by Mike Ashley
Back in Cairo, Tutty Brightsea was profiting from his father’s absence on a field trip to follow his own studies into Egyptology. He and a friend were in a room in a small white cube of a house near the bazaar, watching a man unwrapping a mummy. Her feet were the first things revealed – sticking up at right angles to the narrow trestle table under yellow lamplight. Smells of resins and spices mingled with sweat from the small crowd pressing round the platform. There were a few middle aged Egyptians present, but the audience was the usual cosmopolitan mix of Cairo, with British predominating. An Egyptian man in the black robe looped the stained bandages carefully over his arm and stood back so that everybody could see.
“It’s all wrong, of course,” said Tutty cheerfully. He was large, pink-complexioned and fair-haired, taking after his late mother rather than his piratical father, 22 years old but alternating like a schoolboy between over-confidence and self-consciousness.
“I suppose it’s the inside that matters,” the friend said.
The man put down his armful of bandages, resumed unwrapping. There was a general intake of breath as ankles then calves appeared, the outline of them clear under a thin gold drape. The man beckoned his young assistant to prop up the figure so that he could unbandage the lower torso. A jut of hip bones emerged under their gold chemise-shroud, then a gently rounded stomach. The trail of Tutty’s cigar smoke made a wavering line in the air and he gave a little groan.
“Oh, I say.”
His face was red and sweating. The unspooling bandages made regular little flip flop sounds against the trestle. Elbows were revealed, folded close against the rib cage like wings of a trussed chicken. Flip flop. Brown arms, wrists then hands clasped together over where a heart should be. Flip flop flip flop. The smooth swell of gold-shrouded breasts, ornamented with beaten-gold leaves and blue beads of lapis lazuli. Tutty stared in a trance of desire, pushing against the men in front to get a better view. Only the shoulders and neck were still bandaged and, presumably, the head under its blue and gold painted funerary mask with the rearing royal cobra over the forehead. The painted eyes, eternally open, stared up at the low ceiling. The hands clasped on the golden breast looked as brown and plump as a young child’s.
“She moved. Her leg moved.” Tutty’s triumphant bray rang out across the room. When heads turned towards him his face went even more red. It had seemed the only safe way to release the desire building up in him and he’d said it – as he did so many things – without thinking. From the platform, the black-robed man gave him a poisonous look. His eyes, naturally dark and large but accentuated further with kohl, looked as unearthly as those on the funeral mask. Tutty went quiet. The man turned slowly, put his hand to the painted mask. The minute he touched it, the thing happened. A sneeze exploded from under the mask, a sneeze blowing out two thousand years of sand and dust or perhaps 20 minutes of burnt resin, dried sweat and cigar smoke. The mask slipped and brown hands unclasped themselves and rose up from the gold breasts, tearing at the head bandages. Tutty made a move towards the platform.
“She’s choking. It’s not a joke. Undo her, somebody.”
Peter grabbed his arm.
“Don’t make an exhibition of yourself. She’s all right.”
The young assistant too had moved forwards, but the black-robed man pushed him away. Less ceremoniously than before he spun the loose covering of bandages away from the head, one hand firmly on the girl’s chest to stop her writhing. The face revealed was red and gleaming with sweat and snot, eyes screwed up. The man and his assistant each took one of the girl’s hands and helped her off the trestle to her feet. The assistant produced a flute from his robe and as the thin notes from it wavered into the air the girl began to dance, slowly at first as if dazed, bare feet padding on the platform, upper body moving from side to side. The flute player followed her every move with big, sad eyes. She used her hands to wipe her face, trying to make it look like part of the dance. The man in black hissed something at her and the movements became more inviting. Her rouged lips smiled mechanically, black-rimmed eyes throwing flirtatious looks out over the audience, but at random, not caring if they hit a target or not. Another hissed instruction from the man in black and her hands came down, fingers massaging the gold-draped breasts. Tutty’s face was pouring sweat.
“You’d better come out and get some air,” the friend said.
Tutty followed him obediently through a curtain and into the street, with a last glance back at the girl, now miming a shuddering climax with her upper body thrown back and her legs apart. Outside it was a golden evening, with the smell of the Nile in the air. There was a cafe opposite, with tables under an awning. They made their way there and Tutty clicked his fingers for a waiter, ordered whisky and coffee. He was trying to get back his composure, lounging in his chair like a man of the world.
“I don’t think my respected father would have cared for it, do you?”
“Won’t he be shirty if he knows you’ve been there?”
“He won’t. My father takes no interest whatever in anything less than two thousand years old. I swear the night he begot me he was thinking more about Queen Hatshepsut than he ever did of my poor mother.”
“Tutty, people will hear.”
“Let them. There’s another thing, what do you think it does to a boy to go through prep school called Thutmose? I was conceived in ancient Egyptian, swaddled in mummy clothes, cut my milk teeth on a chip of the Rosetta stone.”
“I’m sure not literally.”
“Near enough, though. I hate Egypt. All I want to do is get back to London, find a job in a bank and marry a good-tempered girl who thinks Ptolemaic is something you take for colic.”
“I hope you haven’t told your father that.”
“I’d have to write it down in hieroglyphics before he’d take any notice.”
“You were making a bit of an exhibition in there.’ ”
“I thought the poor girl was choking.”
“You didn’t do her a favour. You saw that man’s face when she sneezed. I shouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t giving her a bruise or two to remind her not to do it again.”
Tutty gaped. “He wouldn’t, would he? She couldn’t help it.”
“It was probably from trying not to laugh when you yelled out that she was moving. Did you notice the language, by way, when he whispered to her?”
“No.”
“I only caught a few words, but I’d swear he was talking English.”
Tutty was caught childlike, between guilt and self-defence. “You’re saying the brute’s hitting a girl – an English girl - and it’s my fault.”
“I don’t know. Forget I said it. Drink up and let’s go and have dinner.”
But Tutty was staring at the little white cube of a house on the other side of the road with the dark curtain over its doorway.
“You go ahead. I want another drink.”
Still staring at the house, he clicked his fingers for the waiter. His friend gave him an exasperated look and left.
Professor Brightsea and Thomas travelled back to Cairo on a horse-drawn wagon, empty except for the unused camera and measuring rods. The Egyptian foreman who always accompanied the professor on his excavations sat disconsolately with his legs hanging over the back of the cart, aware of loss of money for him and loss of face for them all. The sunset was a red flare of sand particles, the air full of the scent of thorn fires and camel dung. The professor’s mockery had turned to bitter anger.
“The fifth time, Thomas. The fifth time and the worst. You know where the mummy and mummy case will be now? In the hold of a ship en route for New York or Hamburg, whoever bid higher.”
“Couldn’t the police . . .?”
The professor made a contemptuous sound, mimed the counting out of bribe money. “Besides, even if they could be brought back - which they can’t – the damage is done. The whole point of what we do is finding burials undisturbed and recording them. Every little detail, the very faintest trace
in the dust, has got something new to tell us. Imagine seeing a handprint and knowing that the person who made that print might have looked on the living faces of Amenhotep and Queen Tiy. And for profit, for simple financial profit, this . . . this creature, this worse than murderer, destroys irreplaceable evidence of the most fascinating civilization that every existed on earth. The smallest particle of dust from the bandages of the meanest mummy is worth more to the world than the whole of his contaminated, disease-ridden body.”
Miserable at the professor’s disappointment and anger, Thomas murmured, “They say he does other things too. Brothels and so on. Drugs and dancing girls. Anything to make money.”
Brightsea shrugged, as if to say that these things were only to be expected, but were insignificant compared to tomb robbery.
“And the sickening thing is, Thomas, that this corpse-maggot, this smear of slime is one of our own fellow countrymen.”
The cart rolled on towards Cairo.
Tutty was staring at a bare white arm, still streaked here and there with greasepaint, pitted with five red marks of fingers and a thumb.
“It’ll be black and blue by tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll have to put the stuff on thicker to hide it.” Her voice was Cockney and choked up with a cold. She sneezed again. “And then he gives me what-for if I use up the grease paint too thick. Whatever I do he belts me, doesn’t matter what.”
They were sitting on either side of the table in a little back room. The table was covered with unrolled bandages. As she talked the girl was rolling them up again, methodical as a nurse.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I made you sneeze.”
She was still wearing her thin golden costume. Seen close to, you could tell it for the cheap dyed muslin it was, and the beads on her breasts were painted clay, not lapis lazuli. He could hardly take his eyes off them. When he did manage to look up her eyes were blue too. He found that so disturbing that he looked down again at the beads, but they were no help.
“Ain’t your fault. I’d probably have done it anyway. Back in London, when a man said did I want to travel with him to Egypt I thought, well, that’s supposed to be hot, isn’t it, so at least I won’t get colds there like I always do here, only it’s worse. Must be all that dust from the dead people.”
“Why don’t you go back home?” he said.
“Home?” She made a little huffing sound, finished rolling a bandage and tucked the end in, threw it into a basket by her bare feet and started on another.
“Why not? I could pay your fare. I’ve got a bit of money saved up.”
Wildly he imagined himself sailing back to England with her, delivering her to friends and family, her aged parents blessing him.
“I can’t get away.”
“Why not, if he beats you?” A thought struck him. “You’re not married to the fellow, are you?”
She shook her head. “Worse than that.”
“What could be worse than being married to a brute like that?”
“Somebody’s put a curse on me so I have to stay here and do as I’m told.”
“What?” The surprise of it jerked his gaze up from the beads to her eyes again. They were scared, brimming with tears.
“An old Egyptian curse. There’s this man who brought me here. He was a priest in another life, hundreds of years ago, that’s how he knows all about mummies and so on. He said all these words over me like prayers in a foreign language, only they were curses. And he had this special old dead beetle the priests used for cursing people.”
“A scarab?”
“Nothing to do with scabs. A dead beetle, like I said. So he put this curse on me, then he took me to meet this man Abdul I do the mummy act with and said I was Abdul’s slave until he came and released me. If I go away without the priest man saying I can go, I’ll be dead in agony before the next sun rises. That’s what the curse is.”
He laughed, unbelieving. “You don’t believe that nonsense?”
“It’s true. I tried it and its true. One day when Abdul beat me worse than usual I thought, well, anything’s better than this, so I ran off. I hadn’t got no further than the end of the street when this dog came out of nowhere and bit me. Look, I’ve got the marks.” Still rolling bandages, she shot out her leg towards him, almost touching his knee with her toes. Just above the ankle he saw a crescent of white marks.
“I thought it had rabies and I’d be dead in agony by morning, like he said.”
“But it hadn’t. I mean, you’re still here.”
He was stammering, not able to take his eyes off the leg she was presenting to him.
“He says next time it will be rabies, or something even worse. It was a warning to me.”
“But don’t you see, it’s just a lot of hocus pocus to scare you? You could walk out and nothing would happen to you.”
She shook her head, sulky with him for doubting her misery.
“This man, the one who makes out he’s a priest, is he an Egyptian?”
“No, he’s English, just like you and me.”
“What? Oh, look, this is ridiculous. He’s no more a . . .” Then the idea hit him, just at the point where his eyes, travelling up from her ankle, had got as far as a pink and rounded knee, streaked with brown like a sugared almond dropped in mud. He paused, realizing that his hated education hadn’t been a waste of time after all, had been leading up to this moment. “Well, if your Englishman was only a priest in ancient Egypt, I outrank him by miles. I was a pharaoh.”
It fell flat. “A what?”
His heart bounded at her ignorance. He could have kissed her, almost did.
“A kind of king. If he can put curses on people, I can lift them, just like that.”
He clicked his fingers. She looked puzzled.
“There,” he said. “I’ve just lifted the curse. You can go where you like.”
“It’s not right to laugh about it.”
She snatched her leg away, placed it sedately beside the other one.
“I’m not laughing. I tell you, I’ve lifted his curse.”
But she gave him a hurt look and started rolling another bandage. He stared at her, like a willing horse face to face with an unjumpable fence. But there was a way round it, there had to be. The feeling in him was as strong as if the rest of his life depended on getting this right.
“All right, I’ll come back tomorrow and bring you something to protect you, something that will keep you safe against any curse.”
“What?”
“A scar . . . I mean a beetle of your own, only a lot more powerful than his beetle. You can wear it round your neck and it will protect you.”
He saw from the look in her eyes that he had her. Something to touch, something to hold was what she wanted. An amulet. Any ancient Egyptian would have understood.
Tutty hadn’t expected to find his father and Thomas back home already. He gathered from the atmosphere in the house that their field trip had not gone well, but was too full of his own affair to take much interest. He said he wasn’t hungry, fended off questions from Thomas about whether he’d got a touch of sunstroke and went straight upstairs to his room.
He lay on his bed with the window open and the breeze coming off the river. His father’s study was directly below. With both windows open he could hear the murmuring voices of him and Thomas, the rustle of papers. The endless conversations about cataloguing and classifying, every little fragment of carved stone, sliver of painted frieze, flake of gold or gum assigned to its place and dynasty. Slow, long-distance arguments by letters and learned articles among people just like his father and Thomas here in Cairo, in London, New York, Paris, Berlin. Usually the very thought of it annoyed him but tonight he was filled with a happiness, a rightness with his place in the world that made him tolerant. He heard Thomas saying goodnight to his father, coming upstairs to bed in the room opposite his own. Then, soon afterwards, Thomas’ snores. He listened for his father’s footsteps but this must be one of the nights when
he was working late on his own because he was still moving about downstairs. When Tutty struck a match to look at his pocket watch, it was nearly midnight.
He dozed for a while and woke to hear a knock at the side door to the yard. Normally one of the servants would have answered it, even at this hour, but his father must have been waiting because he was there almost at once, asking in Arabic where they’d got to, why were they late. Tutty could understand his father’s Arabic, but not the low reply in the same language. The door closed, then there were at least three voices in the study below, the clink of coffee cups. Tutty thought wearily, Site foreman and friend, probably. On past experience, the haggling over coffee cups about workmen’s pay and food rations on excavations could go on for hours. So it was a pleasant surprise when the visitors left after not much more than half an hour, his father’s slow footsteps came upstairs at last and the house went quiet. Tutty waited another half hour to make sure then tiptoed down to the study in stockinged feet. He lit a candle and looked round the familiar chaos of his father’s study. Every horizontal surface was either covered in papers or crowded with porcelain figures of gods and goddesses, scarabs, fragments of mummy cloth. The growing candle flame wavered over a shelf with a row of small bronze Bastets, their shadows swaying on the wall like a line of cat-headed chorus girls. The jackal jaw of Anubis reflected the flame from the top of a funerary jar. All of those were so familiar to Tutty that he hardly glanced at them. The scarabs, annoyingly, were kept in no sort of order and were hiding all over the place as if they’d uncurled their carved or moulded legs and scuttled there, on shelves, under papers, on top of books. He picked up and rejected some of the more valuable-seeming ones in ivory or semi-precious stones, not wanting to deprive his father more than necessary. One, being used casually as a paperweight, seemed promising. It was larger than the rest, deeply but crudely carved, made of black stone that absorbed the light rather than reflecting it. The feel of it in his hand was weighty and satisfying. Because he hadn’t been able to block out entirely the life-long conditioning of his Egyptian upbringing he recognized it as a heart scarab – black basalt from the New Kingdom, fairly common, found in mummy wrappings and believed by some authorities to represent the heart of the dead person.