The E. Hoffmann Price Fantasy & Science Fiction

by E. Hoffmann Price

  He did not at once caress Bint Anath. Beauty was to be taken like brandy; long savored, keying the senses to ecstasy before sipping a drop. She was exquisite torment, like the frail bouquet that defies detection, yet proclaims its presence in a goblet. He was tall, and glancing down, he reveled in the changed perspective, when looking through the length of the gauzy garment robbed him of the fullness of her flesh.

  Bint Anath glowed, sensing an unvoiced appreciation. Finally she said, “Hofni was murdered. Can you help me avenge him?”

  Walton expressed his sorrow, which he made as eloquent as his admiration. Then he said, “That is for the law to do. Who am I, a foreigner?”

  “But you can help me,” she persisted. “Hofni had speech with you, off and on, these last several days. Maybe he told you of people he had met in his duties. Some little thing you remember might give the answer. Our father is very old, and blood cries to a woman for vengeance. You must try. Out of pity, even if you do not love me. Though Hofni said that you did.”

  Her eyes were long black riddles that burned behind black veils.

  If Walton’s hand quivered, whose would not, being so close to the desire of all Cairo? “Sitti, I am no policeman.”

  “It was some foreigner,” she declared. “What simple-minded fellah would have an English pistol and then be shrewd enough to throw such a valuable weapon away? A foreigner could have worn a servant’s cheap cloak, so that my poor brother thought he was arresting an ox of an Egyptian. Our government favors foreigners. You can trick a man whom our police would not dare approach with suspicion.”

  This was dangerous ground, but Walton’s wits were nimble. She might suspect him, but she had no proof, else she would have already denounced him.

  “I am sorry, sitti. If I only could serve you.”

  “You must,” she pleaded. “Anything I can do—”

  She made as if to rend the frail garment that scarcely concealed her. He tried to check the dazzling gesture. Her arms slipped inside his, and the touch of Egypt burned him. Her lips were like the simun that sears the desert. Every fiber of that dancer’s supple body sought him, clung demanding and imperious. She kissed him with the soul-wrenching caress that only the daughter of an ancient people would know.

  Above the thundering of his heart, he heard her murmur, “All this and more… You will love me… You will not be sorry…”

  When she sank back among the cushions of the mastaba, a dagger fell from among her outer garments. Its voice against the tiles was a cold warning.

  The moon finally rose, silvering Bint Anath’s limbs. She was curled like a kitten on the mastaba. But she was dangerous as a cobra. Her kisses had not deceived him. Her plea for aid was to disarm him.

  Walton fingered the curved dagger, studied it and Bint Anath. But he shook his head and laid the weapon back on the tiles. “She’s too damn beautiful.” No one could deliberately thrust that steel into her breast.

  The silken cushions would smother Bint Anath, yes. But not now; later, and elsewhere. Hassan had admitted her, and she must have told someone of her destination.

  “A bit of brandy to make her sleepy,” he mused. “A bit of hasheesh. Smother her slowly, and she won’t gape or show her teeth…”

  He was glad when she stretched, looked up at him, smiling. Maybe he would not have to kill her. But when she left him, his face lengthened. Maât-ka-Ra’s mummy was a sure doom.

  He went to the closet, unlocked it. He shivered. Lord, it was like looking at Makkara’s beauty; that gilded mask’s subtle smile seemed to shift and query him. He had to get rid of it.

  “God damn Egypt!” His words were a solemn prayer for deliverance.

  The lips of the living had brought him too close to the dead. He shuddered. A pounding at the courtyard door made him jerk, turn pale. Walton seized the painted case as if to hurl it through the barred window. He recovered; he had to pull himself together, before panic betrayed him.

  The bar of the outer door grated. A voice boomed, “Back, thou black ape! I will see the effendi in person!”

  “Aywah, Excellency!” Hassan’s truculence gave way to fawning respect.

  Walton’s trembling fingers closed and locked the cabinet. A vain gesture; the police outside would go through every cranny. He gulped brandy from the decanter, spilled half of it down his shirt front.

  A man in shoes was stamping across the courtyard.

  “God, if I only had kept that pistol—”

  It was only a cable office messenger. Walton sagged, laughed, reeled a bit. The uniformed Egyptian handed him the envelope.

  Walton read the cable. “No answer.” New York had dismissed him. A month’s pay in advance, and transportation home was on deposit for him to collect. He need not stay to initiate his successor. The message did not say that Walton had sniffed too much brandy, but he understood.

  He was glad. “God, good God, I’m leaving Egypt! This cable is my reason. It isn’t flight! They can’t extradite me when they find Maât-ka-Ra’s mummy! I bought it from a native! They can’t hang the villagers either—no legal proof against anyone—”

  He sank to the mastaba, spilled brandy as he half-filled the goblet. Sniff it, hell! He gulped it. He was resurrected; he had escaped the dead whose daughters had reached out to draw him to the black land. He laughed, and laughed more. Egypt could not get him.

  * * * *

  Late that night, he started at the tinkle of bracelets. The jasmine scent of a woman spiced the air. Damn that sleepy Hassan! Good old Hassan, he corrected himself. If it’s Bint Anath, we’ll drive out into the desert…way out…then I’ll leave in the morning…

  But it was Makkara; he saw that when she came into the moon patch beside him. Makkara, all aglow, mysterious and exquisite, to redeem her promise and reclaim her grandmother’s mummy.

  Hassan was snoring. Walton lugged the sycamore case to his sedan. Makkara, leaning against him, lent courage that made him mock the chance that Bint Anath’s suspicions had reached the police. He nosed the car out of the court and into the street.

  A dark shape stirred in the shadows of a doorway. It became a man, black bearded, with a tall, glistening hat and long, white hands. He greeted, “Good evening, Mr. Walton. Perhaps you could give me a lift—”

  This was Girgis, the Coptic Christian priest. Makkara’s elbow nudged Walton, and he knew what to do. He tramped on the gas. The gears whined. “Simple. Pretend I didn’t recognize him.”

  But for some blocks, his hands trembled on the wheel, and he was glad that Makkara was silent. Glad also that he had not smothered Bint Anath; Girgis was spying, had seen her enter.

  That damned, cunning priest with his fine Egyptian features, like a benignant Rameses, who had no right to walk among living men. Walton suspected Girgis of preaching Christ, but secretly worshipping Osiris. It was his kind that made him fear the kiss of Egypt…

  Almost at the Abbas II Bridge, a tall policeman’s hand rose. He loomed, fez crowned colossus in khaki. The fellow was armed with pistol and truncheon. A whistle gleamed in his other hand. Walton tensed, but Makkara whispered, “Don’t run him down.”

  He kicked the brakes. The car froze to the paving, halted just short of the illumination of an electrolier.

  “Effendi, your left headlight is out,” said the policeman. Then he saw Walton’s companion, and respectfully backed from the running board; foreign gentlemen are sensitive about their native women.

  “Thank you.” Walton tossed him a coin. He snapped on the town lights, whose filaments were good. “It’s fixed already.”

  They crossed the Nile, and he was glad when Makkara directed him north of Abu Sir. Her house was lonely, lost among the palms beyond the lake at Sidi Abu Kirsaya, which gleamed at the desert’s edge.

  The house smelled of vacancy. She must have just moved into it. Apparently there were no servants. So he carried the
mummy of Maât-ka-Ra to an inner room.

  “In the old days,” whispered Makkara, “this place was cursed for the sake of crimes that made the gods shudder. But I am not afraid, and the police will not seek Maât-ka-Ra here. Only, you must leave before sunrise.”

  That was wise. He closed the courtyard gate, and he breathed more freely when Makkara led him to the orange trees beside the well. Carpets were spread on the grass, and there were cushions, and flagons of wine.

  Fascinated, Walton watched Makkara slip out of the long habara that concealed her figure. He was disturbed when he saw the black curls that reached to her shoulders, and the cobra diadem that crowned her hair. Her gestures were more than ever like tomb paintings.

  She read his thought, laughed softly, and sank beside him, touched the broad jeweled cincture at her waist.

  “These things belonged to Maât-ka-Ra. Since you saved her from sacrilege, she would want me to wear them for you tonight. My family is descended from the gods, and through my lips they will kiss you.”

  And even before her mouth touched his, Walton knew that she was right. Makkara was incarnate ecstasy rather than flesh born of the Nile; a spindle of maddening flame…

  Later, she knelt beside him, wheedled with that archaic smile that said more than words. “You are worried, Eric. Why?”

  “Hofni.”

  The setting moon did strange things to Makkara’s sweet, haughty face. The fear of Egypt surged from hiding when disdain made her echo, “Hofni!”

  Twenty thousand men died so that a pyramid could be raised over one king’s mummy. So what was one man to her?

  “I’ve got to leave,” he choked. “Tomorrow. Come with me. To America.”

  She sighed, and the moon caressed soft roundnesses. “I cannot leave. My duty to my ancestors. The gods will protect you. You have served them, and my love has made you one of us.”

  That was what he feared most of all. He broke from her arms.

  On his way back to Cairo, he reasoned with himself, “Of course she’d look like Maât-ka-Ra! They’ve been inbred for centuries, these pure-blooded survivors. It’s crazy. Maât-ka-Ra is in the sycamore case, and Makkara isn’t!”

  But he repeated this until he confused the names; until he caught himself saying, “Makkara is in the case.” And when he stumbled into his rooms, he laughed and said, “Of course there’s a woman in the case.”

  * * * *

  Hassan’s eyes rolled all white when he came in with Walton’s breakfast and heard his master laughing. Brandy had always made him solemn. The old negro muttered, “I betake me to Allah for refuge against Satan, and against the wiles of women who mutter spells.”

  Walton heard the incantation against witchcraft and hurled a glass at him. “I’ll break your damned fuzzy head! Shut up!”

  All day long, Walton paced his quarters. “Leave Egypt. Get out. Quick. There’s a woman in the case. There are two women in the case, and they take turns kissing you. Then there’s Bint Anath.”

  At sunset he canceled his reservations. He could not leave until he knew why Makkara looked so much like a mummy’s mask. He wanted her beside him while he opened the case and saw the dried, withered horror behind the sycamore cover. Then he would know that Makkara’s lips were not a dead woman’s.

  That night after making reservations on the next boat, he drove out into the western desert. Sanity was more important than escape from the law.

  Before Makkara could unveil all her beauty, he caught her arm and demanded, “I want to see your grandmother. Now.”

  Her eyes became very old and sad. Tears traced her cheeks. “Why, Eric? She’s so quiet. She’s blessing us.”

  What if she did think he was insane? He had done her a favor, and at a mortal risk. He blurted, “You’re Maât-ka-Ra! I’ve been kissing a dead woman. Let me see.” He reached for the lid of the case.

  She did not try to stay his hand. She rippled against him, swaying and vibrant. He felt her heart thumping, as she pressed herself closer.

  “You must not. It is not fitting to see her face. Only the embalmers may look at the face of a dead woman of high birth. And those who prepare a corpse are stoned with pebbles, to symbolize the sacrilege of looking on the dead or touching them.”

  She was so alive and vital that he was ashamed. He held her at arms length, watched the taper flame play with the curve of her waist, the flare of her thighs. He saw the birthmark on her left breast, clear as though it had been bare; it was shaped like the sacred scarabeus, the symbol of resurrection.

  “The holy symbol would not stay on me if I were dead, and sought the living,” she whispered, leading him into a dim room in the other wing…

  * * * *

  Dawn found him in Cairo. And Bint Anath brazenly sought him, pleading for help. He watched her bare shoulders quiver as she sobbed, “God curse you! You won’t help me. Even though I love you. I always did. It wasn’t just because Hofni wanted me to.”

  He tried to quiet her outburst. He kissed her, stroked her hair, wheedled her from her tears. He watched the dangerous blaze of her eyes melt, felt her insinuating hands as she repented her wrath. Bint Anath was cunning as the cats of Bast; but not sly enough to refrain from saying, finally, “Maybe you’re right, beloved. Maybe no one can trace that native garment dropped near my brother’s body. There is so much talk of fingerprints on cloth, but that is absurd.”

  Only, it was not absurd. It can be done, sometimes.

  “Why don’t you ask Girgis, the priest?” Walton craftily suggested.

  “He tells me I lead an evil life, dancing in that cafe. Then he…” She shuddered, drew her gown closer, as though shrinking from an unwelcome caress.

  “Some night,” wheedled Walton, “you and I will go driving by moonlight?”

  “Wonderful!” She uncoiled from his arms. “Now I’ve got to go to work.”

  Later, he cursed his stupidity. Drive by moonlight. She’d tell Girgis. She might not hate the priest, and when she failed to return…

  Walton again canceled a boat reservation. Makkara drove him mad each night. Somehow, he could never force a test. But he had to before he dared leave Egypt; else he would surely become insane. Sometimes, while she put fresh kohl on her eyelids, he slipped into the mummy’s room, where cakes of bread, and flowers were laid out to take the place of the ghost-sustenance stolen from the tomb. That beautiful gilded face haunted him; once he almost pulled the lid aside, but Makkara’s tinkling bracelets warned him.

  He brooded over her aversion to daylight. He wanted to see her by the sun, but she evaded him; she wept, wheedled, kissed him to frenzy…

  But Bint Anath’s visits ceased. And the police had released the suspected villagers. Just another minor official, this murdered Hofni.

  Then one evening Girgis called, just as Walton was leaving for Makkara’s desert retreat. For one red moment, he was on the verge of tramping on the gas, crushing the priest, driving him against the narrow wall across the street. A traffic accident.

  Girgis however had smoothly moved from the line of peril, and a passerby greeted him. It would not work. Walton affably returned the priest’s salutation; and he was so eager to get rid of the bearded man that he dared not be brusque. That would arouse suspicion. The release of the villagers was a cunning ruse of subtle Egypt.

  So Walton offered Girgis brandy, once they were in the selamlik. The priest declined, after almost wetting his lips. He courteously wondered if a drop of wine was at hand? Afraid of poison, eh?

  But the words of Girgis were soft venom hidden in jasmine. He said, “Mr. Walton, as a man of God, I take this liberty. You will forgive it? Your body is in peril. You are losing weight.”

  He was right. In a mirror, Walton saw the thinness of his cheeks, the unnatural glitter of his eyes.

  “But your soul is my business, not your flesh,” continued the priest. “M
y friend, the prefect of police was with me the first time I noted it, and he agreed that our climate was pulling you down.”

  Walton rose, wrathful. Girgis made a stately gesture. “Please. You love a woman who lives in the western desert, beyond the villages. This is an old land, and I know it even better than you. I know what lives in the extreme west. I know why our ancestors buried their dead there, and why nothing living can stay long in the west.”

  “You’ve got your damn nerve, spying!” flared Walton. “A matter of discretion—”

  The priest laughed softly. “One is always discreet, when there is a woman in the case. But I do not speak of your sin. You are loving something that is not human. Your soul will be damned before your body.”

  Walton was sweating. A woman in the case! Yet that accursed priest could not yet know that the mummy of Maât-ka-Ra was in Makkara’s house, else the police would have learned. That would be a death sentence.

  “What do you suggest?” Affably; play him along. Settle him like Hofni.

  “You must understand, first. Our religion and yours acknowledge that the dead can be raised by evil magic. The Moslem knows this also. There are strange women who come forth by night. The ancient Hebrews called them lilin. The Greeks called them lamia.”

  “How can that be?” scoffed Walton. “Superstitious rot!”

  “No. The human body has seven parts. The first is the flesh and blood we see. Then a name, a power, a shadow, an astral double, a soul, and—”

  “What of it?” Walton challenged.

  “As long as an embalmed body is not destroyed,” he solemnly continued, “magic can collect the other ‘attributes,’ or ‘elements.’ Not all of them, no. But enough to make a thing that a man can kiss—”

  “Shut up, you damned fool!” croaked Walton, sweating and trembling.

  The priest crossed himself and went on, “A fictitious semblance of living flesh. But the shadow can not be reclaimed, for that is the gift of Ra, the Holy and Beneficent Sun Disc. Nothing once dead can ever have that again. The sure test. Such a creature can not face the sun.”