Crook & Flail

by Maira Isabel Pita

  “His divine flesh,” she echoes.

  “The texts refer to this Hour as The Cavern of Osiris. Look there at the top of the register. See that plumed deity sitting inside the coils of a snake? That’s the Flesh of Osiris. ‘Thou art a soul’,” Doug’s voice deepens as he translates, “‘and thy soul is made spirit on earth.’ The snake there is called both Life of Forms and Life of Spirits and the twelve gods and goddesses wearing stars on their heads personify the twelve hours of the dead soul’s passage. The crocodile pictured over here is Evil. ‘He who knows the texts will be one whose soul is not swallowed by the crocodile’.” He pauses and then seems to force himself to say, “But you can’t take any of this seriously, of course.”

  “Why not? It makes perfect metaphysical sense.”

  “Not even Egyptologists can fully grasp what all this means, yet you think you do?” he snaps.

  “I feel I do,” she corrects him mildly.

  “These texts are as precise as mathematical equations and you can’t feel the right answer in math, can you?”

  Mark reaches into the alcove and pulls her out. “Let’s go.”

  “Go?” Doug demands. “We haven’t even reached the burial chamber!”

  Lucia sides with Mark, “I’ve seen enough, let’s move on.”

  Mark whispers in her ear, “I just wish you would.”

  Lori asks, smiling, “Are you enjoying yourself, Lucia?”

  “Yes, thank you.” She senses they have been talking about her and it worries her in more ways than one. The last thing she wants is for Richard’s mysterious development to be hindered by skeptical thoughts surrounding her. Rational cynicism is the contemporary crocodile she has to fight to help him achieve his divine flesh.

  As they start back toward the tomb’s entrance, the long corridor feels like an artery flowing with the mystical blood of paintings.

  They emerge into radiant, blinding sunlight.

  “I need a drink,” Mark announces, his squinting eyes shards of glass reflecting the sky.

  “She has to see at least one other tomb first,” Doug insists. “If you’re really so interested in The Book of what’s in the Duat, Lucia, you absolutely have to experience the tomb of Thutmosis III.” It is a challenge.

  “But it’s out in the middle of nowhere,” Lori protests lazily, “and you have to climb down a really long ladder to get in. Are you afraid of heights, Lucia?”

  “No,” she lies. “Let’s go.”

  Mark thrusts his hands into his pockets and doesn’t move.

  “This tour was your idea,” Doug reminds him, taking hold of Lucia’s arm.

  “I won’t run away, Doug,” she teases.

  He lets go of her with a confused glance at his hand, as if he hadn’t realized what it was doing.

  Mark and Lori follow behind them with obvious reluctance.

  “What has Mark been saying to you, Doug?” Lucia asks him quietly. “You both know how I feel about my late husband. Why did he ask you to give me this in-depth tour if he doesn’t want to encourage my so-called delusions?”

  “He thought it would make you realize what gibberish all this is, Lucia, the book of this and the book of that, winged serpents, men with scarab beetle heads. He thought it would help you come to your senses.”

  “Is that so?” Anger stings her like a scorpion but makes a swift retreat since she knows Mark means well.

  “Besides, none of this stuff actually worked.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because when the body dies, consciousness ends and that’s that.”

  “I don’t think you really believe that, Doug. I mean, how can anyone really believe they’ll cease to exist forever? It’s inconceivable. There’s got to be at least a tiny spark of hope in everyone, whether they consciously believe in anything or not.”

  “Lucia, Mark is concerned about you.”

  “What has he told you, Doug?”

  “Nothing I don’t already know, that you’re obsessed with helping your husband’s soul ascend, or whatever a soul does if it exists at all.”

  Mark doesn’t seem to have mentioned Richard’s other appearances, which is a relief. “If my husband doesn’t have a soul that survived his body then it’s my own time I’m wasting. But if he does I could conceivably be helping him, Doug.”

  He is silent for a long moment. “Well, I don’t see how I can argue with that.” He sounds relieved.

  * * * * *

  After the tomb of Thutmosis III, they spend more time at the rest area than planned, engrossed in conversation. Except for Lori, who just smiles indulgently and sips her soda.

  A cold beer is intensifying Doug’s enthusiasm. “The multitude of deities in the Egyptian pantheon can be likened to the particles in subatomic physics and the mysteries of their interaction,” he declares. “In many ways, their faith was an exact science.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it as exact, exactly,” Mark disagrees wryly.

  They are seated at a table on the covered porch that encircles the small building, avoiding the noisy and crowded interior.

  “Oh but it was, incredibly precise,” Doug insists, a stubborn gleam in his dark eyes.

  “If you say so.” Mark’s shirt is half unbuttoned and the sheen of sweat on the inverted pyramid of flesh visible between its sky-blue folds seems to embody the warm haze of the desert behind him. “But you have to admit that this exact science is mostly incomprehensible to us since you can’t solve an equation without the formula.”

  “That’s true,” Doug agrees, warming up for an argument. “We don’t have the key to ancient Egyptian symbolism. It’s like a modern political cartoon. If you don’t know what people, or issues, it refers to it’s just a meaningless and distorted picture of seemingly unrelated images. For example, if you didn’t know the elephant stood for the Republican Party—”

  “We get it,” Lori says shortly.

  “Of course,” Doug adds quickly, “Egyptian symbolism was much more profound than the kind we find in contemporary political cartoons.”

  “Oh of course.” Lucia smiles at him fondly.

  “In any case, unless we run into a real, live ancient Egyptian,” Mark’s patience is being strained, “all these precious books are going to remain mostly gibberish.”

  “Not so.” Doug gazes out at the tomb-riddled Valley, a faithful gleam in his eyes like a tiny campfire burning in a vast night.

  “Isn’t there some way to apply the recent theories in modern physics to these ancient tableaus?” Lucia asks tentatively, not wanting to annoy Mark or to sound foolish but too interested not to pursue the idea. “I mean, if we assume tomb paintings are symbolic representations of the workings of physical forces and of the universe itself, won’t mankind just end up saying the same thing in different ways? And if so, couldn’t we somehow place one sketch over another and work from there?”

  “We would need a very real point of reference for that,” Mark argues, easily following her train of thought. He has finished his first beer and is efficiently working on a second.

  “We have one!” Doug leans toward her eagerly. “The Egyptians believed in a Primordial Ocean which they called Nun, and Bohm has postulated basically the same theory.”

  “‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’,” Lori chimes in.

  “Go on,” Lucia urges.

  To her surprise, it is Mark who answers her. “I suppose Nun would correspond to Bohm’s Implicate Order, the deeper level of reality that exists beneath our own level of existence, which he calls the Explicate, or Unfolded, Order. He thinks all the forms manifesting in the universe are caused by endless enfoldings and unfoldings.”

  “Oh Doug, that reminds me of the serpent called the Enveloper you mentioned in Seti’s tomb,” Lucia says. “The one containing the Flesh of Osiris…but I’m sorry, Mark, I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

  He stares over her shoulder as he goes on, “Bohm believes the subatomic particles that compose mat
ter are sustained by a constant flow from the Implicate Order. So even when a particle seems to be destroyed it isn’t really—it’s just enfolded back into the deeper order from which it emerged and there is always this constant flowing exchange.”

  “Which means all manifestation,” Lucia can’t help sounding excited, “including our bodies, is in a sense a three-dimensional illusion and that reality is actually the eternal sea of energy from which all images of life surface for a while.”

  Mark looks her straight in the eye. “Like a hologram.”

  She takes a quick, bitter sip of her lemonade as she abruptly realizes what he is implying.

  “One of the things that makes holography possible is interference,” Doug elaborates. “A crisscrossing pattern occurs when two or more waves ripple through each other. If we regard the human soul as a wave, which behaves like a particle in its physical form, then the so-called hologram of creation—”

  “Is cosmic sex.” Lori suddenly comes to life. “All these waves flowing through the void or the Implicate Order or whatever the hell you want to call it, these waves caress each other and get turned on and life as we know it is this state of arousal called a particle, which explains why everything appears to be hard and solid and yet why dying will probably be a big fucking relief.”

  Doug stares at her like a devoted dog but Mark’s attention is fixed on another table.

  Lucia glances over her shoulder to see who he is looking at.

  The tall blonde woman she remembers running into at the Luxor Museum the other morning is sitting alone a few yards away, her long legs stretched out before her in form-fitting white jeans. She is sipping her drink and gazing out across the Valley from behind the reflective silver panes of her sunglasses.

  Lucia forces down the final sickly-sweet dregs of her drink, wanting to kill Mark for so obviously looking at another woman in her presence.

  “Well,” Doug pushes his chair back, “are we ready for Nefertari’s tomb?”

  The only thing Lucia wants now is an empty tomb in which to bury that blonde.

  “It’s the most beautiful tomb in the Valley.” Doug looks bewildered by her sudden lack of enthusiasm.

  “Are tourists allowed in there?” Mark asks abruptly.

  “Of course not,” Doug snaps. “You know that.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Nine

  After Nefertari’s tomb they drop Doug off at the Institute near the Valley, after which Lori chauffeurs them back to the East Bank to spare them a crowded tourist barge. She speeds across the river with her back to them, supporting Mark’s silence. And, feeling increasingly insecure about him, Lucia can’t think of anything to say to lighten the mood.

  In the elevator taking them up to what is now their room, Mark remains as unsociable as an obelisk while she tortures herself trying to figure out what he is thinking. He is probably wondering where that beautiful blonde is staying and planning his approach.

  The doors part with a mechanical sigh and he steps out into the corridor.

  She remains in the lift, miserably wondering if Elizabeth was right about him after all.

  He grabs her arm and pulls her out before the doors close. “Are you all right?”

  “No.”

  “Do you feel dizzy?” He sounds concerned. “Nauseous?”

  “No, it’s not physical.”

  He unlocks their door. “What is it then?”

  She walks into the room ahead of him and drops listlessly onto edge of the bed. She is a fool to believe that love is strong enough to defeat time and space.

  Mark closes the door and comes to stand in front of her. “Lucia,” he grips her chin between his thumb and forefinger and forces her to look up at him, “talk to me.”

  The evanescent particle of personality she knew as Richard Taylor has been swept back into the dark waves of energy from which it came. He nourished her desires while he lived but she has to let him go now because anything else is unnatural, unhealthy. She focuses on the softly undulating horizon of Mark’s lips. “I’m just tired.”

  “I thought you said it wasn’t physical.”

  There is a knock at the door.

  “Mrs. Taylor?” a heavily accented voice inquires with an odd blend of deference and impatience.

  “Yes?”

  “You have just returned from the desert, so we bring you more water.”

  “Leave it outside please.”

  “Very well…enjoy.”

  Mark strides to the door, flings it open and disappears out into the hall.

  She runs after him. “Oh my God!”

  “Get back in the room, Lucia.”

  She recognizes the native man who originally delivered the sparkling water even though half his face is pressed against the wall.

  “Let’s have a little talk.” Firmly clutching the back of the man’s neck, Mark twists one of his arms up against his back. “Who’s paying you to bring her the water?”

  “Compliments of hotel!” The one coal-black eye she can see smolders with a disturbing mix of pain and anger.

  Mark shifts his hold up to the man’s curly black hair, pulls his head back and slams his forehead into the wall.

  She gasps as the dull thudding sound reverberates sickeningly in her womb.

  “Who’s paying you to drug her water, asshole?!”

  All her nerves stand en pointe and the blood rushes through her body in a breathless choreography of fear and excitement.

  “Another woman! Don’t know her name!”

  “Is she staying here in the Etap?”

  “Aywa! Bass!”

  “What’s her room number?”

  “Don’t know! Bass! Minfadlak!”

  Mark thrusts his knee between the man’s fleshy thighs. “What’s her room number?”

  “La! La! We meet in lobby and she give me powder to put in water! I don’t know room number!”

  “What does the bitch look like? Answer me!”

  “Tall and skinny, like model, yellow hair!”

  “Mark, let him go before someone sees this!”

  “The bastard’s drugging you, Lucia. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t beat the shit out of him.”

  “Because if he reports you to the Tourist Police they might arrest you and then I’d be all alone!”

  He yanks the man away from the wall with both hands and shoves him down the corridor. “If you ever come near her again, I’ll hurt you. You got that?”

  Not wanting to wait for the elevator, the Egyptian plunges into the stairwell and makes a noisy retreat in his hard-soled shoes.

  His fists clenched, Mark stares at the door for a moment as if considering going after him. “I should have him arrested,” he turns toward her, “but it won’t help. It’ll just scare Julian away and I intend to catch him.” He picks up the tray laden with bottles sitting outside the door and carries it into the room.

  She quickly locks the door behind them as he takes the water into the bathroom.

  She follows him and stares anxiously up at his face while he examines one of the bottles.

  “Jesus Christ,” he mutters, meeting her eyes in the mirror. “Didn’t you notice the seal was broken on these?”

  She feels unbelievably foolish. “No, I didn’t.”

  His reflected stare penetrates hers. “Now do you believe me?”

  “Yes,” she says.

  He empties the bottle’s sizzling contents into the sink. “Doug should have the test results by tomorrow and then we’ll know exactly what they were giving you.”

  “Whatever it was made me incredibly thirsty, otherwise it was kind of enjoyable,” she remarks and immediately regrets it.

  “Really? Would you enjoy being poisoned? I know you’re a masochist but that’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?”

  “Poisoned?” She looks up into his real eyes.

  “You never know. If you die here in Egypt, the autopsy won’t be as thorough as it would be in the States.” />
  “Oh my God.” She turns away from the inconceivable thought.

  “I’m sorry!” He quickly slips his arms around her waist from behind. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sure it’s not true. Julian knows he can’t hurt you and that’s why he’s playing this game. It’s up to you what happens here.”

  She relaxes against him. “You’re probably wondering what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into, Mark.”

  He whispers, “I know exactly what I’ve gotten myself into,” he unzips her pantsuit, “a beautiful woman!”

  “Oh, Mark, I can’t believe you’re real.”

  “Well, believe it. Shit, this isn’t a dress?”

  She smiles. “No.” Stepping away from him, she slips gracefully out of the suit then snaps her bra open and tosses it away before turning to face him again. She wrests his shirt out of his jeans and begins unbuttoning it. It is a frustratingly long task because he doesn’t help and his passivity now is such a contrast to his violence of a few minutes ago that she is tempted to simply rip all his clothes off.

  Finally he does her the favor of unzipping his jeans and she promptly sinks to her knees before him on the hard tile floor, pulling them down around his thighs just far enough to expose his dark-blue shorts. It pleases her to feel his penis straining against them as with both hands she caresses the slightly rough cotton around to his ass. She squeezes it and gives the promising swell of his buried erection a gentle, encouraging kiss. She closes her eyes for a moment to breathe in a desirable man’s subtly intoxicating scent and then carefully uses her teeth to get a grip on his head through his underpants, which are dry as a desert against her tongue. She captures him between her lips and deliberately teases herself by sucking on him without being able to feel him. She makes herself desperate for the smooth sensation of his skin and for his cool, salty-sweet semen, a drop of which turns the dark-blue fabric black. Just barely tasting him through this wet spot, she can’t stand it anymore and impatiently pulls his shorts down out of her way.

  His erection rears up to greet her, straight and hard as a scepter with which he dominates her while at the same time putting his most powerful feelings in her hands. He strokes her hair away from her face, tenderly warning her not to make him wait too much longer for her mouth. He has no idea it is the memory of all her husband’s erections she is cherishing. Despite its impressive dimensions, Mark’s penis disappoints her simply because it is not Richard’s, which abruptly makes her conscious of the fact that she is kneeling on a very hard surface and that she doesn’t want to be.