The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [159]
Wednesday, 20 December, 1922
Good morning, darling! And what wondrous, wild, mad adventures we are having here! My discovery of Atum-hadu’s fabulous tomb has become a marvellous comic farce, quite exhilarating! Wherever shall I begin this zany tale?
A half-hour’s sleep was all I was granted last night after writing to you and all at once dreaming of you, and then a blink later I looked at my watch before I understood what had woken me, a man shouting my name, footsteps growing louder as he tramped through Atum-hadu’s rich and holy tomb. My heavy eyes could scarcely open, but each angry phrase stung me to wakefulness: “Sweet Jesus’ salty tears! Where’s my ‘mountains of gold’? What the hell is all this? Did a child paint these?” (I must teach your father to shed that typical philistine’s urge: blaming the artist when art is not to one’s taste!) I hobbled into the History Chamber, and there was our CCF, gnawing his unlit cigar, waving his electric torch around, a sword of yellow dust he brought down on my face. “You there,” he yelled. “Mister Carter said I’d find Trilipush here. Where’s Trilipush, eh? You speak English? Speak up, boy!” Very funny, M., no? He thought I was a native, in the dark room, with my beard and the robe I have been working in! I could have held my tongue, shook my head, but that would not have brought about an understanding, which is what your father and I needed most, what we enjoy now, a renewal of our partnership, stronger than ever from our trials.
When CCF left Boston some weeks ago, he was probably—and this is funny to us both right now, he and I, we are both laughing, he is looking over my shoulder making sure I capture all of this in my journal just the way it happened—he was probably angry at me, and you would have known that, wouldn’t you?
Of course, I would prefer (as would CCF) not to mention any of this, but there is a need (CCF agrees) to clarify for anyone who may have brought CCF here, or knew he was coming. Yes, before we could renew our friendship, this ridiculous but cleansing scene had to be enacted, which it is possible someone may have heard and misunderstood, as CCF did have directions from Carter to look for me here, so I will do my best to reconstruct this quite daffy misunderstanding, precisely like one of those film comedies you so love!
“Finneran? How did you find me?”
“Holy mother of Jesus a-weeping! You? What’s happened to you?”
“All manner of good news.”
“Lord, that Carter. Should have invested in him.”
“Would have been a terrible mistake, Chester. He has not accomplished a fraction of what you and I have managed here on much less.”
“What’s that infernal smell?”
“Well, the leg, you see, not a major injury, but—”
“Holy saints and torments, what the devil is—” Your father’s light was off my face and over my shoulder now. He walked past me, following his light into the Bastet Shrine. “What was done to that cat?” he shrieked, sensitive soul.
“These are complex questions, Chester. The ancients’ respect for felines, you see, was religious and—”
“You little vermin. You treacherous, gold-digging little cad. Those poisonous cables—”
“Cables?” I was baffled. He was, to be historically accurate—and he is nodding sheepishly as I write this—he was simply raving from the pressures he had put himself under. Apparently, Margaret, he has some financial problems. You knew that, but perhaps not their extent. And you should have told me much earlier. At any rate, such pressures can make a man believe anything, jump at shadows, see sharp conspiracy where there is only dull coincidence, and so it has been with your poor father: he began on some absurd tale of slanderous cables sent from Luxor. He even dropped them on the floor, one at a time, in great overwrought drama, and while he and I examine them again now, I certainly am as horrified as anyone. I only mention them as you probably already heard about them in Boston, quite terrible things, anonymous notes to church and press and police and our own partners. CCF and I will burn the nasty