The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [59]
Do you know how early in the evening I first noticed you, my Queen? I was explaining the chronic ancient Egyptian tendency to a morbid nostalgia, a trait that paradoxically appeared early in the country’s development, an illness displaying itself in the Egyptian’s persistent political agenda of restoring “debased” religious practise, repeated century after century; in his foolish folk-memory of a lost West that was once rich green pasture, full of mighty bulls; and in his recurring sensation that he was living in corrupted end-times. Usually, such sensations were absurd: nostalgia for things that never existed, restoring something already in perfect condition, paranoia that the end was near or that standards had perilously slipped. However, at certain dramatic, transitional moments, such as the end of the reign of Atum-hadu, these fears were suddenly justified. “At the end of his life, Atum-hadu must certainly have believed that Egypt itself was about to vanish forever,” I was saying when I noticed you in the front row: you were dozing off, my beauty, and that would never do, so I noted your position, and a few minutes later I made a point of looking you in the eye when I recited his Quatrain 35 (uniquely in Fragment C):
She will be mine, she will be mine
She will be mine, she will be mine
And her mother and her goats and her sisters nine
They shall be mine until I tire of them, fine.
This was always an exhilarating moment in my lectures, and I usually selected a young woman at random to feel the savage churn of Atum-hadu’s attentions. In this case, my love, I simply did not realise what I had unleashed.
I recognised you later, when you were but one of many pushing to the foot of the stage to ask one last question they were too shy to ask in front of the whole audience, or simply to shake the English explorer’s hand. I was answering questions and signing copies of Desire and Deceit, so I did not pay you attention, but you did not leave the front of the stage, did you? When I looked back, you were still there. I had seen that face before: the woman who has heard the song of the ancient king.
“Professor Trilipush?” murmured a quiet but resonant voice. “Professor Trilipush, I was so interested by your talk.”
“Well, to be strictly accurate,” I said, stepping down to the floor, “I cannot purport to be a full professor, yet. Technical distinctions at Harvard, as in any primitive society, are of the highest importance.”
“Well then,” you replied with narrowed eyes and upturned mouth, “I cannot purport to have been fully interested in your talk. Some of the more technical aspects did leave me a little less attentive.”
“Oh, miss, now really,” scolded the Nordic beauty to your side, all spheres and half-moons.
“Put a cork in it, Inge,” said my future darling. “Why don’t you go take a sauna or something?”
You boldly introduced yourself, and I could not resist quoting the advertisements one saw everywhere in Boston: “Life is finer when you find fashion with finesse at Finneran’s Finer Finery.” But I must remind you, lest you ever believe Inge’s Norwegian nastiness, I did not know that the shop was your family’s. And recall: you laughed but did not confess your connection, so I assumed the names were coincidental. Atum-hadu was already pulling the strings, my dear, and lucre was never his chief concern.
After the crowd had finally drained out the door, you and I sat and spoke at the foot of the stage, and I decided to trust you, to test you, and I showed you how to write Atum-hadu in hieroglyphs. All the while, your frosty duenna lingered by the front door, talked to the Historical Society workers (delighted at the crowd they had drawn, relieved that the police had not broken up the