Pharaoh

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Husseini nodded. ‘Of course. Go on.’

  ‘So you know how neat and regular it is. Well, that note, like I said, seemed really hurried, and it referred to another folder of his writings where he supposedly specified these connections to the Exodus. The note wasn’t even that clear, but I was intrigued by the idea. It would have been the discovery of a lifetime. Actual historical proof of the Exodus! I looked for that phantom folder in all the cellars and back rooms of the Oriental Institute, searched through all the old records, but there was no sign of it anywhere.’

  Husseini passed him another cigarette and lit up one himself: ‘Yeah, you even came to ask me about it. I remember now . . .’

  ‘That’s right. Anyway, I turned up nothing. Nothing at all. And yet that note had to mean something. It became kind of an obsession for me. Then I got an idea. Maybe Breasted didn’t leave all his writings to the Institute. Maybe there were private collections, even though they weren’t mentioned anywhere.

  ‘I started by looking for his heirs. Thank God, City Hall records were already on the Internet by then, so it wasn’t as hard as I’d thought it might be. In the end I found Breasted’s last descendant: a fifty-year-old lawyer who lived in one of those nice old houses on Longwood, on the city’s south side. I introduced myself as a researcher and asked him about a folder that might have contained the transcriptions of hieroglyphic texts that I was interested in, without really letting him know what I was after.’

  ‘How did he react?’

  ‘Oh, he was very cordial. He said that I wasn’t the first to come looking for that transcription and that I should give it up, because no trace had ever been found of any such folder, and his great-uncle’s papers – what was left of them – had been sifted through at least a dozen times over the years, whenever someone like me chanced upon that note. He offered to let me examine his library if I wanted to try it again, but said that nothing had ever turned up. Courteous as he was, he made me feel like a real fool.

  ‘If only as a matter of pride, though, I accepted his invitation and started to look through the papers in his private library, not really convinced that it would get me anywhere. I went back the day after and the day after that, because I’m stubborn and I just didn’t want to give up. Well, I finally came upon a trail that I thought might help me to find the solution.’

  ‘Feel like eating something?’ interrupted Husseini. ‘It is dinner time, after all. I don’t have much in the house. How does desert-style sound?’

  ‘Sounds fine to me,’ said Blake.

  Husseini put some pita bread in the oven and took a pot of spicy sauce out of the refrigerator, along with some hummus, hard-boiled eggs, cheese and beans.

  ‘Do you have any beer?’ asked Blake. ‘Or are you observant?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Husseini, handing him a bottle from the refrigerator. ‘My mother was Maronite.’

  Blake continued his story as they ate. ‘Breasted had a lover. Her name was Suzanne de Bligny, the widow of a French diplomat from the consulate who had settled down in Minneapolis, and there was correspondence between them. I also found out that Mrs Bligny’s late husband had been stationed in Egypt, at Luxor.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Husseini. ‘The golden age of Egyptology! The heyday of the Hôtel du Nil, of Auguste Mariette and Emil Brugsch . . .’

  ‘Well, their letters suggested that they keenly shared these interests. I found out that Madame de Bligny had a daughter, Mary The´re`se, who married a certain James O’Donnell, an air force officer who was shot down in combat over England.’

  ‘A dynasty of widows,’ commented Husseini, placing the warmed sauce on the table.

  Blake spread some on his pita bread and added some beans. ‘It would seem so. In any case, it turned out that Mary The´re`se O’Donnell was still alive. She was eighty-five years old, and she had kept all the correspondence between Breasted and her mother. I asked her if I could consult it and I finally found the folder that I had been searching for all that time.’

  ‘And I can imagine that in the meantime you neglected everything else: departmental meetings, academic parties, student visiting hours. And your wife, right?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so,’ admitted Blake. ‘I was so taken by this investigation that I didn’t even realize time was passing, or what I was neglecting. I didn’t stop to think that an unguarded trench is immediately occupied by the enemy.’ His expression clouded over, as if all the distressing thoughts that had temporarily lifted, had suddenly renewed their grip.

  ‘What did you find in that file?’ asked Husseini.

  Blake hesitated, as though he were reluctant to reveal a secret that he had kept to himself up until that moment.

  Husseini lowered his gaze and helped himself from the platter. ‘You don’t have to answer me,’ he added. ‘We can talk about something else. Women, politics. With everything that’s been happening out my way, there’s plenty to keep us occupied.’

  Blake ate quietly for a few more minutes. It was quiet outside too. No one was on the streets, and the snow, which had begun to fall heavily, muted even the tolling of the bell in the university tower. Blake stood up and walked to the window. He thought of the scorching sand of the Valley of the Kings and felt for a moment that he’d dreamed up the whole thing. Then he continued with his story.

  ‘The file referred to the note that I had read in the Oriental Institute papers, and there was the beginning of the transcription of a hieroglyphic text that began with this phrase: I followed the Habiru from Pi-Ramses through the Sea of Reeds and then into the desert . . .’

  Husseini nodded. ‘Impressive, no doubt about it. How it matches the beginning of the Book of the Exodus. But you know that the ethnic name Habiru has been interpreted very differently by the experts. Although it’s commonly assumed to mean “Hebrews”, there’s no way that can be taken for granted. I hope you didn’t go and shake up the whole Institute on this basis alone . . . They would obviously have put your ass on the line.’

  ‘The style of the ideograms was extremely similar to the so-called “Israel Stele”,’ observed Blake, clearly offended.

  Husseini seemed to reconsider. ‘No, that’s very impressive, I’d say. Sorry, I didn’t mean to question your competence. It’s just that certain things are very hard to believe. I’ll make more coffee. Would you like some?’

  ‘Sure, as long as you don’t start playing that music with your mortar again.’

  ‘American-style, filtered,’ said Husseini, taking a pot from the coffee maker, ‘otherwise we’ll never sleep again.’

  ‘That transcription, backed by Breasted’s reputation as the foremost expert in the field, contained the most explicit evidence of the historical reliability of the Book of Exodus ever found in any source apart from the Bible. And so I was determined to get to the bottom of it. Breasted had diligently noted where the original could be found. He had seen the papyrus in the house of a certain Mustafa Mahmoud at El Qurna, and had tried to buy it for the Oriental Institute. He had only managed to read the first line and copy the ideograms before the papyrus was put away.’

  ‘El Qurna is a tomb raider’s paradise. Crawling with forgeries as well, my friend. My bet is that he fell for a trap.’

  ‘Even so, I felt that the stakes were too high for me to drop my investigation there, and anyway Breasted was no dupe. If he was convinced that papyrus was authentic, I’d say there was a good chance that it was. Having weighed all the pros and cons, I thought it was worth the risk and I persuaded the department to allocate a considerable sum for field research that I would carry out personally. Olsen’s vote was conclusive for the financing.’

  ‘So you failed. And afterwards they were all there like vultures waiting to pick at your carcass. Right?’

  ‘Just a minute, dear colleague. I’m not that stupid. The papyrus did exist. And probably still does.’

  Husseini took a deep drag on his cigarette and shook his head. ‘Nearly ninety years have passed—’
r />   ‘I’m telling you that the papyrus existed . . . does exist.’

  ‘If you can’t prove it, it’s as if it didn’t, and you know that better than I do. Anyway, I’d like to know how you can be so sure. You’re not going to tell me that at El Qurna you found the heirs of Mustafa Mahmoud—’

  ‘I did, as a matter of fact. Even better than that.’

  ‘Better?’

  ‘Photographic evidence. Partial, dark, but extremely significant.’

  Both men were quiet, the Arab scholar watching the thin line of smoke that rose from the butt of his cigarette, his guest turning the empty coffee cup over and over in his hands. The whine of a police siren echoed distantly between the glass walls of the skyscrapers, travelling through the curtain of snow all the way to the room where they were sitting, like a disturbing, alien wail.

  ‘Continue,’ said Husseini.

  ‘I knew I was playing for high stakes. Looking for a document which may lie at the very basis of thousands of years of tradition means running enormous risks – a short circuit at best, but a catastrophe at the worst. I knew I had to move cautiously and I was careful not to expose myself directly. I took one of my students, Selim Kaddoumi, along.’

  Husseini indicated with a nod that he knew him.

  Blake went on, ‘He’s a smart kid, working on his PhD with me, on a grant from the Egyptian government. He’s completely bilingual and he made all my contacts for me. He talked with the old fellahin of El Qurna, distributed a little money here and there where it counted, obviously keeping a small percentage for himself, until he really chanced upon some important information. An old collection dating back to the golden age had turned up and the underground antiquities smugglers were said to have a number of pieces ready to sell. So at this point I stepped in. Italian designer suit, drove up in a rented luxury car and made an appointment, passing myself off as a possible fence.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Husseini.

  ‘Selim had seen a Polaroid of one of the pieces that was up for sale and he sketched it for me. I thought I recognized one of the finds described by Breasted in the folder that I’d seen in Minneapolis: a gilded bronze bracelet set with amber, hematite and carnelian. What’s more, there were also papyri in the lot. It was reasonable to suppose that the papyrus I was looking for could have been one of them, since there’d been no word of it since Breasted’s times. My gut feeling told me that I’d had a stroke of luck that I would never even have dreamed of. Anyway, it was worth a try.’

  Husseini shook his head. ‘I don’t get it, Blake. A piece suddenly shows up after some eighty years just while you’re looking for it. Didn’t that make you suspicious?’

  ‘Well, that’s not exactly how it was. There was no way I could be sure that the papyrus I was looking for was in the lot. I wasn’t even sure that the bracelet Selim had drawn from a photo was the same one that Breasted had described.’

  Hussein looked at him, confused. ‘But then—’

  ‘The plot thickens, servant of Allah,’ interrupted Blake, ‘true to script. But to tell you the rest I need something stronger to drink. Too much to ask?’

  ‘Afraid so. But I can give you another cigarette. A little nicotine will keep you going.’

  So Blake took a deep drag on the cigarette and continued. ‘I had met an official from our embassy in Cairo. Olsen had introduced us, in case I needed a hand in contacting the Egyptian authorities or the Minister of Antiquities. One evening he called me at the Oriental Institute’s guest facilities to set up an appointment at the Cairo Marriot. It was his favourite hangout, because they serve hamburgers, steaks and French fries. Waiters in cowboy hats, you get the picture.

  ‘He told me to watch out because he knew there were other people – powerful, dangerous people – trying to get their hands on that lot. He wouldn’t say who they were, but he did say they were people who didn’t take kindly to competition. He was warning me as a sort of a favour, like saying, “Watch it. That stuff’s too hot, so stay away.” But for me it was a fantastic confirmation of what I was hoping for. If there were other powerful people or institutions interested in those finds, it meant that there had to be something tremendously important there, like – for example – the Breasted papyrus.’

  ‘Right,’ agreed Husseini. ‘So how did you imagine you could slip it out from under their noses?’

  ‘Well, I may have been presumptuous, but I was also well organized. If the game had been fair I would have won.’

  ‘Sure, tell me about it. They alerted the Egyptian police to you, and you were found with compromising material on you, or in your room or your car.’

  ‘Yeah, more or less. But it went well to start with. The dealer knew his stuff. He showed me the pieces one by one, and described them in the correct historical terms, but he was really interested in getting rid of the jewellery, especially the bracelet, a necklace and a ring, all from the Nineteenth Dynasty. He had also brought objects which were less important but from the same time period: two more bracelets and a pendant, along with scarabs, ankhs and ushtabi figures.

  ‘When I brought up the papyri he started asking questions. He must have been aware of the interest this find had stirred up. When I managed to convince him that there wasn’t anyone behind me, he softened a little and showed me the photograph. I swear that I nearly had a heart attack. It was my papyrus, no question about it. I knew the sequence and the style of the ideograms in the first line by heart and I’d read the description in Breasted’s papers time after time. I had no doubts.

  ‘I tried as hard as I could to disguise my excitement and I asked him if he could give me the photograph. That would have been a victory in itself. I would have been able to read the whole text.’

  ‘Did he agree?’

  ‘No. He hesitated and then put it back in the inside pocket of his jacket. He said something like, “I’d better not. If it were found on you or in your house it might cause trouble.” He said that he’d have to discuss my offer with the person he was working for, and that he would call me. That was the last I saw of him. Because that was when the police rushed in. He disappeared in the confusion and I was trapped there with all that stuff on the table in front of me. The rest is history.’

  Husseini seemed to be reflecting on the story in silence. He turned to look at Blake: ‘Was it dark when the police burst in?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, the place was a big underground warehouse at Khan el Khalili, packed with all kinds of goods and poorly lit by a couple of light bulbs. Anyone who knew his way around would have been able to get away, but I didn’t know where to turn and, anyway, I had no intention of running.’

  ‘Who do you think informed the Egyptian police?’

  Blake shrugged. ‘My mysterious competitors?’

  ‘Yes, that’s likely. Especially if they thought they’d find that papyrus. Most likely they’d bribed the police commander and he was acting on their instructions.’

  ‘I was arrested, listed as persona non grata and expelled from the country.’

  ‘And you were lucky. Any idea what an Egyptian prison is like?’

  ‘Yeah, I got a good idea in the four, five days I spent there. And yet, if I could, I’d head straight back there, even now.’

  Husseini looked at him with a mixture of admiration and pity. ‘You didn’t get enough, did you? Listen to me. You’d better forget all about it because next time you won’t get a second chance. It’s just too dangerous: fences, thieves, drug barons, people who don’t forgive and forget. You wouldn’t come out alive.’

  ‘Not that the idea frightens me much any more.’

  ‘You’ll change your mind. Mark my words, one day you’ll wake up and you’ll want to start all over again . . .’

  Blake shook his head. ‘Start what?’

  ‘Anything. As long as we’re alive, we’re alive. What about the papyrus?’

  ‘Haven’t heard anything more about it. When I got back here I was overwhelmed by the consequences. The loss of my job, my wife
. . .’

  ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘Now as in “right now”?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I’ll find my way back to the car and go home. I’ve got a little place not too far from here. By the ballpark. I’m not going to kill myself, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ said Husseini. ‘I don’t think there’s much I can do for you. I’m just an assistant professor and I don’t have tenure but, if you like, you can tell Olsen when he comes back that I’m willing to give you a hand if I can.’

  ‘Thank you, Husseini. You’ve already helped me. And we’ve never even been . . . friendly.’

  ‘That’s normal. You can’t have relationships with all of your colleagues.’

  ‘Well, it’s late. Time for me to go.’

  ‘Listen, it’s no problem for me. If you like you can sleep here on the couch. It’s pretty comfortable.’

  ‘No, thanks. I really appreciate you taking me in like this but . . . I should be going now. Thanks again. You know, if you’d like to come out to my place, it’s not as nice as here but there’s always something to drink and . . . Well, I’ll give you the address. It’s in Bridgeport . . . If you feel like it, you know.’

  ‘Count on it,’ said Husseini.

  Blake went to a table to write out the address and noticed a photograph of a little boy of maybe five, and a phrase in Arabic that said: In memory of Said. Dad. He would have liked to ask about the little boy, but instead he just scribbled down his address, put on his coat and went to the door. It was still snowing.

  ‘Listen, can I ask you one last question?’ asked Husseini.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Where does the name William Blake come from? It’s like being called Harun al Rashid or Dante Alighieri or Thomas Jefferson.’

  ‘Just chance. I’ve never liked being called Bill, because Bill Blake is awful.’

  ‘I see. Well, goodbye, then. I’ll come and visit, and you can come here whenever you like, if you feel like talking.’

  Blake waved briefly and trudged off through the deep snow. Husseini watched him as he passed from one ring of light to the next under the street lights, until he disappeared in the dark.