Lion in the Valley - Elizabeth Peters [102]
As I strolled toward the kitchen I heard Emerson begin speaking. His voice was too low to enable me to make out the words, but I thought he said something about amoebae.
The kitchen was only a cooking fire in a ring of stones, with the cook’s pots and pans and jars set here and there in seeming confusion; but Hamid knew where everything was. He was a cousin of Abdullah’s, and I must say his appearance would not have inspired confidence in a prospective employer, for he was cadaverously thin, with sad, drooping mustaches. In this case the prospective employer would have been misled, for Hamid’s cooking was first-rate. He looked up from the pot he was stirring and told me dinner was ready. I persuaded him to put it off for a while; if Emerson was beginning with one-celled life forms, it would probably take him quite some time to work up to the hominids. Delighted at my visit, the men gathered around and we had a refreshing gossip.
Before long, however, Hamid’s mustaches drooped even more visibly and his comments became brusque and sullen. I gathered that, like all great chefs, even those who wear turbans instead of tall white hats, he would do something unpleasant to the food if it were not served on time. I therefore told him we would dine, and went to collect the diners.
Emerson had vanished. Ramses was scribbling busily by the light of a candle.
“Is the lecture over?” I inquired.
Ramses nodded. “For the moment, yes. I had not finished asking questions, but Papa informed me he had no more to say on the subject.”
“Do you consider that you have been properly educated?”
“I confess,” said Ramses, “that I find myself unable to visualize certain of the procedures. They sound, if not physically impossible, very tiring. I asked Papa if he could draw a diagram or two, but he said no, he could not. Perhaps you—”
“No,” I said.
“Papa did mention that the subject was to be avoided in conversation and that our particular cultural mores view it as taboo. I find this rather curious, since to the best of my knowledge other societies do not share this attitude. Relative cultural values—”
“Ramses,” I said. “The topic of relative cultural values must be regarded at this time as a digression. Can you not turn your attention to more immediate questions?”
“For example, Mama?”
“For example, dinner. Hamid is fetching it now and he will be seriously displeased if we let the food get cold. Fetch Mr. Fraser and Miss Debenham, if you please, and I will call your papa.”
I found Emerson on the roof, brooding silently in the starlight like a life-sized sphinx. I congratulated him on his efficient handling of a complex subject, to which he replied, “I beg you will not mention it again, Amelia. Ill-natured persons might view any comment whatever as tantamount to rubbing it in.”
Dinner was not a social success. Ramses kept glancing at his notes and occasionally adding a word or two, a process that made Emerson extremely nervous. Enid ignored Donald, addressing most of her remarks to Ramses. The káwurmeh was excellent, though a trifle overseasoned.
I asked Donald why he had not made his presence known to his brother. “For surely,” I added, “you must have heard his voice.”
“I heard him,” Donald answered shortly.
“How could you resist such an affectionate appeal?”
“You can hardly suppose I would expend so much effort in avoiding him and then change my mind.”
Enid said, ostentatiously directing her comment to Ramses, “Cowardice, you know, is not always of the physical variety. Refusal to confront the truth is a form of moral cowardice, which to me is even worse.”
Statements of this nature were not designed to improve the mood of the gathering.
Nor was Emerson any help. As a rule, after a successful day of excavation he is full of cheerful talk about his accomplishments and his plans for the future. I attributed his silence to resentment—unreasonable and unfair in the extreme, since it was Ramses who introduced the subject in the first place, and I only acted as any mother