The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [84]
They asked about Oxford and you, and my explorations and hypotheses. They bubbled with enthusiasm to hear about Atum-hadu, even asked me to recite a quatrain or two. “Oh, you must give us absolutely the most scandalous one,” Sonia pleaded, and Len concurred, sneezing. “Yes please. Don’t spare our sensibilities.” I started them on something mild, your favourite, Quatrain 35 (“She will be mine”), but when I reached the end, the dear little lady looked rather blank: “Is that it? Really? I can hardly see what the fuss is about. Surely they get spicier than that?” “Positively Scandinavian,” Len concurred. “Was your Atum-hadu a Lutheran?” “Very well, then,” I said, “let’s try 57: Roused from sleep, the hooded cobra.” After this quieter recitation (the jazz band was resting and some of the younger ladies in the dining room seemed to be looking our way, leaning towards earshot), the ancients only stuck out their lower lips and wagged their heads from side to side, the identical gesture in them both. “Yessss,” said Len, dubiously, “I suppose some might find that a little off-colour, the snake image, but from your description of the man, I imagined something more.” “Right then, folks, we’ll have 48.” I leaned far in and whispered, as the room’s other diners had stopped talking entirely. Now Sonia was convinced, her hand over her mouth, and Len was nodding quietly. “Oh, my, oh, yes,” sighs Sonia. “You must find this fellow’s tomb! He’s enchanting!” “I’ll have to recite that at the next meeting of my lodge,” says the old man, and Sonia agrees: “Please do write it down. I belong to a poetry club in Minneapolis, and the other ladies will think me quite clever to have found this.” I promised them copies of Desire and Deceit before they disembarked; their pleasure and gratitude at the gift was quite overwhelming. Soon there were endearing invitations to explore Thebes and the Valley of the Kings together, and to visit them in Minneapolis, spend a summer at their house on some lake with an enormous Red Indian name.
We ate lamb and couscous and drank quite a good claret, and over dessert (a sticky native pastry of honey and sesame and orange flower water), Sonia passed Len a clean handkerchief, waited until he had honked his nose again, then asked him, “Well, shall we propose it to our new friend?” and Len said, “By all means. I think Ralph will jump at the chance. Besides, I want to meet the old lech.” And Sonia turned to me and petted the back of my hand and stared into my eyes with a mischievous little grin and sweetly asked if I would like to know anything more about my Atum-hadu, or my prospects of finding him, perhaps even to learn where he was that very instant?
Oh, what a pity, I thought with real sadness to have so quickly lost something of value, the old things are daft. “You have access to such information?” I asked, masking my horror as best I could.
“Perhaps, yes,” said Sonia, and she smiled with such broad joy and excitement, while Len nodded sternly and repeated, “Oh, yes, that we do, dear friend.” Could they have some scholarly background? One of the younger Nordquists perhaps an Egyptologist at Minneapolis’s agricultural university? “Patience, Ralphie, patience,” Sonia said slyly as I followed them, spry for their aggregate centuries, out of the dining room, down the hall, up the main stairs, and along a vibrating passage to their door.
They had taken a cabin easily six times the size of my own, and I had splurged (still confident in your father and the Partnership, as I still am, no question at all). Near an upright piano, on a round table with a fringed green baize cloth reaching nearly to the floor, sat a silver candelabra with three intertwining arms, each with a zebra-striped taper, which Len lit before extinguishing the overhead electric lights and covering the porthole. “Sit, dear boy,” said Sonia, wheeling three small chairs to the table.
Len joined us, and my hands were taken by my neighbours. “Oh, it