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By Root 1055 0

the same dangerous regiment in the desert or had some other sinister connection, but no, it was a passing cloud: much of this language, Macy, I’ve come to understand, is quite common talk among University types, and I admit that while I meant to take careful notes of Terbroogan’s complaints about Trilipush, I lost interest rapidly and now I’m having some difficulty making out just what I meant by jottings such as “RT’s book is about Atoomadoo, who was or was not a king and was or was not a poet and is or is not buried where RT is going and Egyptian poems do or do not rhyme. This is what these men do all day? For work?” Maybe it was the climate or the tucker or the conversation, but I was already finding America rather exhausting and I felt more than just a bit ill. None of Terbroogan’s words have stayed with me, until I asked where in Egypt Trilipush had gone. “Deir el Bahari,” replied Terbroogan, and I made him spell it for me, to be sure. (“Do you see it, Macy?” I later ask my worthy but dim assistant, back at our hotel, poring over maps, but he shakes his head and chews his lip. You don’t mind, do you, Macy? Something of comic relief is how I’m picturing you now.)

“And, because you have such trouble with Professor Trilipush,” I asked the turnip-faced chief, who was wiping his mouth with a handkerchief, “you sent him on this excavation? Expensive way to get him out of your hair, no?”

He hadn’t. It had been Terbroogan’s option, and he’d refused Trilipush the money for the trip, precisely because of disagreements over the quality of Trilipush’s scholarship. (Honestly, Macy, these people were barking mad.) “Unt I happen to know he vath turned down by the MFA, the Met, and the Carnegie.” He’s travelling on his own money, then? “Not at all. He sold shares in his misadventure to some local businessmen.”

My dear Macy, we now come to some language you may not appreciate. I’ve been wondering whether to soften certain hard truths as I found them in those days, and perhaps cast things in a more flattering light for you. Well, I will not do that. I’m too old for it, and you’ve asked me for an honest rendering, and frankly, it isn’t my manner to provide any other kind. Slippery slope, that one. I’m a truth man, me, and I think this must be exactly why I was so resistant this morning to getting started on the Boston leg of my tale. Right, then: I’ll apologise here, this once, and that will be the end of it: I’m sorry if you read things in this chronicle, Mr. Laurence Macy III, that are painful to you or upset your notion of your family, or your poor, late aunt Margaret.

“Not at all. He sold shares in his misadventure to some local businessmen, unsavoury types, if I may say, with unfortunate reputations.” He mentioned your great-uncle Chester Finneran, as well as Heinz Kovacs.

Why didn’t he just fire Trilipush, if he was such a thorn in their side? The fellow explained with a certain tone that “the University generally preferred not to do that” (honestly, these people). But “when he comes back from Egypt empty-handed, which he certainly will, that should be enough to shame the man out,” he added with a nice shot of venom. Noting how he sounded, the professor then visibly exerted himself to give his bloke a fair go: “Trilipush is a good teacher, he was a heroic soldier in Turkey, and he was educated at Oxford, which does add to our department’s credentials, and Atoomadoo is not uninteresting, only not definitive, and so when one has problems, one prefers simply to place people where they will quietly do their job, but this one, my Lord.” That about exhausted the old man’s goodwill. “When he was new here, last year, he was positively fawning towards me, but that did not last.”

I think I must have said it something like this, Macy, though of course I made no note of the exact wording: “Would it be useful to you and the University to discreetly employ someone who may be able to provide you extra material in ‘shaming Mr. Trilipush out,’ as you put it. If, for example, discrepancies in his Oxford record were discovered—”

“But I saw