, anyway. Why do you want to see her?’

  Lily didn’t know. There wasn’t any reason, just the desire. She tried to think of something to tell him.

  ‘I want to see her because she, um, lives in that place.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Well, it’s an ancient Egyptian house, with a garden in it. And anyhow, she’s the priestess of Isis. That’s why I want to see her.’

  ‘We just don’t have the time.’

  ‘I want to stay,’ she said. ‘To stay here longer.’

  ‘Of course you can’t stay. I’ve got to get back to the office.’

  Now he’d be saying to himself: who’s footing the bill for all this? Well, she thought, he offered. She took a firm grip on the guidebook and looked up into his eyes. ‘You can get back to the office‚’ she suggested. ‘And I could stay on here for a while.’

  ‘No.’ He said it so loudly that a cluster of other guests in the hotel lobby turned around to look.

  ‘Just a few—’

  ‘Don’t push your luck, Lil‚’ he said. He stared at her so fiercely that he looked almost frightening, but also exciting. She leaned forward and put her hands on his arms, turned her face upward.

  He grabbed hold of both her hands and began to pull her across the floor to the elevator. A group of people were standing in front of the doors. He started to drag her around the corner and up the stairs. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Upstairs‚’ he answered.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘It’s the only place I can get any sense out of you.’

  She tried to kiss him on the neck and sat down in the middle of the staircase. He piled on top of her, laughing. A woman’s voice from below them called, ‘Hello, hello, you two. Did you drop this?’

  They turned their heads. Down at the bottom of the staircase stood a woman who was smiling broadly. She was holding the guidebook in her right hand and waving it back and forth.

  *

  By mid-morning they were on their way to the ruins. Don seemed to be dozing behind his sunglasses. Lily sat quietly, the book held primly in her lap as if it might have been a prayer-book. Their new touring companions in
cluded two burly, grey-haired men – one Dutch and the other Irish – who were travelling together; an old Canadian woman on her own; and an American family of five: father, mother, two well-developed teenaged daughters and a son of about twelve. The son was interested in the height, width, and exact measurements of all the parts of every building they saw. He told Franz, the group in general and then Don in particular, that he’d worked out a theory about pyramidology that explained just everything you’d ever want to know. His two sisters had their eyes on Franz; the younger one, called Tina, was dressed – foolishly, so her mother told her – in a white T-shirt and red shorts. ‘They aren’t shorts‚’ the girl objected. ‘They’re hot pants.’ The older sister, Lucille, was more conservative; she had on a pair of long trousers and a matching jacket.

  Lily moved away from Don early in the tour. She told him that she wanted to read up on a few things. She sat down and looked out into the distance. Behind her people were taking photographs. The older American girl came up to where Lily was sitting; her face still covered by the camera, she said, ‘This is just great. Isn’t it great?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘The lure of the ancient world – I was always nuts about that kind of thing.’ She said that what had really convinced her parents had been her brother’s insistence on his theory; he was going to make it his school topic for the coming term. She too had been thinking about Egypt for years, having been extremely impressed by an opera she’d once been taken to: Egyptian dress and scenery had figured prominently among the memorable aspects of the production. The name of the composer escaped her at the moment, though she hummed a little of her favourite tune from it, which she said was called ‘The Nuns’ Chorus From Aida’.

  Lily said that was nice; her own introduction had been through the museums.

  Yes, the girl told her, they were OK, but you had to get outdoors to see what was left of the buildings: she liked the temples and things best. She liked, she said, as she moved away with the camera, the way they’d built everything on such a big scale.

  Lily closed the guidebook. She felt that she wanted to stay where she was for a long time, just sitting and doing nothing. She remembered a day at home, a few years back, when she’d gone for a walk in the park. It had been an afternoon in the fall – the distances full of hazy sunshine, the leaves gold, brown, coppery. Two young mothers had been sitting on a bench in front of hers. Each of them had a baby carriage nearby. Sometimes nurses and babysitters came to the park but these girls, she’d felt sure, were the real mothers. And something about the scene, or the season, or maybe just the weather, had made her think what a waste it was that people had only one life, that the choices were always so few, that you couldn’t lead several lives all at once or one after the other.