The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [165]
“But tell me about you, Sonia, what you have seen on the trip of a lifetime. The Rameses tombs? That circus down there at the Carter hole?”
“Oh dear, a bit jealous, are you? There’s no need, believe me. I see these things so clearly. It doesn’t matter.”
“What doesn’t matter?”
“All that. I’ve seen more than I care to of this country. It’s cold and hard here.” And then it was she crying in my arms, shaking, and then just as quickly she had had enough and was sitting up, dabbing her face. “I’ve lost my Len, you see, just two days ago. So very fast here.” She looked west, at the bluffs softening into the open desert. “People seem very temporary here, all this space and history. I’m taking him home tomorrow. You look like how I feel. He liked you, you know. Oh, very much. He said so that first night on the boat. I hope those spirits haven’t sent you off in the wrong direction. You mustn’t take them too, too seriously. They’ll have their little fun, you know. They were human once, too, and dying doesn’t make you smart, I shouldn’t think. Or honest. Or even interesting, now that I think of the dull conversations Len and I used to have with them. I’m done with ghosts now.”
“Poor Len. Poor Sonia.”
“You could come back with me, you know. I could so use the help. All the difficult work ahead. My children live too far away, too busy.” Help? “To get Len home. You could see our home, and our summer house on the lake. It’s very peaceful there. In the winter, you know, there’s so much snow to shovel away from the front of the house. Len used to do it, but I can’t ask the kids to help. Oh, dear Ralph, do come and rescue me from all that. We’ll get you cleaned up at my hotel, some clothes, have a doctor take a look at that leg, and then you’ll rescue this old woman who needs you so much.”
Margaret. Just a few days ago, I would have gone, just a few days earlier. And I could have cabled for you to join us there. You and I taking care of her in her rambling house, summers on the lake, gardening. The newlywed caretakers down in the other house, going to the market, cooking. Fixing this and that. Plenty of time for reading, playing tennis, taking you out on her sailboat. Would have answered everything.
“I am too close to the finish, Sonia, to my find. So terribly close.”
“Of course. Of course, dear boy.”
“Perhaps I might join you later, when I am done here.”
“That would be fine. I’d like that very much. If you won’t consider again and simply come now, right now, just walk away with me . . .”
She picked her way back down the rocky path. I sat in front of my tomb door, too exhausted to stand. She would turn and wave as she descended the winding path. When high rocks hid her, I could imagine her thinking she had seen the last of me, but then the path would turn and she would appear again, smaller, and surprised to still have me in view, she would wave again. Just once more she stopped, quite small, waved her white handkerchief, a tiny figure far beneath me. Shovelling snow.
Tuesday, 26 December, 1922
CCF and I spend the day cleaning, analysing Chamber 8, reading wall inscriptions and illustrations. Make measurements of furnishings, et cetera.
Wednesday, 27 December, 1922
Today Carter began to lift into the light what only the chosen few have seen underground, but he is bringing them up to the waiting crowds and cameras in the most gruesome fashion, as if he has become the prince of death. The stretchers, the bandage wraps: it is a vision of the War itself. I suspect from the shape that the wrapped figure now arising under Carter’s command is the spear-bearing statue I saw down there, but all bandaged over, as if the ancient soldier’s lungs bubbled with mustard gas and his eyes wept those brown, gritty tears. The overwrought display: the tiniest boxes emerge carried by three men on a march to Lucas’s cave, every beaded slipper to be sprayed and glued and restored in this massive