The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [60]
Of course, I did not fool myself that you were taken with me, precisely. No, I could see that another twentieth-century woman had found the words of the XIIIth-Dynasty king to be an overwhelming eau de cologne.
My darling, I am stuck in Cairo, awaiting my licence to proceed from the Antiquities Service, and I wonder what you are doing this very instant. Here it is 17 October, at 11.36 P.M. How I wish I had a device that allowed me to peer at you right now, a telescope of the most powerful kind. I would watch you ceaselessly, my love.
Wednesday, 18 October, 1922
Journal: Nothing at the post. Four days before my Master of Largesse and the backers will wire and refill my coffers, I set off to continue purchasing supplies in the markets and speciality stores dedicated to men in my position. A full day, and the activity eases the boredom I was feeling from my forced delay. Paints, brushes, pencils, chisels, carving knife, electric torch, camp bed: my list is slowly being filled when, on a quiet side street, I note the storefront of a tailor. I will need several more suits, for working and socialising, and something formal for an official Tomb Opening (an event usually involving high officials of the English, French, and Egyptians, possibly General Allenby, et cetera).
I pushed through hanging beads and into a well-lit little space where a tall Egyptian was prematurely stooped from spending years under this low ceiling, and I was soon in a padded, wicker armchair, sipping cardamom coffee with the proprietor while two young boys wheeled in gold-painted cart after cart of fabrics. The tailor and I fingered this and that, discussed the merits of certain cloths for resisting the heat while still catching the eye. I was impressed enough by ten of the samples to order suits of them (CCF would have paid ten times as much in Boston) and stood for my measurements. The triple mirrors offered me left- and right-handed versions of myself to play with, profiles in only my undershorts with my bare feet aligned heel to toe, while below me a crouching servant measured my legs and called out the numbers to a scribe cross-legged on a cushion, his sleeves rolled up to reveal hairless arms with embossed veins like relief maps of river deltas, and somewhere behind a curtain out of sight, I heard female whispers and subdued tittering.
A small deposit and the suits will be ready in one week’s time, the 25th. Go to tourist agency to postpone departure, booking on the Cheops.
And then, as I was strolling along, pleased with my purchase, thinking of my fiancée, I came upon an inspirational sight on a street corner: a wooden easel with two folding stools where tourists could pay to have their likeness painted on a convincingly broken piece of pottery, dressed in Pharaonic garb, surrounded by a hodgepodge of ’glyphs. A fat Egyptian was painting the profile of an American boy while his parents watched, laughing, trading audible asides at the artist’s expense.
Well, I certainly shall not pose for a tourist’s knickknack, but an official portrait, begun prior to the opening of Atum-hadu’s tomb and completed after it, would have a certain timeliness to it, a marker in my career, admired on a wall in Boston or London or Cairo. With a week’s delay still, I have the time. Upon my return to the hotel, I ask the concierge to arrange for the best portraitist he can find to come to my rooms. I begin my sittings tomorrow.
An evening at the cinema. In the darkened